Koine Pronunciation and funny stuff
Barry Hofstetter
nebarry at earthlink.net
Thu Nov 14 18:10:58 EST 2002
----- Original Message -----
From: "James Forsyth" <james at bigbeing.com.au>
To: "Biblical Greek" <b-greek at franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 6:31 AM
Subject: [b-greek] Black's "Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek" &
modern pronunciation
> Should this question have been addressed or am I overlooking something that
> should be seen as common knowledge in the field of Koine phonology? I am
> ready to be corrected.
I seem to recall, from studying ancient Greek linguistics years ago, that Koine
was well on its way to being pronounced like modern Greek, but wasn't there yet
(about midway). I know that's not a very scientific sounding answer, but this
isn't the linguistics list...
Oh, and how do we know this? Primarily by the transliteration of Greek words
into other languages, and by mispellings of the less than educated in the
papyri, folks who tended to write like it sounds, rather than using formally
correct spelling.
Off topic, but interesting, my 5 year old, whom we are home schooling, has
discovered phonics all by her lonesome. She is very good at sounding at words
she reads; now she is attempting to write. Without any coaching from us, she
wrote a whole list of things, some of the words surprisingly recognizable. My
name: "Bewy" and "frum" (from) included...
Here's a joke: An international studying for his English exams learned the word
"enough" in class. He studied ahead, and then proudly announced then next day
that he had learned "thuff" and thruff" as well (though and through...).
Ok, back to Greek stuff...
N.E. Barry Hofstetter
Fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te...
-- Augustine, Confessions 1:1
http://home.earthlink.net/~nebarry
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