[B-Greek] Absurdity of Koine Greek accents (was "Allegory about learning Koine Greek")

Vasile STANCU stancu at mail.dnttm.ro
Sun Jul 19 18:24:52 EDT 2009


I think I could be numbered among those who are trying to use pitch accent
when reading old Greek. The reason why? Because I cannot bear the idea of
learning something which contains a certain mix within itself and yet modify
it by my own will for whatever reason, say, "it is all too difficult as it
stands", etc. (By the way, those who invented the accents must have had some
good reason for doing that: perhaps one similar to the late introduction of
vowel signs in Hebrew). And while I'm doing that, I grow more and more
confident that the rules of accentuation are not that difficult (at least,
not 'impossible', as Mark has just stated) to master - in fact, they become
quite natural and logical this way. I am convinced that using a pitch accent
when practicing reading helps making correct matches when writing. Don't
believe me? Just try...

Vasile



-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Carl Conrad
Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2009 10:40 PM
To: Mark Lightman
Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org; bendersb at earthlink.net
Subject: [B-Greek] Absurdity of Koine Greek accents (was "Allegory about
learning Koine Greek")


On Jul 19, 2009, at 1:07 PM, Mark Lightman wrote:

> ...t I
> am convinced that one of the reasons Koine is so
> hard to learn and to internalize is because the accents
> jump all over the place according to rules which are so
> complicated that they are virtually impossible to master.

A fundamental absurdity about our printed texts (and, of course --  
unfortunately -- our textbooks and reference books) of Koine Greek is  
that they use all three of the accent marks that were invented to  
represent a pitch accent which was no longer used in the Koine. It  
would make far more sense to print Koine Greek texts in the same  
manner as modern Greek is written today: monotonically -- with an  
acute on the stressed syllable of each word. It is important to know  
where the accent is on Koine words, but it is not important to know  
whether that accent is acute or grave or circumflex. Does anyone at  
all attempt to read Koine Greek with a pitch accent? If there is, I'd  
like to know the reason for doing so.

I heartily agree that the rules for polytonic accentuation are  
"virtually impossible to master" -- and what's more, I don't believe  
that there's any good pedagogical reason to master them. Monotonic  
accents would be quite sufficient to aid pronunciation, and where the  
accents make a difference in word recognition, a monotonic accents  
would serve as well as or better than the polytonic accent.

So why are we saddled with this polytonic accentual system? Tertullian  
was talking about his faith, but the reason he gave is the only one we  
can give for our persistence in learning and teaching and writing  
these accents on our transcripts of Koine Greek texts: QUIA ABSURDUM  
EST -- because it makes no sense at all. Look at the papyri and the  
Greek texts there: you won't find any accents at all.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)



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