Too few Restored Koine Open Source resources

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Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Too few Restored Koine Open Source resources

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Jonathan Robie in the [url=http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=2478&p=15161#p15157]Eugene DeVries Attempts Restored Koine[/url] wrote:I once spent a lot of time listening to restored Koine recordings and recordings by native modern Greek speakers. In general, I find that native modern Greek speakers do a much better job with phrasing and prosody, and those are cues that really help convey the meaning of a text.

They do not, of course, use the restored pronunciation. I've tried to convince several modern Greeks to record a chapter or two with restored pronunciation, they look at me like I'm from mars. To me, getting the pronunciation "right" is less important than conveying the meaning of a text, but I really do want to hear the difference between, say, ἡμῶν and ὑμῶν.

And I want a recording that covers the entire New Testament, read very well. There are good modern Greek recordings for the entire GNT, I am not aware of a good, freely available recording in restored pronunciation. So ... I read along with the voice so I can at least see the difference between ἡμῶν and ὑμῶν.
I've said previously that I was trying myself to use, and would start teaching using the Restored Koine. Now, I'm having to rethink that. What I'm finding is that there are not enough audio resources available for free to direct students to. There are a few hours worth on Louis Sorenson's Let's Learn Greek site. Maybe 4% of the New Testament and about the same percentage of Psalms

Students do go online and do find thing for themselves.It seems that most resources they find are Erasmian, a much smaller number are Modern, and almost none chance upon Restored Koine ones. Practically speaking, too, students with better resources achieve more and quicker.

I would love to use the best possible pronunciation with students, and see its advantages, but what can I offer students to listen to? Does anyone have experience teaching with mixed pronunciation systems?

The other problem is that there aren't any copyright expired conversational material. Has anyone compiled even a poor, but workable one in open source? Grammar translation is clearly not the best, but seems to be the most workable solution. Has anyone else found that?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Paul-Nitz
Posts: 497
Joined: June 1st, 2011, 4:19 am
Location: Sussex, Wisconsin

Re: Too few Restored Koine Open Source resources

Post by Paul-Nitz »

1 - Of the growing community of people who do actually communicate in Greek, most use Restored Koine.

2 - Most Greek learners will end up talking to themselves more than anyone else. I'd rather be talking Restored Koine to myself than any other pronunciation scheme.

3 - If a person want to be able to understand various pronunciations, I think Restored Koine is the choice. A Restored Koine speaker can manage okay with Modern Greek, easily understand Restored Attic, and can learn to understand Erasmian. I don't think the shift is quite as easy when starting from Modern or Erasmian. Probably Restored Attic would rate about the same in this regard, but its attempt to restore tone makes it a more difficult scheme to learn
(and, in my opinion, to listen to... with the exception of this guy...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_jnHui ... GF&index=2

Here's a short list of youtube videos I started to collect together in a playlist.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... -41KeFPgGF
Paul D. Nitz - Lilongwe Malawi
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