Unfortunately, The Greeks have never pronounced the letter μ (mu) like a cow noise. The "moo" pronunciation exists only in English-speaking academics. The modern Greeks pronounce μ as "mee", and modern scholarship suggests that the ancient Greeks pronounced the "oo" sound in the name more like a French u or a long German ü.
The "oo" sound in Greek has always been spelled "ου" (omicron upsilon).
I was told a long time ago that the modern French actually spell the sound a cow makes as "meuh". French "euh" spells a sound that doesn't exist in either English or Greek, but it does actually sound remarkably like the sound a cow makes.
Yes, count on me to ruin an otherwise-humorous joke with overanalysis any day. ;-)
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Date: 2006-09-06 07:42 pm (UTC)Shouldn't the Cypriot cow get just a little Turkish?
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Date: 2006-09-06 08:48 pm (UTC)The "oo" sound in Greek has always been spelled "ου" (omicron upsilon).
I was told a long time ago that the modern French actually spell the sound a cow makes as "meuh". French "euh" spells a sound that doesn't exist in either English or Greek, but it does actually sound remarkably like the sound a cow makes.
Yes, count on me to ruin an otherwise-humorous joke with overanalysis any day. ;-)
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Date: 2006-09-06 11:19 pm (UTC);-)
(Ok, that didn't necessarily make sense, nor did it necessarily not....)
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Date: 2006-09-12 05:08 am (UTC)