[B-Greek] Absurdity of Koine Greek accents (was "Allegory about learning Koine Greek")
Eric S. Weiss
papaweiss1 at yahoo.com
Mon Jul 20 08:57:14 EDT 2009
I was thinking this morning that those of us who recommend using a historically proper
pronunciation for Koinê Greek - i.e., Randall Buth's Phonemic Koinê or even Modern Greek
(what Caragounis calls the Historical Pronunciation) - should be similarly consistent when it
comes to accents.
I.e., since the "accent" in Koinê times only represented stress and not (i.e., no longer)
pitch, then a simple stress accent (like is done in Modern Greek) is what Koinê/NT texts
should have, and the basic "rules" we teach or use re: when to use an acute vs. circumflex
vs. grave accent should be rewritten to discuss only one kind of accent (i.e., a stress
mark), and explain the shifts in stress, rather than explain when a circumflex is used, when
an acute changes to grave, etc.
I would guess that vowel length and nouns tending to be persistent and verbs tending to be
recessive when it comes to accents would still be part of these "stress accent rules."
What remains, then, is what to do with the breathing marks. Should they be retained to
differentiate between words, or should they, like the different shapes/kinds of
accents, likewise be dropped since they no longer affected pronunciation. Were breathing
marks used in texts from Koinê times by Koinê writers?
- - -
Eric S. Weiss
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