[B-Greek] Adding accents
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Wed Feb 17 10:09:35 EST 2010
Karlos egrapse
> 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.
Yes, though as a practioner of both, I would evaluate the Greek accents to
carry a lighter load. That is, unvocalized Hebrew, while fully functional, is
more ambiguous than unaccented Greek.
And for language learning,
I recommend as highly marked a text as possible.
The thing that prepares someone for reading unaccented Greek or unvocalized
Hebrew is intenalization of the language, not reading underdifferentiated
systems. Sometimes one hears that a person
who wants to read 'unpointed Hebrew' should practice with 'unpointed
Hebrew'. The opposite is true at the beginning-intermediate language
learning stage, despite what many ulpanim do in Israel.
When the words are known and recognized, the correct pronunciation
will jump to the lips of the reader, but if the words are not known or
recognized
then the person must consult other sources even if they could have guessed
the approximate meaning in context.
Fortunately, there is a point somewhere far down the road for the learner
where they know enough vocabulary from all the patterns of the language
to even fill in correct vowels on totally new vocabulary and will absorb the
word from context. But by then they are usually speaking the language
fairly fluently.
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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