[B-Greek] BH BH, the bleating of an ancient sheep

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Fri Jul 17 13:42:03 EDT 2009


From: Nicholas Aggelopoulos <n_aggelopoulos at hotmail.com>
Date: July 17, 2009 10:51:02 AM EDT
To: <tom at katabiblon.com>, <mitchlarramore at yahoo.com>, <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org 
 >
Subject: RE: [B-Greek] BH BH, the bleating of an ancient sheep


Hello Mitch,

The fragments are

O D’HLIQIOS WSPER PROBATON BH BH LEGWN BADIZEI
Cratinus Frg 43 Ed Kock

and

THYEIN ME MELLEI KAI KELEYEI BH LEGWN BADIZEIN
Aristophanes Frg 642 Kock

There are several other problems with the Cratinus fragment. First of  
all it was saved in a late reference to Cratinus in Hellenistic times,  
when in fact beta might no longer have been pronounced as /b/ even if  
that was once the original pronunciation at the time of Cratinus (5th  
C BC). In any event,  we do not know what Cratinus would have  
pronounced or written exactly. This is further reinforced from the  
fact that at the time of Cratinus the letter eta was used only to  
indicate the aspiration in the alphabet of Athens, in other words  
Cratinus could have NOT written BH BH.

Secondly, Bh is the third person aorist (past perfect) indicative of  
the verb to go, meaning something like “let it go” or “let it  
be”, so one interpretation may be that the sheep is saying like a  
fool “let it be, let it be”, which in this case sounds a bit like  
the sheep bleat. Both passages have Bh before badizein or badizei,  
which would lend some support to this interpretation.

Goldart (1870, The modern Greek language in relation to ancient Greek)  
argued that sheep do not have vocal cords and the sounds they produce  
can only be approximated in human speech. That the translation is baa  
baa for bh bh in itself weakens the Erasmian argument, as the English  
baa baa only approximates the Erasmian bh bh.

Finally in a different passage, in Peace, Aristophanes says that they  
may cry “OI OI” like sheep.

  Nicholas Aggelopoulos
----------------------------------


 > From: tom at katabiblon.com
 > To: mitchlarramore at yahoo.com; b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
 > Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:05:31 +0000
 > Subject: Re: [B-Greek] BH BH, the bleating of an ancient sheep
 >
 > Mitch,
 >
 > Harry Foundalis quotes that text on his Modern Greek site:
 >
 > "In general, the second letter of the alphabet, beta, was  
pronounced as [b] in Plato’s time, but was changed to [v] by the time  
the Gospels were written.... Greek readers of this text who do not  
believe that Plato, Socrates, etc., were sounding so barbaric, may  
take a clue from this very word: “barbaros” was coined after  
somebody who, as a non-native speaker of Greek would produce  
incomprehensible speech, which sounded like... well, what? Could it be  
“var-var-var”? Wouldn’t it sound more barbaric if it were “bar- 
bar-bar”? Besides this word, direct evidence for beta comes from a  
fragment of Attic comedy where it is said that the voice of the sheep  
is BH-BH.(4)
 >
 > "(4). Cratinus, in Dionysalexandros:
 > ὁ δ’ ἠλίθιος ὣσπερ πρόβατον βῆ βῆ  
λέγων βαδίζει:
 > the fool goes about like a sheep saying “ba ba”."
 >
 > http://www.foundalis.com/lan/grkalpha.htm
 >
 > Regards,
 > Tom Moore
 >
 > > -------Original Message-------
 > > From: Mitch Larramore <mitchlarramore at yahoo.com>
 > > Subject: [B-Greek] BH BH, the bleating of an ancient sheep
 > > Sent: Jul 17 '09 02:03
 > >
 > >
 > > 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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