[B-Greek] Off topic question: Homer
R Yochanan Bitan Buth
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Thu Sep 8 10:37:34 EDT 2005
XAIRETE Gregg,
I, too, do not consider this off-topic but a tangent point leads into
the heart of Koine studies.
Gregg EGRAPSEN
>...
>Biblical Greek was pronounced like Classical greek. At least, the
>Gospel of John is written as if it were, and I know that in the
>time of Catullus, phi, theta, and chi were aspirated, because the
>Latin poet makes fun of Greek pronunciation in one of his poems.
>In any case, some Greeks and Romans were interested in all this
>stuff, so they wrote down how things were supposed to be
>pronounced, so we still know this stuff even though the original
>forms of the languages >are "dead".
>...Good luck
>Phileo.
>Gregg Geist>
You are correct for the 'stops' p,t,k, and 'aspirated stops' pH, tH,
kH. Amen.
However, for the rest you would seem to be mixing eras. For example,
at least ghamma [g] and veta [b] had gone soft by the first century
with [d] at least partially so. It was the voiced consonants that led
the aspirated stops down the road to fricativization at the end of the
Roman Period Koine. This is, of course, completely inverted from
Erasmian (which would be hard to recommend), but still distinct from
the classical period.
More important, and much easier to document are the vowels. There had
been systematic reducation by the first century that implies that
length and raising-falling accent were no longer part of the living
speech, and hadn't been so for some time (though it could have been
artificially added to learned reading and was known to the
grammarians. [Cf. French singing of silent 'e' today.]). You mentioned
reading GJohn 1 so you may be interested in Horrocks' reconstruction
(Greek, History of the Language and Its Speakers), page 94. He has pH,
tH, kH (which you will appreiciate), but uses the six-vowel system
EI=I=H, AI=E, A, W=O, OU, OI=U. I have a discussion on
http://biblicalulpan.org/PDF%20Files/PRONSYS1_US.pdf
(Incidently, I advocate a 'conservative' vowel system for the first-
second century: EI=I, H, AI=E, A, W=O, OU, OI=U.)
The feature you focus on, aspirated p,t,k, is the one feature that I
recommend dropping from a practical pronunciation. (Again, for
discussion, see the ten-page article.) If you can control the feature,
be my guest. Likewise, if you should choose a six-vowel system. I
would even like to hear a recording IF you can control the other Roman
period features in a smooth reading (an mp3 of 1John1 is avaiable on
the website above.)
For myself, I found that I could read texts with the aspirated stops,
but I could not mix it into smooth speech when not reading a text. It
took a lot of 'extra processing energy', energy necessary for
generating 'live speech', and the internal tension was not something
that I wanted to ask students to duplicate. The hill was 'too steep'
and the payoff was too little, even detrimental (besides strongly
clashing with modern Greek): it would guarantee a slower entry into
the language [something that would be 'fatal' for most]. Maybe at a
later time when we have a core of speakers/users who are already
close, in the ball park, with their pronunciation.
As for the compromise on 'stops' described, I can live with it nicely,
knowing that the whole Mediterranean was moving in that direction
during the three centuries following the NT, already had done so with
voiced consonants, and knowing that 'etic [sub-phonemic]' consonants
are the least disruptive of listening to real speech. I suspect that
there were even some minority dialects like the above in Asia Minor
during Paul's visits. They would have understood each other
seemlessly. The feature is 'subphonemic'. Paul would have thought that
such speakers had an aspirated-stop lisp but were otherwise
articulate. And to such a dialect Paul would have sounded like a
'gringo'. (excuse the anachronism, but the aspirated p,t,k of Paul is
one of the things that Spanish speakers hear from Anglo lips.) Their
vowels and voiced consonants would match. And that seems like a pretty
nice match when making a 2000-year jump.
Most on this list will know that the above is presented as an aside, a
necessary consideration when undertaking to learn to speak the
language, and it is speaking the language like other languages
learned-as-an-adult that I advocate. I really don't see any other way
for the field to move forward with a quantum step to the plane
necessary for the information age.
Hebrew speakers within Biblical Studies already know what I mean. I
suspect that the Hebrew paradigm has already (and finally!) started to
move. When a 'critical mass' is reached (20-30% of teachers?), then
all of the teachers and learners (and administrators!) will assume
fluency as a goal for those serious. GENOITO DH KAI WDE. (yè'nüto dhe
kè o'dhè. [If you wish: ghè'nüto dhe kè o'dhè]
ERRWSO (è'roso)
Randall Buth
Randall Buth, PhD
Director, Biblical Language Center
www.biblicalulpan.org
and Director, Biblical Studies in Israel
Hebrew University, Rothberg International School
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
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