Classical Greek had long and short vowels, heavy and light syllables, a pitch accent as well as (presumably) a stress pattern. How exactly this all worked together with pitch and stress patterns at the clause and sentence level is a matter of some speculation. W. Sidney Allen’s “Vox Graeca: The Pronunciation of Classical Greek” is a good survey of this broad field.

The essential thing to remember is that classical Greek was dead in Europe at the dawn of the Renaissance. Outside of a few scholars in the shrinking Byzantine Empire, no one could read or pronounce it. So when the study of classical Greek was revived, it took on a Byzantine accent, which since the 4th Century was a stress accent, not a pitch accent. It also had a much smaller set of vowels sounds, much like modern Greek where everything ends up sounding like “ee”.

What we end up with today for Classical Greek pronunciation is a result of that reawakening, plus centuries of attempts at reforming the pronunciation of Greek (and Latin) by various scholars over the years, starting with Erasmus. But we still have that Byzantine stress accent.

I am totally fascinated by this subject. I have worked in a fair number of small businesses and larger institutions. I have seen inconsistencies, poor design, make that extremely poor design and complete ignorance of meta data create many times the work it took to enter the data itself.

It is sad that the understanding of this subject has not filtered down to people who could really use it. Small businesses and small to medium institutions like community colleges spend a lot of time and money trying to manage their data using 19th century concepts on 21st century computers.

On the meta part .. maybe it was someone from Australia or New Zealand. I can see someone with an aussie accent sounding like they said meet’-ah. I haven’t heart any brits pronounce it that way either.

There’s the question of what conclusions it should be possible to reach from a collection of facts and rules of inference.

Then there’s the question of what those conclusions actually mean in everyday English.

There’s a kind of Wiki for executable English content that combines data, inference, and English meanings.

It’s at http://www.reengineeringllc.com , and shared use is free.

Enjoy your posts immensely. Keep them coming.