[B-Greek] Standardized Erasmian Pronunciation

John Schwandt jschwandt at nsa.edu
Sat May 1 11:52:03 EDT 2004


Carl Conrad Wrote:
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.

John Schwandt Writes:
Agreeing with Carl, I wanted to point out that one of the major reasons for
creating the pronunciation pages found at
http://www.biblicalgreek.org/links/pronunciation.html was to compare and
contrast major pronunciation conventions.  The idea behind the Erasmian
pronunciation page http://www.biblicalgreek.org/links/erasmian.html
was to show the variety or lack of consistency within the Erasmian
tradition.  I chose four main varieties of the Erasmian pronunciation to
compare, but I could have included many more lesser known versions within
this tradition.  So, Raymond, if you want a "pure" or standardized Erasmian
pronunciation I'm afraid it doesn't exist nor can be created at this time.
If you offer some version as the "standard" I could simply add it to my list
and it would be no more standard than any of the others.  If your view of
"standard" is simply the most widely used of the Erasmian varieties, there
are further complications.  I conducted an informal Erasmian pronunciation
survey (http://www.biblicalgreek.org/links/survey.html) on this list last
year and found that the most common convention is a mixture between the
pronunciations proposed by Machen and Mounce.  Should this mixture merit
it's own title?  Unfortunately, it is not contained in any one grammar and
will change over time.

Raymond, I appreciate your work and your audio file uploads.  But I think
your description of a pure or standardized Erasmian pronunciation is
misleading and possibly uncharitable to those using a different Erasmian
variation.  You pronunciation sounded like a consistent Machen
pronunciation, but I have to think than many using the Mounce or Allen
scheme would raise their collective eyebrow when you call yours (Machen's?)
"pure".

May I suggest that instead of describing it as "pure" or standard that you
simply name the grammar that contains the pronunciation scheme that you are
using and then try to be as consistent with that scheme.  That way you could
describe your sound as a "pure" or consistent presentation of a Machen's
Erasmian pronunciation.

Raymond Regalado Wrote:
>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 )

John Schwandt Writes:
I don't think the IPA (international phonetic alphabet) will be of any help
for standardizing any of the Erasmian pronunciations.  The IPA is simply a
standardized alphabet (symbol) system.  I was torn on whether to use it on
http://www.biblicalgreek.org/links/pronunciation.html but it would not have
changed any of the sounds in any of the pronunciation systems. (I decided
not to use it since it would require further explanation and the actual
sound files made it less of an issue.)

Blessings,
John Schwandt





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