{DOUBLE POST EDITED BY MOD}

Thank you. Rook doesn't understand what I'm taking about, and I thought I made it clear in the slide. Rook's talking breathing marks, βαρεία in this case often called acute in Engish. I'm talking about Διαλυτικά, as in dieresis. Two dots above a glyph like you see in Mötley Crüe, except they don't affect the meaning. Pardon me for using simple words but it was clear they were necessary. http://www.drshirley.org/fonts/SPIonic.html The etymological meaning is to dissolve, as in to dissolve a diphthong. You have Boy, and you have Bowie. Using Latin vowels you can express this as boi or boï. One is a diphthong, the other not, you say Bo ee. Got it? Ok, so what is the problem with tis slide. We're talking about Greek diphthongs, and it's possible that εψιλον may have been at one point a diphthong, perhaps ei if I'm remembering my early classical, but that's beside the point. If you were trying to express a diphthong, you would use two actual vowels. Are you with me so far? The character you used doesn't exist in Dr. Nicholas's version of unicode because ε is never, ever, ever the last vowel of a diphthong. You'll have to study up on the Finnish rules of vowel harmony to figure out why. If what you proposed exists, you would be famous. You would have found something the authority of the language missed out on. They would have to add your character somewhere beyond the extended Greek block (polytonic). Ok, are you with me so far. SPIonic, SuperGreek all those, all those were invented pre unicode. They were actually born out of some very smart bible enthusiasts. SBL used it for a time, Notre Dame doesn't use it anymore, Sydney never used it. It was always at best, a hack. A very good hack, but a hack none the less. Things encoded in SuperGreek for example were not identical to those in SPIonic. I'm sure you are telling the truth in that you found it on some website, and yes, you will find it on many web 1.0 designed for Mosaic sites. And you will still find a ton of material encoded SPIonic. But we don't use it anymore. It was abandoned in 1998 due to the work of Dr. Nicholas. We have unicode now, which means you can change your font and your Greek won't turn into Greeklish. There are not encoding problems because one person is using SPIonic, and someone else is using SuperGreek. It was a high high priority, so high that it managed to get into the 900 block of unicode. One of the few places it's used is http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ The Perseus Project, where a ton of texts are already encoded in SPIonic. But you know what, given that font hasn't been updated in 10 YEARS, and there are not many others that convert it's style of Greeklish to polytonic orthography, which just so happens to NOT INCLUDE USE OF Διαλυτικά AT ALL! These are 10 diacritics which was what I'm talking about, and near as I'm aware two breathing marks. ʽ - rough ʼ - smooth. In English terms, the other diacritics we use acute, grave, circumflex, tilde, the macron, the breve, the apostrophe, the hyphen, and the hypodiastole. That's it! We don't use Διαλυτικά! διακριτικός is an interesting word that means distinguishing. Got it? Let me say this again in simple terms. TWO DOTS ABOVE A LETTER ISN'T USED IN POLYTONIC ORTHOGRAPHY Διαλυτικά always are used to diphthong. ALWAYS! Now I bring up wikipedia because it just so happens that they have a list of monotonic and extended Greek (Polytonic) Every character you would need. This is if you can't be bothered to enable Greek support on your PC. Let us review. 1) SPIonic isn't used anymore, we use unicode. Hasn't been used since 1998 due to the work of Dr. Nicholas (University of Sydney). 2) Εψιλον never gets Διαλυτικά. NEVER EVER Talk to the Fins about vowels, granted they are off the Ural branch but they understand vowel harmony. 3) The Mötley Crüe character, the Διαλυτικά are ALWAYS used, as the name suggests, to dissolve a diphthong. ALWAYS. It's the difference between Boy (boi) and David Bowie (Bo&iuml If you see Διαλυτικά, pretend your Japanese. 4) There are a couple of good resources that use SPIonic, but given this is a single font that hasn't been updated in 10 years (IIRC the author is dead). You find enthusiastic that use it, but for any sort of data interchange, we use unicode. 5) Just because it's wikipedia doesn't make it automatically a bad resource. (You don't know who wrote it do you?) They have a complete list of Greek characters. You may also find them in your character map. There is NO reason what so ever to use SPIonic, unless you have a resource that needs it. 6) Διαλυτικά are not breathing marks. You can tell based on the etymology, that's the nice thing about Greek, things are pretty fucking obvious. Extended homework What you REALLY need to do, and this is not to be insulting, is to actually visit Dr. Nicholas's pages on the subject. He's the guy who encoded the present incarnations of mono and Polytonic Greek. Classical Greek phonology is a very interesting subject and I'm sure it would be of some great benefit. http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/unicode_aitch.html Nice history of 'eta. He actually uses the English words for breathing marks, which can be frustrating but it's a worth while read. And another thing, it might be helpful for you to actually READ legit criticism before you start off on an unrelated tangent. Etymology is a really worth while subject if you are truly interested in understanding Greek. If you understand the etymology, then I wouldn't have had to explain these fundamentals to you. I understand that many these things are new concepts, but there is no need to get frustrated. You might also want to grab word processing in classical languages http://www.scholarsfonts.net/wordprcp.zip And remember kid, there is always someone on the net who knows more than you do.

I see what you mean, but I can say with certainty that I had paragraphs in the first place. Does this happen often? New users lose paragraphs? Look like a bug to me.

Some people appear to have difficulty with that, despite the fact that for most, simply pressing "enter" inserts a line break if you are using the text editor. Maybe check the input settings you have marked before you post. Also, there is the preview function. The "edit" button is at the bottom of your posts.

A group of kids living in their parents' basement, mooching off our hard-earned dollars (and their parents') apparently took the liberty to "correct" my slide 14.

This 'correction' is actually an adequate representation of an error I committed in this slide, at least as far as "their" representation of my slip-up with the Greek.  I simply did not check my notes before publishing them--instead I had transliterated (not "translated" as these kids suggest) them into English (or more properly, Latin) for a handout I gave to everyone on at the lecture and copy-pasted them into the slide, and once more transliterated them back into SPIonic.  I managed to transliterate the other Greek words on the page like grammatikos, philosophia, and athleteon; why I overlooked koine and gymnasion must be due to late nights and not being thorough.  Consequently, due to this lapse, gumnasion (nu not mu) and koinh (epsilon not eta) were latinized.  (By the way, they're not called "glyphs", they're called 'breathings' or 'breathing marks' - check any basic Greek grammar book, you can start with Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek, by James Morwood)  

Needless to say, it is certainly a good thing I was not giving a lecture on the importance of Greek vocabulary, or this might be very embarrassing!  Luckily for me though, one error is easily accounted for and I have no trouble admitting that a correction needs to be made and that is was completely due to my inadequate proofreading of the slide (the notes for the slide should be fine).  Indeed, based on the very fact that I was giving a lecture on ancient literature, the dubious claim of Jesus' historicity, and the problems of interpreting Gospels as containing historical memory, I can call this criticism petty on the part of my detractors.

However, their criticism of SPIonic is just like the rest of this "correction" -- It is downright petty.  SPIonic is the font SBL still uses as its font type for koine.  Yes, you can use unicode, but in every instance where monographs are concerned, I have only ever seen SPIonic or LazerGreek.  The only exception I know of is Richard Carrier's entries in The Empty Tomb, but I would hesitate to call that academic (although it certainly can be classified as such).  If it is good enough for SBL, the largest society of published academic material in Biblical studies, it is certainly acceptable for me.  (After all, I got SPIonic from the SBL site) By the way, kids, using wikipedia as a source belies your own ignorance.  I would suggest spending the money (or perhaps your parents money?) and picking up the LSJ 9th Ed.  Lay off the interwebs for the big-people research, k?

Additionally, it is interesting that this petty, useless, criticism is actually the best these dolts can muster.  Don't let the terrorists win folks. 

EDIT (added after I read the last few posts):

Pfft!  Sorry I almost spewed soda through my nose.  Seriously, talk about lame.

Riiighhhttt....  You're "not watching me" - except for the hours you all spend flaming me online...stalking me...harassing and blackmailing people who are working at making our future brighter.  No wonder you couldn't think of a better way to take down scientology - you're simply not bright enough to use rational arguments like sane people to ridicule ignorance and persuade rational minds.  Lulz!  Lehts teh haxxorz t3h site!  W007z! (And in doing so brought about more media attention for their cult and - oh look!  More converts!) Talk about impetuousness. 

Wez are teh anonyMous!!11!!!  Lulz! (idiot).

Srsly. 

Yes, I understand.  I was not clear.  I intended to put a breathing mark (one) above the eta (in the original draft for the slide, just as the "corrected" slide includes above).  I obviously hit the 5 key instead of the 0.  I'm not contesting your analysis, I just don't find it relevant.  You're giving a lecture on an ad hoc.

Thank you.  I will.

Um...the "slide" was about as arrogant and provoking as it gets.  I'm sorry but a "fuck off" was in order after it was "anonymously" posted.  And it was well deserved.  Your post does you more credit than the rather preposterous "correction" of the slide.  Which, by the way, was one out of over 30+ slides.  Others also contained Greek and Hebrew.  Additionally, you will note that I pronounced the words correctly during the presentation - the proof-reading errors above are worthy to be criticized of - I should have been more careful.  I've been to lectures where I have heard full PhD's fumble through actual information related to their presentations.  So if I had a "unrelated tangent" - you may want to consider the original source (the slide) and remember that anybody reading my reply versus your slide would conclude the slide is about as childish as they come.  Ho ho!  *eye roll*

Yes there are tons of people who know more than me.  And they make mistakes too, often where the mistakes matter (this error on this slide is not nearly as important as the message I express in the slide).  Now, if we are done with this silly little charade of yours here, perhaps we can deal with the larger issues at play?  Like theism being irrational and the need to stop religious fanatics from stealing our rights?  Oh, and as always, exposing the Bible for the fiction that it is.

double post

Entire argument based on something completely irrellivant (in this case formatting rather than his point or argument).  Thankyou again RnR, another failure on grand scales.

But then it wouldn't sound menacing.  We wouldn't be struck with fear at the thought of anonymous.... watching....