Reasoning/Appetitive: Fragments from the Indo-European Studies Conference #1

One of the things that I noticed about the presenters at the Indo-European conference was their skilled pronunciation of words. Over the course of the conference, only one person mentioned that their pronunication was not perfect (and it only applied to his Sanskrit and not his Greek) and even those people with thick accents pronounced words impeccably. I was most impressed by the speaker who pronounced fabulous Latin although his own speech was layered with a thick Japanese accent.

This ability was one of the things that really impressed me about the eclectic people who spoke and attended such a conference. Gregory Nagy even displayed both Classical and Homeric Greek pronunciation.

This reminded me that although I was working with Vox Graeca, my pronunciation is not getting significantly better. I also realized that I cannot actually roll my r's. I can essentially do a half-trill with it but I cannot sustain that trill and it's not a real rolled r anyway. I decided I needed to learn because proper pronunciation of Greek requires this rolled r. I looked up a couple of tutorials online: wikihow and eHow. Propertius II warned me that it is possible that I might never be able to do it (lame!) but I will keep trying (although at the moment I sound like an idiot). If anyone has some hints, I would love to hear it.

More fragments from the conference coming over the next few days.