Pronouncing passage references (e.g. Κατά Ιωάννην 1:1-2)

[Jonathan Robie]

I am recording some audio in Greek, and I have to identify passage references like Κατά Ιωάννην 1:1-2.

How would you say that out loud? Does anyone know how this is said in modern Greek?

[Mark Lightman]

...I have to identify passage references like Κατά Ιωάννην 1:1-2.How would you say that out loud?

κεφάλαιον ἕν, στίχος ἓν καὶ στίχος δύο.

ἔρρωσο.

[Jonathan Robie]

...I have to identify passage references like Κατά Ιωάννην 1:1-2.How would you say that out loud?

κεφάλαιον ἕν, στίχος ἓν καὶ στίχος δύο.

Thanks! Let me explore this a little ...

κεφάλαιος for chapter and στίχος for verse match what modern Greek does, and both words are in LSJ, so that's good.

Perhaps ἕως for the end of a range, e.g. στίχοι ἓν ἕως δύο?

What about cardinal vs. ordinal numbers, is it a matter of personal preference? Is this also OK?

Κατά Ιωάννην, κεφάλαιον πρῶτον, στίχοι πρῶτος ἕως δεύτερος

[Seumas Macdonald]

I have used/heard ἁπὸ and μέχρι for specifying range. Ordinals are preferred but I confess to lapsing to cardinals when my brain can't bring up the right ordinal.

[Jonathan Robie]

I have used/heard ἁπὸ and μέχρι for specifying range. Ordinals are preferred but I confess to lapsing to cardinals when my brain can't bring up the right ordinal.

Someone who knows ancient Greek well and speaks modern Greek fluently suggested this in email: ΑΠΟ ΤΟ ΕΝΑ ΕΩΣ (ΜΕΧΡΙ) ΤΟ ΤΕΣΣΑΡΑ, saying also that "in modern you can use them both, in hellenistic only ΕΩΣ but not ΜΕΧΡΙ." I haven't asked if I can cite it as his opinion, so I will leave his name off for now.

[Devenios Doulenios]

The Koine NT recordings available on Bible.is (by the Greek Bible Society) use the ordinals for the chapter numbers. The speaker is a native Greek. However, I don't see why you couldn't use the cardinals.

[Devenios Doulenios]

Our own Louis Sorenson used the cardinals in his recordings of selected Psalms, e.g., Ψαμος εις, Ψαλμοσ εις και εικοσι.

[Jonathan Robie]

Our own Louis Sorenson used the cardinals in his recordings of selected Psalms, e.g., Ψαμος εις, Ψαλμοσ εις και εικοσι.

What does he say for ranges of verses? I assume και is for when he cites just the two verses, not a range.

[Devenios Doulenios]

Honestly, I don't know. The recordings he did only cited the chapter number, not a range of verses. They are the ones he had on his site some time back (LetsreadGreek.org; the site is now defunct. He has a .com site now with the same name, but I don't see the Psalm files on it.). I'd be interested to know myself what he uses.

[Jonathan Robie]

Nikolaos Adamou has graciously written the following to answer questions raised in this thread. He gave me permission to post it here. Because I need this for stuff Micheal Palmer and I are doing, I will write this information up in a form similar to my document on asking and answering questions.

An Ordinal Number is a number that tells the position of something in a list, such as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th etc. Since books, chapters and verses are in a list, ordinal numbers are used to define what is the position of the verse. Apostolos Vavilis reading in the Greek Bible Society is correctly using ordinal numbers. Cardinal numbers say how many of something there are, such as one, two, three, four, five, and because of that cannot be used. We do not number, we list.

Verses are not sentences, while in the non-native environment are treated as such, particularly when there is an attempt to read out loud.

For example
2 Corinthians 2:12-13
(12) Ἐλθὼν δὲ εἰς τὴν Τρῳάδα εἰς τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ Χριστοῦ, καὶ θύρας μοι ἀνεῳγμένης ἐν Κυρίῳ, (13) οὐκ ἔσχηκα ἄνεσιν τῷ πνεύματί μου τῷ μὴ εὑρεῖν με Τίτον τὸν ἀδελφόν μου, ἀλλὰ ἀποταξάμενος αὐτοῖς ἐξῆλθον εἰς Μακεδονίαν.

Πρὸς Κορινθίους Δευτέρα ἐπιστολή, κεφάλαιον δεύτερον, στίχοι δωδέκατος καὶ δέκατος τρίτος.

The conjunction καὶ connects two consecutive verses.

When we have a unit of verses, as for example when I would like to make a reference to the epistle reading of the next Sunday Aug. 16, which is the thirteen Sunday of the year in the list of the lectionary series, which is Α´ Κορ. 16 (ιστ´), 13-24, then the conjunction ἕως is used, a relative particle expressing the relationship from a beginning to the end.
Books and chapters are identified in Greek and not Arabic numerical symbols, using capital letters for the books and lower case for the chapters, while the letter is followed by right upper keraia (κεραῖα) that looks like an acute – it is a numerical symbol and not an acute accent. It is important in order to distinguish a scale. βʹ is two or second, and ͵βιηʹ (2000 + 18=2018. The left below the letter keraia indicates thousands. A "left keraia" is the Unicode U+0375, ‘Greek Lower Numeral Sign’.

(https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_numerals)

While in Greek numerical writing there is no distinction between cardinal and ordinal numbers, in reading them there is… thus there are different words.

I go back to my example, Α´ Κορ. ιστ´ 13-24, that I will read πρὸς κορινθίους πρώτη ἐπιστολή, κεφάλαιον δέκατον ἕκτον, στῖχοι δέκατος τρῖτος ἕως εἰκοστὸν τέταρτον. The first verse is given in nominative and the last in accusative.

When for the same Sunday I would like to see the reading, that is ΚΥΡΙΑΚῌ ΔΕΚΑΤῌ ΤΡΙΤῌ, Ἐκ τοῦ κατὰ Ματθαῖον κα΄ 33 - 42
I read: Ἐκ τοῦ κατὰ Ματθαῖον, κεφάλαιον εἰσοστὸν πρῶτον (κα΄), στῖχοι τριακοστὸς τρῖτος (33) ἕως ( - ) τεσσαρακοστὸν δεύτερον (42).

ἕως is a conjunction as it is given in (https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fu ... 3/heos.htm and https://www.studylight.org/lexicons/greek/2193.html ) not an adverb as it is given in (https://biblehub.com/greek/2193.htm ).

Last point, while the usage of chapter κεφάλαιον was used, the form κεφάλαιος was given. Here we have a problem with the accent. We cannot have an accent on the syllable ΦΑ because the syllable ΛΑΙ is diphthong, and it is a long, not a short syllable, and as such, it takes two musical phongs –time periods. It can be either the adjective κεφαλαῖος, κεφαλαῖα, κεφάλαιον or the adverb κεφαλαίως. The common word is Περικεφαλαῖα.