[B-Greek] "proper" pronunciation?
Kevin Riley
klriley at alphalink.com.au
Mon Jan 8 20:00:47 EST 2007
What is aimed at is usually a phonemic system. This recognises that there
were differences, but that the underlying system was the same. So of course
there were differences, but, just as in modern English, there was a
recognition that certain sounds, while different, were essentially 'the same
sound'. So to say that for Koine there were 6 vowel phonemes /i/, /e/, /a/,
/o/, /u/, /y/ does not mean that every Greek pronounced them as [i], [e],
[a], [o], [u], [y], but that the correspondences between dialects were
regular. Australian English has 3 varieties, all 3 have the same phonemes,
and, most of the time, the phonemic representation is identical to that of
RP, and when it differs, usually the differences are regular [e.g., final
/I/ in RP is /i/ in Australian]. But most Australians can easily tell them
apart because they 'sound different', but it doesn't usually impede
comprehension. Some Greek dialects had moved /y/ and /e/ to /i/ in
classical times, some took much longer, but just as English speakers
recognise the American /a/ as 'really' being an /o/ in many cases, I am sure
Greeks throughout history could make the same adjustments when hearing other
Greeks. The argument is that Erasmian/Classical pronunciation was no longer
phonemically correct by the 1st century [no one I know of disagrees with
this], and therefore either modern or a 'restored' Koine pronunciation is
better.
Kevin Riley
-------Original Message-------
From: shoes6 at juno.com
Date: 3/01/2007 9:48:51 AM
This topic has been discussed and rehashed plenty of times. An aspect
Of this debate that doesn't always get mentioned, however, is the fact
That we probably expect more uniformity than the ancients provided.
That is:
In our day, people who speak any widespread language (such as English)
Have the "equalizing" influences of television, air travel, highways,
The Internet, movies, etc. People on the opposite side of the world
Can read and hear much of the same English that I hear. Therefore, the
English language is almost certainly more uniform than it would be
Without these factors.
***And we still have different dialects!***
Put together native English speakers from different places and
Different social strata, and they might well have a hard time
Communicating.
If that is true in our day, local idiosyncracies were probably much
More developed in the pre-modern world.
What, then, is the genuine ancient pronunciation? There were probably
Hundreds of them. Sure, we can trace back some tendencies. But even
Those tendencies are a representation of the world overall, not of any
Individual speaker, not even any one century.
Ted Shoemaker
.
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