Black's "Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek" &- modern pronunciation
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Nov 15 15:41:45 EST 2002
[Reposted in plain-text ASCII for Larry Baker to replace MIME/HTML version
originally posted to the list and now deleted]
From: "Larry Baker" <lbaker at accs.edu>
To: Biblical Greek <b-greek at franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: [b-greek] RE: Black's "Linguistics for Students of New Testament
Greek" &- modern pronunciation
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 12:11:45 -0600
In dealing with Modern Greek and Erasmian pronunciations, you must also
consider a third: the historical Anglicizing of Greek words over the
centuries, such as, where omicron-upsilon comes into Latin and English as
"u", and kappa as a "c", and "upsilon" as a "y" or "v", and a syllabic
initial/consonantal iota as a "j".
And then there is Grimm's Law is the Guttural/Labial/Dental shifts from
Greek into English/German:
gamma >> k, kappa >> h, chi >> g,
beta >> p, pi >> f, phi >> b,
delta >> t, tau >> th, theta >> d.
Thomas A. Robinson's MASTERING GREEK VOCABULARY has some nice material
about this chart and examples on p. 147.
Larry Baker
American Christian College and Seminary
OKC, OK
-----Original Message-----
From: James Forsyth [mailto:james at bigbeing.com.au]
Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 5:32 AM
Subject: Black's "Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek" &-
modern pronunciation
Hi B-Greek,
One concern I have with Black's "Linguistics for Students of New Testament
Greek" is that no credence at all is given to the possibility of the
upsilon sounding like an iota or a beta sounding like an English "V" or a
delta sounding like a soft theta.
One example of a modern English word where putting one's etymological cap
on one may say "How long has the upsilon been pronounced that way?" would
be paralytic vs. PARALUTIKOS.
Further, a diphthong sounding like a consonant in EUANGGELLION (which can
at times sound like an "f" but in this instance sounding like a "v"). How
long has this pronunciation been around?
An example of the reverse i.e. something close to Erasmian pronunciation
actually being used (and here thinking of the delta) would be dendrites
(apologies, botanic knowledge sadly wanting) vs. DENDRON.
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.
Thank you,
James Forsyth
(Assoc) DipTh; BA (Youth Affairs); GradDip (SRM)
ICQ: 10747220
james at bigbeing.com.au
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