[B-Greek] Pronunciation rules

Justin Buol vonbuol at gmail.com
Wed Oct 5 16:12:09 EDT 2005


I think that the historical approach outlined by Buth ought to be favored
over being able to distinguish amongst all the different vowel sounds, thus
facilitating easier learning. When people learn English, we expect them over
time to adapt to all the crazy rules of pronunciation that so often are
completely out of line with a phonological approach derived from the
spelling. With any other language, we are expected to learn its
idiosyncracies. It may be difficult initially, but over time skill will
develop. Besides, sticking with a more historical approach could help pick
up more rhymes or word plays, or other subtle elements of the language that
an artificial construct like Erasmian pronunciation would not as easily
facilitate.

I am currently making the shift out of Erasmian to Buth's suggested method.
It's definitely slow going!

Justin

On 10/5/05, Steve Westfall <steve.westfall at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> People currently beginning to learn ancient Greek need something that
> is consistent, and I think it's less confusing for those people if the
> instructor takes care to distinguish between sounds like alpha and omicron
> instead of pronouncing them the same like Pennington does.
>

--
Justin Buol
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School



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