[B-Greek] Why Monotonic Greek. Was: Free Polytonic Uncial GreekUnicode Font?
frjsilver at optonline.net
frjsilver at optonline.net
Fri Aug 11 19:28:00 EDT 2006
Dear Friends --
I thank Dave Smith for kicking the ball to me.
Modern Greek is atonic and apnoic, so adding tones and (a)pnoimata to vowels was an exercise in archaism in writing MG. This was helpful, since many people were writing them incorrectly anyway because the diacritics made no difference in speaking or hearing the language.
As a result -- and much more successfully than the katharevousa movement of the early 20th century -- Greek has come to be written with stress rather than tone in the last forty years or so. Now stress is indicated by what appears to be an oxytone, and that's pretty much the only diacritic used in MG except for the diairesis, which indicates that two vowels in sequence are to be pronounced as separate syllables rather than as a diphthong.
With all that background in mind, you should know that scriptural and liturgical texts are still written with pnoic and tonic symbols, as are scholarly editions of ancient works, both prechristian and patristic.
It *does* mean something. People are aware that there's something different about their modern demotic language and the language of the scriptures and services. So, for instance, we can hear the Trisagion Hymn sung even now as `AGIOS `O QEOS, KTL.
And parallel editions of the scriptures are available, with KOINH and DHMOTIKH on facing pages.
I hope this helps a little.
Father James Silver
Monk James, Orthodox Church in America
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Smith (REL110, 211,212)"
Date: Wednesday, August 9, 2006 10:27 pm
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Why Monotonic Greek. Was: Free Polytonic Uncial GreekUnicode Font?
To: B-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> I have a Greek NT that appears to be one used by the Orthodox Church,
> printed in Athens in 1974, that has has all the diacritical
> markings that
> UBS texts have. These accents and breathing marks also extend to
> the charts
> and maps in the back of the book, except for where uncials are
> used. But I
> suggest that this question be fielded to James Silver.
>
> Dave Smith
> Hudson, NC
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "James Ernest"
> To: "Curtis Hinson"
> Cc: "B Greek"
> Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2006 19:57
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Why Monotonic Greek. Was: Free Polytonic Uncial
> GreekUnicode Font?
>
>
> > Are the Bibles that are used in Greece today monotonic or polytonic?
> >
> > James Ernest
> > ---
> > B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
> > B-Greek mailing list
> > B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
> >
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
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