[B-Greek] Lord's Prayer in Greek

Kevin Riley klriley at alphalink.com.au
Sat May 1 06:39:35 EDT 2004



>-----Original Message-----
>From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
>[mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Raymond Regalado

>Thanks. ;-)
>
>As an aside, I do believe people should perhaps pay attention to the
>IPA (International Phonetic Association) alphabet (cf:
>http://www.ic.arizona.edu/%7Elsp/IPA.html ).  It perhaps lists every
>conceivable phonetic element in the languages of the world.  Methinks,
>we could have a more consistent Erasmian pronunciation by using the IPA
>(cf: http://users.otenet.gr/~bm-celusy/chart1.html )
>
>Best,
>
>Raymond Regalado
>Tokyo, Japan

Your faith in the IPA is somewhat optimistic.  The IPA if used in a narrow
phonetic transcription can record fairly precisely how a word/phrase is
pronounced, but it cannot be used to decide how a language once was
pronounced.  Its use is also far from uniform across languages or within
languages.  It is more often used phonemically rather than phonetically, and
that brings as many problems as the Erasmian system.  As we are very
unlikely in this world to meet a speaker of Koine or Attic Greek, the effort
to learn IPA to the level needed to 'standardise' the pronunciation of
Classical or Koine Greek would be better put into learning to read Greek.

Kevin Riley




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