[B-Greek] Absurdity of Koine Greek accents (was "Allegory about learning Koine Greek")
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Jul 20 09:52:32 EDT 2009
On Jul 20, 2009, at 8:57 AM, Eric S. Weiss wrote:
> 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.
It should be realized that this is a hornet's nest -- a real can of
worms. It should also be realized that it would take something more
than a tsunami to shake up the institutions that sustain traditional
Koine Greek pedagogy.
> 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.
This might be difficult, and I'm not sure how one would proceed. How
to explain the differentiation in accentuation between A/NQRWPOS
(ανθρωπος) nom. and A/NQRWPON (ανθρωπον) acc. but
ANQRW/POU (ανθρώπου) gen. and ANQRW/PW (ανθρώπω) dat.?
Instead of PLOI=ON (πλοῖον) we would write PLOI/ON
(πλοίον) -- but what do we do when we add an enclitic, e.g.
PLOION ESTIN? I think what we do is to make it PLOIO/N ESTIN
(πλοιόν εστιν) and forget that there ever was a circmflex on
that OI in the traditional formulation: PLOI=O/N ESTIN (πλοῖόν
ἐστιν).
If we go native like those who write papyri or uncial MSS, we'll
also omit breathing marks and iota subscripts; the subscripts too are
remnants of obsolete long-vowel diphthongs -- some editors of
Classical Attic print the iota as a "postscript" -- i.e. they write
ANQRWPWI for the dative of this noun and assume that WI is pronounced
as a long-vowel diphthong, perhaps like the Yiddish interjection, "Oi!"
But the rule would indeed have to be rewritten. A constant would, I
assume, be that the accent can only appear on one of the last three
syllables and that enclitics are understood to be syllables belonging
to the word to which they attach.
> 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?
Look at BDF §14; pronunciation changes in the aspirated stops have had
their impact on compound verbs.
As I said at the outset, it IS a hornet's nst or a can of worms,
depending on whether you like hornets more or worms more.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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