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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2714252, member: 19463&quot;]I agree fully with Ken&#039;s take on the matter.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>People who don&#039;t like run on posting should leave now.&nbsp; You were warned.</p><p><br /></p><p>In addition to pronunciation we have grammar which changed in similar ways. Today&#039;s teachers deny the English subjunctive so they think the <u>Fiddler on the Roof</u> song &quot;If I <i>Were</i> a Rich Man&quot; should have been<i> Was </i>but I was taught that were indicated he was not rich while was would have been ambiguous and poor form.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Chaucer was the &quot;Father of English Literature&quot; in the 14th century AD.&nbsp; That was as long ago as as separated the Aes Grave period from the Fall Of Rome.&nbsp; Those of you who were forced to read Chaucer in school may recall wondering in what language it was written.&nbsp; Would you like to hear what my Greek professor (a Homer to 5th century guy) had to say about the language in the New Testament or Late Roman authors who wrote in Greek.&nbsp; Not suitable for public posting!&nbsp;&nbsp; Ken mentioned generational problems.&nbsp; Try 20 generations.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>It is often possible to derive likely pronunciations from poetry or jokes in comedies but these only apply to one time and place. Many jokes rely on word play and the only people who &#039;get&#039; them would be those who share some fine point.&nbsp;&nbsp; We even have a word for this.&nbsp; Who knows Shibboleth?</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Before the 19th century English did not take some things all that seriously but it became fashionable to put down people who failed to use your spelling and pronunciation dictates.&nbsp; Onto this scene came a generation of Classicists who worshiped Cicero and failed students who spoke incorrectly.&nbsp; Most of these guys never read anything after the 1st century so, even if they were right, they avoided problems by saying there was nothing worth reading.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Septimius Severus was said to speak Latin with a thick accent.&nbsp; Julia Domna rarely spoke it.&nbsp; If you have taken both, you might prefer Greek, too.&nbsp; I did but it was only a dozen times harder because the gap between Homer and the Byzantines was greater than that between us and Jesus.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I strongly suspect Pilate and Jesus could converse in Greek or Aramaic.&nbsp; I have never seen anything to suggest Jesus spoke Latin that could not be attributed to the Roman Church. </p><p><br /></p><p>This is a great question but one with no answer.&nbsp; The only thing I believe with certainty is that those who claim to know every answer rarely understood the question. We do the best we can.&nbsp; We do better when we try to communicate rather than make fun of those who are different in some little way.&nbsp; The more we learn, the more we should realize we do not know.&nbsp; &quot;I was so much <i>smarter</i> then, I&#039;m <i>dumber</i> than that now.&quot;[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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