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

Randall Buth randallbuth at gmail.com
Tue Jul 21 07:20:07 EDT 2009


>So he teaches pitch accent although we know that NT Koine had no pitch
accent; does he also use the reconstructed Attic pronunciation of
Sidney Allen? Or does he use the Erasmian pronunciation?

He teaches a mix.

Basically, it is 'reconstructed Attic' (Sidney Allen -- Stephen Daitz)
but with the modern Greek voiceless fricatives  φ, θ, χ   F Q X
added in place of the hard aspirates 'p', 't', 'k'.

So one could call it Erasmo-Daitz, which is a sub-type of Erasmian,
just like different Erasmians are sub-types of that methodology.
I coined the hyphen name with Daitz because I not sure that Allen actually
used a pitch accent. In his book Vox Graeca toward the end he said
something to the effect that it was too difficult and he hadn't heard
anything satisfactory. But Daitz recorded Homer with the system.

Rico's rational has been twofold: officially, this could help someone spell
(he does not believe that it is historically correct and points out "Koine" as
a close approximation to the Greek of NT times),
and unofficially, it was quite daunting for him to think about changing after
20-30 years. This last reason is a good one for students to consider
BEFORE they invest in developing fluency.
They should choose where they want to end up at before they get there.

Randall Buth


-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth at gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life



More information about the B-Greek mailing list