[B-Greek] "proper" pronunciation?

Eric Weiss papaweiss1 at yahoo.com
Mon Jan 1 20:20:36 EST 2007


Ooops! Here is the full URL for Randall Buth's pronunciation paper 
(Go to Courses - Greek Demo Lesson to get to the page with the link 
to this):

http://www.biblicalulpan.org/PDF%20files/PRONSYS1%202005.pdf

Eric Weiss <papaweiss1 at yahoo.com> wrote:  1st-century Greek was almost identical in pronunciation to Modern 
Greek. A couple differences, per Randall Buth: 

 - eta was likely still pronounced like the "ey" in "they" (Modern Greek 
pronounces it "ee"); and 
- the omicron-iota diphthong ("oi") and the upsilon ("u") were probably 
pronounced like a French "u" - i.e., say "ee" with your mouth/lips 
rounded like you are saying "oh" (Modern Greek pronounces these like 
"ee" also).
 
 (Neither 1st-century nor Modern Greek pronounces the "h" sound of 
the initial rough breathing as Erasmian teaches one to do.

 Randall Buth has a detailed paper on 1st-century Koinê pronunciation 
here: 

 http://www.biblicalulpan.org/PDF%20f...YS1%202005.pdf

 (his regular Webpage is http://www.biblicalulpan.org/ )

 I believe Chrys Caragounis differs with Buth in believing that Koinê was 
pronounced like Modern Greek in all respects: 
THE ERROR OF ERASMUS AND UN-GREEK PRONUNCIATIONS OF GREEK 
http://www.bsw.org/?l=72081&a=Art06.html
http://www.apostolicbible.com/un-greek.pdf (pdf version)

Every Greek Orthodox Church I've visited uses the Modern Greek pronunciation 
when reading the Scriptures or the Liturgy, even though the Greek is 
Koinê/Byzantine.

John Schwandt wrote an article on different pronunciation schemes, and you can 
click on the links to hear the pronunciations of the letters: 

http://www.biblicalgreek.org/links/pronunciation.php

 Schwandt edited the ESV Reverse Interlinear - 
http://www.amazon.com/English-Greek-...dp/158134628X/ - created an online 
National Greek Exam - http://www.greekexam.com/ - and did the Greek (and 
Hebrew?) pronunciation module in the Logos Bible Software program.


 Eric S. Weiss

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Eric S. Weiss


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