X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 0;andrew.cmu.edu;Network-Mail Newsgroups: soc.culture.greek,soc.answers,news.answers From: nfotis@ntua.gr (Nick C. Fotis) Subject: (30 Aug 93) Soc.Culture.Greek FAQ - Linguistics Followup-To: poster Organization: National Technical Univ. of Athens Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1993 18:23:35 GMT Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu Archive-name: greek-faq/linguistics Last-modified: 1993/08/30 Soc.Culture.Greek Frequently Asked Questions and Answers ======================================================== (Linguistics) ============= Last Change: 17 April 1993 [ ANYONE WHO WANTS TO EDIT IT, SO IT CAN BE MORE ORGANIZED / READABLE ??? ] Many FAQs, including this one, are available on the archive site rtfm.mit.edu [18.70.0.224] in the directory pub/usenet/news.answers. The name under which a FAQ is archived appears in the Archive-name line at the top of the article. This FAQ is archived as greek-faq/linguistics There's a mail server on that machine. You send a e-mail message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu containing the keyword "help" (without quotes!) in the message body. Items Changed: -------------- [ ANYONE WHO WANTS TO SPLIT IT INTO MORE SUBJECTS, SO IT CAN BE MORE ORGANIZED??? ] -- Lines which got changed, have the `#' character in front of them. Added lines are prepended with a `+' Removed lines are just removed. Use 'diff' to locate these changes. I have included my comments within braces '[' and ']'. Nikolaos Fotis ======================================================================== This text is (C)Copyright 1992, 1993 of Nikolaos C. Fotis. You can copy freely this file, provided you keep this copyright notice intact. Compiled by Nikolaos (Nick) C. Fotis, e-mail: nfotis@theseas.ntua.gr Please contact me for updates,corrections, etc. Disclaimer: that's only a hasty collection of texts and information as I (or other people) remember it, so this file is worth only what you paid for it (and even less! ;-) ) ======================================================================== Subjects: ========= 1. Difference between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern ============================================================= Greek pronunciations?? ====================== [ ANYONE WHO WANTS TO EDIT IT, SO IT CAN BE MORE ORGANIZED??? ] I ask the people to send me stuff in order to make this file more complete. I'm just a kind of editor, and I cannot know everything. YOU'll determine if this FAQ is good or not! ======================================================================== 1. Difference between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern ============================================================= Greek pronunciations?? ====================== [ This question spawned a HUGE thread!! I'm quoting from the various correspodents who participated in this thread . Basically, there are two subtopics here: a. How does one express pronounciation of Greek text in English-like languages? b. How did ancient Greeks pronounce their written works?? There's no end to this debate. I'm just quoting the various opinions and (mis)information ;-) presented in USENET -- nfotis . I hope no one asks again about that subject :-/ ] From: adjg@sour.sw.oz.au (Andrew Gollan) ---- drg@candidus.ma30.bull.com (Daniel R. Guilderson) writes: |I have an English translation of Homer's Odyssey. There is a |pronunciation key in an appendix but the author states that ALL 'c's |are pronounced as 'k' and all 'ch's as 'kh'. Well I know that modern |Greeks pronounce Chios as hee'os. So how would you pronounce Circe^ |(circumflex over the e) and Cynthera? I can't imagine pronouncing |Circe^ as kir'kee, although anything is possible I suppose. |Maybe someone from s.c.g can comment on some of the differences |between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern Greek pronunciations? You are pushing shit uphill trying to reconstruct the Classical Greek pronunciation from the "English" equivalents. All but a very few English works adopt the Latinized spellings of the Greek names, which were themselves at best an approximation. We then apply modern English pronunciation to the Latin spellings resulting in completely warped pronunciation. Latinized Greek letter Sound --------- ------------ ----- a (short) alpha u as in 'cup' a (long) alpha a as in 'father' b beta b as in 'bed' c kappa as french hard c: 'comment' d delta d as in 'dog' e (short) epsilon e as in 'pet' e (long) eta as all of 'air' f - - g gamma g as in 'god' h (initial) rough breathing h as in 'hot' i iota i as in 'pit' j - - k kappa as french hard c: 'comment' l la(m)bda l as in 'lid' m mu m as in 'mud' n nu n as in 'net' o (short) omicron o as in 'pot' o (long) omega aw as in 'awful' p pi as french p: 'Paris' q - - r rho rolled r as in french: 'rue' s sigma s as in 'sad' (mostly) t tau as french t: 'tu' u omicron+upsilon oo as in 'tool' v - - w - - x xi x as in 'fax' (even first in a word) y (short) upsilon as french u: 'tu' y (long) upsilon as french u: 'sur' z zeta zd ch khi c as in 'cot' (emphatically) ph phi p as in 'pot' (emphatically) th theta t as in 'top' (emphatically) ae alpha+iota as all of 'eye' au alpha+upsilon as ow in 'cow' ei epsilon+iota a as in 'take' eu epsilon+upsilon as all of 'yew' (sort of) oi omicron+iota oy as in 'boy' The latinization is not quite regular in its treatment of upsilon. Words which start with upsilon in Greek always have a rough breathing (i.e. an initial 'h') but this is not always transcribed into latin. Also some upsilons are transcribed as 'u' not 'y', which adds to the confusion. Note the major differences between the long and short versions of the vowels, this, combined with the total absense of any marking for the length, gives you a lot of leeway for mispronouncing these names. Without looking them up in the Greek you just can't know the length. The Greek accent of the time was a melodic rather than the modern stress accent. There were three marks an acute ('), a grave (`) and a circumflex (~) which indicated the type of pitch change to apply to a word. Almost all words have exactly one stress mark somewhere in the last three syllables. This is not recorded in the Latinization. From: ccc@cs.toronto.edu ("Christina C. Christara") ---- It seems correct that the c's are pronounced as k's. In ancient Greek, an i is pronounced as i in kit (i.e. short ee) An eta is pronounces as ee (i.e. long) An y is also pronounced same as i (but thinner). Therefore Circe^ should be Kirkee and Cynthera Kintheera. Here the `th' combination is pronounced as the first 2 letters in `think'. In modern Greek, i, eta, and y are all pronounced almost the same. There is no short, long, thin e. As for the 'ch's I don't think that there is a respective sound in English. The closest is a strong 'h'. 'kh' is not that far either. Also, as far as I know, ancient Greeks pronounced the first sound of some words deeper than modern Greeks. These words, when they lost the deep sound in the beginning (this could have happened at the end of the Hellenistic period), were written with a so-called `spirit' (daseia in Greek) to remind the deep sound. Such words are found in English starting with `h'. Examples `hyper' (yper), hippopotamus (ippopotamos), hero (eros, pronounced eeros, this does not mean love) horizon (orizwn, the w is omega), rhetor (retwr) etc. Another difference between ancient and modern Greek pronounciation is the diphthong case. Modern Greeks pronounce `ai' as `e' (epsilon), `ou' as `u' (as in put), `ei' as `ee', `eu' as `ef' or `ev', `au' as `af' or `av', while ancient Greeks pronounced the two sounds with their original sound, i.e. each phthong separetely, without creating new phtongs. From: kd@doc.ic.ac.uk (Kostis Dryllerakis) ---- There is a wide debate about the pronunciation of ancient greek. It is obvious that we have no sound record of the era and we can only reconstruct sounds from their evolution to modern greek (actually there are studies about the "special" words that imitate sounds like pain, and animal sounds but I haven't heard of definite conclusions). The controvercy on the pronunciation of ancient greek started when European classic scholars requested a code to be adopted as the "standard one" among them. Erasmus is principally responsible for the pronunciation given to ancient greek from scholars even now. His proposal was based to the closeness of the ancient greek to the latin-based languages and was many times arbitrary. Later in his life he is said to have renounced his own pronunciation scheme. So the controversy will remain live. For us greeks, we would like to believe that our language is not only close to ancient greek to its symbols but also to its sounds. I beleive that I speak for all of the fellow scientists when I say that we are at least amused by the pronunciation of the greek alphabet as used in mathematics related sciences. Take care when you refer to "correct pronunciation" to mention a particular era in history since you do not expect people at Homer's time to have pronounced things the same way as in classical or Hellenistic times. In case you believe this is possible it might be wise to also check the modern greek pronunciation. From: wiener@duke.cs.duke.edu (Edward Wiener) ---- The languages of Western Europe absorbed many Greek words and place names through Latin translations. Remember that in Latin, Cicero is pronounced "Kikero," Caesar as "Kaisar," and so forth. When these Latinised names were transmuted into English, French, and the other languages of Western Europe, the spelling for the most part remained the same, but the difference in pronounciation was not taken into account. Circe, if I am not mistaken, is indeed pronounced "kir'kee" in Greek. Interestingly, Russian and other Slavic languages preserved the ancient pronounciation of Greek names better than Western Europe. Cyprus, in Russian, is Kipr, Plato is "Platon," Thucydides is "Fukidid," etc. From: mls@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (mike.siemon) ---- > There is a wide debate about the pronunciation of ancient greek. >It is obvious that we have no sound record of the era and we can only >reconstruct sounds from their evolution to modern greek (actually there That is part, but only part, of the data. There are, additionally, the transcriptions of Greek words into other languages (Latin, Persian, Coptic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and on into the later movements of peoples of various languages), all variously well known -- plus of course borrowing in the other direction INTO Greek, at various times. There are also the comments on pronunciation BY ancient Greek grammarians (not as good at this as the Sanskrit school leading to Panini, but still quite valuable). All of this can be used to cross-check and validate/falsify hypotheses about ancient Greek pronunciations, and the hypotheses themselves and the standards for reasoning about them derive from a very considerable modern development of phonology and theoretical linguistics. None of this makes the results "certain" -- but a lot more is securely known than in the first fumbling days of the rediscovery of Greek by the Western Europeans. It is also a somewhat distinct issue from that of a TEACHING pronunciation of Greek -- there are enough unresolved (and probably unresolvable) problems like just how to produce the pitch accents (simply importing Asian models begs the question) that teachers generally follow and establish local practive even knowing that it is not a good "reproduction" of the ancient sound. From: michael.polymenakos@factory.com (Michael Polymenakos) ---- >Maybe someone from s.c.g can comment on some of the differences >between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern Greek pronunciations? The big differences: The differences between H, I, Y, EI, OI and YI (did I forget one?) have become extinct. Actually, the popular Greek singer Savvopoulos and some computer-armed speech scientists came forward a few years ago, proving that a difference still exists, although it is nowhere as pronounced as it used to be. Ditto for O and W (omega), ditto for E and AI. The 'h' sound before some words (represented by ` on the first letter) has dissapeared. Example Hellas -> Ellas. Ditto for the differences in pronounciation marked by psili vs daseia vs perispomeni. For that reason, (and to ease the transition to automation), all these punctuation points were merged to one, a few years ago. But what do I know? I am a programmer, not a linguist. J.T.Pring writes in his preface of the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Greek: <> [things in brackets are Michael's comments] From: ls1@cec1.wustl.edu (Lambros Skartsis) ---- [ About the Erasmian model of pronounciation ] > ccc@cs.toronto.edu ("Christina C. Christara"): > >> ls1@cec1.wustl.edu (Lambros Skartsis) >> >>I think that it was Erasmus who first claimed the above, as well as that >>the today's "soft" greek consonents (ghamma, dhelta, etc.) were pronounced >>as "hard" by the ancients (i.e., "g", "d", etc.) - and so the term >>Erasmian pronounciation. I believe that this theory is very highly >>disputed today. > >I received another message about this, and I think you are right. >Indeed, I have heard that there is a dispute about the pronounciation >proposed by Erasmus, and that many of his interpretations of the >Greek sounds/letters/language are questioned. >When I was in high-school I was taught the Erasmian interpretation >and nothing else. I heard about the dispute later. Actually, even this dispute became an emotional matter for the greeks. If you really think about it, not only the language but the way it is pronounced is a matter related to the national characteristics of a nation. Imagine ancient greek pronounced the Erasmian way: with all these hard consonents and the abundance of two-vowel sets (i.e., vowel followed by vowel). The latter is something that we know very well that was considered as quite bad-sounding to a anc.greek's ear ("hasmodia"). Actually the whole effect would be an almost .... dutch sounding - and hence the accusation by many greeks that all these Erasmian theories so often adopted by germanic scholars were a part of the well-known trend of association of ancient greek culture/arian theories/modern germanic peoples. The greeks of course go to the other extreme and often preach that hardly any basic change occured in accent. For the dipthong pronounciation argument (i.e., e.g. "oi"="i" or "o-i") I had seen some time ago the following evidence against the Erasmian pronounciation [the validity of the theory behind which , as I said earlier, I believe not to be that popular any more(?)]: an Athenian speaker is said to have confused his audience by the use of the word "loimos" vs. "limos" (both, in modern greek would be pronounced as "leemos", while they mean [in both anc. and modern greek] a desease and hunger, respectively). For a confusion to have occured, it is argued, both words should have been pronounced the same in ancient greek, as well. From: rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires) ---- [Mr. Fouliras notes that 1) noone really knows what the *real* pronunciation was like, 2) that accent marks were added later to help with the learning task, 3) that there were various dialects of ancient Greek.] As my final contribution to this thread, I will note that the author of the above tape set spends many minutes at the beginning of the tapes making all of these points, and more, discussing why we should bother learning how to pronounce ancient Greek (not only for intellectual honesty, but for a complete aesthetic experience); how we know the way the language was pronounced (a specific greek Grammerian was mentioned, talking about the circumflex ("bending the pitch"), the grave and acute accents, as well as a specific example of how the borrowing of a Greek word into Latin (pilosopia) gives a clue to the pronunciation of 'p,'); and finally, that there were various dialects -- the Aeolic, the Attic, the Ionic -- and that the only one of these that we have much evidence for is the Attic of classical Athens, that though we have few clues how Homeric Greek might have been spoken, since the received texts of Homer are from the later period anyway, this is what is will be covered. The narrator fully acknowledges that although his reconstruction is necessarily hypothetical, nevertheless it is based on solid scholarship, and he references the _Vox Graeca_ that others in this thread have mentioned, and another work I can't recall now, also discussing why his reconstruction is superior to that of Erasmus. Included in the tape are examples of the opening lines of the Iliad, as spoken by a modern Greek, by a person speaking the Erasmeian reconstruction, and his reconstruction, including all of the pitch and metrical accents. The tapes, after covering the pronunciation of individual letters, progresses to that of the various accent marks, and then to how to master the poetical meter of e.g. Homer, using a five step learning process. The last examples given are passages from major authors like Aeschylus, Euripides, Plato, and lastly, that of the only complete extant poem of Sappho, with a soooo exquisite dovely cooing quality to it that my spine tingles now thinking of it. From: wiltinkm@dutiws.twi.tudelft.nl (M. Wiltink.a73A.telnr-015-138378) ---- It seems to me that most, if not all of the people here start with English renderings of Latinised versions of Greek names and then wonder where things went wrong. The Greeks had no such letter as the c. They had sigma, which poses no problems and becomes s, and kappa, k. This is where most of the trouble starts. Most Greek words passed on to recent times came via Latin. Latin, however, had no (well, almost no) k and used c, pronounced ...k. Then modern languages started pronouncing c as either s or k, depending on what letter followed it. Believe it or not, ALL c's in words derived from Greek should be pronounced k. The same, by the way, goes for c's in Latin words, though this should not be taken to mean that I want everybody to pronounce 'circus' 'kirkus'. There are words that have become sufficiently English to pronounce them by the rules for English, which say that ce, ci are pronounced se, si. But in most Greek names, I myself do prefer to write and pronounce k - Alkibiades, to name one example. [ ccc@cs.toronto.edu ("Christina C. Christara") comments on the last paragraph: I agree, with a minor comment. I think the (ancient) Greeks had 2 alphabets, which were very similar to each other. One was called western or Chalkidean (by people from Chalkis) and the other eastern or Ionian (by people from Asia Minor, centered in Miletos). I think (but I am not sure) that the western had a 'c'. But Athens at some point around 400 BC decided to adopt the eastern- Ionian alphabet and drove all Greeks in that way. The western-Chalkidean alphabet was used as basis for the Latin alphabet (indirectly through the Etruscan one?). Todays Greek alphabet is the eastern-Ionian one, with the lower case letters developed later. End of parenthesis -- nfotis ] The same goes for ai, which became ae in Latin and is generally, though not universally, pronounced ay as in 'hay'. Personally and subjectively, I prefer the sound found in 'high'. The upsilon, u, is a bit different. It was transcribed y in Latin but in German and in Scandinivian languages y is still pronounced u. This is sometimes a major source of irritation for me, as most ski-jumping commentators pronounced 'Nyk\"anen' 'Nikaanen' instead of 'Nukaynen' during the time he was all over Sportnet. From: cla02@keele.ac.uk (R. Wallace) ---- [ Regarding the last post... ] This is almost, but not quite, right. There were in fact many Greek alphabets. I suspect every city had its own variant. and even within cities there is not total consistency. They do, however, fall into families, and the division between east and west is significant. The origin of the letter c is rather odd. The Romans got their alphabet from the Etruscans, who got it from the Greeks. There is a dispute as to whether the alphabet the Etruscans adopted was a west or east Greek alphabet. Common sense would suggest that they got it from the nearest Greeks to them, those in Cumae, who used a variant of the west Greek alphabet. On the other hand, the occasional use of the east Greek letter samech is evidence against this view. It was not, however, the Athenian alphabet; it contained, for example, the letter Koppa, which became the ancestor of our Q. Etruscan did not distinguish between voiced and unvoiced gutturals (K and G), and so used both of those letters for the same sound. The Romans, however, did (like us) make the distinction, but instead of doing the rational thing and reinstating the original uses of the Greek letters, they marked the gamma to signify when it was unvoiced. So: C is originally a gamma (write a capital gamma leaning a bit and you will see how it happened); G is a gamma with a marker to show that it really is a gamma. And that is why the Roam alphabet acquired 3 letters for the same sound: K,C and Q. Just to make life complicated, in some forms of Greek writing the sigma is written a bit like our c. This has been adopted by some modern scholars (we call it the lunate sigma) especially by epigraphists who do not want to beg questions about where words end. [ In another post, regarding Greek alphabets ] Lambros Skartsis (ls1@cec1.wustl.edu) wrote: : : cla02@keele.ac.uk (R. Wallace) writes: : : >... The Romans got their alphabet : >from the Etruscans, who got it from the Greeks. There is a dispute as to : >whether the alphabet the Etruscans adopted was a west or east Greek : >alphabet. Common sense would suggest that they got it from the nearest : >Greeks to them, those in Cumae, who used a variant of the west Greek : >alphabet. : : Richard, wasn't Cumae a colony of the greek city called Cyme, in Euboea? : (the colony retained the name Cyme, Cumae being the latin version). : That is the only theory I am aware of (I can't pretend to have much : knowledge on the : topic!), i.e., that Etruscans took their alphabet from Cyme. But did : the mother-city (metropolis) in Euboea use the west form of the alphabet? There is a tradition the Cumae was founded from the Greek city Cyme in Aeolis in Asia Minor (just a bit north of Smyrna). Strabo says it was a joint foundation of Chalcis and Cyme in Euboea, which explains its name (he says that they did a deal that the city should be called after Cyme, but be a colony of Chalcis) , but he also records traditions that it was a colony of Chalcis alone, and gives another explanation for the name. I would guess that this means that the Cyme stories are just attempts at etymology (but who knows?). Anyway, none of this is relevant, because they did use a version of the Chalcidian alphabet in Cumae. I think the Chalcidian alphabet is classified as a Western alphabet, isn't it? [ He checked, in David Diringers 'The Alphabet' (3rd edition I think), and he seems right ] From: rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires) ---- The Pronunciation and Reading of Ancient Greek: A Practical Guide Stephen G. Daitz ISBN 0-88432-125-8 Audio Forum, a div. of Jeffrey-Norton Publishers On-The-Green, Guillford, CT 06437 New York sales office: 145 E. 49th, NY,NY 10017 London sales 31 Kensington Church St. London W8 4LL, U.K. Other tapes in The Living Voice of Greek and Latin Lit.: _The Birds_ Cicero, selections _Hekabe_ Greek Poetry The P. & R. of Ancient Latin From: filippou@cs.mcgill.ca (Dimitrios FILIPPOU) ---- From "Vox Graeca: A Guide to Pronunciation of Classical Greek", by W. Sidney Allen, 3rd Edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Great Britain 1987, pp. 177--179. SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDED PRONUNCIATIONS (`English' refers to the standard or `received' pronunciations of Southern British English. Asterisks indicate less accurate approximations.) alpha (short) As first `a' in Italian `amare' *As vowel of English `cup' (N.B. not as vowel of `cap') alpha (long) As second `a' in Italian `amare' *As `a' in English `father' alpha with iota As `alpha (long)' subscript alpha-iota As in English `high' alpha-upsilon As in English `how' alpha (long)- As `alpha-upsilon' upsilon beta As English `b' gamma (1) As English "hard" `g' (2) Before kappa, chi, gamma, mu: as `n' in English `ink' or `ng' in `song' delta As French `d' *As English `d' epsilon As in English `pet' epsilon-iota As in German `Beet' epsilon-upsilon Pronounce as two vowels: `epsilon' `upsilon' zeta [zd] as in English `wisdom' eta As in French `t^ete' eta with iota As `eta' subscript eta-upsilon As `epsilon-upsilon' theta As `t' in English `top' (emphatically pronounced) *As `th' in English `thin' iota (short) As in French `vite' *As in English `bit' iota (long) As in French `vive' *As in English `bead' kappa As French "hard" `c', or English (non-initial) `k', `ck', or "hard" `c' lambda As French `l', or English `l' before vowels *As English `l' in other contexts mu As English `m' nu As `n' in French or *English `net' xi As `x' in English `box' omicron As in German `Gott' *As in English `pot' omicron-iota As in English `boy', `coin' omicron-upsilon As in English `pool' or French `rouge' pi As French `p', or English (non-initial) `p' rho As Scottish "rolled" `r' sigma (1) As `s' in English `sing', or `ss' in `less', `lesson' (2) Before `beta', `gamma', `delta', `mu': as English `z' (N.B. but not elsewhere) sigma-sigma As `sigma' `sigma' tau As French `t' *As English (non-initial) `t' upsilon (short) As in French `lune' upsilon (long) As in French `ruse' upsilon-iota [no pronunciation rule given] phi As `p' in English `pot' (emphatically pronounced) *As `f' in English `foot' chi As `c' in English `cat' (emphatically pronounced) *As `ch' in Scottish `loch' psi As `ps' in English `lapse' omega As in English `saw' omega with iota As `omega' subscript [The author of this monography discusses also how to pronounce the accented vowels and the double consonants. In conclusion, he says that the accents should not be pronounced in a `melodic' way -- which, he states, was the way Ancient Greek was spoken --, but rather in a `stress-based' way like Byzantine and Modern Greek, because the Ancient Greek melodic pronounciation of accents is not known. He also states that the iota-subscript should not have any effect on the pronounciation of the vowel it accompanies. Finally, he says that double consonants should be pronounced the same as single ones, only a bit longer.] From: michael.polymenakos@factory.com (Michael Polymenakos) ---- >By the way, Greek netters seem to have some ideological reason >to believe that their native language is very similar to >classical Greek. In practise I've had a lot of troubles when I think that there is some confusion here between 'language' and pronounciation. The language is extremely similar, especially if one compares late hellenistic period Greek (circa 1 a.d.) with modern Greek. It is much easier for me as a modern Greek to read the New Testament (1950 years old), that it is for an english-speaking person to read Chaucher (a modern piece of work, by comparison). The pronounciation changed a lot. But, again, changes since the late hellenistic period are minor compared to the changes to English since half that long ago. In general, it is agreed that Greek pronounciation has changed very little since 1000ad. In fact, as recently as a few decades ago, a number of regional dialects used syntactical and phonological features of corresponding ancient Greek dialects (in mountainous northern Laconia, for example, where the ancient Doric dialect survived practically intact). Unfortunately, after WWII, control of education was taken away from the local village/parish level, and all Greeks now sound like they are from Athens. Only recently did Greeks realise what a terrible waste of valuable cultural resources that was. [ When challenged "why these valuable resources, in light of the need to rebuild the country from zero?", in my words, he replied: 1. There was no effort to study and record these languages. Where some research was made (with the Tsakones, for example), dialects were found that were completely identical to the corresponding ancient Greek dialects for those regions. Having records of these dialects would provide us with valuable information about ancient and byzantine Greek. 2. Ditto for all the regional literature of these areas. Along with these dialects, we also tossed away volumes of oral tradition. Again, where ever research was made, the knowledge gained was tremendous. By the time the Greek state woke up to what had happened, and started funding research projects, many papoudes and giagiades had died, and with them many stories that the younger generation did not learn because anything said in a village dialect was considered 'unimportant' and 'uncultured'. The end result was the same as if though thousands of books had been burned. In all fairness, it is hard to blame anyone for what happened. With Greece badly underdeveloped in the 1920s, the big restructuring of education, which became totally centralised after WWII, was nescessary. Back then development was the only priority, and the funds for research were not available. ] >pronouncing Greek names in the classical way, which is usual >for Finns (even tourists without any classical education). >I was unable to find my way to Herakleion before I learned >to call it "Iraklio". But what is the 'Classical Way'? This subject started with a question on the pronunciation of 'Circee'. All english educated people know that this is pronounced 'Sir-see'. Yet, everyone who expressed an opinion on this group so far has agreed that the right pronounciation is 'Kir-kee'. As for "Herakleion', most americans would pronounce it 'He-ra-KLEI-on', because the anglisezed word does not carry the accent mark, which makes the classical prounanciation 'He-RA-klei-on'. According to J.T. Pring's comments which I posted a few days ago: Both the Eta (H) and the Epsilon-iota (EI) had become I by early byzantine times --> hi-RA-kli-on The initial h dissapeared by the fourth century AD --> i-RA-kli-on The final 'n' began dropping out of use in local dialects sinse Byzantine times, and is now becoming rare, but many people still use it, in fact pre-1980 road signs and maps usually read "HRAKLEION". So, one's classical pronounciation of 'Herakleion' would have been as much understood in 1992ad as it would have been understood in 400ad. Not bad, I think. From: filippou@cs.mcgill.ca (Dimitrios FILIPPOU) ------------------------------------------------- [ Regarding Allen's book ; added R. Wallace's and Stavros Macrakis' remarks to this message. R.Wallace's comments are prefaced with RW>, while Stavros' are prefaced with SM>; I hope these aren't too hard to follow -- nfotis ]: SM> Below, some comments on your notes. But the basic questions you don't SM> address are: why would the ancients bother to invent six different SM> ways of writing the sound "i"? And two different ways of writing "e" SM> or "o"? And sometimes doubling consonants, and sometimes not? And SM> how do you explain the structure of ancient poetry without referring SM> to syllable quantity, which depends on vowel length? SM> SM> The other issues (pronunciation of gamma as hard g or as gh, etc.) are SM> less important, because they don't change the STRUCTURE of the system. SM> In fact, I think it would make sense -- at least for teaching in SM> Greece -- to preserve the modern pronunciation for them. Keeping SM> distinct pronunciations for the diphthongs and long vowels (eta, SM> omega), on the other hand, would preserve the ancient structure and SM> seems important. First, let's see some *facts*: 1. The system of (Ancient and Modern) Greek writting -- as we know it today -- has been developped by the Alexan- drian and (mostly) by the Byzantine grammarians. For example, it is the Byzantines who introduced the small Greek letters around the 9th c. AD. RW> This is true, but the writing system is immaterial. There is a good deal RW> of inscription material from the 5th and 4th centuries BC, and arguments RW> from orthography are based on that. SM> Although the system of diacritics (accents, breathings, iota SM> subscript) was introduced by the Alexandrines, the consonants and SM> vowels were around long before that! As for small letters, I don't SM> see how that affects pronunciation. 2. There's not much -- if any at all -- difference between the Byzantine (after, say, 4-5th c. AD) pronounciation and the Modern Greek pronounciation. According to Allen himself, changes from the Ancient Greek pronounciation (i.e., Allen's version) to the Byzantine/Modern Greek pronounciation may have come as early as in the first century of Roman occupation of Greece (2nd c. BC). RW> Quite right. Spelling mistakes in 2nd century AD papyri seem to show that RW> substantial changes in pronunciation had taken place, while spelling (as RW> often) remained more conservative. I vividly remember the first time I RW> was faced with the text of a papyrus letter from this period, written by RW> a young man who clearly had not been paying attention to his teachers at RW> school! It didn't look like Greek at all! Then I pronounced it in the RW> Modern Greek way, and it all became clear. But the fact that the pattern RW> of variation in spelling is quite different from that of the 4th or 5th RW> centuries is evidence that pronunciation had changed (as you would RW> expect it to over such a period). 3. How the Ancient Greeks (here, we are talking about the Attic dialect, 5-4th c. BC) were pronouncing certain letters, diphthongs, etc. is and -- I think -- will remain an unsolved problem. SM> Of course, the _exact_ pronunciation will never be known, but there is SM> lots of evidence to help us get a good idea. Modern pronunciation is SM> one kind of evidence. On the one hand, we have the bleating of the sheep in Aristophanes which is written as: beta-eta (w. acc. circ.) -- beta -eta (w. acc. circ.) In Modern Greek pronounciation this reads: "vee-vee", when common logic suggests that it should be read as "bebe". Therefore, Allen recommends that "beta = `b' as in `book'"; and "eta ~= epsilon". RW> There is actually more to the argument than this. Latin, for example, RW> transliterates beta as a B, and epsilon as an E. SM> True, we expect sheep to say "be be" and not "vi vi", but there is a SM> lot of other evidence for these pronunciations. When you say SM> "therefore", it's as though this is the only evidence! On the other hand, we have the oracle of Delphoi to the Athenians, who could not understand whether it meant that they would suffer from famine ("limos") or from plague ("loimos") the first year of the Peloponnesian War (the Athenians' confusion is quoted by Thucydides). This confusion can be understood only if the Athenians were pronouncing iota = omicron-iota as Modern Greeks do. But Allen suggests: "NO! omicron -iota = o-ee (i.e., a "true" diphthong). (Allen discus- ses this notorious quote of Thucydides, but, I don't remember his points -- I returned the damned book :-( ) RW> No. The story requires the pronunciations to be similar, but not RW> identical. Some other *observations*: a. Allen accepts the Byzantine/Modern Greek pronounciation of the accents on the basis of "we don't know enough about the melodic accent reading of the Ancient Greeks". SM> I don't think he "accepts" the modern pronunciation as being a good SM> reconstruction; he simply recommends using it to simplify things, SM> since the tonal system is not fully understood, and adds a lot of SM> difficulty to teaching the language. Given what we know of the SM> Ancient Greek tonal system, by the way, it is more like the Japanese SM> or Serbian systems than it is like the Chinese system. Foreigners SM> have trouble learning the Japanese and Serbian systems, and in fact SM> usually "hear" the tones in those languages as stress patterns at SM> first. Given that there are no speakers of Ancient Greek, it would SM> seem unproductive to spend a lot of time teaching this. Conversely, SM> teaching modern pronunciation would NOT help travellers in Greece make SM> themselves understood! Could not this apply also in the way the Greek letters are read? I.e., once we don't know for sure how the Ancient Greeks were reading certain vowels, consonants, combinations of letters, etc., why don't we stick to the closest relative, the Byzantine/Modern Greek pronounciation? RW> Some people regard this as a good argument. At least Ancient Greek RW> pronounced as Modern Greek does sound as if it might be a real language! RW> The argument against is that the modern pronunciation makes nonsense of RW> Ancient Greek poetry, and loses much of the sound-play in any ancient RW> text. Personally, I find this objection compelling, but it is possible RW> to take a different view. But this is just a question of pedagogic RW> convenience, and doesn't contribute to the question of how the language RW> was pronounced. I think Allen is right about accents. It is certain that RW> the ancient accents were pitch accents (as in Chinese) rather than RW> stress accents; we know a good deal in theory about how they were RW> pronounved (the musical interval over which the voice moved on a RW> particular syllable and so on) but all actual attempts to put it into RW> pracitice seem unconvincing to me. And students have quite enough hassle RW> learning the language as it is! SM> Of course, we don't know "for sure", but we do have a lot of good SM> evidence, including borrowings, related languages, and the internal SM> structure of the language and the orthography. b. If we adopt Allen's recommendations certain sounds will be excluded from the Ancient Greek pronounciation. Even if Allen is right in saying that most likely "beta = English `b'", I find it hard to believe that the Ancient Greek (more precicely, the Athenians) had not ANY of the following soft (e.g., fricative) sounds in their vocabulary: v --> Modern Greek "beta" y (as in English `young') --> M.G. "gamma" th (as in English `there') --> M.G. "delta" th (a in English `theatre') --> M.G. "theta" All languages that I'm familiar with (Modern Greek, English and French) have at least some of the above sounds. Why not Ancient Greek? SM> !! Actually, the (modern) "gamma" (the gh sound before a/o/u, not the SM> y sound before i/e), "theta", and "dhelta" sounds are UNCOMMON in the SM> world's languages. For instance, none of Italian, Japanese, French, SM> Turkish, Serbian, German, or Hawaiian has any of them. c. If we adopt Allen's recommendations, we get a pronouncia- tion full of hiatuses ("hasmodies"). My poor ear suffers when I try to read loudly by Allen's system words such as: aiphnidiazomai (= I get surprised) chairekakos (= malicious), etc. SM> Why would you expect Ancient Greek to sound good to your ear? Latin SM> pronounced according to the historical pronunciation sounds strange to SM> Italians, too. as it suffers when I hear my colleagues talking about "k-eye" (and they mean "chi" = `hee'), or "ps-eye" (and they mean "psi" = `psee') in Maths. RW> Yes of course, what do you expect? And the pronunciation of Chaucerian RW> English sounds weird to me! But we will all agree that Mathematicians RW> pronounce Greek in a barbarous way! SM> These are of course incorrect pronunciations according to Allen. SM> Something like "k-eye" is the pronunciation of "kai" (and), not of the SM> letter chi. d. Allen makes a direct attack in the Preface of the latest edition of his monography, on another Swedish (?) scholar who dares to say that Attic Greek was pronounced almost the same as Byzantine/Modern Greek from the 4th c. BC. This attack -- it's just a dismissal of the Sewde's position w/out much justification -- has really surprised me. (I'm not used to such scholar stabbings in the Prefaces of books!) In conclusion, I believe that anyone who wants to learn Ancient Greek, he should better learn to pronounce it the way Byzantines did and (Modern) Greeks do. In this way, he/she will be learning at least 50% of the Modern Greek language as well! RW> If I were teaching a Greek, I might agree. The principal objection to RW> believing that the modern pronunciation is basically the same as the RW> ancient pronunciation (apart from the inherent plausibilty of any RW> language remaining unchanged in pronunciation for two and a half RW> thousand years, through a period when we know that accentuation, RW> grammatical structure, and vocabulary did change substantially) is that RW> it assumes that when the ancients adopted the alphabet they chose a RW> system which was by no means phonetic (i.e. there are several ways of RW> representing the same sound). In other words, the ancient greeks were RW> dotty, which I am unwilling to accept. It is surely more likely that RW> they initially adopted a system where there was a more or less RW> one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds, and that gradually RW> pronunciation changed while orthography remained the same (as indeed it RW> has done in many languages, including English and French), leading to RW> these poor kids in the 2nd century AD getting all their spellings wrong. RW> That, I think, is where the evidence, but we will always be guessing. SM> Pronunciation is probably the easiest thing to learn about Modern SM> Greek if you know Ancient Greek. (Although of course too many SM> foreigners don't bother!) Dimitrios Filippou PS. I repeat: I'm not a classicist neither a linguist! Just an "boring/bored" engineer ....:-) ======================================================================== End of Linguistics Part of the FAQ -- Nick (Nikolaos) Fotis National Technical Univ. of Athens, Greece HOME: 16 Esperidon St., InterNet : nfotis@theseas.ntua.gr Halandri, GR - 152 32 UUCP: mcsun!pythia!theseas!nfotis Athens, GREECE FAX: (+30 1) 77 84 578