How would an ancient Greek have pronounced "heiros gamos"?

Question

I've asked two people so far, and they are Greek scholars, but they didn't make it clear enough through email. Is it: eye-ros (eye as in eyeball, ros with the 'os' like ostrich) gam-os (gam like 'ham' and 'os' the same as before)?

Answer 1

You pretty much got it, except make sure you pronounce the "a" in "gam" like what it sounds like when the doctor says, "Open your mouth and say, Ahhhh," or like somebody from Boston would say "Hah-vard" or "yah-rd" for "Harvard" and "yard." Don't pronounce it the nasally American way we pronounce our "a" as in "ham."

I'm also not sure that you wouldn't vocalize the "h" at the beginning of "heiros". You wouldn't pronounce it as strongly as we would pronounce the "h" sound at the beginning of our words, but the Greeks did differentiate between aspirated and unaspirated words. I'd ask about that one, though.

Answer 2

They are Greek scholars and they do not know...
Poor Greek, poor scholar-ism, poor education, poor educated-to-be-by-those scholars. Perhaps you mean this:
Ιερός γάμος
For the moment let's accept that the modern greek pronunciation coincides with the ancient greek one (if you want more details I will answer you). It should be
all I-s like y in boy (the simplest y sound you could make)
all single e-s like e in pet
γ is like yard or yes y without the ee sound between the y and the next vowel. It is like a much softened g (have you heard the spanish soft version of g?),
all o-s like o in boy (again the simplest, clearest o you can make)
ρ is an r pronounced firmly (if this makes any sense) -it is clearer than an american r, less intense than a spanish rr.
Stress where the accent goes
(Scholars of the Hellenistic period had added some symbols besides the accent symbol in modern greek, to help non-Greeks learn the new language. In this case, a c symbol above the I in Ιερός would make it sound heavier, more like a (ye -he -a closing sound).
NO WAY LIKE eye in eyeball

Answer 3

Heiros Gamos is one of the largest legal sites on the Internet.

It means "sacred marraige"

The pronunciation you mentioned sounds right-"aye-ros gamos. The gam has an inflection, then you say" os " in your regular tone.