[B-Greek] ETA, i.e. HTA

Randall Buth ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Sun Jul 16 15:24:53 EDT 2006


Shalom Gerry,

there are several easy answers to your questions.

 >I was looking through Ward Powers Learn To Read NT Greek the other  
day with my daughter when he mentions that the ETA should be sounded  
like the word "There".
For example we  would then sound Jesus like "yair- soos" or  ORGH   
like "Or-gair"   rather than Yay -sous or Or-gay
  I ask Ward about this and he made mention that F F Bruce
mentioned that the ETA was pronounced more like the "ea" in Bear.
What I don't understand is that whilst Bruce certainly does say that,  
how does the "R" sound fit in?
Bruce says that "ETA" sounds only like the "ea" in Bear, not actually  
rhyme with it so that the "r" is also sounded.
Can anyone throw any light on that?
Gerry Todd>

pronounce HTA like "they",
though without the extra 'i' sound that comes at the end of the  
English word.
If you don't hear that or know what I'm talking about, you may need  
more help than this email. In the meantime, it is like the vowel in  
"they", and "ate" and "eight".

On the grammar book description and the history of HTA:
1. HTA is a vowel RW is a consonant. Go with your gut feeling, do you  
think Ward would be talking about adding an 'R' sound? [ans.: no]
2. some English dialects drop 'r' from the end of words. this can get  
humorous when people say that their "pasta" [=pastor] likes to eat  
"paster" [=pasta]. Perhaps Ward's "there" does not have a 'r'  
pronounced at the end.
3. HTA went through several stages in Greek. In the epic period the  
symbol was a rough breathing for dialects that had the 'h' sound. At  
that time Greek had a short 'e' and a long 'e' vowel sound, whose  
lengths were not distinguished in writing. PLEASE NOTE: length refers  
to actual time of the sound and does not refer to the sounds of  
English. At the end of the classical period HTA became the symbol for  
the long E, and its sound was close to 'ae' , say between English  
"bet" and "bat". However, in the following centuries it began to  
chase EI toward the vowel IWTA. EI went up to IWTA first, during the  
third century BCE. HTA filled in a middle high vowel, close to "e" in  
"they". Several centuries later, HTA also joined IWTA in sound,  
sometime between the second to fourth century CE/AD.

HTA is the primary distinction between the KOINH vowel system and the  
modern system.
If you pronounce ITA, that is a fourth century CE to modern phenomenon.
the KOINH  OI [=U] were different from the modern [I] but the ancient  
pronunciation does not present any problem for modern speakers.

Blessings
Randall Buth



More information about the B-Greek mailing list