[B-Greek] Lining Out a Greek Text

Jonathan Robie jwrobie at mindspring.com
Tue May 29 11:33:05 EDT 2007


Randall Buth wrote:
>> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Lining Out a Greek Text
>> http://ibiblio.org/koine/greek/liningout/liningout.html
>>
>> Jonathan
> shalom Yonatan,
>   

Shalom! And sorry for the long pause, I posted this and went on my 
Memorial Day vacation shortly thereafter.

> Your project is sound and I appreciate what you are doing. You might be
> encouraged to know that I do something similar whenever I record material.
>   

This is very encouraging indeed. As you may have suspected, I was really 
looking for confirmation whether this is a useful approach.

> (As soon as I send this off I need to record some  Epiktetou paragraphs
> about visiting bathhouses, BALANEIA in Greek. We have a nicely preserved
> BALANEION in BetShean [SKUQOPOLIS]. The first thing I did was 'clause'
> these out into short sense units on different lines.)
>   

It really does help me when reading things out loud, I'd almost 
certainly do the same.

> (See Buth, Selected Readings with 500 Friends, BLC)
>   

That's oriented toward Hebrew, isn't it? I have no background in Hebrew ...

> As your notes and discussion show, the line length is arbitrary and reflects
> a function of 'sense' with natural breathing. Length also changes as
> students reach different levels. At the base is what might consider a breath
> sequence, I find that 3 to 6 seconds is a typical upper end, and these can
> be broken down into pieces as short as under 1 second. Greek 'clausings'
> tend to be a tad longer than Hebrew ones, probably because of the long
> syllable structures caused by the grammatical concord systems EN TH
> ELLHNIKHi.
>   

Yes, this is really important to keep in mind. I like thinking of this 
in terms of seconds as well as words.

I really appreciate your feedback!

Jonathan



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