[B-Greek] BH BH, the bleating of an ancient sheep
David McKay
davidmckay52 at gmail.com
Thu Jul 16 22:26:34 EDT 2009
Trickier than you might think, Mitch.
If you study the sounds that people say various animals make, there is a lot
of variety. For instance, only English people say that a rooster says
Cock-a-doodle-doo.
It is not at all certain that ancient Greeks thought the sheep was saying
Baa Baa. Maybe they did hear it as Vee vee. I don't think that would settle
the pronunciation of BH at all.
David McKay
2009/7/17 Mitch Larramore <mitchlarramore at yahoo.com>
>
> To demonstrate that ancient Greek writers did NOT pronounce Greek as the
> Moderns do (at least in some cases), a text was sighted which described the
> sound sheep make. The ancient (comedy) writer identified, so it was argued,
> the sound of a sheep as BH BH (bah, bah). Modern Greeks of course would
> pronounce BH BH 'vee vee.' Does anybody know the whereabouts of that
> particular ancient text, if it exists at all? Seems to me the guy who
> originally put forth this argument did not actually quote the ancient text,
> which made me a bit leery. However, if this text actually exists, I suppose
> that would settle the pronunciation question to some extent.
>
>
> Mitch Larramore
> Sugar Land, Texas
>
>
>
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