[B-Greek] Why Monotonic Greek. Was: Free Polytonic Uncial Greek Unicode Font?

Curtis Hinson curtis at curtishinson.com
Wed Aug 9 12:05:50 EDT 2006


Greetings Steve,

I should have given a little context for my statements.  To make a long 
story short, the diacritical markings were invented by Aristophones of 
Byzantium sometime around 200BC.  These marks were intended as an aid to 
foreigners using Greek.  These were not in common use though for 
centuries.  They appear on rare occasion in a few biblical manuscripts 
after 200AD but are not really common until about the 9th century and 
not standard until the middle ages.

I do find it ironic that the Greek pedagogical regime (big grin) has for 
a long time insisted on the so-called "Erasmian" pronunciation of 
talking about Greek, and also on the diacritical markings.  Since the 
diacritical markings were intended as an aid to foreigners pronouncing 
Greek, it seems amusing that so many students are taught a butchered 
pronunciation, and the diacriticals are also drilled into their heads 
even though they're not pronouncing Greek, but talking ABOUT Greek.

The Greeks themselves finally rethought the issue and as of the late 
1970s, polytonic Greek is illegal in Greece for official documents or 
public signage, and monotonic Greek is the standard in Greece.  Greeks 
reasoned that the polytonic system was useless since they did not need 
markings to know how to pronounce their own language.

I suppose an approximate analog might be English, which is notorious for 
having a pronunciation that is high context, far far more inconsistent 
and difficult than Greek, in my opinion.  So if someone had called for 
all English documents to start being written in IPA notation to help 
foreigners pronounce the language, it might be a similar effect to 
causing Greek to be written with diacriticals.

Having said all this, I have made note on B-Greek in the recent past the 
text critical and interpretive issues introduced by the use of 
diacritics.  Because the diacritical markings do not appear in the early 
manuscripts, they are editorial markings adding by late copyists or by 
modern editors.  I cited an example of how the aspiration on the eta in 
John 1:17 throws the meaning of the verse in a different light.  I 
personally feel this adds an unnecessary opportunity for editorializing 
in the Greek text, and since so many appeal to the Greek text to throw 
off the editorializing of the translations, I find it distasteful to use 
diacriticals in that way.  Particularly because, I observe, students are 
just force-fed the markings but not made aware of how they can 
editorialize or bias someone's reading of the text.

" Essentially, modern Greek pronunciation starts from Plato's time; we 
call it modern, not because it is young, but because it is still in use 
today."  -- http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/lessons/lesson1.asp

For that reason, in whatever teaching I do, I teach students the 
"modern" pronunciation and the monotonic way of writing Greek.  Once 
they're very comfortable with that, I explain how the diacriticals work 
so they are not ignorant of them.  I then explain about Erasmian to the 
students having now learned Greek pronunciation as their default.  Since 
they've learned the natural way of speaking Greek, this is a humorous 
discussion along the lines of explaining Pig-Latin to a young English 
speaker.  I've never had a student at that point who then chose to go 
with Erasmian.

Anyway that should begin to clarify why I think polytonic Greek is an 
unnecessary burden on Greek students and a useless practice.  So, I make 
an observation that one of the greatest and most pointless impacts of 
polytonic Greek has been the creation of a bagfull of different Greek 
encoding standards used only by Greek scholars.  Greeks themselves use 
Unicode Greek (or in the past, ISO Greek, but same keyboard layout).  
Because the layout isn't encumbered by adding many diacriticals, it's a 
simple and standard keyboard layout.

In Windows XP, go to Control Panel --> Regional and Language Options --> 
Languages tab --> Details button. 
Add "EL (Greek)" with the Greek keyboard layout, and you can have the 
language bar show up on the taskbar instead of taking up screen space.  
(I think having the language bar out of the taskbar is only useful for 
Asian languages.)  Now you should be able to switch between typing in 
English and Greek by hitting Alt-Shift.  No need for special or 
additional programs, and you'll generate truly portable, international 
standard text.

Bless the Name
Curtis Hinson
http://curtishinson.com

Steve Westfall wrote the following on 8/8/2006 8:42 PM:
> Curtis,
>
> I don't understand your comment about freeing yourself from polytonic, and
> polytonic defacing Greek, or what either of those has to do with using XP's
> language bar.  Can you please elaborate?
>
> Thank you.
>
> Steve Westfall
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
> [mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Curtis Hinson
> Sent: Monday, August 07, 2006 11:49 PM
> To: B Greek
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Fwd: Free Polytonic Uncial Greek Unicode Font?
>
> Since I freed myself from the chains of the polytonic, which defaces Greek
> like graffiti, I simply set up XP's language bar to let me switch back and
> forth between unicode Greek and English.  I notice quite a few on here do
> the same.  Amazing how it simplifies life.
>
> Bless the Name
> Curtis Hinson
>
>
>   

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