[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/




More information about the B-Greek mailing list