Talk:Wp/grc/Βαράκος Ὀβάμας

Χουσαὶν versus Οὑσαὶν

Hussein: would it be better with spiritus asper (Οὑσαὶν) instead of Chi letter (Χουσαὶν)?

Crazymadlover

Probably not. I'm transcribing the Classical Arabic version of the name (Ḥusayn), in which the first sound is a voiceless fricative pharyngeal whose closest analogue in AGreek is the velar chi, a primarily nonlaryngeal consonant; it's "crucial" to make the distinction btn. laryngeal and nonlaryngeal sounds in phonetics. If I were transcribing the English pronunciation (according to which the first sound is laryngeal), it would be Οὑσαὶν, of course [or even Οὑσεὶν or Οὑσεῖν], but first names in Wikipedias written in grc and la are based on the most immediate-to-classical form of a name; hence Bārūkh, which is the analogue of Barack in Biblical Hebrew and Koine (I'm wondering why the Vicipaedistae chose the "Anglo-Latin" Baracus and not Baruch, as in Baruch Spinoza). Btw., I have already written an article on Obama, but I'll probably wait till his inauguration on Jan 20, before I publish it. --Omnipaedista 23:10, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Additional notes: Bαροὺχ Χουσαὶν Ὀβάμα ὁ B' | حسین בָּרוּךְ Obama II ; Χουσαίν as in Ἐφραίμ and not Χουσαῖν. The article is written in Ionic/Epic Greek (some terms however are just epicized attic, original or revived, Greek): inauguaration: ὅρκωμοσίη, slogan: συνθηματολογίη, term: θητείη (as in ὑγιείη).
--Omnipaedista 22:20, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) User:Zeus06 suggested the following vowel transcription: Χουσαΐν, Βάϊδεν, Κέϊν. This transcription, while it is suitable for Katharevousian phonetics, is not compatible with grc phonetics. Contrarily to popular belief, grc did not generally allow χασμῳδία (see also here). For example, πρόεδρος is pronounced prohedros, ταώς tahōs, πέος pehos, Ἐφραίμ is from Hebrew ʾEp̄ráyim (if the word were modern Greek it would have been transcribed as **Ἐφράϊμ, but it was people speaking Koine that did the transcription and they didn't use diaeretics - διαιρετικὰ σημεῖα in occasions like this), παράδεισος paradeisos/paradēsos (not **παραδέϊσος, from Persian *paridayda-), Ίωάννης Jōhannēs, etc.. In ancient Greek, the only "chasmodiae" allowed were the absolutely necessary morphological ones, e.g. Ῥωμα-ϊκός. The only (minor) complications in the transcriptions of foreign names to grc, in this 'pedia, concern only English phonology. The current covention, however, is to render [eɪ] with ει, [oʊ] with ου, [aɪ] with αι, [oɪ] with οι, [ii] with ῑ, and [ɔɔ] with ω, because the sound equivalences are perfect, provided one implements the epic/early-attic pronunciation of these vowels. Postscript: I personally used to use περισπωμέναι in monosyllabic foreign words, such as Cain - Κεῖν, Sean - Σῶν, but I've abandonned this practice, since περισπωμέναι are usually reserved (in the case of monosyllabic Greek words) only for denoting the correct pronunciation of synaerized (συνῃρημένα) clusters of vowels, e.g. τέων > τῶν. --Omnipaedista 23:02, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Update: Per many users' requests in the Agora, it was decided that the language of this project must come closer to the standards of Koine, thus this article must conform to this new policy as well; but still, its initial Ionic version will be preserved in a separate page linked to this article. --Omnipaedista 01:47, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Omnipaedista says: "I'm transcribing the Classical Arabic version of the name (Ḥusayn), in which the first sound is a voiceless fricative pharyngeal whose closest analogue in AGreek is the velar chi, a primarily nonlaryngeal consonant; it's "crucial" to make the distinction btn. laryngeal and nonlaryngeal sounds in phonetics."

First of all, it's more crucial to make the distinction between stops and fricatives, and Classical Greek chi was an aspirated stop, not a fricative. I.e. it was identical to the first consonant in "Carter" and didn't sound anything like the H in Hussein. Second, even if chi were a velar fricative (as it eventually became at some point, although our article claims that specifically Chi may have evaded fricativization until as late as the 10th century AD), a pharyngeal is at least as different from a velar as it is from a laryngeal; indeed it is even more different from a velar, because there is a place of articulation between velar and pharyngeal, namely uvular, and Arabic distinguishes clearly between pharyngeal and uvular. Finally, one may look at the Septuagint, which had to deal with the very same Semitic pharyngeal fricative in Hebrew: it has Ευα for Ḥayyâ "Eve", Ενώχ for Ḥanoḫ "Enoch", Ἄννα for Ḥannâ "Anna", Ἀγγαῖος for Ḥaggay "Haggai" (though admittedly Χαμ for Ḥam, "Ham"). Apparently the sound was much more likely not to be rendered at all, and only rarely was it rendered with a Chi. --91.148.159.4 16:05, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I have not said that the Classical Greek χ was not fricative. All I said is that it was nonlarygeal. However, since you have provided very convincing examples where the distinction between stops and fricatives was counted as more important in Ancient Greek, I will change the Ionic version of the article and use the form Crazymadlover has proposed: Οὑσαίν. --Omnipaedista 03:53, 14 November 2009 (UTC)