[B-Greek] Why Monotonic Greek. Was: Free Polytonic Uncial Greek Unicode Font?

Carl W.Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Aug 10 16:13:12 EDT 2006


I've delayed responding to this because I wanted to think it through  
and check a couple matters before responding.
My intention is certainly not to "set the record straight" on theses  
matters, because I don't think the record is at all straight; rather  
I think that at least some of what is set forth in Curtis'  
formulation below is of questionable validity, but even more I think  
that the much that concerns the actual pronunciation of Greek at any  
time or place in the history of the spoken and written language is  
subject to dispute. What I want to do here is to suggest some  
alternative views where I think it particularly appropriate.

On Aug 9, 2006, at 12:05 PM, Curtis Hinson wrote:

> Greetings Steve,
>
> I should have given a little context for my statements.  To make a  
> long
> story short, the diacritical markings were invented by Aristophones of
> Byzantium sometime around 200BC.  These marks were intended as an  
> aid to
> foreigners using Greek.  These were not in common use though for
> centuries.  They appear on rare occasion in a few biblical manuscripts
> after 200AD but are not really common until about the 9th century and
> not standard until the middle ages.

The attribution of invention of the accents to the Alexandrian  
Homeric scholar Aristophanes of Byzantium "sometime around 200 BC" is  
not in dispute. My understanding of the reason for their invention is  
that the pronunciation was changing and that Aristophanes intended  
the accents to show how Greek texts were enunciated in earlier times.  
Certainly there's no complete consensus on a theory of how the pitch- 
accent represented by these accents actually worked, but I think that  
there are relatively few who argue seriously that there never really  
was any pitch accent.

> I do find it ironic that the Greek pedagogical regime (big grin)  
> has for
> a long time insisted on the so-called "Erasmian" pronunciation of
> talking about Greek, and also on the diacritical markings.  Since the
> diacritical markings were intended as an aid to foreigners pronouncing
> Greek, it seems amusing that so many students are taught a butchered
> pronunciation, and the diacriticals are also drilled into their heads
> even though they're not pronouncing Greek, but talking ABOUT Greek.

The above paragraph doesn't claim, of course, to be more than  
personal opinion. That's just as well.

> The Greeks themselves finally rethought the issue and as of the late
> 1970s, polytonic Greek is illegal in Greece for official documents or
> public signage, and monotonic Greek is the standard in Greece.  Greeks
> reasoned that the polytonic system was useless since they did not need
> markings to know how to pronounce their own language.

The problem with this statement is that it appears to confound the  
question of pronunciation of all phases of historical Greek prior to  
the 1970's with the question of pronunciation and orthography  
appropriate for the modern Demotic Greek. I think what was really  
decided in the 70's was that the Katharevousa and its conventions  
should no longer be the official language of the nation. Nor is there  
any reason to dispute that polytonic accents are pointless for the  
pronunciation of Modern Greek. As for the question whether the Greeks  
of the 1970's knew how to pronounce their own language, that  
confounding enters in again: a modern Greek might well read Homer and  
the GNT with a Modern Greek pronunciation, but I suspect that most  
modern Greeks have considerable difficulty with Homer and some  
difficulty with the GNT that hasn't been converted into Modern Greek.  
So far as pronunciation is concerned, it's questionable how much of a  
factor in comprehension is the pronunciation of an ancient text in  
its "original" enunciation, however desirable one might think the  
"original" enunciation is.

> I suppose an approximate analog might be English, which is  
> notorious for
> having a pronunciation that is high context, far far more inconsistent
> and difficult than Greek, in my opinion.  So if someone had called for
> all English documents to start being written in IPA notation to help
> foreigners pronounce the language, it might be a similar effect to
> causing Greek to be written with diacriticals.

There's danger of anachronism here. Even if we (21st-century English- 
speakers) can read Shakespeare with some difficulty and Chaucer with  
some greater difficulty and enunciate those texts with our current  
pronunciations--whether American, or British, or Australian, or  
whatever -- it's hardly likely that the sounds we produce are very  
close to those of spoken English in the appropriate centuries.

> Having said all this, I have made note on B-Greek in the recent  
> past the
> text critical and interpretive issues introduced by the use of
> diacritics.  Because the diacritical markings do not appear in the  
> early
> manuscripts, they are editorial markings adding by late copyists or by
> modern editors.  I cited an example of how the aspiration on the  
> eta in
> John 1:17 throws the meaning of the verse in a different light.  I
> personally feel this adds an unnecessary opportunity for  
> editorializing
> in the Greek text, and since so many appeal to the Greek text to throw
> off the editorializing of the translations, I find it distasteful  
> to use
> diacriticals in that way.  Particularly because, I observe,  
> students are
> just force-fed the markings but not made aware of how they can
> editorialize or bias someone's reading of the text.

I still haven't seen this evident; one who knows Koine Greek  
certainly knows that the H's in John 1:17 must be the article rather  
than the disjunctive particle or some form of the verb EIMI.

> " Essentially, modern Greek pronunciation starts from Plato's time; we
> call it modern, not because it is young, but because it is still in  
> use
> today."  -- http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/lessons/lesson1.asp

That such a statement may be cited from the given source does not  
mean it is true. I think it's highly doubtful than Plato pronounced  
Greek in the same fashion as do modern Greeks.

> For that reason, in whatever teaching I do, I teach students the
> "modern" pronunciation and the monotonic way of writing Greek.  Once
> they're very comfortable with that, I explain how the diacriticals  
> work
> so they are not ignorant of them.  I then explain about Erasmian to  
> the
> students having now learned Greek pronunciation as their default.   
> Since
> they've learned the natural way of speaking Greek, this is a humorous
> discussion along the lines of explaining Pig-Latin to a young English
> speaker.  I've never had a student at that point who then chose to go
> with Erasmian.

Well, I honestly don't think that the pronunciation one adopts in the  
classroom matters very much UNLESS one is making a serious effort to  
speak and write Biblical or Classical Greek (or whatever historical  
form of the language). IF one is going to make that effort, then I  
think that modern Greek pronunciation may be useful, but if it's  
Biblical Koine, I'd push Randall Buth's system. There is certainly  
one virtue to the traditional Erasmian (even if ONLY one): the  
differentiation of the vowel sounds as enunciated.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/





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