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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