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

Herb Picoski pic3lite at telus.net
Wed Jan 6 22:16:10 EST 2010


As a new student, trying to learn to read out loud, I prefer the texts I can 
find with the breathing marks. Even the smooth breathing. If it was missing 
I might think that the writer had missed it. then I wouldn't be sure of the 
pronunciation. I'd spend more time looking for another copy.
Herb the Student
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Lightman" <lightmanmark at yahoo.com>
To: <owl at postmaster.co.uk>; "Carl Conrad" <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
Cc: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>; "John Sanders" 
<john.franklin.sanders at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 7:05 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] In defense of "Orthography" (was: "Excluded 
Middle(was 'B-Greek Year End Awards')"


> 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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