[B-Greek] Lord's Prayer in Greek

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Apr 30 19:27:37 EDT 2004


At 8:24 AM +0900 5/1/04, Raymond Regalado wrote:
>On 2004.5.1, at 04:11  AM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>
>> I rather suspect that most of those seminarians taught Erasmian Greek
>> in
>> different schools would have considerable difficulty understanding the
>> Greek pronounced by those from other schools: there isn't even a
>> consistent
>> pronunciation of Erasmian--which is why the notion of "pure" Erasmian
>> has
>> to seem to me pretty much a fantasy.
>
>By "pure" Erasmian I was thinking that perhaps the International
>Phonetic Association standards could be followed.  I was under the
>impression that the IPA was a true "world standard", i.e. that the
>sounds it was meant to represent are "constant" and not "in flux" from
>country to country.
>
>> And if one is going to do that, then would it not make more sense to
>> adopt
>> and practice a pronunciation that has some sound basis in a historical
>> reconstruction of the way the language actually was spoken at some
>> point in
>> its history?
>
>Point taken.  I will strive to learn the "historical" pronunciation (as
>shown here: http://www.biblicalgreek.org/links/biblical.html )

Well, I do think it's worth the effort to do that, but my point about the
Erasmian pronunciation, aside from the obvious fact that it's artificial
and non-historical, is chiefly that it is not really taught CONSISTENTLY
from one classroom to another.
-- 

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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