zeta pronounce

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annis
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Post by annis »

Here's a modern Greek talking about differences between classical period and Modern pronunciation - The Greek Alphabet. He has excellent descriptions of the evidence for the ancient pronunciations.
William S. Annis — http://www.aoidoi.org/http://www.scholiastae.org/
τίς πατέρ' αἰνήσει εἰ μὴ κακοδαίμονες υἱοί;

chad
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Post by chad »

Thanks for the link Will, that's an excellent article, I haven't seen it before. I've just read this thread now and I agree with Will 100% :)

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Post by cweb255 »

ThomasGR wrote:Well, this is exactly the way how Greeks pronounce "z", and it does not sound like "dz" or "zd".

Originally, Latin didn't have "z" in its alphabet and was later adopted from the Greek one, sometimes in the second or first century BC, together with K, X and Y, which were used only for words loaned from Greek.
Actually Latin has a 'z' in it's earliest alphabet, as well as a K, but it was dropped and then later adopted again from Greek.

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Post by 1%homeless »

Here's a modern Greek talking...
Macedonia doesn't count! :lol: He says he is born in Macedonia. :wink: I've read this before. This is where I was first introduced to issues of philology in Greece and realized that I was a barbarian ...and that most of Europe agree more with each other (in terms of Greek philology) than with Greece for some reason.

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Post by yadfothgildloc »

So, is eta pronouced (xsampa) /e/ or /E:/? I was taught /e/ (and that it should be differentiated from epsilon-iota (/Ei/), but that page says it's a long epsilon.

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Post by annis »

yadfothgildloc wrote:So, is eta pronouced (xsampa) /e/ or /E:/? I was taught /e/ (and that it should be differentiated from epsilon-iota (/Ei/), but that page says it's a long epsilon.
Yay, XSAMPA!

epsilon: /e/
epsilon iota: /ej/ or /e:/ depending on origin; merged to /e:/ BC.v.
eta: /E:/
omicron: /o/
omega: /O:/

I've mostly corrected by O series, but I still tend to epsilon /E/, eta /e:/ when I'm not paying close attention.
William S. Annis — http://www.aoidoi.org/http://www.scholiastae.org/
τίς πατέρ' αἰνήσει εἰ μὴ κακοδαίμονες υἱοί;

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Post by ThomasGR »

http://www.cogsci.indiana.edu/farg/harr ... etapro.htm

The above link that is mentioned says that after the fourth century BC zeta is pronounce as “z”.
However, at some time in the 4th century BCE the change to the modern Greek pronunciation of z as [z] was already taking place. Aristotle (Metaphysics, 993a) writes that whereas some people would analyze z into s+d, others consider it as a separate sound which does not consist of already recognized elements. At the same time there starts to be some confusion between z and s in Greek inscriptions (e.g., anabazmous instead of anabasmous, 329 BCE).
Further evidence for a later continuous (fricative) pronunciation of z ([z]) comes from ancient Greek grammarians (e.g., Dionysius Thrax), who divide consonants into two primary categories: the aphona (beta, gamma, delta, kappa, pi, tau, theta, phi, and chi), and the hemiphona (zeta, ksi, psi, lambda, mu, nu, rho, sigma). In Aristotle's Poetics (1456b) the aphona are described as "having contact" (= "meta prosboles"), but not being pronounceable without a vowel. In modern parlance we would say that aphona are the plosives, pronounced instantaneously, while hemiphona (of which zeta is a member) are fricatives, and those other consonants that can be pronounced continuously, without the need for a following vowel. This agrees with a pronunciation of z as [z].

Ancient Persian names that contain the consonants [zd] are transliterated in Greek through z. For example, in Plato we have Oromazes (Ωρομάζης) for Persian Auramazda; and in Xenophon we find Artaozos (Αρτάοζος; in Herodotus: Artavazos) for Artavazda. The Hebrew name Ašdod, we find it in Herodotus as Azotos (Άζωτος).
Ancient Greeks were never keen to render the sounds of foreign words correctly, but rather to improve them and make more easier for a Greek to pronounce, in other words to “hellenise”. Therefore this evidence does not count. According to that tradition we have
Phraortes for (Persian) Kshatrita (not even close),
Cyaxares for Uwakshatra (!),
Astyages for Ishtumegu (!),
Cyrus for Kurush,
Cambyses for Kambujiya,
Darius for Darayavahush,
Xerxes for Xshayarsha,
Artaxerxes for Artaxshassa
Arses for Arsha
Hystaspis for Vishtaspa (!).
For Xerxes we have in the Bible Ahasuerus (in the Greek transcription). Also to mention here Jesus for Joshuah, Maria for Myriam and all the biblical names.

Getting back to our “evidence”, the Hebrew word Ašdod to a Greek sounded to much barbaric, and has to be improved to Azotos (zeta as “z”!). This tradition is followed even today, where Shakespeare becomes Sekspirios (used till the 19th century, though today they pronounce it in the English way) and Hegel becomes Egelios.

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Post by mingshey »

ThomasGR wrote: Ancient Greeks were never keen to render the sounds of foreign words correctly, but rather to improve them and make more easier for a Greek to pronounce, in other words to “hellenise”. Therefore this evidence does not count. According to that tradition we have
Phraortes for (Persian) Kshatrita (not even close),
Cyaxares for Uwakshatra (!),
Astyages for Ishtumegu (!),
Cyrus for Kurush,
Cambyses for Kambujiya,
Darius for Darayavahush,
Xerxes for Xshayarsha,
Artaxerxes for Artaxshassa
Arses for Arsha
Hystaspis for Vishtaspa (!).

...
I was always curious when I saw the name Cyrus appears everywhere in Greek primers, what Persian name was like that, that is, sounded like Greek. Now I see.

In your sense of Greek, can you shed me a light how the name of master Zhuangtsu should be transliterated in Greek, especially ancient?

(I guess modern Greek could embrace the sounds like dz or ts, though.)

ThomasGR
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Post by ThomasGR »

In your sense of Greek, can you shed me a light how the name of master Zhuangtsu should be transliterated in Greek, especially ancient?
It depends very much on the person who hears this word for the first time and how he is able to render the sounds, if he was a young person or an older one (who perhaps is a little deaf, btw). If we follow the example “Astyages for Ishtumegu”, it could sound like Zyages, or another example is (written in Greek) Ζυάγχης (almost Zuangkhes), or Zuanses, or even place an eta before and make it Ezyges. One thing we may be sure, it has to end in –es or –os and must not have too many consonants followed one the other. We have also the case of the Chinese name Kong Tzu that is rendered as Confucius. This continues in the Latin tradition where we have Avicenna, for (the Persian name) Abu Ali Husain ebn Abdallah Ebn-e Sina. It does not necessarily need to sound close to the original name :)

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Post by chad »

hi thomas, thanks for the link :)
http://www.cogsci.indiana.edu/farg/harr ... etapro.htm

The above link that is mentioned says that after the fourth century BC zeta is pronounce as “z”.
the last paragraph is a bit weird though: it implies that dionysius thrax says that zeta is a fricative (because he called it a hemiphonon or something), but in the 2nd paragraph it quotes dionysius thrax saying that zeta is sigma + delta. back to the last paragraph, the author's inference that dionysius thrax said that zeta is a fricative because:

he called it a hemiphonon, and
aristotle says that an aphonon can't be pronounced without a vowel,

doesn't follow, at least at a first glance. i'll still keep my pronunciation of zeta as z + d (sigma is z before b g d m), which i pronounce as 1 sound, not 2, just like other weird combinations e.g. pi + tau as 1 sound, because that's how the greeks syllabified them (rather than splitting them over syllables). cheers :)

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Post by yadfothgildloc »

X-SAMPA rocks.

The pronounciations of Epsilon and Eta are reverse what I was taught? weird.

I was taught omicron and Omega right though.

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Post by Adelheid »

I can't figure out what that xsampa pronucniation is. But I am curious now about the pronunciation of the eta and the epsilon, since it appears to be contrary to what you expected.
Can you give an example of that pronunciation of /E:/ ena /e/, and /e:/? I've searched the net, but can't find anything useful yet.

Regards,
Adelheid

ThomasGR
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Post by ThomasGR »

Neither can I figure out waht x-sampa is, but about the rest you should listen to the file http://www.rhapsodes.fll.vt.edu/Greek.htm to get the answer. It's the worst pronunciation one can imagine. Homer will really turn upside down in his grave. Epsilon is pronounced as a long "i" eta is a prolonged "e", and Epsilon iota (ει) becomes a very long "i" folowwed by another (long) "i". "au" (αυ) is "a" followed by a very long "u" that is even stressed, though it should'nt be stressed and should be a very short. And hows zeta pronounced? It's the most ugly sound you can imagine. It's a "z" followed by a stressed "D", like trying to say "zDDDDe". Please for God's sake, do not use this sound!!!!!!! :)

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Post by Adelheid »

I understand what xsampa is, just can't figure out the exactt pronunciation. Still curious about that epsilon and eta!

Adelheid

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Post by ThomasGR »

Well, I do not and still remain in complete darkness.
So, what's a x-sampa? An American jargon slogan?

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Post by annis »

XSAMPA is an extension to SAMPA, a way to code the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), which uses many special characters, in plain ASCII.

It is a convenient way to talk more precisely about phonetics when not everyone in the conversation has a full UNICODE font.
William S. Annis — http://www.aoidoi.org/http://www.scholiastae.org/
τίς πατέρ' αἰνήσει εἰ μὴ κακοδαίμονες υἱοί;

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Post by ThomasGR »

I see. Thanks for the information.

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Post by yadfothgildloc »

check out the wikipedia entry on X-SAMPA also. it's pretty useful as a reference.

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