[B-Greek] In defense of "Orthography" (was: "Excluded Middle (was 'B-Greek Year End Awards')"

Mark Lightman lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Wed Jan 6 22:05:50 EST 2010


Hi, Carl,
 
Getting rid of just the smooth breathing and
getting rid of breathing marks
altogether and getting rid of diacritical marks
altogether and getting rid of
all orthographic conventions are four different things.
All but the first of these would make Greek
harder to learn and I could never be in
favor of that.
 
But getting rid of just of just the smooth breathing has no downside
(unless you are an engineer or a computer programmer,
I guess) and would undoubtedly 
make Greek EASIER to learn.  Imagine telling new
students that the rough
breathing is basically an "H," and leaving it at that.  I maintain that
even for advanced students, having to check, even if on a subconscious
level, every vowel for the breathing marks uses up a good deal of precious
mental energy that is needed to read a very difficult language.  Plus don't
forget the point that on many texts you can't even tell if a breathing IS
rough or smooth.
 
To get rid of all, or most, orthographic conventions would be very 
difficult and is unlikely to happen.  But all it would take to kill
the smooth breathing for ever is for one publisher to write a 
grammar or a text with no smooth breathings.  Everyone would
see how much easier it is to read and that would be the end of
it.  It was only after Sarah won her award that I noticed that
Paula Saffire actually made the same argument on page 4 of
her Ancient Greek Alive:  "It would be best if modern editors
dispensed with the non-h sign altogether, as an eye-saving 
measure...Future editors take note!"
 
On the Dialogos list we e-mail each other in Koine.  At first
most of us used breathings and accents, but in time, most
of us gave them up.  It takes too much time to put them in,
and while many things make our beginning Greek tough
to understand, a lack of diacritical marks is not among them.
Buth does not use them in casual writing.  What we do, though, it
to occasionally stick in an accent or a breathing to help
distinguish words from words.  But here is what has 
surprised me.  While it is obviously much easier to write
without the marks, I think it may be easier to READ as 
well.  I think you read the words faster, not slowed down
by the breathings and accents.  I am actually not entirely
convinced now that getting rid of all diacritical marks might
not be easier for students in the long run.  Not convinced
either way, so, for now, I add my voice in defense of most Greek
orthography.
 
But, I'm sorry, but keeping the smooth breathing makes about
as much sense to me as giving a Nobel Prize to a guy who
was only on the job for a few...wait, strike that.  That belongs
on a different Year End Awards list. 

Mark L


FWSFOROS MARKOS

--- On Wed, 1/6/10, Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com> wrote:


From: Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
Subject: [B-Greek] In defense of "Orthography" (was: "Excluded Middle (was 'B-Greek Year End Awards')"
To: owl at postmaster.co.uk
Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org, "John Sanders" <john.franklin.sanders at gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday, January 6, 2010, 1:46 PM


A few months ago (Sun Jul 19 15:40:20 EDT 2009) I posted to this
list a message entitled, "Absurdity of Koine Greek accents" and asked, 
"why are we saddled with this polytonic accentual system? Tertullian  
was talking about his faith, but the reason he gave is the only one we  
can give for our persistence in learning and teaching and writing  
these accents on our transcripts of Koine Greek texts: QUIA ABSURDUM  
EST -- because it makes no sense at all. Look at the papyri and the  
Greek texts there: you won't find any accents at all."

The response was clear and loud: we have no alternative but to
preserve the traditional orthography. Or, preserving the traditional
orthography is more useful than an effort to abolish it would be.
I concur with that. I also think this applies to the breathing marks.
They certainly could be done away with for Koine Greek texts of 
the era when we know aspiration was not pronounced. On the other
hand, I guess I could learn to discern by context when an O is the
article and when it is a neuter singular relative pronoun. So also
I could learn to discern by context when EIS and EN are masculine
and neuter numerals and when they are prepositions -- but it is
convenient to have them spelled with differentiation, just as it
is convenient to have the English homonyms "to," "too," and "two"
differentiated orthographically -- although ... , although ... 
teenagers texting messages seem to have no difficulty understanding
"2" to indicate the right one of those words in context.

There was a review in the NY Times of January 1 of a new book
by Jack Lynch, entitled _THE LEXICOGRAPHER’S DILEMMA
The Evolution of ‘Proper’ English, From Shakespeare to ‘South Park’__.
The review was titled, "This Is English, Rules Are Optional."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/books/01book.html?ref=books

Judging from the review (and the first chapter is accessible from
the review) it's a worthwhile read. It brings home what we all know
but don't often acknowledge, that "orthography" or "correct spelling"
is a convention that is helpful insofar as it conforms what we read to
patterns to which we are accustomed and limits the amount of guessing
we have to do at what the author intended to say; on the other hand,
it is a convention that is a hindrance to the extent that the conventional
spelling -- including the diacriticals -- have ceased to represent the
way words are actually pronounced in current usage. Part of our
difficulty -- and the source of much of the futile disputation of 
B-Greek -- has to do with our confusion over and disagreements
about how Greek was pronounced in the NT era and how it should
be pronounced by today's students of NT Greek.

If I should ask the question, what would happen if we just simply
dispensed with our conventions of ancient Greek orthography 
(including accents, breathing marks, initial-medial and final sigmas,
upper-case and lower-case letters, etc. Suppose that we, like those
writing on ancient papyri, should make no distinction between
writing QAILO or QELW, between TH and TI, between
TWN and TON? My guess is that it would be considerably more
difficult for new learners to gain any degree of competence in
ancient Greek than it already is now.

All of which is to underscore the obvious, which applies to
the breathing marks as it does to spelling the vowels and diphthongs
and placing the accents: Spelling is a CONVENTION, one that
like other conventions, can be, at different times, a help or a 
hindrance.

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

On Jan 6, 2010, at 11:54 AM, John Owlett wrote:
> One of the slightly mindbending things you have to learn in the
> early stages of logic is that something's being untrue does not
> make it false.
> 
> There are many cases where a two-valued logic (true/false,
> black/white, zero/one, or whatever) is adequate.
> 
> There are also many cases where a three-valued logic is necessary.
> John's engineering list case (is/not is/not assigned) is a good
> example.  Others include (black/white/grey) and the lawyers'
> (proved to be true/proved to be false/not proven).
> 
> And, life being what it is, there are many-valued logics, where
> even three values are not enough.
> 
> A two-valued logic, with no shades of grey, is said to have an
> "excluded middle".
> 
> Do we need a middle breathing?
> 
> If you're writing Greek for someone to read, I would say No.
> The reader either aspirates the start of the word or doesn't.
> 
> So I think that Hawkeye can keep her award.
> 
> If you're writing a Greek minuscule for a future generation
> of textual critics, then it could be helpful to show that you
> have clearly decided not to aspirate.
> 
> But who wants to help textual critics?  :-)
> 
> Later,
> 
> Dr Owl
> 
> ----------------------------
> John Owlett, Southampton, UK
> 
> Yesterday, John Sanders wrote:
> 
>> In reference to THE HAWKEYE PIERCE AWARD FOR THE
>> ORTHOGRAPHIC REFORM LEAST LIKELY TO
>> TAKE PLACE BECAUSE IT MAKES TOO MUCH SENSE:
>> 
>> Sarah Madden, for suggesting that we retain rough breathings
>> but get rid of smooth readings.
>> 
>> If I may, I would like to come to the support of Aristophanes
>> of Byzantium.  I fear many may not understand the significance
>> of using two symbols for the aspirate (one for smooth breathing
>> and one for rough breathing).  At one time, many years ago, I
>> also thought along similar lines as they who wish to eliminate
>> the redundant symbol, but my work requirements changed that
>> for me.




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