[B-Greek] Online teaching tools
Mark Lightman
lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Sat Dec 8 11:12:27 EST 2007
After years of basically just silently reading NT Greek, I am
trying to do more with speaking and hearing it and I'm not sure
what the solution to pronunciation is. The problem, as others
have pointed out, is that Erasmian pronunciation is simply
awful, it sounds bad and it makes your lips and tongue do things that
are just unnatural for an English speaker or I imagine any speaker,
probably even Erasmus himself. Plus the shifting accents, and the
fact that English speakers cannot pronounce long vowels and short
vowels (as opposed to half vowels) in the same word and get the
stress right at the same time. Modern Greek pronunciation, on the
other hand, sounds better and is MUCH easier to master. For example,
I have the Lord's prayer memorized and try to recite it in Greek everyday.
I have been using Erasmian pronunciation for 20 years, whereas I learned
modern Greek pronunciation just a few months ago from one of those
Greek for travelers booklets and tapes, and yet right now I can say the
Lord's Prayer EASIER and FASTER in Modern Greek. In fact, if you mess
around with modern Greek at all, you will find that you start slipping into it.
At first, it sounds crazy to pronounce AUTOS aftos, but do it for a bit and
after a while you will come to abhor the sound owtos. On the other hand,
it is, as Sarah says, untenable for learners of NT Greek to pronounce
hUMIN and hHMIN the same; it's hard enough not to get them confused
when reading. Randal Buth's scheme is probably a good idea as a
compromise, but having started in modern Greek, I'm not ready yet to
learn a THIRD way to do it.
I think the best solution is to first really get Erasmus down, listen to it and
speak it and think in it, and then to learn modern Greek pronunciation. If
Nikole Kidman can act with an American accent without forgetting how to
use her Australian accent at home, I think we too can do both. Erasmus is
too useful in terms of spelling and reading to forgo, and yet 100 million (or
whatever it is) modern Greeks cannot be wrong.
One final note. I taught my six year old to memorize the Lord's prayer in
Greek with Erasmian pronunciation and he says it better and faster than me,
getting the accents right and being more flowing and less choppy than for
example Jonathan Pennigton's Zondervan recordings. So I guess kids can
even make Erasmus work.
Sarah Madden <sarah.r.madden at gmail.com> wrote:
Unless one is speaking with or listening to modern Greek speakers, or
listening to Greek Orthodox sermons, I'm interested in knowing what the
advantage (if any) is to most students of NT Greek to learn the modern
pronunciation? I personally like the fact that Erasmus came up with a method
that helps identify words by their sounds -- every letter is pronounced, and
the vowels each have their own sounds. My experience with mentoring students
is that the ones who know modern Greek (either because of living in Greece
or by getting an audio tape and learning it) might be able to read the text,
but their spelling and recognition/understanding of the nuances
between particular words (e.g., hWS versus hOS) is weak. Any thoughts?
Sarah Madden
On Dec 7, 2007 2:39 PM, Jack Custer wrote:
> I am a new arrival and look forward to profitable discussions here.
>
> I would be very interested in hearing of any online AUDIO resources which
> present biblical (LXX and NT) or patristic texts using the "liturgical" or
> "modern" (I would say "native") pronunciation (as opposed to the "Erasmian"
> used in just about every academic institution in North America).
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Fr. Jack Custer
> Academic Dean
> Byzantine Catholic Seminary
> Pittsburgh PA USA
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--
Sarah
sarah.r.madden at gmail.com
work: 301.429.8189
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