[B-Greek] latest thoughts on Greek Audio, aesthetics verus utility

Mark Lightman lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Fri Mar 27 22:37:05 EDT 2009


I finally got a used MP3 player for a good price
(I traded all my GM stock for it) and so I have been
listening to a lot of the Greek Audio that is 
available for free.  My sense is that there is more
of this out there now than there was even a year
ago.  At first, I was trying to find an alternative to
Jonathan Pennington, whose c.d.'s I have listened
to many times.  I DON'T want this post to lead to
another fight over Erasmus versus Modern or
Living Koine, although I don't think we have had 
this fight on this list since the Bush years, so maybe it's
time  for it.  But what I didn't like about Pennington
is not that he uses Erasmus, but that he sounds 
less like a Rhapsode from Rhodes and more like
an Accountant from Akron.  He makes no attempt
to roll his r's or not to glide his long vowels.  I had
thought that the problems with Erasmus could
be solved if you just gave it a certain Mediteranian
flair, if you read it say the way a Frenchman or
an Italian might, not the way, say, I would.  And it
turns out there are readings of the Greek NT in more
or less Erasmus which sound much better, Louis Tyler
for example.  And yes, Buth's First John and the readings
available on Greek Latin Audio.com (with MG pronunciation)
do SOUND much better than Pennington.
 
But when I put these on my player and listened to them
for a while, I discovered something which in retrospect is
pretty obvious.  While some Greek audio sounds very nice,
it may not be as helpful as Pennington.  My real find has been
Marilyn Phemister.  Her Greek sounds about as pretty as her
name, which is to say it is uglier than Pennington.  But I have 
found her readings to be very USEFUL.  I can understand her
Greek very well.  She speaks slowly.  She enunciates each
word.  She has less idiosyncracies than any Greek Audio I 
have found.  She gets the accents right most of the time.
Again, her diction is dull, artificial, ugly, and very helpful I 
think in what is a very difficult task, listening to and understanding
a language you have learned by reading.
 
Now, I know what you are going to say.  Sure, I can understand
my High School French teacher better than I can Jean Paul
Sartre, but Marilyn Phemister is not real Greek, it's not 
"Living," as Buth might say.  I agree.  But you have to 
walk before you run.  I find that listening to Phemister over
and over again I can follow the Greek text quite well, once
I go through it a few times with the text in front of me.  I
realize that this is only the first step in Audio Learning, and
that Buth is ultimately right about hearing and speaking 
not just NT texts but real language.  He has challenged us that
we cannot really say we understand koine if we cannot understand
a random passage from e.g. Josephus read at normal speed.  I'd
like to get there, but I can at least do this with Phemister, and
I am grateful for her to making her readings available.
 
As a postscript, I have also put on my player Book 1 of the Iliad
read by one Stanley Lombardo.  His website says that he is
from New Orleans, but he reads Greek like a Sicilian on steroids.
He basically uses Erasmus but for some reason pronounces both
omega and omicron as a long o as in note.  He reads very dramatically,
but very fast and does some weird things with the accents.  Again, his
Greek sounds much better than Phemister or Pennington, but it is
much harder to follow, even though I am getting as familar with Book
I of the Iliad as I am with the Greek NT, since I have readi it about ten
times now.  If Phemister had recorded it, it would sound worse, but
I have no doubt she would help me understand the Iliad better.  If
you haven't already done so, I would recommend that you go
to her website and give her a try, even if you have a bias against
American sounding Erasmians. 
 
Mark L. 
 
 
 
 


      


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