[B-Greek] PEI, FEI, XEI, KSI, PSI (was pee or pie)

George F Somsel gfsomsel at yahoo.com
Sun Jul 9 06:46:00 EDT 2006


Randall,
   
  I'm not convinced that this is true.  Just to give one small example from modern day speech which I have heard myself:  My stepfather used to say "poosh" for "push" even though he pronounced his other "u" vowels correctly.  It therefore seems to me that to say that a pair X = Y would always be equivalent despite may not be the case.
   
  _____________
  

Randall Buth <randallbuth at gmail.com> wrote:
    Shalom Jim,

  <SNIP>
  
"PLEASE NOTE: this does not mean that an ω-μεγα [W-MEGA] would sound
exactly the same as an ω-μεγα [W-MEGA] in another dialect. To the
contrary, we may assume that there would be continual small changes
from dialect to dialect and even from village to village in some
cases. What the above equivalencies mean [EI=I, AI=E, W=O, OI=U ---
rb] is that within any particular dialect, the ω-μεγα [W-MEGA],
however it is pronounced, will be pronounced like ο-μικρον [W-MIKRON]
in that dialect. Likewise, the equivalencies do not mean that marginal
dialects would not exist that did not follow the equivalencies of the
major, majority dialects. The equivalencies above point out the what a
traveller would hear in the majority dialects all over the
Mediterranean, from Rome to Judea, from the Aegean to Egypt."

In other words -- (applying this to the vowels EI and I in the post
about Greek letter names PEI PI, PSEI PSI...) --
the important point is to recognize that traders in Jerusalem would
pronounce EI the same way as they pronounced I, and officials in
Tarsus would pronounce I the same way that they pronounced EI, but
those is Tarsus would certainly not sound EI/I in the same way as
those from Jerusalem sounded EI/I. Likewise in Rome, Quintillian [the
Latin rhetoritician who knew Greek and Greek pedagogy quite well]
would have pronounced EI in the same way he that pronounced I, and
Plutarch up at Delphi would have pronounced EI and I the same. But
even though all of these people would have pronounced EI and I the
same within their respective dialect, they would not have spoken it
exactly the same way as someone from a different dialect area. We
learn that from studying the phonemic system of a language and from
human language in general, which cannot be confused with the phonetic
output. (This is the point 2, from above)

Where does this pronunciation issue fit in the overall scheme of things?
Far below fluency. We should want second-language fluency if we are
going to invest years of our time in the thing. Anyway, I demand it
for myself. And the means are now available for making this more
achievable on a mass scale than in the days of WHD Rouse. Especially
with publishers waking up to the relative ease of producing CDs.



Randall Buth
-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
randallbuth at gmail.com
---



george
gfsomsel
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