[B-Greek] Online teaching tools

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Sat Dec 8 08:09:34 EST 2007


On Dec 8, 2007, at 7:34 AM, Sarah Madden wrote:

> While we're on the subject of pronunciation, I wonder why some  
> people -- even if they are trying to use Erasmian pronunciation --  
> don't always remember to distinguish the sounds, say, between a  
> "xi" (14th letter) and a "chi" (22nd letter) -- I have heard learned  
> people pronounce the "chi" (as in "ARCH" - "beginning") like "KS" --  
> this is more like an English pronunciation of an English "x" in  
> "axiom" and this destroys any difference between the two Greek  
> letters. In addition, I can only imagine that this casual reading  
> method makes it very difficult to remember vocabulary words since  
> one would have to simultaneously juggle several pronunciations in  
> one's head to equal the one word.
>
> This is what I have noticed for that particular letter (chi), when  
> certain persons would read, say, Jn 1:1a -- EN ARCH EIN hO LOGOS ,,,
>
> Erasmian pronunciation: "en arkhay ane ho logos"
> Slightly incorrect Erasmian pronunciation: "en arksay ane ho logos"

I think this derives in part from the fact that the printed Greek Chi  
looks like a printed Roman "X" -- and in part from the fact that Greek- 
font keyboard configurations are inconsistent, some of them using the  
Roman "X" for Chi, others using the Roman "C." Add to that the fact  
that some people insist on assimilating their B-Greek transliteration  
scheme to the keyboard they're using (most people do write "C" for Chi  
and "X" for Xi, but a few write "X" for Chi and "C" for Xi. But we  
can't yet move over to Unicode Greek altogether because quite a few  
list-members still have trouble configuring their text-encoding to  
represent UTF-8 Greek characters.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)



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