[B-Greek] pronouncing vowels

Raymond Regalado fwgk5942 at mb.infoweb.ne.jp
Mon Dec 8 07:57:34 EST 2003


On Mon, 2003-12-08 at 10:22, Blake T. Garretson wrote:
> I've been learning Greek out of the Summers/Sawyer grammer, and I have a 
> question about the pronunciation of vowels.  Summers says alpha, iota, 
> and upsilon may be pronounced either short or long, but he doesn't 
> specify WHEN to pronounce them either way.  What is the rule here?
> 
> Thanks,
> Blake Garretson
> Liberty Center, Ohio

Since I have been pondering this whole matter of pronunciation as well
as the accent rules (using Summers' grammar, among others) perhaps I may
be allowed to say something about the long/short distinction.  The
"rule" is that one should basically learn the length of those vowels as
part of learning vocabulary.  I would doubt that there is much
difference in the way the long and short versions of these vowels
actually *sound* (so, one need not worry about whether he is pronouncing
it short enough or long enough).  There are also other rules that one
will pick up along the way, such that the nominative, accusative and
vocative of all neuter nouns of all declensions always end in short
alpha, etc.  The distinction between long and short is important for
accentuation, as for instance the acute accent can never be on the
antepenult if the ultima is long, etc.  I suggest that you focus at this
point on learning the accent rules and not worry too much about the
distinction between long and short vowels.

Kind Regards,

Raymond Regalado
Tokyo, Japan




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