Randall
BUTH A Phonemic Greek Pronunciation for Roman
Period Koine
If
students would like to attain a fluent control of the
language, to be able to think in the language or speak
with it, they must come to grips with the need to include
audio and oral material in a program. When a person wants
to use living language methods to learn a language, one
is required to make some choices about what kind of
pronunciation system to use.
More
particularly, there is a rather large student
population on the edge of classical studies. Every year
tens of thousands of students begin the study of
ìNew Testament Greekî/ìKoineî.
Some of them will continue with their studies and aspire
to reach high levels of language control. What will they
want to sound like at the end of the day?
Several
considerations would go into designing an authentic Koine
pronunciation that is also practical for speakers of West
European languages. A first consideration might be a
phonemic pronunciation system that fits the language use
of that time. The pronunciation should preserve
the same significant sound distinctions that were used in
the Roman period. [NB: preserving phonemes not
graphemes.]
Already in the 2nd--1st centuries BCE
there was a relatively stable 7-vowel system that became
entrenched around the Mediterranean [I=EI,Ý H, ÝE=AI,
ÝA, ÝW=O, ÝOU,
U=OI] and by the 2nd - 4th
centuries CE there was a 6-vowel system [I=EI=H, ÝE=AI,
ÝA, ÝW=O,
ÝOU,Ý
U=Ÿ™]
after HTA merged with high front vowel [i]. Cf.
G. Horrocks, Greek, a History of the Language and its
Speakers (Longman 1997) and F. Gignac, A
Grammar of the Greek Papyri of the Roman and Byzantine
Periods (Milan 1976).
This is relatively close to the 5-vowel system post 1000
CE [=Modern Greek I, E, A, O, OU]. Modern Greek
ears ìhearî the six vowel system within
their own 5-vowel framework.
Consonants present a curious irony. The Erasmian system got
the stops exactly inverted from the Roman period. Roman
period voiced stops became fricatives, and shortly
afterwards the voiceless stops also became fricatives. A
practical and historical compromise is to use the Roman
period voiced fricatives and the post-Roman voiceless
fricatives. This results in fricatives throughout, like
in Modern Greek. When these consonants are combined with
either the 7 or 6 vowel system above, the pronunciation
sounds remarkably like Modern Greek and is pleasing
enough to modern speakers as to be accepted as a
Greek-like dialect.
There are several historical and aesthetic advantages for
using such a system when learning Koine Greek. First of
all, the phonemic system is perceived in the way that
ancient audiences would hear the words of a speaker. For
example, GRAPSH "he would write" is distinguished from
GRAPSEI "he will write" while LOIPH "remaining" and LUPH
"grief" provide assonance with OI/U. Secondly,
manuscripts and epigraphic texts from the period are read
correctly. The 1st century father who wrote a
letter TW OIEIW can be read smoothly as writing
ìto the sonî. Thirdly, the system is
historically viable and was used in live speech for
hundreds of years. With the extra vowels OI and H the
fuller ancient morphological system is easier to maintain
and perceive than with the five vowel modern system so
words like UMEIS "you" and HMEIS "we" remain distinct.
Fourthly, and not to be taken lightly, a student is able
to branch into the modern language relatively smoothly.
The only sound that will be misaligned phonemically for
modern ears is the -¤' in the 7-vowel system. A student
who becomes fluent in Modern Greek may ameliorate this
problem by shifting to the ancient 6-vowel system for
reading ancient texts.
Finally, the production of all of this with prose texts
requires careful control of word order in order to
distinguish focal items in a sentence from relational,
topical spans. A demonstration will be given from two
extended texts. As will be perceived, such a reading is
complementary to a technical metalinguistic analysis.
The incentive of learning a language within an oral
environment heightens the pronunciation issue. Finding a
sound system that is both historically fitting to the
period of interest and that is reasonably acceptable to
modern ears is an added bonus. Using the language in a
spoken environment further enhances the ability of an
audience to follow the main points and structure of a
text.