Bear with me, here. :-)

Joe A. Friberg JoeFriberg at email.msn.com
Thu Oct 21 16:23:06 EDT 1999


The following are comments forwarded (permission indicated) from Randall
Buth, continuing the discussion of pronunciation of Koine Greek.  I have
made three brief insertions (labeled as JAF:, closing also added) in direct
answer to his questions regarding my purported practice in adopting a
graphemically distinct pronunciation of vowels.

----- Original Message -----
From: yochanan bitan <ButhFam at compuserve.com>
To: joe friberg <JoeFriberg at email.msn.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 1999 5:38 AM
Subject: Re: Re: Bear with me, here. :-)


<<offlist , but you may edit and resend as you like.
randall buth
=================
RE:     Re: Re: Bear with me, here.  :-)

> comments from Randall Buth:

> >but emically,
> >the same pronunciation should be used for both /oi/ and /u/,
> >and that pronunciation for 'oi' should be distinguished from /i,ei/,
> >as well as from /ou/.

(joe friberg)
>On this one point I would disagree.  While it may be historically
>inaccurate, I have attempted to maintain a distinction between each
>graphemically distinct vowel and dipthong.  I find this helpful for
>learning/remembering spellings.  I would suggest the heuristic value
>outweighs historical considerations, esp. for the beginner.  The learning
of
>the collapse of various sounds can come later, when one is ready to deal
>directly w/ the papyrii!

i wonder:
do you pronounce luw 'i untie' and louw 'i wash' differently?>>

JAF: Yes!  Y is umlauted (I guess I imitate German which I have studied, not
French), and OU is plain back rounded /u/ sound.

<<do you pronounce present tense and present subjunctive same or different
(blepei/bleph)?
how about future versus aorist subjunctive? lusei versus lush?>>

JAF: Yes!  I work at making the appropriate long/short distinctions between
H/E and W/O.  I also work at keeping H undipthongized (without a closing
semivowel glide).

<<[related, but on the side and more "british", do you accent the correct
syllable when not looking at a text? xai'rontes 'being happy' versus
euro'ntes 'having found', fe'rein 'to be carrying' versus labei'n 'to
take'? the point: not internalizing words with the correct accents can lead
to excessive morphological difficulties and imperceived syntactical
functions for the learner.]>>

JAF: Yes!  I have worked at recognizing and internalizing the accentual
patterns as well.

<<the examples above would be distinguished in an emic koine. paul and
epictetos would keep the above apart. a koine pronunciation would merely
exchange an unhistorical underdifferentiated reconstruction for a
historical underdifferentiated reconstruction, but it would do it in line
with the known direction of the language, would be linguistically
defensible, and would allow much smoother integration with both the
literary records of the time as well as the modern language.
[the other ancient option from a koine pronuciation for me would be the
'allen' system. it has a better claim for distinguishing orthography than
'american erasmus', but few pay any attention to that, probably because no
is trying to communicate with it.]

as i mentioned earlier, this really only becomes a pressing issue when
someone tries to internalize the language. an analogy: to reconstruct a
two-dimensional flat object into a three-dimensional house that one can
live in takes a lot of energy and time. it would be silly to invest such
effort into something that was known to not exist. i am comfortable with
storing the language in a framework that epictetus or paul would have been
comfortable with.

erroso
randall buth>>

JAF: Well, perhaps I am following something akin to the Allen system.  I am
not quite sure, though, and it is hard to find a native speaker to practice
with ;-) .  I have been enlightened by the discussion of pronunciation, and
I will be better able to pursue future research in this area.

Thanks!  And God Bless!
Joe Friberg
Arlington, TX






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