Hello etcetera,
Thank you very much for your response.
Yes, I have been aware about the ‘heat treatment’ this subject is usually subject to. I noticed that the ‘heating’ cycle is in most cases quite steady and carefully/anxiously managed by the contributors, as expected. The cooling cycle however, varies: sometimes, it is let go by itself, and the process will end without any apparent intervention and without any obvious result; some other times, it is stopped abruptly.
My impression is that the real problem is not that we do not have audio samples at hand; on the contrary, we have plenty… It is the need of the common students (self-taught ones, mostly) to get confident that the pronunciation system they use is acceptable and does not need to be later replaced by some other system which proves to be more appropriate). Every beginner student, I believe, is at least surprised, if not astonished, to learn that there is no authority to confirm universally that the appropriate pronunciation pattern for Ancient Greek is ‘this’ or ‘that’.
Scholars are, naturally, very rigorous in their approach; they offer, with solid evidence, historically reconstructed phonetic systems for each dialect/generation of Greek language. And they are perfectly right!.. However, such systems cannot satisfy those who want to extend their interest beyond a certain generation of Ancient Greek. I cannot imagine any student reading koine using a certain phonetic system at some point, and then easily shift to another system when reading attic - let alone Homer, Herodotus etc. But who does really care? No person of the old times is here now to claim that the way I pronounce η, say, or οι/ει/ω/ο/παρρεσ…/ etc. is not correct.
I believe the historically reconstructed systems are not perfect models for pronunciation of Ancient Greek (in general) today. One which can be applied to all generations of Ancient Greek - from Homeric to Byzantine - and sounds as ‘Greek’ as possible would be ideal and indeed practical and widely accepted, probably. It is not necessary to have ‘dedicated’ systems for English/German/French, etc. native speakers. Such systems will always, I believe, be rejected by any Greek today. Rather, the specific sounds of today’s Greek (which are just a few) should be imitated as closely as possible.
As for myself, I proceed this way:
- Learn and imitate the Modern Greek sounds and apply them to any generation of Ancient Greek, to the extent possible.
- Where this is not possible/acceptable, find the right alternative and amend the system (see Erasmus, or whatever system that fits).
I am ready to prepare a sample of reading aloud (the reading/recording itself has been done already), in a format of a mini-webpage, where three readers are supposed to be involved (actually, my own recording only is available at this time…), for this text: NT 1John 1:1-4, in three versions: (1) word by word, (2) small groups of words, and (3) the whole passage. But I am not sure whether this is really useful to others; I had done it anyway for my own use…
Recording while reading aloud is a very useful instrument, I believe: it prompts the performer be more rigorous and consistent. It is like the difference between reading a book in a foreign language on the one hand, and translating it in writing on the other. In the first case, when new words/phrases are encountered the tendency is to guess the meaning from the context; in the second, the translator cannot afford this ‘luxury’, but needs to consult dictionaries, etc. from time to time.
I think therefore that a useful audio database should contain a collection of parallel recordings (samples, rather than extensive texts) by different contributors, of the same text at a time.
