[B-Greek] Greetings from Athens
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Sun Jan 1 15:51:38 EST 2006
SHalom Ernest,
On 12/31/05, Ernest Blum <eblum at adelphia.net> wrote:
> I'm a newcommer to b-greek and am fascinated by the colloquy going on here.
>
> In regard to Greek pronunciation, I'd be interested to know "the panel's"
> take on the pronunciation system of Stephen G. Daitz and his performances of
> Homer, Socrates etc.
>
> Ernest Blum
>
For starters, have you read the ten page PDF on our website?
www.biblicalulpan.org
under "courses" "greek materials" at end of page 'click here to read
entire file'. There is info there on basic outline of the Daitz'
system. I had to read with this at UCLA in the early 80's, though I
don't know their current practice.
Personally, I find the recordings too artificial sounding.
Exaggerated. This may be what Sidney Allen referred to when he said
that none of the attempts at reproduction sounded convincing to him.
(I don't know when Professor Allen first wrote that conclusion, though
he certainly overlapped with some of Daitz' productions.) In fairness,
though, one should add that a person's attempt or even exaggeration of
a system does not invalidate the system. There is even a society
within APA devoted to this (SORGL?). Some do a nice job though that is
not the way I want to end up sounding.
I am interested in using the ancient language 'all the way', meaning
nothing short of "fluency as a second language" is acceptable to me.
That is what Francois Gouin discovered in the 19th century and WHD
Rouse advocated as well. This is easier to achieve in Hellenistic
Greek where tone and length have dropped out, so I set my sights on
how people like Josephus, Luke, Paul and Plutarch would have read the
old epics. To READ a poem outloud while adding length and tone is
fairly easy, but to control such items while adlib-speaking and
regenerating a language--that is quite a hurdle and misses my period
of primary interest. The last point on period of primary interest is
decisive for me, so I don't work toward developing Allen-Daitz 'epic',
on the principle of working with the system that I would like to end
up with.
One reason for my notes on the b-greek list is to encourage people to
set their sights on the correct goal when language learning. The
people using Erasmian usually claim that only reading is important,
but it is a basic principle of language learning that people can much
more easily read and absorb and expand a language that they can
already converse in. Developing that initial core fluency will also
tend to fix one's pronunciation and I would prefer to be fixing
something that is along historical lines of 'real' (either Koine or
modern) rather than fixing something known to be false (Erasmian joins
EI to HTA, something Luke and Paul would not have done; and in the US
one hears crazy things like O=A, U=OU, while they ignore 1st century
equivalencies like U=OI, O=W and E=AI). Again, the primary theoretical
point is not which system one uses but that one makes progress toward
truly learning the language. First the bar needs to be set (beginners
usually don't know how low the bar is set or how out of touch
classical paradigms are with what is known about language learning),
then appropriate means towards that end need to be initiated. Such
progress requires speaking and listening, and that last requirement
forces one to make an educated choice on pronunciation towards the
beginning rather than at the end of one's studies. Hence the Koine
system, which, incidently slids into its historical daughter (modern)
quite easily. Not surprising, since Koine generated modern.
ERRWSO KAI "EUTUXISMEON TO NEON ETOS"
Randall Buth
--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
randallbuth at gmail.com
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