Breath marks in Latin & Greek.

[Hot Lava Mama]

How important is it that they KNOW these, and get them consistently correct? I understand that one of the breath marks in greek requires you to pronounce an "h" in front, but what about the other ones? I test the kids frequently on their vocabulary in both latin and greek, but have not pressed that they put the breath marks in. Am I going to regret it?

Hot Lava Mama

[Hot Lava Mama]

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[Finnella]

I didn't study Greek until college, so naturally I had to learn all those breath marks. But how old are your children and want do you want to get out of Greek? I'd want to know that before even trying an answer.

 

I do think that if you want them to be reading Greek, eventually you'll want them to learn the marks. This isn't an exact parallel, but my older son is in 9th grade this year and has been in a ps Spanish immersion program since 1st grade. It turns out that no one ever taught the kids about the proper use of accent marks. By 9th grade, my DS was supposed to be writing Spanish fluently and reading at an advanced level. This hole in his education suddenly became a big problem, and he had to do lots of cramming to get where his teacher expected him to be.

 

I'm not sure what you mean when you refer to breath marks in Latin. I took three years of Latin in high school and majored in it in college. We never used any breath marks. The textbooks marked long vowels for reference purposes, but we never used the marks in our own work.

[Hot Lava Mama]

I wasn't sure if they were called "breath marks" in Latin, also. I know the Greek book referred to the marks above the words as "breath marks", so I thought that was what they were called in Latin, also.

Hot Lava Mama

[Finnella]

I thought to check some of my books today; I still have a few Loeb Classical editions from college. In case this is useful, the Latin doesn't use any of the markings, for example, long vowels, that the textbooks do. The Greek texts, however, do have the breath marks.

 

That's what I thought, but I'm glad I found some texts to back up my memories.

[Cleopatra]

We are beginners but I will give you answer based on what we have learned ......

 

The breath marks in Greek are VERY important as one way denotes an "h" sound and the other way doesn't. Without them, you will not be pronouncing it correctly.

 

In Latin, the marks are accents. As for their importance, I'm not as clear but, since we just started Henle, I know that there are definite rules for when you use them. We will learn the rules just to be on the safe side ..... :001_smile:

 

HTH!

[Little Nyssa]

We use the modern Greek pronunciation-- and the breath marks don't make any difference to our pronunciation. There are a few words which have different meanings with different marks, but not that many. For now, I am not teaching my kids the marks, FWIW, but my kids are still pretty little-- they'll have to learn them someday, though.

[Ester Maria]

A Greek word without the correct accent and, if needed, breath mark, is NOT a correct Greek word and should NOT be "counted". It is considered the same type of misspelling as would be confusing omega with omicron, for example - therefore the standard procedure of taking away points applies.

 

If you use the reconstructed Greek pronunciation, spiritus asper stands for a /h/ sound at the beginning of the word, while spiritus lenis basically means the absence of that sound, so you just elegantly ignore it in pronunciation, but you must write it when you write.

 

In Latin, however, stress and length marks (those are the only type of marks sometimes used) are NOT an integral part of the script and CAN be ignored (except when you study poetry / metrics and specifically request that vowel lengths be specified).