[B-Greek] Greek Letters

frjsilver at optonline.net frjsilver at optonline.net
Sat Dec 23 11:14:10 EST 2006


Dear Friends --
 
In Modern Greek, YILOS means 'light, thin, high-pitched' -- all in relation to sounds, especially the human voice.  So, for instance, YILOTONOS is antonymous to BARUTONOS, and YILH FWNH is a way of referring to a male tenor voice as opposed to a barytone.
 
Although we're used to contrasting BARUTONOS with OXUTONOS in polytonic orthography, we can't hear the distinction any more, so everything is marked now merely by stress.  But I think that a case can be made for regarding the descrIption YILOS as a way of distinguishing the acoustic values of E and H at a time long before EI, H, I, OI and U were all itacized into equivalent sounds.  In our time, only A, E, O and W (mostly) retain their own values, yet -- except for W, all these are modified when they introduce a diphthong.
 
In a nutshell, then, I suspect that E was pronounced on a tone higher than that of H, or (put the other way round) that I was pronunced on a tone lower than that of U, and that W was held longer than O.
 
Am I making sense yet?
 
Peace and blessings to all.
 
Father James Silver
 
Monk James
Orthodox Church in America

----- Original Message -----
From: Terry Pruitt 
Date: Saturday, December 23, 2006 8:45 am
Subject: [B-Greek] Greek Letters
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org

> Friends,
> 
> I have just finished my first semester of Biblical Greek in 
> seminary using Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek. When 
> discussing the Greek alphabet, Mounce writes the names of the 
> Greek letters in Greek as well as English on page 8 and 9. For 
> the Epsilon and Upsilon in the Greek spelling of the names he 
> separates the leading character from the rest of the name like 
> so: 
> 
> E YILON
> U YILON
> 
> What is a YILON? 
> 
> None of my Greek dictionaries have this word in it. 
> 
> Mounce also separates out Omicron and Omega like so: 
> 
> W MEGA
> O MIKRON
> 
> The break down of these letter names make sense "o big" and "o 
> small", so to speak. I don't see a like correlation for Epsilon 
> and Upsilon since I don't know what a YILON is. 
> 
> Thank you for your help in advance. 
> 
> Merry Christmas,
> Terry L. Pruitt
> Glen Burnie, MD
> 
> Student at Capital Bible Seminary 
> 
> 
> 
> Terry L. Pruitt
> My Blog: Pruitt Communications 
> http://pruittcommunications.blogspot.comMy Website: Prune Pitts 
> http://www.geocities.com/prunepitts1 
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