I have a question if I may please. Starting out in the academic pronunciation, I am now going to change over to Living Koine.
Did I read that there is no rough breathing mark, the way that you and Randall Buth speak.
Thank you!
It is not easy to develop fluency in Koine Greek as a student or a teacher, but it is fun! One thing you can do, however, to make it easier, is to connect with other students and teachers doing the same. Feel free to make connections and discuss all matters of Koine Greek as a living language here!
Thanks for posting the question here also so that everyone could benefit from it.
It is not entirely clear when rough breathing fell out of the language in Palestine, though Egyptian evidence suggests that it fell out of pronunciation in the Koine period. This is evidenced by the following sort of spelling errors (Gignac 1976, 134):
μετ᾽ ὄρκου (instead of μεθ᾽ ὅρκου) (PMich. 123 V, IV.13-14,21 (45–47 CE))
ἐπ᾽ οἶς (instead of ἐφ᾽ οἷς) (PMich. 322a.38 (46 CE))
For Palestine, we may not have enough evidence on this particular question, though I am continuing to research it. One possible piece of evidence that it stayed around for some time is the Hebrew rendering of Greek συνέδριον as סנהדרין (sanhedrin) which has an etymological rough breathing in the middle of the word (ἕδριον), though that may have only been preserved because it was in the middle of a word. Word-medial sounds are more likely to be preserved than word-initial sounds.
Therefore, it is likely that rough breathing had been lost in Palestinian Koine in the Koine period, though we do not have enough evidence to say for sure. There is some evidence which might suggest otherwise, such as two or three Greek loanwords in the Mishnah, 'sanhedrin' being one of them. Shai Heijmans has written an excellent Ph.D. thesis on Greek loanwords in the Mishnah in which he discusses this.
Hope this helps!
Ben Παῦλος