ancient greek pronunciation

[smmpm]

I have a question: how do we know the way ancient Greek was pronounced? there weren`t any tape recorders back in those days

[ludwiggeoge]

Maybe it's impossible.

[annis]

Well, it's true there were no tape recorders, but we do have a lot of comparative material to work with. For example, how the Romans spelled Greek words.<br /><br />Also, the Greeks themselves wrote manuals to help barbarians learn how to correctly speak the language, too, which is how we know that Greek accents are pitch accents.<br /><br />I have a few links to pages about this subject at http://www.aoidoi.org/links.php.

[Miltiades]

An other thing we can consider is the words that represent animal sounds.
The voice of an animal cannot change through the centuries (which happens with human language) so they can give us valuable and secure information, For example in an late classical text someone describes the way someone else talks. He says that he talks like a sheep " bh=, bh="
(bee, bee). Judging fromthis we can conclude that the greek letter β
was pronunced as b (v in modern greek), and the letter η was pronunced as ee(i in modern greek.

[chad]

hi miltiades, i'd disagree that eta has an "ee" sound, that's iota. cheers, chad.

[Miltiades]

I'm sure that η had an ee sound. Afterall i've studied ancient greek and linguistics, but anyway what makes u say that it was iota that had that ee sound?

[Miltiades]

what i just thought is that maybe we're both trying to say the same thing.
i use e as it is sounds in word...lets say "festival"....

[chad]

oh ok, so when you say "ee" you mean a long version of the "e" in festival? i agree, you're right, that's the sound of eta, like "air", "hair", &c.

it's just the "ee" sound in all english words i can think of has a different sound, with the mouth more closed, the tongue raised and the pronunciation closer to the front of the mouth. e.g.

bee, fee, knee, Lee, see, tee, &c.

i thought you were saying that eta has the vowel sound in these words...

cheers, chad.

[chad]

i just noticed that this random little thread has already got 320 views?!? someone appears to be unnecessarily concerned about our discussion of eta miltiades

[Miltiades]

LOL, LOL!!!!

I was sure it was a misunderstanding...The fact is that when describing the pronunciation of a word, i use the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet).

[Raya]

Hahaha!

Well, many are curious about the sound of ancient Greek - I suppose they found a different treat in here, but ah well.

[Miltiades]

What do you mean Raya?

[PeterD]

I have a few links to pages about this subject at http://www.aoidoi.org/links.php.

I listened to the reconstructed pronunciation. I dare say, Annis, if the Ancient Greeks spoke like that, they would probably have decided not to speak at all.

Have a great weekend.

[chad]

hi peter, did you listen to this recording? (it's plato's symposium). it's the only prose reconstructed recording on the net which seems quite accurate to me.

http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/agp/Symp_172f.ram

cheers, chad.

[PeterD]

Hi Chad,

Yes, I have heard it. Honestly, Chad, I sincerely think it's awful. The guy in the recording sounds like he's... I better not say it.

Cheers to you, friend

[chad]

hi peter, i find it helpful listening to these reconstructed pronunciations, whether or not i actually like the sound of the person's voice. but i agree with you, it can be offputting... cheers, chad.

[1%homeless]

Yes, I have heard it. Honestly, Chad, I sincerely think it's awful.

Really? I thought this was the best rendition I've ever encountered. If you found any better rendition online, please share.

[Bert]

I listened to it and I could not find a whole lot 'offputting' about his voice.
I don't have the words so I could not read along, but I had the impression that there was not a whole lot of difference between the long and short vowels.
I listened to http://www.rhapsodoioralgreekandlatin.org/iliad1.htm
I found this maybe a little overdone but who am I to say.
I think that an ancient Greek listening to a modern opera would find it overdone.
I liked listening to it though because I could read along.
I could not really detect the consistent pattern of the hexameter though.
Maybe a bit more practice in reading myself.

Cheers (oops, that's Chad's line)
Greetings.
Bert.

[1%homeless]

Cheers (oops, that's Chad's line)

Heh heh heh.

I don't have the words so I could not read along

You can get the full text here:
http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/agp/

I found this maybe a little overdone but who am I to say.

I agree that Daitz is overly dramatic.

[chad]

hi, i agree, i personally like the sounds of Stefan Hagel's clips... i find daitz's clips a little offputting because he bends his long vowels when aristoxenus says that (in song) they're held steady, but i still find it useful listening to his clips, because they're accurate in their structure and their phonemes, as far as i can tell.

so are hagel's clips too of course... he emailed me a computer-generated model of the pitch structure of the first few lines of the iliad... it's interesting, the way we both model the pitch of these lines is almost identical (except for the pitch emphasis in proper names), but he's developed a sophisticated computer-automated approach (which could probably model the whole iliad in a few seconds), while my approach is slow unsophisticated manual work...

cheers, chad.

[Thucydides]

Does anybody have Vox Graeca? What's that like?