[B-Greek] Re: How do modern Greeks pronounce Biblical Greek?
Barry Hofstetter
nebarry at verizon.net
Sat Apr 9 08:01:11 EDT 2005
----- Original Message -----
From: "demis" <demis123 at rcn.com>
To: <jpb at buchan.org.uk>; <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 09, 2005 9:41 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Re: How do modern Greeks pronounce Biblical Greek?
> Hi
> I would like to tell you about the "erasmian" pronunciation.
> Since I am Greek and I have stadied Encient Greek in High School for 4 years
> this "erasmian" pronunciation is an American invetion for people to make
> belive that they speak Ancient Greek.
> Of course Modern with Ancient Greek in pronunciation it is Not the same and
> the paralilism can be with Latin and Italian.
> Generally thie Erasmian "thing" it is foreign to the Greek Language an
> invetion of English people trying to "speak Greek?"
> NO SENCE ......
Since the Erasmean system was developed by Erasmus, a 15th-16th century Dutch
scholar, I don't think it is an American invention, though it has been very
popular in American schools -- I started begining Greek in the Fall of 1977 at
the University of Maryland (Baltimore County), and the professor, a University
of Penn Ph.D. in classics, used the Erasmean pronunciation. I am sure we
Americans, such terrible ethnocentrists as we tend to be, use the really
horrible American accent in our attempts at speaking...
In its defense, while the Erasmean pronunciation does not perfectly represent
how Greek was actually spoken at any period in its history (Randall mentioned
HTA and the diphtong EI), it comes rather close in some ways, and at least
attempts to make the distinctions that would have obtained in the Attic period.
Historical linguistics goes a long way toward determining for us how ancient
Greek was actually spoken at various periods in history, and somebody has
already mentioned some biblio items to that effect.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter
Adjunct Faculty, The Center for Urban Theological Studies
Philadelphia, PA
http://www.cuts.edu
Visiting Faculty, Reformed Theological Seminary
Washington, D.C.
http://www.rts.edu/campuses/washington_dc/index.cfm
And me:
http://mysite.verizon.net/nebarry/
Opinions expressed by author of this message do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of the institutions listed above...
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list