I’ve been studying Greek for months now, and am reading the Iliad currently. The one thing I have absolutely no idea about is those pesky accents. How am I supposed to pronounce them, and, more importantly, how to know which accents to use and where to put them while writing? The whole thing baffles me.
Where can I go through a non-dense and user-friendly guide to Ancient Greek accentuation? Reading is fine without them but apparently it’s vital for communicating/composition in Greek.
I am sure this must have been debated here at length but I thought the video referred to was misleading. I only watched the first video but it referred to “stress accents” and not “pitch accents”. I make no great claims for my greek pronunciation but I didnt like what I heard. Much better to read Probert if you want to know about the theory. Beginners surely have more important things to worry about?
Skimming through the video, I would say that it pretty much covers what beginners need to know about the rules of Greek accents (as written) and no more. Most textbooks will say about the same thing with more or less clarity.
As to what you heard in the stress accents, it is rather unusual for one person to like another person’s Ancient Greek pronunciation. Many people have studied the question in some depth and come to the conclusion that learning Greek words with stress accents, as in the video, is by far the most practical approach.
I’m not sure how much of Probert would be useful theory for language learners trying either to learn vocabulary or to get a sense of how the Ancient Greek pitch accent worked for its speakers. The book looks like it’s mainly concerned with the historical reasons that the persistent accent on certain words occurs where it does. For the general theory of the pitch accent, the standard book would be Devine and Stephens. You could read D&S and try to reproduce the pitch accent described there; in the best case, it would come out something like the recordings of Avery Andrews. http://members.iinet.net.au/~ada/AveryAndrews/Homer/
Or you could ignore the theory and try to learn a pitch accent by listening to recordings that give Ancient Greek with a convincing pitch accent. The problem is a shortage of good models. Probably the extensive set of recordings that comes closest to my sense of how the pitch accent worked is John Simon’s New Testament, at http://www.helding.net/greeklatinaudio/greek/.
You didnt read my post carefully enough. Its not what I heard in the video that causes me to comment it is what is said .
The video says that accents indicate “where to stress a word”. Contrast this with Probert 7. “The accent of ancient Greek was a pitch accent”.
I know that everyone has different ideas about how to pronounce Greek so i am not commenting on what I heard in terms of pronunciation.
I’m not sure how much of Probert would be useful theory for language learners trying either to learn vocabulary or to get a sense of how the Ancient Greek pitch accent worked for its speakers.
Probert is precisely aimed at language learners. She explicitly says she is not writing a reference work (she refers readers who want that to Chandler) but an introductory work.
The book looks like it’s mainly concerned with the historical reasons that the persistent accent on certain words occurs where it does.
Introducing a sentence with “The book looks like” indicates to me that you have not read it and are therefore perhaps not best placed to judge. A more informed review can be found here http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2004/2004-04-10.html.
I think Probert might be a little tough for the original poster who said " The one thing I have absolutely no idea about is those pesky accents." But I think poster here deserve clear guidance and not the sort of thing in the video.
I have the impression from my short time on this forum that many learners wish to rush and learn everything very quickly instead of taking time to allow things to fall in place. My advice to a beginner is that there are many more important things to worry about than accents in the early days.
What exactly is your problem with the video? The advice to realize the accent as a stress accent? The implicit assertion that the historical accent was a stress accent (which was true from the second century on, and thus not even wrong coming from an institute of Biblical Greek)? I think the video is clear guidance, as far as is practical in a work of its type, and reasonable advice, even though it is not the approach that I chose to follow.
It’s not clear to me what is your recommended way not to worry about accents in the early days. Would you have beginning students accentuate Greek as if it were Latin?
The poetry and meter of the language is entirely based on vowel quantity, not the pitch accent – despite its vocal prominence. The pitch accent follows a number of regular rules, but is irregular enough that it has to be learned independently for many words. The pitch is rarely necessary to distinguish meaning. Some dialects do not even observe it. While vowel quantity should be observed from day one, pitch can and should be neglected for beginning language learners. It is in fact impossible to achieve fluent pitch without years of effort.
The fact that without any qualification in a video designed for beginners the speaker incorrectly asserted that accents are markers of “where to stress a word”. I think I already answered this question.
The original poster was concerned about accents in Homer. I am not sure that it is worth getting involved in the debate about when pitch accents became stress accents.
It’s not clear to me what is your recommended way not to worry about accents in the early days. Would you have beginning students accentuate Greek as if it were Latin?
My recommendation is to learn the accent as part of the word when learning vocabulary but not to get too obsessed by exactly how they work. Learning vocabulary and how to conjugate and decline and some basic syntax are more important objectives than how exactly accents work.
Later on I would suggest a more detailed study of accents together with singing lessons so that the sung portions of Tragedy can be accurately performed.
