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

Eric Weiss papaweiss1 at yahoo.com
Wed Aug 9 20:20:42 EDT 2006


Curtis Hinson wrote:

> 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 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.

Can you explain what you mean here? I.e., does monotonic 
Greek mean "without the accents and breathing marks"?

And - which word of John 1:17 is significantly affected 
by the rough breathing on the eta? How do you read/translate 
it without the aspiration?

Thanks!



Eric S. Weiss


 		
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