[mathieuh]

More on this: in French the letter y is written "i grec", or "Greek 'i'".

In the IPA, the sound of the French 'u' or German 'ü' is written with as 'y'. E.g. French "tu" -> [ty].

To speakers of languages without that sound, it often gets mapped to the vowel sound in the English word "loose".

So you can see what's happened here, "cybernetics" with the "Greek 'y'" pronounced as French "u" becomes "kubernetes".

I don't know if modern Greek still has that sound.

I love little realisations like this. Sometimes I wish I'd done linguistics instead of computer science.

[stavros]

Modern Greek doesn't have the French "u" sound, I don't know if ancient Greek did. The "υ" in "κυβερνήτης" (cybernetes/kubernetes = helmsman, governor) is pronounced "i", as in "miss".

Incidentally, the word "governor" comes from "kubernetes" as well.

[mathieuh]

The French "u" sound is just "i" pronounced with your lips rounded, so the two sounds are very similar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_phonology#Vowel_...

It seems some varieties of Ancient Greek did have that sound

[stavros]

As far as I know/can see, it was more of an "oo" sound, rather than a ü, but I'm not an expert and you may be entirely correct.