Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/64

 42 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. schools became unintelligible to the different peoples, and especially to the Greeks. This strange pronunciation owes its origin to the lucubrations of a scholar, and is in opposition to old and new traditions of the Greeks. Dr. Edward Engel, in his book entitled: "Die Aussprache des Griechischen," has given the history, and in very plain words the definition of the school pronunciation of Greek. Many others before Engel, convinced that this pronun- ciation was incorrect and unscientific, had raised their voices; to Engel, however, is due the credit that his book made it impossible for any college professor to defend this school pronun- ciation as correct or justifiable, and learnedly to pull the wool over anybody's eyes. It is a curi- ous fact that most of those men of profound learning who wrote for the school and against the true Greek pronunciation had absolutely no knowledge of the latter. Had they possessed such knowledge, and had they compared the pronunciation which the old inscriptions give with that of the living Greek of to-day, they could not have remained opposed to truth with a stubbornness which is incomprehensible. This school pronunciation is an invention of Desiderius Erasmus, called Rotterdamus, and