[B-Greek] Accents in Ancient Greek
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Sun Sep 12 04:58:09 EDT 2010
>The proposition that putting the stress on the wrong syllable interferes with
communication in Greek and English has a certain logical appeal, but all I can
say is that the empirical evidence that I have argues against it. >
Several items:
As speech becomes more rapid you will want the syllables correctly accented
in order to help process longer streams of sound correctly into the right
words. The wrong accent does create many false starts and the need to
repeat in live communication. My experience.
This is still true in Modern Greek, even more so, because of their
limited vowel
inventory.
I would even recommend differentiating OY (high pitch/stress) "of which' from
OY (lowtone/pitch) 'not'. TWN (high pitch/stress) 'of the (pl) from
TON (the, acc).
The shift of "pitch" (multitone accent system) to "stress" (single
high tone/vs.
low) in Greek probably happened with the rise of the KOINH after Alexander the
Great. This appears to be one of the main triggers that caused the length
system in the vowels to drop out, producing things like AI=E and W=O.
When learning words in a language that I will remember and produce, I
find that consistancy helps, and correctly accented/stressed syllables helps
with that consistancy. Said the other way around, inconsistancy hurts
language learning.
Correctly accented words also help one trace how the language dealt with
homonyms and word choices throughout the various periods of the language
(post-Alexander).
Finally, I have found that it is easier to learn things correctly from
the beginning
(a word to the wise)
but difficult to change over after occasionally mumbling over texts for 25-30
years.
Reconstituting a 'sound-based' language takes a lot of work and the correct
accented syllables are relatively 'fragile' when assaulted from all sides at
conferences by incorrectly accented Greek. I don't have trouble following
Erasmian Greek, but I have stopped listening to anything that is 'randomly'
accented. It is too destructive on my ears, it reintroduces misaccented words
and Greek is not a 'mother-tongue' in me that overrides and reasserts itself
through any onslaught.
Your mileage may vary.
Randall Buth
--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth at gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life
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