In my readings (haha, that sounded cool ) I have seen some greek words in Latin texts. I know that Rome was influenced by Greek Culture, so that is understandible.. Look at how many words of French origin are in the English language. These Greek words were also declined in the way of the Greeks, which makes sense. Seeing as the Romans decided to use Greek words, to retain the Greek cases and whatnot, would it be logical to assume that (at least some) Romans pronounced Greek as the Greeks did, with all the accents preserved? Just as some (usually snobby in my experience) English speakers pronounce borrowed french words with proper french pronounciation.
That said, I assume that the Romans wrote greek with roman letters. the reason I ask, though is because, on the cover of a fairly cheezy book, is a coin or something with the words SIGNVM...XPISTI. the ... means that I forgot the rest.. how embarrasing. anyway, it seems that Christi was written with greek characters, exept for the 's', which wasn't a sigma, but a latin 's'. it just seemed odd to me, but it made me ask my self if the romans used the greek alphabet to write greek words (kind of like the Japanese's three writing systems). does anyone know?
It probably doesn't matter either way, as we will probably never sound stupid while speaking in latin or greek, so we have nothing to fear from pronouncing greek with the wrong accents.
Gratias,
Jon
Roman pronounciation of Greek
- Deudeditus
- Textkit Enthusiast
- Posts: 425
- Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2005 5:15 am
- Location: The world, man.
- Contact:
-
- Textkit Neophyte
- Posts: 58
- Joined: Wed Dec 14, 2005 9:55 am
- Lucus Eques
- Textkit Zealot
- Posts: 2037
- Joined: Wed Jan 07, 2004 12:52 pm
- Location: Pennsylvania
- Contact:
-
- Textkit Fan
- Posts: 200
- Joined: Fri Apr 23, 2004 8:47 pm
- Location: London, UK
- Deudeditus
- Textkit Enthusiast
- Posts: 425
- Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2005 5:15 am
- Location: The world, man.
- Contact: