[B-Greek] IPA New Testament

Kevin Riley klriley100 at gmail.com
Sun Dec 6 19:58:16 EST 2009


Having waded through quite a few IPA tanscriptions over the years, they are
often of most use to those who already know what the language sounds like.
So many who use it seem to feel the need to modify it in some way, which in
any phonemic description can make it misleading at best.  Some languages
have multiple systems to transcribe what is in fact the exact same language
and dialect.  Just to look at the transcriptions, you would be sure they
were transcriptions of quite different dialects.  If the transcriber gives a
clear description of his/her method, with each symbol keyed to a word in the
language where there will be no confusion, then it can be very useful to
someone who knows the language to some extent, and even of some use to those
who don't.  It depends on what use you want to make of it.  A narrow
phonetic transcript, transcribed according to the standard usage of IPA
symbols, is the only one that is of much use to someone who wants to learn
to speak the language and has no prior knowledge of it.  The broader the
transcription, the more likely you are to get variant schemes.  That is why
many teachers and learners advise getting audio files, not transcriptions or
descriptions of how the language sounds.

Kevin Riley

2009/12/5 Carl W. Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>

> My guess -- and it's only that -- is that the audio files would really be
> more useful to students of Greek, who might feel that learning the IPA would
> be tantamount to learning yet another alphabet beyond the Greek alphabet.
> Linguists, on the other hand, might find it very useful.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (ret)
>
>
> On Friday, December 04, 2009, at 06:26PM, "Davis Prickett" <
> davisprickett at gmail.com> wrote:
> >Let's say you were to do even a broad transcription into one of the
> proposed
> >methods of pronunciation. Do you think it would have any benefit in
> helping
> >to understand how it should be pronounced or especially in figuring out
> more
> >of the phonology of the language?
> >
> >-Davis
> >On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 2:59 PM, Carl W. Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Whether this has been done, I don't know, but the question seems
> predicated
> >> upon an assumption that there is a "standard" pronunciation appropriate
> to
> >> the Greek NT. In fact there are several. (1) Probably the Erasmian
> system is
> >> the one most widely used -- with dubious justification, but with the
> heavy
> >> weight of tradition enforcing its use; (2) Greeks today and many
> non-Greeks
> >> pronounce the text of the GNT in a Modern Greek pronunciation, a
> >> pronunciation which is considerably closer to the probable pronunciation
> of
> >> Greek employed by its original composers, although not quite identical;
> (3)
> >> Randall Buth has reconstructed the pronunciation of Greek current in the
> >> Eastern Mediterranean at the time of the composition of the GNT; he has
> >> produced recordings of several NT texts in his reconstructed Koine
> >> pronunciation; (4) Finally, there is the reconstructed classical Attic
> >> pronunciation that is taught in some American universities and used in
> some
> >> pedagogical materials (e.g. the JACT Reading Greek course). There is no
> >> consensus -- certainly not among list-members of B-Greek -- regarding
> the
> >> right system of pronunciation to use, although there is probably a
> strong
> >> majority of those who have learned to use the Erasmian pronunciation and
> are
> >> not inclined to shift to one of the other methods of pronunciation.
> >>
> >> It should be noted, with regard to the other current thread on Greek
> audio
> >> Bibles, that the same alternatives bear upon the pronunciation to be
> used in
> >> audio Bibles: are they recorded using the Erasmian, the Modern Greek,
> the
> >> Buthian Reconstructed Koine, or the reconstructed Classical Attic
> >> pronunciation?
> >>
> >> Carl W. Conrad
> >> Department of Classics, Washington University (ret)
> >>
>



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