Pronunciation
Stephen C. Carlson
scarlson at mindspring.com
Fri May 10 21:46:16 EDT 2002
At 08:07 PM 5/10/2002 -0400, Andrew W. Carlson wrote:
>What I was confused about was in Erasumian Pronunciation (the standard
>pronuctiantion for Koine Greek that is taught) are the vowels A, I, and U
>always pronounced long as in their alphabetical names, or are they
>pronunced both short and long?
Technically, yes. But, as vowel length is not phonemic in English, almost
no one, however, actually does that in the U.S. (In English, a so-called
long vowel actually changes its quality.)
>If so, how do you determine whether or not to pronounce the vowel in
>question long or short?
It's marked in dictionaries. If you know the rules for the
accents, you can make some inferences. For example, if the
A, I, or U carries a circumflex accent, it is always long.
Also, Greek poetry follows certain metrical rules, so if you
see a word in Homer, for instance, you can in some circumstances
infer the length of an A, I, U in the word. That's where the
dictionary writers get their information.
>Andrew W. Carlson
Stephen Carlson, no relation
--
Stephen C. Carlson mailto:scarlson at mindspring.com
Synoptic Problem Home Page http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words." Shujing 2.35
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list