[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
>---
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list