From: Ronald Ross (rross@cariari.ucr.ac.cr)
Date: Sat Feb 22 1997 - 16:18:02 EST
> At 11:02 AM -0600 2/22/97, Sam Johnson wrote:
> >I am seeking advice on teaching beginning greek. I have truly enjoyed
> >the discussion from previous posts but my question is on pronounciation
> >for beginners. I have learned the Erasmus system but Spiros Zodhiates
> >convinced me to learn modern greek pronounciation. That is all I use but
> >I do know the Erasmus system.
> > I have two eager men at church who will be going into the ministry and
> >are preparing to go to Seminary in a few years. I am really leaning
> >toward teaching them modern greek because I see some definite advantages
> >and I would introduce them of course to erasmus pronounciation but my
> >emphasis would be modern greek. Does anyone see any real harm in doing
> >this?
> > This is not a discussion about modern greek vs koine pronounciation
> >but about getting two men started in Greek. I have already decided on
> >the grammer book but I would like to hear from anyone who has an opinion
> >about this. I have put together a very simple chart on modern greek
> >pronounciation that would replace the grammer's phonetic pages.
And Carl Conrad wrote:
snip
> I don't quite see what the "definite advantages" of the
> modern Greek pronunciation might be. I do think that one needs to learn to
> read aloud continuous sequences of the text and hear the sounds. The one
> thing I find disturbing about using modern Greek pronunciation is the fact
> that so many of the vowels and diphthongs that are spelled differently
> (e.g. H, U, OI, I, EI and another set E, AI) that the student fails to have
> the advantage of a pronunciation that reinformces the written forms of
> words he/she is learning. What are the advantages that outweigh this if you
> use the modern pronunciation? It has always seemed to me that the
> fundamental reason for pronouncing a dead language is to gain the aural
> reinforcement for the written words.
I quite agree with Carl. I taught beginning and intermediate Greek for
several years at a seminary here in Costa Rica with a text that taught
only modern pronunciation. I made the decision to have my students
disregard the pronunciation in the text and taught them the Erasmus
pronunciation for the very same reason Carl mentions. There is a better
letter-to-sound correspondence. I too would be interested in knowing
what the presumed advantages are to using the modern pronunciation.
Ron Ross
Department of Linguistics
University of Costa Rica
UBS Consultant
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:38:06 EDT