Hallo conlangers!

On Monday 13 June 2011 09:09:10, R A Brown wrote:

> I know I'm answering myself - but what choice have I!
> 
> On 10/06/2011 19:11, R A Brown wrote:
> > The current thread on Livagian romanization has made me
> > consider whether 'twould be better to romanize TAKE. I
> > sometimes get the impression that some dismiss the
> > language because it is written in Greek letters.
> 
> The fact that I've had only one email - and that as a
> _private_ response - rather suggests that writing TAKE in
> Greek letters ain't a problem. There's only 24 letters to
> get to know anyway    ;)

Indeed.  The Greek alphabet is easy to learn, and should not
be a hindrance against exploring the language.  Those people
who refuse to deal with the Greek alphabet probably would
refuse to deal with your language as well, even if it was
presented in Latin script.
 
> On the other hand, no philhellenists protested against the
> notion     :(
> 
> However, the more I think about it, the more I feel that if
> I use Roman characters the reaction is likely to be that
> TAKE isn't really _Greek_ without inflexions.

Right.  Of course, Greek could be romanized just like any
language, but most people probably agree with me when I feel
that the Greek alphabet belongs to Greek, and TAKE thus
*should* be written in Greek letters.
 
> [snip]
> 
> > But it is not till the 2nd cent CE that we find them
> > being used sporadically on papyruses. It was not until
> > the Byzantine period that the system we still use in
> > printing ancient Greek became standardized. In other
> > words, the polytonic orthography that I'm saddling TAKE
> > with just ain't ancient! It's a Byzantine invention.
> 
> Yes, and the Byzantines seemed to like complicated systems.
> 
> If the aim of revising TAKE is to make it more obviously
> _ancient_ Greek without inflexions, then why am I saddling
> it with a Byzantine complication, e.g. rules when to use a
> circumflex or an acute accent.

Well, a scholar who would strip Greek of its inflections in
order to make it more convenient to use as an auxlang, wouldn't
he also discard the complicated accent signs, especially if the
ancient Greeks did not actually use them?  (BTW, Peano did not
mark vowel length in Latino sine flexione.)
 
> > It occurred to me that if I remove all the darned
> > diacritics, I could go the whole hog and use Roman
> > letters,
> 
> I could - but then would it be ancient Greek without inflexions?
> 
> I recall that when I learnt ancient Greek at school way back
> in the 1950s, we ignored the accents (we learnt them later
> in the 6th form as basically an academic exercise), though
> we did use the breathings because they do affect the
> pronunciation, i.e. /h/ or no /h/.
> 
> TAKE version #1 had the modern Greek monotonic accentuation
> introduce in 1982. The present revision is using the
> polytonic accentuation which had its beginnings in the
> Hellenistic period but was not formalized until the
> Byzantine period.  This, I now think, runs counter to the
> notion of _simplifying_ ancient Greek.

It does.  It seems nonsensical to retain that complexity
when one goes forth and eliminates the inflections.
 
> In modern Greek the accent denotes stress - but the
> polytonic system was developed to show _pitch_ accent. We
> only imperfectly know the pitch accent of ancient Greek and
> nothing about stress (though there are disputed theories
> about that).
> 
> At school, we used the horrible "Henninian" system, i.e.
> stress it as though it were Latin!

Ouch!  As much as I like the Latin stress system (I use it
in Old Albic, though there it is a pitch rather than stress
accent) - Greek just ain't Latin!  It is of course legitimate
to use such an accentuation in a Greek-derived conlang, but
stressing Ancient Greek that way is simply WRONG.

>       I shall definitely not
> saddle TAKE with that one!

Especially as it depends on vowel length, which you are
apparently going to do away with.  A consistent initial,
penultimate or final syllable accent is also easier than the
Latin system.

>       There is no evidence whatever
> that ancient Greek used any such system and it needs a
> knowledge of long & short vowels, which would be an
> unwelcome complication to TAKE.
> 
> Therefore I am proposing:
> - to keep the Greek letters as there is obviously no demand
> to do otherwise;

A good choice.

> - to drop the Byzantine-based polytonic accentuation as this
> adds an unnecessary complication and *was unknown in
> classical Greek*;

Also a good idea.

> - to retain the rough breathing to show initial /h/ (unless
> I am persuaded to make TAKE psilotic    :)

I would do so, too.

> - to pronounce words with even stress à la française with
> _slight_ emphasis on the last.

That works well, I think.

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