[B-Greek] Pronunciation of long and short Iota
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at ioa.com
Fri Oct 14 09:27:07 EDT 2005
It probably won't surprise anyone, but I've just been disabused of a
life-long error in my more-or-less Erasmian pronunciation of Iota. As
a consequence of the discussion of the proper pronunciation of the
diphthong AI in DIKAIOS a couple days ago, it was borught to my
attention by a list-member who contacted me off-list that I was
evidently indicating pronunciation of a short Iota in DI-KAI-OS as
identical with a long Iota: I wrote that the first syllable should be
pronounced "dee" whether in the Erasmian or in probable Koine
pronunciation of the NT era. Certainly many textbooks expounding an
"Erasmian" pronunciation distinguish a short Iota as equivalent to
English "i" in "hIt" from a long Iota as equivalent to English "ee"
in "feet." For years I have been pronouncing a short Iota in an open
syllable such as the DI- of DI-KAI-OS as "dee" -- but a short Iota in
a closed syllable such hIP in hIP-POS I have been pronouncing like
the English "I" in "hIt."
As a consequence of this being called to my attention, I decided to
check on some resources.
W. Sidney Allen (Pronunciation of Classical Greek) says (p. 65):
"There is no strong evidence that the long and short vowels differed
in quality,
both being close front unrounded; and the narrow opening of the long
vowel
is expressly mentioned by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The short I of
Greek is
thus likely to have been of a closer quality than the vowel of
English 'bit';
certainly it was closer than the Latin short-i, and it is this that
accounts for
the fact that E rather than I is used to transcribe the Latin vowel.
It was thus
similar to unaccented modern Greek I (or H, U, EI, OI, etc.) or
French [i] as in
vite ... The view that the Greek long vowel was more open than the
short is
probably mistaken."
If Allen is correct, then there wasn't any qualitative difference
between
short and long Iota -- the difference is quantitative, i.e. how long
the sound
was drawn out. And IF that's correct, then what I do with Iota in an
open
syllable (DEE-KYE-OS Attic, DEE-KAY-OS Koine) is correct and where I
err is in making short Iota qualitataively different in a closed
syllable: i.e.,
I ought to pronounce hIPPOS as HEEP-POS.
My sense about the Koine is that Iota, whether short or long,
is pronounced (as in Modern Greek) pretty much the same as H, U, Ei,
and OI. And that seems to me to be constated in Randall Buth's thorough
discussion of what he calls "Emic Koine" in his paper, "hH KOINE
PROFORA,
(Koine Pronunciation)" which is accessible as a PDF document on the
"Greek materials" page of his Biblical Ulpan website.
If all that is right, then in fact I have been correct in my
pronunciation of
short Iota in open syllables (DI = 'dee') but wrong in my pronunciation
of short Iota in closed syllables (hIPPOS should be 'heep-pos').
If I'm still confused and mistaken about this, I would like to be
corrected.
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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