[B-Greek] Accent marks in ancient Greek

Mark Lightman lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Sat Sep 11 14:01:45 EDT 2010


Paul wrote:

<Honestly I'd love to junk the entire system of accents if I could. What do
the people on this list have to say about ancient Greek accents?>

Hi, Paul,

Paul's post raises three questions.  1.  What is the best way to type Greek 
accents and other diacriticals? 2. Should one even bother with these while 
typing Greek? 3.  Which would you rather see scrapped first, the Electoral 
College, the Designated Hitter, or all Greek accents and diacritical marks?

As for question one, which I don't think Paul actually asked about, in passing 
let me note that I recently switched from the Logos Biblical Keyboard to the 
regular WIndows Greek Polytonic  Keyboard.  I did this because it is alleged 
that the latter shows up better on more forums.  The conventional wisdom is that 
the latter takes a lot longer to learn but eventually there is not much 
difference in using the two.  I think this is more or less true.  I had to paste 
little tabs on some of the keys to mark the accents, which I did not have to do 
the Logos Keyboard.  I guess after some time I won't need the tabs.

But this brings me to question two.  I have argued that there is really no 
reason to put the accents and diacriticals in when typing Greek because on most 
on line forums, the font is too small to really see the accents clearly.  If 
anything, they make the Greek harder to read.  Nobody will admit this because 
most people are used to reading Greek with accents and they think the accents 
help, but this is only because human beings in general are resistant to change.  
Typing in the accents might help you learn them better, if this is a priority 
for you,  which brings us to question three.  (and I'm not sure Paul actually 
asked this question either, but I want to way in on it anyway.)

The current system of Greek accents and diacriticals is largely an accident of 
history.  As has been pointed out, the earliest manuscripts did not have them.  
Editors decided at one point to put them in.  Had they not, we would have been 
forced to come up with any number of arbitrary conventions, all of which would 
have been superior to the present system.  We could have

1.  Decided to stress all Greek words on the last syllable.  This is more or 
less what is done in Hebrew, and Hebrew is much easier to read out loud than 
Greek.  Beginners can recite large chucks of the Hebrew Bible or prayers with no 
problems, whereas even advanced speakers of Ancient Greek struggle to have the 
words flow out.

2.  Conversely, we could have decided to have the stresses be recessive, either 
all the way back on the first syllable, or on the antepenult.  This is how 
Sappho pronounced Greek and she did just fine for herself. Stressing the accent 
on the beginning of the word would make Greek much easier for English and German 
speakers.

3.  Or we could have adopted a proposal I first heard on B-Greek in July 2009 by 
Amos Bender

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2009-July/049801.html

where Amos recommends placing the stress on the root syllable of Greek word.    
At the time I told Amos that I liked the idea, but it might be hard on some 
words to figure out which syllable is the root of the word.  But I have since 
tried it, and it is actually quite easy to do.  Most Greek words have one 
syllable roots, and where a root is two syllables, you could have a rule where 
you stressed it on the first or second (take your pick.)  What is good about 
this system is that the stress goes with the most meaningful part of the word, 
whereas now it is sometimes on the ending, sometimes on the root, sometimes on 
the augment or the second or first syllable of a preposition.

4.  Or we could have decided to stress all syllables equally.  Why not do this?  
Under the current system, because we want to make sure we get the stress 
correct, we tend to OVER-stress syllables, resulting in an artificial 
enunication.  If we are going to be artificial, why not be artificial and easy 
instead of artificial and hard?  After all,  how do we teach people to stress 
the first five syllables of κεκαυστηριασμἐνων (KEKAUSTHIASMENVN) in 1 Tim 4:2?  
We say none of the syllables gets a special stress, right?  Why not do this with 
every word?  Would the resultant Greek be monitone and lifeless?  Not really.  
People would give very slight stresses to whatever syllable seemed most natural 
for them to stress.  The rest of us would not even really notice which syllable 
is stressed, and there would be no stress over the stress.  


5.  An even more radical version of number four is just to let everyone stress 
whatever accent they want.  This is what James Dobson does in his audio and what 
Maurice Robinson does in his audio Greek NT.  I know what you are going to say.  
"My Lord, Lightman, what kind of chaos are you proposing?!?  What would happen 
if  everyone stressed words differently?"  Well, listen to a little Robinson


http://www.bingo-ev.de/~ps2866/Byz/English/English.htm
and let me ask you a question.  Can you understand what he is saying?   I think 
anyone who has had a little experience listening to Greek will understand 100% 
of his Greek NT.  If I can understand 100% of someone, on what basis can I 
criticize the way they speak the language?  I live in a neighborhood where lots 
of people are learning English as a second language.  They almost never stress 
English words on the same syllables as I do, and it never interferes with my 
ability to understand them.

I have no doubt that the current system of accenting Greek--and I have not even 
gone into the silliness of retaining the circumflex and the grave and the smooth 
breathing--makes learning Greek much harder than it would be if we scrapped the 
current system in favor of any other system or no system at all.  My only 
question is, how much harder does it make it.  Maybe 15% harder than it needs to 
be.

When I first started learning Greek, I did not pay much attention to Greek 
accents.  Now that I am focusing on speaking it, I am trying to internalize the 
current accent system.  I'm getting there.  It's a lot mental energy that I 
would rather spend on learning more vocab, but I'm doing it  not because I think 
it will help my Greek, but because...everyone else does it.

<Honestly I'd love to junk the entire system of accents if I could.>

I think you can, Paul, both in typing and in speaking.  I see no draw back to 
doing so.



 Mark L
Φωσφορος


FWSFOROS MARKOS




________________________________
From: P R <prittman at gmail.com>
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Wed, September 8, 2010 11:18:07 PM
Subject: [B-Greek] Accent marks in ancient Greek

I typically have a heck of a time getting accent marks on Greek letters that
I type in MS Word, and recently came across a transcript from another list,
some of whose members were saying that they don't use accent marks when
writing out ancient Greek letters, since they are either unnecessary or
conjectural (in that the system of accents was inserted centuries after
Greek writing first developed).

Honestly I'd love to junk the entire system of accents if I could. What do
the people on this list have to say about ancient Greek accents?

I didn't see a way to search the archives, and I didn't see anything like
this in the previous couple of months.

Paul Rittman
---
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