[B-Greek] Re: Accents
Jeremiah & Elisa Ketchum
jeremiah_ketchum at ntm.org
Mon Nov 22 15:24:50 EST 2004
To get the discussion back to Greek, you said that there were instances where
where accents are "very important". I generally don't pay that much attention
to accents -- the only marks I really look for are rough breathing for
pronunciation and iota subscripts for identification. Could you give me a few
examples of important uses of accents?
Jeremiah Ketchum
New Tribes Mission
El Cajon, CA
------ Original Message ------
Received: 01:26 PM EST, 11/22/2004
From: "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>
To: Raymond Regalado <fwgk5942 at mb.infoweb.ne.jp>Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Re: Change of prefered Language
At 1:39 AM +0900 11/23/04, Raymond Regalado wrote:
>On 2004.11.23, at 12:56 AM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>
>> At 4:25 PM +0100 11/22/04, Wieland Willker wrote:
>>> Raymond Regalado wrote:
>>>> Allow me to go ahead and see if this works.
>>>> This is in English.
>>>> ??t?? est?? ?????????.
>>>
>>> Obviously not.
>>> :-)
>>
>> Actually it does show up as Greek unicode characters in the archives
>> at our
>> web-site, but it shows mis-placed breathing marks and wrong
>> accentuation
>
>I put the rough breathing over the omicron instead of the upsilon in
>the OU dipthong at the start of the first word. The second word I
>didn't accent at all, but I think I got the last word correctly. At
>any rate, it shows up in the archives the way I typed it -- at least on
>my computer!
Yes, the rough breathing is misplaced--all accenting on diphthongs should
be on the second vowel; there should be a smooth breathing on the E of
ESTIN; finally it looks like a diaeresis over the W of hELLHNIKWS, but when
I enlarge the text on a screen it does look like a ~ circumflex. If there
is a moral to this tale, it lies in the punch-line of a shaggy-dog story
about a seminar paper on Aristophanes that I submitted half a century ago
to Professor Rudolf Pfeiffer in Munich. I had hoped to find enlightening
comments in the margins or at the end when I got it back; what I found was
the single remark: "Es ist ganz klar dass Sie die Akzente nie gelernt
haben: entweder keine--oder die richtigen" Which, being Englished, is "It's
quite clear that you never learned the accents: either (use) none at all or
the right ones!" Ever since then I've tried pretty hard to get my accents
right, although I have often said in this forum that I think there are very
few instances where they are important (but then they are VERY important).
This thread illustrates what I have occasionally felt to characterize our
discussion on B-Greek: we expend more effort TALKING about talking about
Greek than we do on talking about Greek.
--
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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