[B-Greek] Standardized Erasmian Pronunciation

Raymond Regalado fwgk5942 at mb.infoweb.ne.jp
Sat May 1 12:50:29 EDT 2004


On 2004.5.2, at 12:52  AM, John Schwandt wrote:

> 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".

I didn't mean to imply that only my Erasmian is "pure" while that of 
others' is "corrupt".  By "pure" I had in mind the idea of keeping 
vowels "pure" in the "technical sense" instead of diphthongizing them 
(as a Japanese-speaking Tennessean friend of mine does to the Japanese 
syllabary! ;-)) --  pronouncing omicron as IPA [o] instead of IPA [a], 
etc.  And, why would IPA [o] be better than IPA [a] for omicron?  
Because the Greeks (modern and ancient) used [o] instead of [a] for 
omicron, for one thing.  But then again, this is just convention and we 
could as well agree to use [a] instead of [o], perhaps.

> 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.

Along with the symbols, the IPA also came with the "technical 
explanations" for the sounds the symbols were supposed to symbolize 
(e.g. omicron is [o] which is a "close-middle, back, rounded" vowel 
sound, etc.).  Anyway, I may be misunderstanding the limits or 
intentions of the IPA, but since it is -- for one thing -- the system 
used in all English-Japanese dictionaries to teach Japanese students of 
English how English is supposed to *really* sound like, I assumed that 
the symbols were meant to symbolize "fixed" sounds, just like "meter" 
refers to a "fixed" standard of length maintained by the International 
Standards Organization.

>  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.)

I see.  Actually, in studying (and coming to a decision on) this whole 
matter of pronunciation, your site was a big help to me!  And, I got 
examples of sounds which I think should be part of what I've been 
calling "pure Erasmian" from your site.  For instance, in 
http://www.biblicalgreek.org/links/erasmian.html you point out that the 
Allen variation of Erasmian pronounces omicron closer to the "pure" 
omicron sound (IPA [o]) than the Mounce version (which you refer to as 
"North American" on this page).

Blessings,

Raymond Regalado
Tokyo, Japan




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