[B-Greek] where did all the sheep OIS go?

Randall Buth randallbuth at gmail.com
Fri Sep 18 16:20:46 EDT 2009


Visiting a greek isle again, and grateful that they still have lamb
on the menu and some people are willing to listen to someone
speaking old Greek.

this note has two points. one leads into the other.

1. I find that one needs to use ITA to simplify things, especially with
people who do not know where one is coming from. that means
shifting into a third century CE dialect for visiting Greece. Not
too difficult really since it only means one sound shift from a Koine
pronunciation. As mentioned many times, they are not bothered,
and for practical considerations do not notice, when one pronounces
OI and Y as an "umlaut u" (rounded high front vowel). they hear
something close enough to 'i' to flollow a foreigner's speech.

2. In ordering lamb in a restaurant one can reflect on 'sheep' in the
NT and LXX. It is curious that OIS 'sheep' is never used. for that
matter YS 'pig' is rarely used. 1xx in NT and 6xx in LXX (also YEIOS 8
and SYS 1).
In contrast
we have PROBATON  39xx in NT, 295xx in LXX,
and XOIROS 12 in NT, 0 in LXX.

I suspect that OIS did not disappear because they were all eaten
but because OIS and YS sounded alike in KOINH.
So PROBATON was a practical solution to avoid saying 'pig' when
one meant 'sheep'.

ERRWSQE
IWANHS


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



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