[B-Greek] RE: pronouncing vowels

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Dec 8 20:21:52 EST 2003


At 7:53 PM -0500 12/8/03, Blake T. Garretson wrote:
>Thanks for the responses so far.
>
>I guess I'm still bothered that I *could* pronounce iota like the "ee"
>in feet, or the "i" in "pit", but I *always* pronounce it long because I
>don't know when to switch to short pronunciation.
>
>Are there any rules at all specifying when to use either pronunciation?
>   Raymond said:
>	The "rule" is that one should basically learn the length of
>	those vowels as part of learning vocabulary.
>But I don't get how I know the length of the vowels in the first place.
>  The grammer from which I'm working doesn't say something like:
>	LUW means "I loose or I destroy" and the U is long.
>Am I missing something basic?

If your vocabulary does not tell you the length of alpha, iota, or upsilon
in words, then you must consult a good lexicon; you should note that if one
of these has a circumflex over it, it must be long.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



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