Re: Religion-Names in Conlangs. Or At Least in Mine. :)

On Thu, 24 Dec 1998, Raymond A. Brown wrote:

> /khristos/, /os/ being the nominative singular ending.  Sometime between
> the 1st and 4th cents AD - probably at different times in different regions
> - it changed to /xristos/ which is still the Greek pronunciation.
The modern Greek pronunciation is also /kristos/ and /khristos/, depending
on which first-generatio Greek immigrant I'm talking to.  In other words,
don't swallow the state-recieved pronunciation on anything too
wholeheartedly (although I have heard grumbling about how the Hellas
educational system is trying mightily to eliminate the last of the
dialects and accents).

Now, when one asks for an "ancient" Greek pronunciation, there is no way
to pin it down.  First, there is the Erasmian mistake, wherein a scholar
who spoke no Greek (although he could read it) decided to assign sound
values to individual Greek letters.

Then there are the various reconstructions of "Greek" (actually Greeks)
for the "ancient" period, strictly speaking.

However, when we get to matters of Christianity (linguistically), ancient
Greek is long since gone.  Instead, what is used is a Greek-based
argot--"koine", with pronunciation extremely different from the Erasmian
stuff.  It's really interesting to hear protestant-trained folks trying
to twist Koine into Erasmian pronunciation.