Pronunciation of Greek names in Homer's Odyssey
Daniel R. Guilderson
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?
Robert S. Hill
>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.
>
traditional English pronunciation is SIR-see, which I like just fine.
I wish translators would use either `correct' renderings or
traditional Anglicized renderings, but not both. And give a
pronouncing cross-reference between them, in any case.
>Maybe someone from s.c.g can comment on some of the differences
>between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern Greek pronunciations?
Another FAQ!!!! See W. Sidney Allen's Vox Graeca.
Robert S. Hill
bh...@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov
Andrew Gollan
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.
--
Q.C. (Queen's Counsellor): A |Andrew Gollan - "Anti-Family and proud of it"
learned associate of a gay man. |Phone: +61 2 698 2322 Fax: +61 2 699 9174
Handbag: A male fashion __ |Softway, GPO Box 305,
accessory of a gay woman. \/ |Strawberry Hills NSW 2012, Australia
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.
You may want to check all this with an expert,
since I am not one. And even if I were ...
C. Christara
Steven Chung
I think if you are dealing with ancient Greek and names that have been
absorbed into English, you should just use the familiar pronunciation. It
would be senseless, for example, to begin calling Ajax 'Aias' again. Circe
is a more marginal case, but Webster tells me it's pronounced soft in
English so that seems fine.
Kostis Dryllerakis
In article <DRG.92De...@candidus.ma30.bull.com>,
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.
A final point of advise to those that want to pursue the subject further:
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
beleive this is possible it might be wise to also check the modern greek pronunciation.
Roger Squires
>
>Maybe someone from s.c.g can comment on some of the differences
>between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern Greek pronunciations?
You may wish to locate a copy of a set of two cassette tapes
called _The Sound of Ancient Greek_, which is designed
to provide an introduction to pronunciatino of classical
greek in Athens in the 4th-5th centuries B.C.
The author's name escapes me, but check your local library --
mine had a copy. I notice the same gentleman also has a
similar tape set out for classical Latin.
Roger Squires
rsqu...@cyclosps.eece.unm.edu
Panayotis Fouliras; TA PhD
[..]
> You may wish to locate a copy of a set of two cassette tapes
> called _The Sound of Ancient Greek_, which is designed
> to provide an introduction to pronunciatino of classical
> greek in Athens in the 4th-5th centuries B.C.
> The author's name escapes me, but check your local library --
> mine had a copy. I notice the same gentleman also has a
> similar tape set out for classical Latin.
>Roger Squires
>rsqu...@cyclosps.eece.unm.edu
May I also add, that the pronunciations proposed by various
people are (just like in Latin) not the real ones, but those
*beleived* by various schools to be the real ones. After all
accents appear (I think) during the 1st/2nd century A.D. from
the grammarians of Alexandria (to improve the
readability/pronunciation of the written stuff).
It should further be emphasized, that the pronunciation was
different from one area to another (something that happens in
every country in the world), so it is quite well mentioned in
the above that the particular 'pronunciation' refers to what is
beleived to have been the pronunciation in Athens *only*.
Modern Greek pronunciation is simpler and different from what I
have seen being proposed for the Ancient dialects.
Regards
Panayotis
--
UUCP: p...@qmw-dcs.uucp | Computer Science Dept | "H Rwmania
Internet: p...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk | QMW University of London | kai an
JANET: p...@uk.ac.qmw.dcs | Mile End Road | eperasen,
Voice: +44 71 975 5220 | London E1 4NS | anthei kai
FAX: +44 81 980 6533 | | ferei kai
Cellphone: Too expensive to fit allon"
Lambros Skartsis
c...@cs.toronto.edu ("Christina C. Christara") writes:
>In article <DRG.92De...@candidus.ma30.bull.com> d...@candidus.ma30.bull.com (Daniel R. Guilderson) writes:
>> ...
>>Maybe someone from s.c.g can comment on some of the differences
>>between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern Greek pronunciations?
>
>...
>
>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.
Christina, whether the above is true or not, is still a matter of discussion.
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. Do you remember the joke some greek students made to
a German archaeologist, long time ago, who insisted on pronouncing
"ei" as "e-i", "ou" as "o-u" etc.? Well, I better not refer to that,
it's rather nasty!!
L. Skartsis
mike.siemon
(Kostis Dryllerakis) writes:
> 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.
See Sidney Allen's little book _Vox Graeca_ (and its companion, _Vox
Latina_) for substantial detail and argument on this.
--
Michael L. Siemon "Oh, stand, stand at the window,
As the tears scald and start;
m...@panix.com You shall love your crooked neighbor
(please note address) With your crooked heart."
david carlton
> There is a wide debate about the pronunciation of ancient greek.
> It is obvious that we have no sound record of the era
True.
> and we can only
> reconstruct sounds from their evolution to modern greek
Completely false.
> (actually there
> are studies about the "special" words that imitate sounds like pain,
> and animal sounds but I haven't heard of definite conclusions).
Onomatopoeic words are only the beginning of it. If you want a good
reference, look at W. S. Allen's _Vox Graeca_.
david carlton
car...@husc.harvard.edu
This MUST be a good party -- My RIB CAGE is being painfully
pressed up against someone's MARTINI!!
Jacques Guy
>Onomatopoeic words are only the beginning of it. If you want a good
>reference, look at W. S. Allen's _Vox Graeca_.
I was thinking of joining the foray, but could not remember the title of
a book. Perhaps, yes, it was Vox Graeca. At any rate, it dealt with
the probable pronunciation of the Greek of 500 BC or so, and much of
the evidence was drawn from grammarians' work and, most importantly,
from misspellings. If I remember right, phi, theta, and chi were
pronounced as aspirated stops. No surprise there. The surprise, to me,
was in the pronunciation of vowels. Eta was [i], and the diphthong
"oi" something like modern French "u". The rest I do not remember alas.
Jim Mann
> In article <DRG.92De...@candidus.ma30.bull.com>,
d...@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.
> >
> keer-KAY actually. Sort of. More or less. Of course, the
> traditional English pronunciation is SIR-see, which I like just
fine.
> I wish translators would use either `correct' renderings or
> traditional Anglicized renderings, but not both. And give a
> pronouncing cross-reference between them, in any case.
>
Well, at least most translations are better than what they
are doing in my daughter's 7th grade English class. They are
reading the story of the Odyssey (not a full translation) which
keeps the Greek names for the Gods, but calls the hero
Ulysses. (Actually, other than that, I can't complain. It's been
a nice, detailed lesson, as has been their whole mythology
section.)
And of course, this is better than the movie version of Ulysses
(with Kirk Douglas), where we have the Gods Zeus and Neptune.
--
Jim Mann
Stratus Computer jm...@vineland.pubs.stratus.com
Lambros Skartsis
c...@cs.toronto.edu ("Christina C. Christara") writes:
>In article <1992Dec10.2...@wuecl.wustl.edu> l...@cec1.wustl.edu (Lambros Skartsis) writes:
>>Christina, whether the above is true or not, is still a matter of discussion.
>>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.
Anybody knows anything more?
Regards,
L. Skartsis
Roger Squires
>In rsqu...@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires) writes:
>> You may wish to locate a copy of a set of two cassette tapes
>> to provide an introduction to pronunciation of classical
>> greek in Athens in the 4th-5th centuries B.C.
[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.
>
>Panayotis
Roger Squires
rsqu...@cyclops.eece.unm.edu
Roger Squires
>
>And of course, this is better than the movie version of Ulysses
>(with Kirk Douglas), where we have the Gods Zeus and Neptune.
>
Probably derived from the Great Books xlation, where
(unless I'm grossly misteaken, its been awhile) I
was horrified (when quite young) to find the Roman
god's names used.
>Jim Mann
>Stratus Computer jm...@vineland.pubs.stratus.com
Roger Squires
rsqu...@cyclops.eece.unm.edu
Avery D Andrews
> 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
I haven't noticed that the `traditionalist' view (that classical
Greek pronunciation was pretty much like Modern Greek) has many
non-Greek adherents, which suggests that its basis is more emotional
than scholarly or scientific. And 2500 years is a *long* time for
the pronunciation of a language to remain essentially unchanged.
And what is the traditionalist position on Greek pronunciation in
the vicinity of 700 BC, which is around when the Homeric poems seem
to be currently thought to have been written down?
Michael Polymenakos
>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
Right.
>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.
I could not even figure out who 'Circe^' was, until you wrote Ki'rkee.
:-)
Ki'rkee is the right pronounciation, at least in modern Greek.
>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:
<<After the hellenistic period, the distinguishing power of word-accent
lay in its position rather than its pitch, and the former distinctions
in vowel length were lost. Certain words now show a stronger tendency to
keep the primary stress in their inflected forms. A E I O have remained
more or less unchanged in quality; OY was already U before the end of
the classical period; and W merged with O as a mid back vowel after the
first century AD, and the second element of AY HY had developed into a
labial fricative. H and EI had both become I by early Byzantine times. Y
and OI were being confused as `u' [thats two dots over the u] in
Hellenistic Greek, and both became i by the tenth century.
Double consonants have been reduced to single, except in a few
dialects. The aspirated voiceless stops Theta, Phi, Chi had changed to
fricatives by the fourth century AD, and initial h (marked by the "rough
breathing") had dissapeared. By the same date, the voiced stops
represented by Beta, Delta, Gamma had become replaced by fricatives. but
in certain modern forms the labial and dental stops are still
preserved after M N, being now written as P T, eg GAMPROS < GAMBROS,
DENTRO < DENDRON. The original voiceless P T K following a nasal have
changed to voiced (which can also occur without the nasal environment,
especially in the initial position). Among other phonological changes
are (i) loss of many initial and medial unaccented vowels, including the
verbal augment. (ii) Loss of nasals finally and before a continuant
consonant. (iii) Dissimilation of voiceless consonant groups, eg FTERO <
PTERON, OXTW < OKTW, SKOLIO < SXOLEION, EKACA < EKAYSA [C = Psi].>>
[things in brackets are my comments]
Michael
Panayotis Fouliras; TA PhD
Never heard of it, but I do admit that your description of it
was more than vivid!
Bob Ingria
>Maybe someone from s.c.g can comment on some of the differences
>between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern Greek pronunciations?
Another FAQ!!!! See W. Sidney Allen's Vox Graeca.
I would also recommend:
Robert Browning, Medieval and Modern Greek, Cambridge University
Press, which goes through the phonological, morphological, and (more
sketchily) syntactic changes from the Koine period up through the
Modern Period.
Carl Darling Buck, The Greek Dialects. I believe Buck discusses
pronunciation differences between ancient dialects, in addition to the
paradigm differences, but it's been a long time since I last looked
into it.
--
-30-
Bob Ingria
Rich Alderson
> p...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Panayotis Fouliras; TA PhD) writes:
>>In rsqu...@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires) writes:
>>> You may wish to locate a copy of a set of two cassette tapes
>>> called _The Sound of Ancient Greek_, ...
>>> to provide an introduction to pronunciation of classical
>>> greek in Athens in the 4th-5th centuries B.C.
>
> [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
Just for the record (or tape :-): The tapes are produced by Stephen Daitz.
--
Rich Alderson 'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take
such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
--J. R. R. Tolkien,
alde...@leland.stanford.edu _The Lost Road_
Rich Alderson
You should also look at W. B. Stanford, _The Sound of Greek_, with its 45rpm
record.
Bob Ingria
In article <liqcv2...@news.bbn.com>, ingria@bbn (Bob Ingria) writes:
>In article <9DEC1992...@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov> bh...@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov (Robert S. Hill) writes:
> In article <DRG.92De...@candidus.ma30.bull.com>, d...@candidus.ma30.bull.com (Daniel R. Guilderson) writes...
>
> >Maybe someone from s.c.g can comment on some of the differences
> >between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern Greek pronunciations?
>
> Another FAQ!!!! See W. Sidney Allen's Vox Graeca.
>
>I would also recommend:
>
>Robert Browning, Medieval and Modern Greek,
>
You should also look at W. B. Stanford, _The Sound of Greek_, with its 45rpm
record.
Yes! I had wanted to include Stanford's book, as well, but I could
only remember the book's title, not the author's name.
--
-30-
Bob Ingria
David Barrington
>In article <9DEC1992...@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov> bh...@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov (Robert S. Hill) writes:
> In article <DRG.92De...@candidus.ma30.bull.com>, d...@candidus.ma30.bull.com (Daniel R. Guilderson) writes...
>
> >Maybe someone from s.c.g can comment on some of the differences
> >between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern Greek pronunciations?
>
> Another FAQ!!!! See W. Sidney Allen's Vox Graeca.
>
>I would also recommend:
>
>--
>-30-
>Bob Ingria
Is there an FAQ list for this group? If not, perhaps one way to create
a quick and dirty one is as follows. As in Mr. Hill's answer above, the
best answer to an FAQ is often an entire book. Maybe the thing to do is
for some of the various professional classicists here to look over their
libraries and formulate FAQ's for which their favorite book is the answer.
ObClassicalContent:
Quote for exam week (Aeneid, hope I've remembered right)
"Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit."
Dave MB
Avery D Andrews
bounds of science & scholarship.
Not long after coming up with what seemed to me to be a reasonable
way of implementing the AG pitch accents when reciting Homer (which
turned out, interestingly, to be pretty close to the Devine & Stephens
reconstruction), I felt impelled to switch from the fricative
pronuncation of theta, phi, chi & zeta that I learned in school
to the right ones (the first three, aspirate, the last, zd). The reason
was that using fricatives seemed to impair the rhythm significantly,
presumably due to the omission of various stop onsets & their associated
percussive effects.
This is certainly 100% subjective, and perhaps idiosyncratic as well,
but if there's anything to it it may in part that if you can manage
to disentangle pitch from the other aspects of stress (duration and
loudness), your general perception of rhythm changes in interesting
(and rather enjoyable) ways.
JA...@ukcc.uky.edu
alde...@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
>
>In addition to aspirates and pitches, I pronounce ETA and O MEGA as mid-low
>long vowels, E PSILON and O MIKRON as mid-high short vowels, U PSILON as high
>back rounded, and the digraphs EPSILON+IOTA and OMIKRON+UPSILON as a mid-high
>long vowels alternating with diphthongs.
>
A
Actually the evidence for upsilon as _front_ rounded vowel is mostly circum-
stantial and deductive. That is to say, the argument goes that the formerly
_back_ round Indo-European [u] "must have been" _front_ rounded in Classical
Greek, since it ended up as front non-rounded, and thus had to go through
a stage between. These "logical" arguments can be dangerous. I could be
convinced by other evidence, but for the moment I'm with Alderson on this,
and against (my former student) Don Ringe, even though he knows more about
Greek than I. Nor am I going to weaken my position by telling you his
arguments, so there!
Rich Alderson
>Not long after coming up with what seemed to me to be a reasonable way of
>implementing the AG pitch accents when reciting Homer (which turned out,
>interestingly, to be pretty close to the Devine & Stephens reconstruction), I
>felt impelled to switch from the fricative pronuncation of theta, phi, chi &
>zeta that I learned in school to the right ones (the first three, aspirate,
>the last, zd). The reason was that using fricatives seemed to impair the
>rhythm significantly, presumably due to the omission of various stop onsets &
>their associated percussive effects.
>
>This is certainly 100% subjective, and perhaps idiosyncratic as well, but if
>there's anything to it it may in part that if you can manage to disentangle
>pitch from the other aspects of stress (duration and loudness), your general
>perception of rhythm changes in interesting (and rather enjoyable) ways.
Those teachers of Greek who have heard me do this seem to like it, even if they
warn the rest of the class that this is a reconstruction.
In addition to aspirates and pitches, I pronounce ETA and O MEGA as mid-low
long vowels, E PSILON and O MIKRON as mid-high short vowels, U PSILON as high
back rounded, and the digraphs EPSILON+IOTA and OMIKRON+UPSILON as a mid-high
long vowels alternating with diphthongs.
In ASCII IPA, then, the enchantress with whom Odysseus lived for a while is
ki'rkE:`
or in English transcription
keerkehhhh
with a high pitch on the first syllable falling to a low pitch on the long
final vowel.
This gives results acceptable to me, if not to anyone else.