[B-Greek] Adding accents

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Wed Feb 17 09:41:47 EST 2010


On Feb 17, 2010, at 9:22 AM, Randall Buth wrote:
>> Ruth,
>> 
>> Would there be a benefit, in your way of thinking, if all of us eliminated accents in our writings? If nothing else, it will return us to the Hellenistic language accent system, the system used by the writers of the NT. The ancients had to distinguish between an EIS and a hEIS, an O from a hO, right? It seems intuitively right to me to write the same way the biblical writers did. It will force us to think more so like a Koine Greek speaker/writer. What are your thoughts?
>> 
>> Eddie Mishoe
> 
> I like the way that you are thinking.
> It is, of course, exactly the way first century readers had to read texts.
> One could always add, though it is unnecessary for the logic of Eddie's
> argument, that many of those "sounds" weren't even heard or pronouced
> by first century users.
> 
> And it is exactly why writing letters without accents makes sense. It also
> reminds one of wherever internalization may be incomplete. If one doesn't
> know on which syllable to accent a word, it means that further work is

Isn't this really comparable to reading and writing Hebrew without the pointing?
Except that Greek doesn't depend on the pointing for vowels. But the accentuation
is certainly part of the pronunciation, and that would not be indicated if one uses
no punctuation.

On another point with regard to typing Greek: I frankly don't see any special
virtue in using the Greek Polytonic keyboard, although I have it readily available
on my Mac. I have been using the GreekKeys system for the better part of two
decades and it works well for me with the accents, breathings and combinations 
neatly ranged across the numeric row at the top of the keyboard and the easy
toggling between Greek and Roman characters with a simple keystroke. It seems
to me that whatever method one initially chooses for keying in the Greek, it does
require an investment of some time and effort to acquire ease in the execution.
Once one has acquired it, it seems silly to relearn a new method.

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






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