Fwd: reading for vocabulary
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Sep 23 08:25:35 EDT 1998
At 9:33 PM -0500 9/22/98, TonyProst at aol.com wrote:
>
>Another consideration in reading for comprehension in Greek, at least in
>Homer, is the problem of reading dactylic hexameter despite the accents. I can
>read the language as "prose" (with the proper accents) and (sort of)
>understand it, but when I switch to reading the meter, my comprehension goes
>out the door. It takes several readings to bring the two mental functions into
>congruence.
Are you reading the accents as pitch accents? Theoretically, that should
not interfere with reading the dactylic hexameter metrically--IF you're
reading the dactylic hexameters as regular sequences of long and short
syllables rather than putting a verbal stress on the obligatory first long
of each dactyl. I would guess that more likely you're doing it like Latin
hexameters, where there is a definite conflict between a metrical ictus and
ordinary word-accent and both ictus and accent are sounded as stress on the
syllables.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad at yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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