[B-Greek] DIKAIOS, kai demotikh
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at ioa.com
Wed Oct 12 08:41:59 EDT 2005
On Oct 12, 2005, at 8:27 AM, Curtis Hinson wrote:
> GEIA SAS
>
> I usually explain the AI dipthong in modern/historical
> pronunciation as
> "eh" as in "bed" because "ay" seems to prompt English speakers to
> glide
> the vowel "aeiyi", which doesn't reproduce the Greek sound which is
> short and sharp. That probably holds true for all Greek vowels and
> dipthongs, Greeks don't mess around or linger on them. English
> seems to
> glide more than most languages, for that matter.
Regardless of what the modern Greek pronunciation of AI is -- or how
any one of the Erasmian schemes of pronunciation represent AI,, it's
significant, I think, the papyri of the early Christian era show
orthographical confusion -- substitution of E and AI where one or the
other might be expected, so that they clearly represented the same
sound to the writer. I take this to mean that AI was NOT a diphthong
for the Hellenistic speaker of Greek.
> Does anyone have thoughts, by the way, on whether the KATHEREUSA is
> closer to historical pronunciation than DEMOTIKI?
I assume you mean the KAQAREUOUSA or "katharevousa"; this was, I
think, an attempt to inject archaic/ancient inflection into the
modern language -- that is, a sort of as-it-were Atticism. But I
don't think that the KAQAREUOUSA involved any pronunciation that was
different from that of standard spoken Modern Greek.
> Carl W. Conrad wrote the following on 10/12/2005 5:24 AM:
>
>
>> On Oct 11, 2005, at 9:52 PM, TuNeCedeMalis67 at aol.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> LOL, I just opened a barrel of monkeys :-)
>>>
>>> OK, I'm using Erasmian with the AI sounding like "eye". If the
>>> syllable
>>> breaks at an iota it sounds like "ee". If an iota falls in the
>>> middle of a
>>> syllable it sounds like "i" in pit.
>>>
>>> Strong often breaks a syllable like the "dik" in (dik-ah-yos).
>>> I'm not
>>> worried about all that.
>>>
>>> I'm focused on repeatedly hearing the iota moved to the next
>>> syllable,
>>> instead of being pronounced with the alpha as a dipthong. I want to
>>> make sure I'm
>>> putting the iota with the correct syllable. I saw that there was a
>>> root word
>>> ending in alpha and I'm assuming all this has to do with that?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> That the syllable was a diphthong in classical Attic is attested by
>> the circumflex
>> over the iota in the marking of accents. On the other hand, in terms
>> of dervation,
>> DIKAIOS is what's called a "denominative" adjective derived from a
>> noun DIKH
>> ("right, justice") the older (and non-Attic) form of which is DIKA;
>> the adjective
>> was formed with the additive -I/OS-A-ON, and there may have been a
>> time
>> when DIKAIOS was a four-syllable word divided DI-KA-I-OS with an
>> acute
>> accent on the A. At any rate, in the classical period it was a
>> diphthong AI with
>> circumflex marked on the second vowel of the diphthong, as is
>> standard.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> In a message dated 10/11/2005 9:30:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>>> cwconrad at ioa.com writes:
>>>
>>> On Oct 11, 2005, at 9:12 PM, TuNeCedeMalis67 at aol.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Is DIKAIOS pronounced (dik-ah-yos)? Is the AI a dipthong? It's
>>>> accented like
>>>> a dipthong, but seems to usually be pronounced like it isn't.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Yes, it is a diphthong. I've always divided it as DI-KAI-OS. I
>>> think
>>> that pronunciation
>>> as DI-KA-YOS is wrong. My Erasmian would make it DEE-KYE-OS, but
>>> I'd
>>> expect Koine
>>> pronunciation would be more DEE-KAY-OS (with AY as in "May" or "de-
>>> lay").
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ---
>>> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> Carl W. Conrad
>> Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
>> 1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
>> cwconrad2 at mac.com
>> WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
>>
>> ---
>> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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