Re: an announcement...

Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> Ed Heil wrote:
> >
> > That sounds like a lot of fun, though!  I made a hobby of trying to
> > get those things right pronouncing Greek, but nobody else in the
> > department much cared.
> >
>
>         Same for me with Latin in High School. I tried to pronounce right
the
> long vowels, but nobody cared.
Oh, but it's the only way for Latin verse to have any audible
structure whatsoever!  How can people not care?...

Actually I learned to do long vowels by being taught how to scan the
Aeneid.  We were never taught to pronounce long vowels when we were
first learning the language (for me, that was in high school, when I
was about 15), but when we started scanning verse it suddenly became
very necessary.

> Moreover, the pronunciation of Latin we
> are taught in French schools is very strange : the 's' is always
> pronounced /s/, the diphtongs pronounced nearly seperating the vowels,
> but the 'r' is pronounced like in French. Anyway, it is still better
> than Latin taught to French pupils just 30 years ago (everything was
> pronounced as in French, except that no consonnant was silent. So you
> had 's' /z/ between vowels and 'ae' /e/).
I understand that a hundred or so years ago, everyone pronounced
Latin as if it was his or her native language, much the same as,
according to Dave Barry, it is the custom of people in Miami, Florida
to drive according to the traffic laws of their native country. :)


>         At least, Modern Greek is easier in that respect: a stress of
> intensity, pure vowels, an impressive number of vowels and diphtongs
> that are read /i/ (the strangest of all -for a French person- being
> epsilon-iota, ei which is pronounced /E/ in French), many
> vowel-diphtongs that are pronounced like in French (like
> omicron-upsilon, 'ou' /u/ or alpha-iota, 'ai' /E/). Now that I have a
> Greek roommate (no, we don't live in the same room, only in the same
> house. Can we say "house-mate"? :) ), I'm gonna add "Modern Greek" on my
> resume :) (with Dutch I hope :) ).
Excellent!  How lucky you are!

"House-mate" sounds fine to me, though "roommate" certainly includes
the possibility of merely sharing rooms in the same house. :)

Ed

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Boxcars are pulling an Ed of sorts out of town.
             edheil@postmark.net
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