how to do the pitch accent

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Tertius Robertus
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how to do the pitch accent

Post by Tertius Robertus »

can anyone be kind to give some tips on how to pronunce the malevolous pitch accent :D

is there any resource to drill? anything?

cheers!

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Post by Amadeus »

Noooooooooooooooooo!

Don't do it! You can't cross over to the dark side!

I'm kidding, of course. :wink: But I'm serious when I say that the pitch accent is not very practical. And of all the audio recordings I've heard of people trying to imitate the ancient pitch accent, none convinces me. So, choose wisely, my son, you are going to deal with a very complex issue (IMO).
Lisa: Relax?! I can't relax! Nor can I yield, relent, or... Only two synonyms? Oh my God! I'm losing my perspicacity! Aaaaa!

Homer: Well it's always in the last place you look.

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Post by Arvid »

Don't let them talk you out of it! I've never had any vocal interaction with anyone in the Classics community or a formal course in Greek (or Latin) and so I was shocked when I learned how the people in Academe pronounced the Classical languages. I thought the purpose of scholarship was to learn how things were. Anybody can mangle a language's pronunciation to conform to their own language habits!

Now that I'm through ranting... I'm trying to learn Homeric Greek, and a big part of that is learning why this is poetry. Today anything printed with ragged right margins is poetry, I guess, but then it was the rhythm and articulation, so I want to learn the best ideas we currently have on what that was. Yes, if you were sent back to Homer's time in a time machine, you undoubtedly couldn't pass as a native, but the purpose is to read poetry AS poetry.

As an English speaker, though, it's uniquely hard to learn to appreciate quantitative verse, never mind with a pitch accent. The rhythm of English is very unusual: we have a very heavy stress accent, reduce or even eliminate the vowels in unstressed syllables, and speed up or slow down so that the stressed syllables in key words in the sentence come at as evenly spaced in time as possible. All this is the very antithesis of what you need to pronounce Homer properly!

It may sound insane, but I think the language with living native speakers that you could learn the most from in this regard is: wait for it...Japanese! It has a pitch contour that's completely independent of syllable length, syllables that can last different numbers of "morai," to use a Greek term: 1 for a short vowel, 2 for a long vowel or a closed syllable, or even 0, like the su- in sukiyaki. Unlike English with its evenly-spaced key stresses, the (in)famous "machine-gun articulation" of Japanese insists on making each mora occupy exactly the same length of time. All this while raising and lowering the pitch to conform to the accent. AND there are native speakers who can tell you if you're doing it right. The main thing is to become accustomed to the fact that the speech habits of your language are not laws of nature; something we English speakers especially need help with!

Good luck with your attempts to master the pitch accent, and let us know about any discoveries you make!

Tertius Robertus
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Post by Tertius Robertus »

thanks guys

ad amadeum
But I'm serious when I say that the pitch accent is not very practical.
i believe thee,
And of all the audio recordings I've heard of people trying to imitate the ancient pitch accent, none convinces me.
i cant judge, i dont even know how they are supposed to sound. thus far i only know the names: rising a rise-and-falling.
So, choose wisely, my son, you are going to deal with a very complex issue
i will. hum!

****

ad arvid
Don't let them talk you out of it!
he is not serious, be not bothered :)
I thought the purpose of scholarship was to learn how things were.
funny, i spent 3 years in college (enough to not go back there again) and convinced myself that their purpose is the opposite. :wink:
I'm trying to learn Homeric Greek, and a big part of that is learning why this is poetry
me too
Today anything printed with ragged right margins is poetry
true, unfortunately
but then it was the rhythm and articulation
do not forget the themes, there must be themes, a subject which ever, unlike today :)
As an English speaker, though, it's uniquely hard to learn to appreciate quantitative verse, never mind with a pitch accent. The rhythm of English is very unusual: we have a very heavy stress accent, reduce or even eliminate the vowels in unstressed syllables, and speed up or slow down so that the stressed syllables in key words in the sentence come at as evenly spaced in time as possible.
my difficult as a portuguese native are others, namely to pronunce the vowels, which we either eat or change the quality when unstressed; i overcame this a long time ago when learning latin :)

and of course the inexistance of regular pitch, except in 2 vowels, which have a high constant pitch, which do not agree at least in the idea conveyed by the name rising and rise-and-falling -.-
It may sound insane, but I think the language with living native speakers that you could learn the most from in this regard is: wait for it...Japanese!
:shock:
It has a pitch contour that's completely independent of syllable length, syllables that can last different numbers of "morai," to use a Greek term: 1 for a short vowel, 2 for a long vowel or a closed syllable, or even 0, like the su- in sukiyaki.
where can i learn more? :)
Good luck with your attempts to master the pitch accent, and let us know about any discoveries you make!
thanks, i will

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Post by annis »

The problem with reconstructing the old pronunciation is that it requires one to make a few decisions about what is most likely. Since there are legitimate differences of opinion on this, you cannot be sure that person A using a reconstructed pronunciation will make the same decisions as person B endeavoring to do the same thing. With that warning, I lay out my practice below.

1. I pronounce the grave (i.e. the reduced, word-final acute not at the end of a clause) as though it has no accent at all. For example, τὴν βουλήν.

2. On a short vowel, I pronounce the acute as high. For example, φέ?ω.

3. On a long vowel or a diphthong, I pronounce the acute as rising. As in, βουλή.

4. I pronounce the circumflex as high-falling (some people might go for rise-fall), as in μοῖ?α.

I am more restrained in the pitch interval between the high and low pitches. I believe Dio. Thrax says the interval was a musical fifth, but that's pretty extreme typologically (that is, it's unusually large compared to other languages that use pitch accent), so I suspect he meant the interval used in public speaking, where you expect some exaggeration.
William S. Annis — http://www.aoidoi.org/http://www.scholiastae.org/
τίς πατέρ' αἰνήσει εἰ μὴ κακοδαίμονες υἱοί;

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Post by Arvid »

Listen to Annis; he has some great articles about reciting Greek poetry, including some mp3s of his own recitations on his site http://www.aoidoi.org/ Great stuff!

What helps me is to tap my fingers in a regular beat and try to make each long syllable (a closed syllable or one with a long vowel) take up two beats and each short syllable only take one. Then when an accent comes up, just raise my pitch by what seems like a realistic amount, and drop down immediately for the next beat (mora, the Greeks would have said.) An acute accent on a short syllable is easy, just a higher pitch; but to me, an acute accent on a syllable with a long vowel means that it's the second of the two morai that's accented, and a circumflex means it's the first. Of course, speaking slowly like this, it'll sound kind of choppy, but it'll smooth out as you speak faster.

One advantage of this way of looking at things is that it makes all those complicated accent rules almost transparent: Visualize a pitch contour over the word, just blipping up for one beat, which can be no more than third from the end. Then if the final syllable becomes long, this shoves the whole word farther back under the pitch contour, and the accent would move forward in the word. Or if it was a circumflex, it would have to become an acute because that little blip in pitch would have to move to the second beat of the vowel instead of the first. That long list of accent rules used to drive me crazy, but once I started visualizing it like this, it became almost automatic.

Like Annis said, bards in declaiming poetry undoubtedly exaggerated the change in pitch. Just remember, this WAS a spoken human language. If something sounds too artificial to you, it probably is.

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Post by Lucus Eques »

I strongly agree with Will on all points — grave indicates NOT to rise, and nothing else, and in particular that the Greek circumflex most closely resembles the regular accent of Spanish (for example in ¡José! — the final vowel has a Greek circumflex, a rise and fall on the same syllable).
Will knows what he's talking about, and I concur fully with him.

One exception: I find the interval of a fifth to be most natural. Will and I have conversed a bit on this subject via Skype. Although certainly some speakers may have done only a third, as Will does, most speakers of Ancient Greek, I believe, would have employed the fifth, as it has been written. It is a very natural interval for the voice to produce; Will himself has intervals of a fifth in his English, as do I and most speakers. I think of the greatly varied pitches that I heard in Italy, and I conclude readily that a perfect fifth makes perfect sense.
L. Amādeus Rāniērius · Λ. Θεόφιλος Ῥᾱνιήριος 🦂

SCORPIO·MARTIANVS

Tertius Robertus
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Post by Tertius Robertus »

oh thanks guys, this was very useful. i found the mentioned recordings and will try to copy them :)

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Post by chad »

hi, also worth pointing out that some of the advice given above doesn't agree with the authoritative book on greek prosody, the one by devine and stephens 1994. (when i say authoritative, i don't mean conclusive (because what is in grk?), i just mean that there isn't anything else yet which really treats the area thoroughly.)

e.g. a grave does indicate a rise (compared to the previous syllable) but is lower in pitch compared to the following (this account is cited and approved in probert's recent accenting textbook... for those interested in the history and principles of accenting probert just brought out a book in 2006 which is really good, explaining why some forms are recessive and others aren't).

the acute on the other hand indicates that the following syllable is on a lower pitch (and this is where the big pitch interval happens, not a massive pitch leap on the accented syllable itself which is usually assumed). pitch rises step by step to and including the acute syllable.

years ago i summarised devine and stephens in a pdf on this old out-of-date site, iliad.envy.nu which i was surprised to find still exists.

you could use will's method perfectly well, just worth knowing there are different views (not necessarily better), cheers, chad. :)

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Post by Tertius Robertus »

thanks chad i will tak a closer look into your summary

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Post by petardo »

I learnt greek with the greek modern pronunciation (I am not greek) and was quite surprised at university!! :shock:

a curiosity... when a short vowel is long followed by two consonant do you read a long vowel also? so, they should take a lot of time to speak these greek! on the other side, long vowels are supposed to be open so ¿a short vowel that has became long by position is also pronounced open?

by the way, why many people apply reconstructed pronunciation to everything from Homer to Lucian (who lived 10 centuries after) or even, I don't know, Anna Kommena? :roll:

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Post by modus.irrealis »

petardo wrote:a curiosity... when a short vowel is long followed by two consonant do you read a long vowel also?
No -- or at least, you shouldn't in the reconstructed pronunciation. Short vowels should always be pronounced short. (Personally, I think it's terminology here to blame, and it's very inaccurate in my opinion to say that a vowel is long by position.)
by the way, why many people apply reconstructed pronunciation to everything from Homer to Lucian (who lived 10 centuries after) or even, I don't know, Anna Kommena? :roll:
Because it's easier to use one pronunciation and it's very difficult to figure out what the pronunciation of Greek was at specific moments of times -- with Anna there, I wouldn't be too surprised if she still pronounced υ and οι as a French u instead of the "barbaric"/"provincial" modern pronunciation :D.

Although, not that I've looked all that closely into these things, but from asking around, it doesn't seem like any classrooms actually use a reconstructed pronunciation. They all seem to use an academic (or Erasmian) pronunciation which, whatever may have been it's original motivation, does not accurately reflect the pronunciation of Greek of any era.

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Post by annis »

modus.irrealis wrote:
petardo wrote:a curiosity... when a short vowel is long followed by two consonant do you read a long vowel also?
No -- or at least, you shouldn't in the reconstructed pronunciation. Short vowels should always be pronounced short. (Personally, I think it's terminology here to blame, and it's very inaccurate in my opinion to say that a vowel is long by position.)
Yes. I agitate for terminology that describes vowels as long or short but syllables as heavy or light. Some professional metricians do use this terminology.
William S. Annis — http://www.aoidoi.org/http://www.scholiastae.org/
τίς πατέρ' αἰνήσει εἰ μὴ κακοδαίμονες υἱοί;

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Post by mingshey »

annis wrote:
modus.irrealis wrote:
petardo wrote:a curiosity... when a short vowel is long followed by two consonant do you read a long vowel also?
No -- or at least, you shouldn't in the reconstructed pronunciation. Short vowels should always be pronounced short. (Personally, I think it's terminology here to blame, and it's very inaccurate in my opinion to say that a vowel is long by position.)
Yes. I agitate for terminology that describes vowels as long or short but syllables as heavy or light. Some professional metricians do use this terminology.

I do the short vowels short always, but when it is followed by two or more consonants I give the first consonant an extra time to ring out, thus making a long syllable, or it might be close to a little pause between the consonants. That's how I grok it.

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Post by Gonzalo »

I do something similar to what Minghsey says, but I give more emphasis in the tonic syllable (where the accent is located). I don´t know if Mingshey gives more emphasis in that syllable or not. Might he illustrate us?

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Post by mingshey »

Gonzalo wrote:I do something similar to what Minghsey says, but I give more emphasis in the tonic syllable (where the accent is located). I don´t know if Mingshey gives more emphasis in that syllable or not. Might he illustrate us?
I try not to give stress at the accented syllables. I raise the tone as William describes it: grave->normal pitch(no extra pitch), accute-> high or rising, circumflex-> rise and fall as if the syllable is a combination of two short syllables ; one with an accute followed by an accent-less one. In a poetry it is combined with the feet to give a sense of singing.

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Post by Gonzalo »

Ok. I do what I feel it´s right but I think that you know a lot of Greek Language (more than me, I want to say). Anyway, it´s obvious that when I read aloud prose (v. gr. speeches) I try not to seem a singer... but a Statesman. :P

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Post by petardo »

curious to see how the historic problem of barbaric/classic Greek in Greece has always been related to grammar, vocabulary and the like, NOT pronunciation. I don't know of a greek writer saying "we are not pronouncing our language in a proper way" even the most clean (or kathareusa) type of Greek defender.

seems to be our problem, not theirs :wink:

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