I am trying to teach myself Koine Greek using Bill Mounces Basics of Biblical Greek 4th edition. I also have A Primer on Biblical Greek by Clayton Croy.
I am having problems with vowels that can be long or short (α, ι, υ). Specifically, how do I know when I look at a word if the vowel is the long form or the short form?
Croy’s book says there is no way to tell by looking at it. Is that true? Does that mean I just have to rote memorize what words use the short form and what words use the long form?
For example I was trying to pronounce Γαλιλαἱα but was using the long form of ι so when I checked my pronunciation it was all wrong.
It’s true, you will have to brute memorize whether α, ι, and υ are long or short in a word’s stem. But if these are part of a grammatical ending, the length will be consistent.
Also, I believe that by the time the NT was written, Greek had lost the distinction of long and short vowels. So no Pharisee will come back from the dead to correct you.
Is this something that morphology would shed light on?
For example, if I new the morphonology of a word, would that tell me whether a vowel that can be long or short is actually long or short in that particular word?
Morphology is about inflection (declension and conjugation) and word formation. The latter might help you to tell about vowel length: if you know that the base has a long vowel you would expect the derivative to have a long vowel.
This kind of help will become available as you build your Greek vocabulary. At the start, however, you need to just memorize the lengths for ι, υ, and α.
• If you can read his work, Herodianus writes extensively about vowel duration, both systematicaly and in individual cases. But it’s been hard and long work, for me at least.
• Another, and more fun way, is to read Homer’s or dramatic works and notice the words where the majority of α,ι,υ 's fall on the long parts of feet. At this stage you don’t need to understand the words themselves.
• Or, just find one of the modern lexica, like Montanari’s for example (but also some of the old ones like Valpy’s on Google Books etc) with metric notation on the ambivalent syllables. NB: the old lexica are not always to be trusted, but at least you get something that you can verify later.