Help!The Accents

Jasper · Post by **Jasper** » Thu Apr 07, 2005 5:20 am

hello everyone,i'm just a very very beginner.
where can i get something about how to pronounce the accents ' `and^?and some references about listening?
Thank you very much!

Evyn · Post by **Evyn** » Thu Apr 07, 2005 6:17 am

Take a look at the following site.

http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris ... ammar.html

Timotheus · Post by **Timotheus** » Fri Apr 08, 2005 4:15 am

Take a look at the following site.

http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris ... ammar.html

thanks for the link. I found it once before but couln't remember where to find it

Evyn · Post by **Evyn** » Fri Apr 08, 2005 6:04 am

You're welcome!

psilord · Post by **psilord** » Sat Apr 09, 2005 7:00 am

I'd like to recommend that link for the faq.

ThomasGR · Post by **ThomasGR** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 9:01 pm

Never bother with these signs, a simple English stress would be fine. You'll never be able to reproduce them correctly, since no one is there to teach you how to do this. I will bet a fortune that even Harris has plenty of theories, but nothing practical so far

chad · Post by **chad** » Sun Apr 17, 2005 12:57 am

hi thomas, i disagree. we may never master ancient greek completely, why not just read translations? because for some reason we're trying to imagine these things in the original. to try to do this in some areas (like appreciating the grammar) but not in other areas (like the music of the language, which is one of the most noted aspects of ancient greek compared to most other languages) doesn't make sense to me

ThomasGR · Post by **ThomasGR** » Sun Apr 17, 2005 9:39 pm

My opinion is that the melody of a language you can get only by listening and immitating a native speaker, and one will never get a grasp just by studying books. Since there is noway one can listen to an ancient Greek, all the rest is plain academic studies and guesses how it could sounded. Aside from this, the beauty of a langauage consists more through the vocabulary and syntax, than the rest. If one keeps the rhythm of a poem, it's more than enough.

chad · Post by **chad** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 4:52 am

hi thomas, just because vivaldi is dead and we can't listen to orchestras from his time doesn't mean that his music is lost. people can write music and later people can recreate it. with greek the evidence is there, it's just more patchy.

if somebody said don't try to recreate vivaldi, just play every note on a c, what would a musician say? that's how i feel when people say don't try to recreate the most noted distinction of ancient greek. if i wanted to pronounce greek accents as a stress i'd just learn modern greek which i have no desire to do at the moment.

Emma_85 · Post by **Emma_85** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 8:58 am

I think you're right Chad, we can try and recreate the correct pronounciation of ancient Greek so that we can then appreciate the language's beauty. But there are other reasons to learn ancient Greek other than to apprecitate the beauty of its sound. For many others the main motivation is probably another and so it's fine to just stress the accents knowing that it would have sounded different in the original. If you want to go to the bother of trying to learn how to recreate the original sound of the language no one will stop you, it's good that some people try, but I don't think everyone need spend their time focusing on pronounciation. So I agree with Thomas that it's more than enough to just get the gist of the rhythm (for most people), but I don't agree with him that trying to work out the correct pronounciation is a wholly fruitless task.
For the beginner at least the main focus should be on vocab and grammar and so I think Thomas' advice wasn't a bad one to just stress the accents.

Anyway, good luck with your studies Jasper!