Speaking greek

Ken Smith kens at 180solutions.com
Thu May 17 17:31:19 EDT 2001


Out of curiosity, why do you consider the modern Greek pronunciation to
be easier than the Erasmian?  I grant that since it is connected to a
living language, those who use it because of their connection to that
language will probably have a much more fluent, "life-like" accent than
those (like myself) for whom Greek (alas!) remains primarily a matter of
reading NT texts.  But I don't see how it's "easier".  Indeed, because
so many different vowels and diphthongs are pronounced identically
(hOI=OI=hH=H=Hi=U=I=AI, etc.), I frequently find it rather confusing.
Eventually you get used to it, and you're able to tell from context
whether "tees eemerees" is "of the day" (THS hHMERHS)or "in the days"
(TAIS hHMERAIS), but it certainly seems to call for more discrimination
and skill than the same phrase read in the Erasmian pronunciation.

Ken Smith

-----Original Message-----
From: Sam Johnson [mailto:jfamily5 at prodigy.net] 
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2001 2:00 PM
To: Biblical Greek
Cc: buthfam at compuserve.com
Subject: [b-greek] Speaking greek


I have done quite a bit of research on this and the evidence points to
modern Greek being the closest to Koine. Robertson mentions this in his
grammer and even makes a claim that the Greek spoken today is closer to
the Koine in spite of the time span. 

My greek teacher who was from Athens loved to tell the story about his
mother who could read his New Testament even though she only knew modern
Greek. I have learned the pronunciation of modern Greek and it is much
easier than using the erasmusian. I hope many of you will consider
learning modern Greek pronunciation. I have communicated with a well
known Greek scholar and he told me "that modern Greek comes as close to
any model we have for how it was actually pronounced in ancient times". 

In His Grip,
Sam Johnson






 
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