[B-Greek] Greek NT Audio: vehicle of communication? or enunciation of
John Sanders
john.franklin.sanders at gmail.com
Sat Oct 11 12:29:59 EDT 2008
I have enjoyed this conversation on pronunciation, but perhaps Dr. Conrad is
correct and it has gone on a wee bit too long. Nevertheless, I shall add to
it.
First, let me attempt to answer Dr. Conrad's question. Without any real
background or knowledge, my thoughts on Homeric pronunciation would be:
Since the vowels are not contracted, I will assume they are articulated in
some fashion.
I personally suspect that even at this early period, the "aspirate" has
already been lost (in this Ionian dialect).
Although the main method of "accenting" the words is by means of prosody, I
think the poems are to be sung (not chanted nor sung in an operatic fashion,
but in a kind of spoken song fashion). So the prosody used may not be quite
what we would think of as in a regular spoken fashion.
That is all that I can put forward. I am prepared to accept correction on
this matter.
For my first comment on the question of pronunciation, I am reminded of some
of the dialogues from Plato. Seminaries, colleges, and universities charge
money in exchange for giving instruction for the acquisition of certain
skills, Greek being one of those skills. Although there is no warranty
given, there is an implied warranty that if a student will follow their
plan, that student will acquire sufficient skill in the use of Greek (to
read the New Testament). There perhaps can be some debate as to what level
is implied by sufficient, but I would think that it would mean fluency in
Greek by any meaningful definition of the term.
Although I am not in the manufacturing business, I do have close
connections, and one major trend the last decade or so has been what is
commonly called "lean manufacturing", or "Sigma 6", or the "Toyota Plan" or
such. These plans are to make manufacturing more "efficient" (yes,
efficiency is defined as good, and less efficient is defined as less good).
As I understand (I do not have statistical data for support, just rumor),
the rate for "failure" (not becoming fluent) is rather high. In other
words, the system is not working as one would expect. One would think that
the students would become exasperated and angry with this setup, but they
are not (of course we should not blame them; they are the offspring of a
generation that has voted their representatives to indebt each family to the
tune of nearly $600,000. If you cannot differentiate between prosperity and
bondage, why should we expect their offspring to expect value for their
expenditures).
The faculty also should demand a better process, but how many are objecting
to the system as is? Someone should be objecting to a system that by most
accounts is not doing what should be expected.
Along with revamping the teaching process a decision will need to be made
about pronunciation. There have been a lot of arguments presented, so the
administrations and faculty need to make a decision, let us hope (and really
pray hard) that they make the correct decision.
There has been one argument made in behalf of Erasmian pronunciation, and
that is the phonetics help to reinforce the acquisition of vocabulary. I am
not certain this is correct, it may be, but I am skeptical.
Let me try a thought experiment. Let us say there is a Chinese native
speaker, that speaker wishes to learn English, but not for conversational
purposes, just to read English. So she (or he, if you prefer), decides to
pronounce each English word as it is written, so that it will help to
acquire vocabulary faster. It sounds enticing, but I am not skeptical. I
do not think that individual will acquire more vocabulary quicker because
she vocalizes the words as they are written than those other students who
have to learn the quirky spelling, but use the words in conversation, etc.
in their learning mode.
You may differ, but I just do not think there is any statistical advantage.
--
John Sanders
Suzhou, China (temporarily in Tokyo, Japan)
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list