What a definition! Such then is the case, one can deduce from the above,
with *German*!! (And as to "gamesmanship" well, let us see who knows
what is alive and what is dead with Greek).
>I am sure that Italians who used to attend Mass that was sung in Latin had
>>little idea of what the words they heard meant unless they had
>>specifically been taught ecclesiastical Latin, although of course the
>Latin >was the ancestor of their own native language. While I can't affirm
>it for >sure, I rather suspect that the same is true of Greeks today who
>hear the >NT read in the orthodox churches: unless they have been to
>school and >learned the Koine, they are unlikely to make more sense of the
>gospel of >Luke than will of Homer or Aeschylus.
Your "suspicion" if unfoundedg. And in more ways than one. The Greeks
who go to an Orthodox church and hear the NT read, and even the liturgy, as
recorded in text from the first centuries, understand *very well*
(not to say "all" and "everything") of what is read and is chanted - and I
am not speaking of "schooled" Greeks in either Koine or in the language of
Homer. Homer they do not understand, nor even Aeschylos (primarily
because of grammatical differences *imposed* on the language by
Hellenistic and early Christian era grammarians - the main "body" of the
language remains remarkably the same.) But, Luke and Johm and Agios
Basileios they understand VERY WELL! In great part because of this more
general "imposition" or adoption of Christianity on/by Hellenism - since
it is *before all* (instead of "after all") a Hellenicly speaking religion,
ie the language of Christos, and since its inception. That is substantive.
Techno-logically, the basic fixity in grammar, the grammatical (and to
a lesser extent syntactical) standard imposed, and "enforced", on the
language by the Christian Byzantine court-and-Patriarchate court
grammarians remained in force effectively the same through almost
one thousand years, till the fall of Constantinopole (1453.), considered
sufficient and necessary for their Hellenization and Chriostianization by
all the archons of the Imperium turn Autocracy turn Theocracy, Western
ie Roman in origin to begin with, or Eastern, ie mainly Armenian, and,
of course, of the Romanized and Christianized Greeks, turn "Byzantine".
There more reasons yet for it. One essential one being that after the
fall of Hellenized Byzantium to the ethnic Seltsuk Turks, and the
subjugation to Hellas, what remained for Hellenes as anchor and solace and
a viable means to enter into communion and at the same time "school"
(Mr. Conrad) themselves in the Greek language was the doubly manifest
religious-and-linguistic aspect of Christian liturgy, with all the ancient
texts therein. Thus, the Greek who went to Church, at the same time was
"schooled" linguistically. Being the relationship as close as that was
(Islam made an insignificant inroads in the about 400 years of occupation,
while the minor in number Jewish diaspora in the synagogues of Greece
maintained their liturgy in Greek, which was the main language of 1st
century Judaism, in Ierousalem as well as in most all centers of the
Diaspora throughout the Mediterranean) Koine remained actively "alive"
in the mind and tongue of the ordinary person -and did not "die.".
>Homer is as much worth reading--and hearing chanted aloud in
>>hexameters--today. I'm sure that when read aloud in modern Greek
>>schools, the Iliad and Odyssey are sounded in the vowels, diphthongs and
>>consonants of today's Dimotiki: MININ AIDE, QEA, PILIADW AhILLAIWS,
>>rather than MHNIN AEIDE, QEA, PHLHIADEW ACILLEWS.
Sorry, Professor, but you shouldn't be so "sure" with your assurities.
You are making an altogether fallacious assumtion here, as to how Greeks
today write and reade. That is, you asuume that in today's language, what
you call Dimotiki (prejudicing the issue, but that is small lettering for
this forum) what I (and not only I) call "Omiloumenii" maintains when
written necessarily a logical correspondence to the written sign, in that
respect when pronouncing *long* a vowl that it is written *long*, And
when a *short* that it is written *short* or, maybe, too, that modern
Greek does not use *long* vowels, or does not distinguish between *long*
and *short* thus having one *i* (and I mean by that all three as the same)
or one *o* etc., and thus in reading MHNIN, as above, the pronounce it
MININ, or when saying "don't believe in that", they say MIN PISTEUIS IS
AUTO, instead of MHN PISTEUEIS EIS AUTO. Nothing can be further from the
truth. What is the truth, of course, and in an inversely analogous way to
the paradigm given by CWC, is that whereus they are trained and expected to
write "orthographically" and "correctly", ie write the words in the same
manner as when standardized by the Alexandrian gragrammarians and
imposed-maintained, as written above, by the Byzantine Christian tradition,
they *speak* as they well pleased, as *speech* as "air", "spirit", was not
"capturambe", "fixable" in time, and so measurable, and punishable for
that matter - as the palms and bottocks and cheeks of so many hundreads
of generations of millions of Greek children can attest, by the barbaric
wooden sticks and slapping hands of madly bent on correction
"schol-archers". And so the could say MHN and could say MIN, or could say
in fact a by far looonger and emphatic MHHHN (MIIIIIIN) but it is MHN
that they *had* to write all the same. As, for example in the case of
TWRA. They might had said to someone a "shortly" TORA, or again call upon
someone to come TWWWRA (TOOOOOORA) but it is TWRA, they had to write.
As in the case, too, with verbs. I often say GRAFO. That's right. Verb, with
a short "O" at the end. Why not? That IS what I pronounce. As I, too,
sometimes I may say, to my wife, "E, AGAPI MOU PEINWW!" (ie, let's hurry
it - long *O* in stressing it and beimg emphatic.
Sorry, Sir, but when read in school the Iliad, and the Odyssey, and the
Biblos, AND a poem of the modern masters Elytis and Seferis, the
"orthography" - in terms of the "standardized", "fix" in time, and "mind"
and "mode" - is ignored. So that the dipthongs and long-short vowels may
or may not be necesarily "pronounced" according to the writer's momentary
inclination - but are dipthongs and long-short vowels are pronounced,
and more faithfully so in accordance to the orally maintained, living
tradition. In this, MHNIN *is* pronounced in fact MHNIN, and not by any
letter observation, but by natural inclination. I have taught Homer to
Greek youth, and adults, as I have read many a time the "Apostole" in an
ecclesia
and monastery and *I know*.
>I'm sure these hexameters read in the Erasmian pronunciation are not an
>>awful lot closer to the original pronunciation of the 8th c. B.C. than
>when >they are read in today's Dimotiki, but I think that they have more
>of the >richness and >diversity of the original vowels and diphthongs.
Oh, 8ee mou! How surely "sure" one can be!!
To end this note by adding that the subject title that was given to the
thread to which I responed was altogether unreflective of the point that
had been made by CWC regarding Koinem and which I had treated quite at
length in my first post on "Teaching Beginning Greek pronunciation" - and
which was epitomized that *Koine* Greek was a "dead" language. In this
I 'd pick no argument with CWC were he to had previously written this about
*Ancient*, specifically, Greek, which not only in my book is other
than Koine but is so on most everybody's book - the period divisions being:
Ancient, Koine, Modern - with most all Classics departments stopping the
Ancient Greek curriculum just short of the period that begins Koine.
(No Greek person would consider Ancient Greek a "dead" language - in that
in Greek the word Ancient is ARCAIA, meaning ARCIKA, ie "first, original" -
and not due to considerations of any emotional attachment, or for patriotic
reasons, but because they *feel* their language as continueous and ONE
and LIVING.
Carl Conrad, having said
>Surely any subscriber to this list who is really cognizant of English
>usage >and is not engaged in rhetorical gamesmanship knows what is meant
>by a >"dead" language:
Are you saying that I am "engaging in rhetorical gamesmanship," or that
I am not "really cognizant of (the) English (language) usage" or that
I don't "know what is meant by *dead* language"? Or by a "living" one?!
Just to set the record straight. Please.
Isidoros
The Ionic Centre, Athens ioniccentre@hol.gr