[B-Greek] Re: How do modern greeks pronounce Biblical Greek?
R Yochanan Bitan Buth
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Sat Apr 9 19:57:58 EDT 2005
Tauber egrapsen
>... After 403 B.C., sound changes continued. By the 1st century A.D.
EI
had become even more closed to sound like I and H had started to move
to
where EI had been. The vowel shifts continued over hundreds of years
to
eventually result in Modern Greek pronunciation.>
The description of the Attic system was very well done. Thank you. It
really calls for the continuing history up to the Roman period Koine.
Most of the interesting changes for KOINH take place relatively soon
after the 403 spelling reform.
EI was already showing signs of moving in the 4th century BCE. The
big shift took place during 300-150 BCE after the spread of Greek with
Alexander. The catalyst was the loss of length in the system. Just one
little feature, but the whole system had to reorganize.
That meant that the long W [aw in Attic] and short O merged without
length in the system,
Short A and long A merged (this doesnt affect the orthography), short
I and long I merged (likewise with no effect on orthography) though
with EI merging as well, while OY simply remained a single length.
However long-Hta, apparently pulled by the merger of EI=I, raised and
slipped passed e-psilon rather than merge, leaving three front vowel
heights: i, e-Hta, lower e-psilon.
This produced a seven vowel system that was in use from 150 BCE to
300CE. (I, H, E, A, O, OU, Ü.) Sometime between 150 and 350 CE it
appears that the asymmetry in the front vowels was resolved by Hta
also moving up to I. That left a six vowel system (I, E, A, O, OU, Ü).
By 1000CE the Ü also joined I, leaving the five vowel modern system
for the last millenium.
The watershed of the system was the loss of length. The major
disruption was collapse of the long/short Attic system. And the period
of 300-100BCE can be called the Great Greek Vowel Reduction.
ERRWSO
Randall Buth, PhD
Director, Biblical Language Center
www.biblicalulpan.org
and Director, Biblical Studies in Israel
Hebrew University, Rothberg International School
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
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