[B-Greek] Absurdity of Koine Greek accents (was "Allegory about learning Koine Greek")
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Sun Jul 19 18:47:10 EDT 2009
On Jul 19, 2009, at 5:56 PM, Eric S. Weiss wrote:
>
>> From Unit Two, Section 4, p. 17 of Introduction to Attic Greek, by
>> Donald
> J. Mastronarde:
Attic Greek accentuation is one thing, Koine Greek another.
We are told that Aristophanes of Byzantium invented the system of
accentuation in the 3rd century BCE in order to mark clearly how the
classical texts had been pronounced with a pitch accent -- AS IT WAS
NO LONGER BEING PRONOUNCED, A STRESS ACCENT HAVING REPLACED THE PITCH
ACCENT. One would like to know precisely when the change in
accentuation had been completed, the "terminus post quem" for the
pronunciation of Greek with stress accent only.
It seems to me that our pedagogical conventions regarding Biblical
Greek are in no respect stranger than with regard to pronunciation: we
are not much (most of us) concerned with ascertaining and observing
the pronunciation of Greek actually used by those who composed and
transmitted the GNT, but when it comes to retention and observance of
a pitch accentuation system that, so far as we can tell, was obsolete
in the era of the NT, we are scrupulously religious -- one might even
be tempted to say tha we are superstitious. Of course, we won't try to
PRONOUNCE our Koine Greek texts with a pitch accent, but we will
insist that the DIACRITICAL MARKS OF PITCH ACCENT are learned and duly
written when we transcribe NT Greek texts. "Oh brave new world, that
hath such creatures in it!"
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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