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JWW Paragraphs 18-27

Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2003 1:06 am
by booyah
my questions are connected to accents:

1. are all diphthongs considered long?

2. ultimately, how could i know that a vowel is long or not? i know that Williams has the long mark over the letter to let us know they are long. but, aren't these long marks absent when you normally write the word?

for example, how do i know that the [size=150] α [/size] in [size=150] ἡμέρα [/size] is long? is it something that i just have to memorize and know? or is there a way i can tell that it is long?

just by looking at it i can mistakenly write it as [size=150] ἥμερα [/size] .

any help is greatly appreciated!

Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2003 1:08 am
by booyah
my mistake on the author's name. it's white. :D

Re: JWW Paragraphs 18-27

Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2003 5:22 am
by annis
booyah wrote:my questions are connected to accents:

1. are all diphthongs considered long?
Yes. Sort of. Final ‐αι and ‐οι of adjectives and nouns are considered short for the purposes of accent. In poetry, they're assumed long (though again can be read short in certain contexts I'll not annoy you with until you move to the Homer board. :) )
2. ultimately, how could i know that a vowel is long or not?
By memorizing the length. No way around that, I'm afraid. There are some patterns, but I'm not sure learning those is less work than just memorizing accenting and length from the vocab lists.

Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2003 5:33 pm
by booyah
thanks annis! as always, you are of great help.