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Carrion Luggage #1096044 added August 28, 2025 at 10:42am
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Gamma Ways
I vaguely remember discussing this pronunciation in the previous blog, but not recently and not this article. From Mental Floss:
And by "gyro" they mean the food, not the spinny stabilizer, which most people seem to get right (insofar as anything is "right" when it comes to pronunciation).
Alongside philosophy, democracy, and the Olympics, the gyro is one of the most famous—and delicious—things invented by the Greeks.
Matter of personal taste, of course, but I don't find most Greek food all that appealing. The gyro is an exception. I know this because there's a pretty significant Greek-origin population near me, and they used to do a festival every year. Maybe they also still do the festival; I don't know.
I'm not ragging on it, mind you. Lots of people, Greek or not, love it. Like I said, matter of personal taste.
But like I said, the gyro is an exception for me, and I want to pronounce it right when I order it.
But if you grew up outside its nation of origin, you may have a hard time pronouncing the food item the next time you order one. So is it “jee-roh”, “jye-roh”, or “yee-roh”?
I've been told it's actually khee-roh, with something like the guttural kh sound found in languages as diverse as Hebrew and Scots Gaelic. But I wasn't aware that Greek was one of those languages. I don't consider my source to be perfect on this point: he was a Brooklyner of Italian ancestry.
Gyros consist of a pita wrap containing meat (usually pork and beef in Greece, while lamb is more common in the U.S.) sliced off a vertical rotisserie.
The rotisserie thing is probably why it shares a spelling with that other gyro.
From 1965 to 1980, the United States experienced a wave of immigration from Greece. The largest number of immigrants ultimately settled in New York, many in the neighborhood of Astoria, Queens.
Which is why I don't completely dismiss the opinion of the guy from Brooklyn out of hand.
Part of the problem arises from the transliteration of the Greek gamma, or γ. Gamma generally represents the “g” sound in the Greek alphabet, pronounced like the “g” in “gift.” When gamma comes before “ee” and “eh” sounds, however, like the one in gyro, that hard “g” sound turns into more of a rough “y.” Hence the word is “year-oh” instead of “gee-roh.”
Still no gutturals involved, though.
When in doubt, one might just point with one's finger at the menu or whatever, like one does at East Asian restaurants. Or, like, there's this ubiquitous Thai beer called Singha, which Americans usually pronounce every letter of, but I've been informed it's actually just "sing." But when I tried ordering a "sing" at a Thai place, the server said (in a Thai accent), "You mean sing-ha?"
So I'm still not sure. What I am sure of is that pronunciation of a written word can be difficult, which is one reason you still get people wrongly pronouncing .gif like jif. |
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