[B-Greek] Accents in Ancient Greek

Mark Lightman lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Mon Sep 13 22:37:35 EDT 2010


James egrapsed:

<A few years ago, I was at a conference where an Italian speaker was  presenting 
a paper on the LXX in English. He consistently put the accent  on the wrong 
syllable and the vowels weren't always correct, either.  Plus, he was trying to 
get the whole paper into a limited amount of  time. I had an outline on paper of 
what he was covering and was familiar  with the subject. But, I could not 
understand more than about 5% of his  presentation. 


Accents do matter.>


Hi, James,

1.   At the last academic conference I attended, the papers were delivered  in 
flawless English, and I understood about 10% of what was said.  So, I  would say 
this Italian guy did pretty well for himself.  :)  


2.   Thanks for sharing this.  This is the sort of empirical evidence that I  
think should guide discussions like this.  What you say causes me to  reevaluate 
one point I was making in the larger discussion.

Niko wrote:


<Furthermore, accents make difference in distinguishing words that
otherwise have the same spelling.

Caragounis, in his 12 lessons audio CD about “How to pronounce Greek as a Greek”
gives the following list.

AMNHNOS        ἄκμνηνος        fasting from food             ἀκμηνὸς
  full-grown
AKRATOS          ἀκράτος        without being mixed         ἀκτατῶς
in uncontrolled    manner
BATOS              βάτος          blamble-bush
βατὸς         verb adj: that can be passed
DEREIS              δέρεις        pres. Inf.
δερεῖν        fut. inf.
DEMOS             δήμος         people
δημὸς         fat
DIAIRW             διαίρω        lift up
 διαιρῶ       divide
DOKOS             δόκος         opinion
δοκὸς         beam
EDRANON         ἔδρανον      seat
ἀδρανὸν      neut. Adj: steady
EIMI                  εἶμι             go
      εἶμὶ             I am
ELEUSIS          ἔλευσις       coming
Ἐλευσὶς       Eleusis
ZHTW               ζήτω           long live (from ζάω)
ζητῶ          I seek
UEA                  θέα             view
      θεὰ             goddess
UERMH             θέρμη          warmth, heat
θερμὴ         adj.: warm
IEREIA               ἱέρεια         priestess
   ἱερεία         festival, sacrifice
IW                    ἴω               I come (pr.sub. (εἶμι)
  ἰὼ              exclamation: alas!
KONIS               κόνις           dust
     κονὶς          nit
NOMOS            νόμος           law
  νομὸς         pasture, district
OINOS              οἶνος            wine
     οἰνὸς          the ace of the dice
POTE                πότε            when?
   ποτὲ           ever
TIS                    τίς, τίνος, τίνι, τίνα  (inter. pronouns)
  τις, τινός, τινί, τινὰ        indef. pronouns
AISXYNW          αἰσχύνω       I shame out (pes. ind.)
αἰσχυνῶ     (fut. ind.)
KRINW              κρίνω            I judge (pres. ind.)
κρινῶ         (fut. ind.)
MENW              μένω             I abide (pres. ind.)
μενῶ          (fut. ind.)
NEMW              νέμω             I divide (pres. ind.)
νεμῶ          (fut. ind.)

 I think this is an important reason to keep the accents in USE.>

Hi, Niko.  It is good to have you back on the list.

What's  funny about this, is that even with the accents, I often confuse these  
words and other pairs like them.  The accents SHOULD help, but my brain  tends 
to ignore the accents and it seems like I always mistake the less  familiar word 
for the more familiar.  Maybe this just means I should pay  closer attention to 
the accents.

Randall wrote:


<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).>

Hi, Randall,

The reintroduction of the tone/pitch, on a  very limited basis, to overcome late 
homophones, strikes me as very  cool.  It's not consistent, but it makes a whole 
'lotta sense. It's one  of the things I like about Modern Ancient Greek, that it 
is ALIVE, growing, evolving, being changed by the people who use it.  


Paul wrote:


<How sure are we that the current system of
accents that we see now, is in fact the way that classical and koine Greek
was pronounced?>

Hi, Paul,


I don't know for sure, but I would think  that people who spoke Greek as a 
second language--people like Jesus and  Peter and John--probably did not put the 
stress on the syllable that the  text books told them to.  (Question:  Could God 
create an accent system  so complicated that even HE could not follow it?)  Some 
of them with  Semitic backgrounds may--I say may because I sure as heck don't  
know--may have just accented the last syllable.  Some of them may even  have 
been done what Robinson and Dobson, do, i.e. place the accent on  whatever 
syllable sounded natural to them, without worrying about whose  ears got hurt.

Treatises on Greek Accentuation, like history books, are written by the winners.

 Mark L



FWSFOROS MARKOS


      


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