[B-Greek] Koine Greek pronunciation

Edgar Foster edgarfoster2003 at yahoo.com
Sun Apr 13 13:30:11 EDT 2008


Donald Mastronarde also writes that omicron was
"Originally called by the Greeks OU; but the
Byzantines called it O MIKRON = 'little o' when omega
W MEGA = 'big o,' was no longer distinct from it in
pronunciation" (Introduction to Attic Greek, p. 11).
He suggests that omicron was pronounced like the o in
the German Gott ("a short back mid vowel"), whereas
omega was pronounced like "aw" in the English word
"saw" (i.e. "a long open central back vowel").

See
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ancgreek/ancient_greek_start.html


Regards,
Edgar

--- "Eric S. Weiss" <papaweiss1 at yahoo.com> wrote:


> But ... was the difference between "short o" and
> "long o" 
> the difference between "pot" and "note"? Or was it
> simply 
> a difference in how long the sound was sustained?
> 
> Both Chrys Caragounis and Randall Buth argue from
> the 
> evidence we have from misspellings that omicron and
> omega 
> had the same sound in Koinê times - whether "pot" or
> 
> "note" or "or."


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