[B-Greek] RE: pronouncing vowels

Kevin Riley klriley at alphalink.com.au
Mon Dec 8 20:50:47 EST 2003


There are a few 'rules', but basically it has been determined by reading
Greek poetry, and then you can tell for most occurrences whether the vowel
should be long or short - as long as they are in open syllables.  Even with
the use of accents [circumflex only on long vowels] and cognate words, not
all lengths are known.  A reasonably reliable way to work it out is to buy a
dictionary that marks the long vowels.  Many Classical Greek texts do so.
The whole issue of length may not [or may, depending who you read] have been
relevant for NT Greek.  It always seemed to me to be rather a lot of effort
to go to to learn the length of the unmarked vowels.

Kevin Riley

>-----Original Message-----
>From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
>[mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Blake T.
>Garretson
>Sent: Tuesday, 9 December 2003 11:54 AM
>
>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?
>
>Thanks,
>Blake Garretson
>Liberty Center, Ohio
>---




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