Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Erasmian

A reconstructed pronunciation of both Greek and Latin was suggested by the Humanist Erasmus in a treatise of 1528: the early Humanists had learned Greek from Byzantine scholars, who used the Byzantine (i.e., modern Greek) pronunciation of the Greek letters. Greeks on the whole continue to use the modern Greek pronunciation, and foreigners are generally ignorant of the Greek animosity to what is called "Erasmian" pronunciation in Greece, where it has come to symbolize Western appropriation of classical culture, and a humiliating rejection of the medieval and modern Greek claim to Greekness.—A Brief History of Ancient Greek, pages 179–80

<idle musing>
This is very obvious in the huge volume The Development of Greek and the New Testament by Chrys Caragounis. (Aside: There is a good analysis of Caragounis's reconstructed pronunciation of Koiné here.)
</idle musing>

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