[B-Greek] Tweaking Greek

Randall Buth randallbuth at gmail.com
Mon Oct 24 07:45:02 EDT 2005


On Tweaking Greek

One of the things I am considering this week is the feeling, learnability,
and advisability of switching between a spoken DHMOTIKH [pronounced
"dhimotikí"] (5-vowel modern Greek) and a 6 or 7 vowel KOINH 'reading
dialect'. Especially, when 'in country'. Obviously, this is not a
statistically valid test, but a subjective attempt to renew 'a feasibility
reading'. Simply, is it recommendable? If so, how difficult, what payoffs?

[I have had a very few anecdotal comments from the other direction where
some beginning students (using Koine, i.e., "tweaked modern + 2 vowels")
have visited Greece in the company of 'advanced' students from the US. The
beginning students were able to pick up numbers and isolated words in the
market place that left the 'advanced' friends wondering.]

 Because of the comments on list a few weeks ago I had gotten out my
Zodhiatis CDs and listened to several short books, several times. Yes, the
reading is unnaturally slow, but I found that it was a VERY NICE pace when
DRIVING in car. It is slow enough to allow one to concentrate on driving
without losing one's place. While I can follow my own James and 1 John in a
car, in large part by familiarity, I will need to re-think options for
future recordings. Set the bar near 'normal' or provide 'learner mode'?
Hmmm?! The info age answer is both, right?

 Several other observations that may be relevant or of interest to others. I
enjoyed listening to Spiros' ITA's. That is HTA pronounced as [i] (Vowel of
'feet' is written [i] when spelled "phonetically", this follows most every
Latin-based script except English.) Most words were recognized as read,
though the ITA would stick out as dialectically different from HTA.
Something like British I've b*n [bin] versus US I've b*n [ben]. Part of the
enjoyment is having my own 'inside voice' automatically match the sound to
an [e] HTA. On reflection, I like to read with HTA for my personal reading,
but enough listening to Spiros should produce a comfortable, allophonic
free-variation effect for my ears. The free-variation H/I would still be
memorable and separate from the straight EI/I, so it shouldn't add much of a
learner problem. Such an allophonic situation was probably true to the later
Imperial Period (i.e., Koine of later Roman Period 200-300CE) when the HTA
sound merged. Anyway, I am paying attention to this while sitting in Patmos,
speaking/learning modern and reading ancient with a 'tweaked' pronounciation
(modern plus two vowels HTA and OI/U [ü]).

 I wonder if any of those using modern 5 vowel (I, E, A, O, U) have
experimented with adding either OI/U (the late Imperial 6-emic vowel sounds)
or both OI/U and Hta (the earlier Roman period 7-emic vowel sounds)?
Thoughts?

 ERRWSQE

Randall Buth

[PS: Due to internet any responses may be 48hr)



--
Randall Buth
www.biblicalulpan.org <http://www.biblicalulpan.org>
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
randallbuth at gmail.com



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