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

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Jul 21 07:50:47 EDT 2009


On Jul 21, 2009, at 7:20 AM, Randall Buth wrote:

>> 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.

Which is why I said that an attempt to reconstruct a real  
approximation of Koine accentuation was a hornet's nest and a can of  
worms and that I was mixing these two metaphors together. Only at the  
end of my academic career did I learn of Randall's pronunciation, even  
if I had come to see the inefficacy of teaching by the analytic  
method. Vee grow too soon old and too late shmart (if we grow shmart  
at all ... ).

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






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