TITLE: What do Greek Mathematicians use when they use our equivalent Greek letters in formulas and equations?
QUESTION [19 upvotes]: Like for example, it's common to use the Greek letter $\theta$ to represent an angle right? So what would a Greek person doing math use to represent an angle? Would they also use $\theta$? Or is there another notation that they would use in order for them to use their letters like we do? Such as if we say $A\geq B$, would a Greek student, mathematician, or whoever say: $\alpha \geq \beta$ or is there something else they say? It just seems like the Greek letters from a non-Greek point of view have so much meaning to us, but then how do they percieve their letters used in mathematics?

REPLY [8 votes]: I am Greek.
We use all the letters, Greek or Latin. But we pronounce some of them in a different way.
For example the letter $\mu$ is pronounced "me". The letter $\beta$ as "vita". The angles are almost always named as $\theta, \phi, \omega$.
If somebody writes $A\ge B$ we read the same as $\alpha\ge \beta$.
The only problem is when you want a student to understand that $\chi \psi$ denotes $\chi\cdot \psi$ but $\ln a$ has nothing to do with $l\cdot n \cdot a$.
Finally, I wanted to add that actually $\pi$ is not pronounced like the food - for example (apple-pie) - but like "me" with the letter p at the beginning (that is, "pe").