[B-Greek] Re Pronunciation
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue May 13 12:00:26 EDT 2003
At 6:53 PM -0600 5/13/03, Paul Hughes wrote:
>Hello all
>
>There seems to be a plethora of ways to pronouce biblical greek, my
>question today is regarding the dipthong "EU" as in the first line of the
>book of mark: Mark 1:1 ARCH TOU EUANGGELIOU IHSOU CRISTOU TOU QEOU. On one
>biblical greek website it was pronounced as almost a long english "O".
>Then I heard a reading of Mark 1 by "greeklatinaudio.com" in which the
>reader seemed to pronounce the "EU" dipthong as "EV" almost like the
>english form of evangelism. I was wondering is there a standard which the
>majority of the scholastic community is leaning and what is the concensus
>of opinion on the b-greek community?
Paul (and please use your full-name in signature, in accordance with BG
protocol), you'd best not expect any consensus of opinion in the b-greek
community. That pronunciation as EV-, that is, with the V following short
epsilon pronounced like a -V-, probably comes closest to the way the word
was actually pronounced in the NT era, and it is the pronunciation in
Modern Greek. My guess is that in most American schools you'll hear
something closer to an English long U or else an attempted diphthongal
pronunciation wherein one hears a quick eh followed by oo: EH-OO. That's
what I taught when I was teaching, but it's pretty certain that by the
period of the NT the U following E or H was consonantized to a voiced V.
--
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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