[B-Greek] Pronunciation rules

Jon Rumble jon.rumble at gmail.com
Thu Oct 6 01:21:53 EDT 2005


The problem with trying to get everyone to pronounce the greek vowels the
same is that even if you picked one system and said, for example, omicron
sounds like the 'o' in hot or whatever - that means something completely
different to English speaking people living in America, England, Australia,
New Zealand, South Africa, India etc etc. As an Australian you'd probably be
horrified to hear me read greek :)
 On the other hand, didn't Koine come into existance from the influence of
many different languages and cultures on Greek? So even then wouldn't people
have pronounced things quite differently, just as English is spoken very
differently accross the world? Maybe there really is some validity to the
idea "to each his own" since the idea of one correct historical
pronunciation may be as much a fantasy as the student studying 21st century
English in 2000 years trying to work out how our English vowels are
'supposed to' sound.
 Jon Rumble
Perth, Australia
 On 10/6/05, Justin Buol <vonbuol at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
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