Audio of Philemon in Koine
Posted: December 14th, 2019, 11:29 pm
I am attempting to switch over to a Koine (1st-2nd c. CE) pronunciation of Koine Greek from a restored Classical scheme. I've used Buth's books in the past so the pronunciation is not entirely new for me. Here's my attempt at reading Philemon from the SBLGNT:
https://archive.org/details/philemon_201912
My pronunciation differs from Randall Buth's scheme in that I maintain the spiritus asper, hard δ, and aspirated stops, since these were maintained (except the spiritus asper in some places) in the first century. It's still a work in progress, but it helps that my first language (Korean) has aspirated and non-aspirated forms of all consonants. The hardest sound for me to pronounce consistently is η. In unstressed syllables I find it really hard to distinguish it from ε, and I don't want to pronounce it as a dipthong ("ei") as in Erasmian. Coincidentally, Korean also has two vowels that parallel ε (ㅐ) and η (ㅔ), but native Korean speakers can hardly tell the difference anymore. I know that in modern French the distinction between [e] and [ε] is also disappearing, especially in unstressed syllables. Maybe that was the case in Koine Greek in unstressed syllables?
Let me know if you have any feedback.
https://archive.org/details/philemon_201912
My pronunciation differs from Randall Buth's scheme in that I maintain the spiritus asper, hard δ, and aspirated stops, since these were maintained (except the spiritus asper in some places) in the first century. It's still a work in progress, but it helps that my first language (Korean) has aspirated and non-aspirated forms of all consonants. The hardest sound for me to pronounce consistently is η. In unstressed syllables I find it really hard to distinguish it from ε, and I don't want to pronounce it as a dipthong ("ei") as in Erasmian. Coincidentally, Korean also has two vowels that parallel ε (ㅐ) and η (ㅔ), but native Korean speakers can hardly tell the difference anymore. I know that in modern French the distinction between [e] and [ε] is also disappearing, especially in unstressed syllables. Maybe that was the case in Koine Greek in unstressed syllables?
Let me know if you have any feedback.