In older textbooks, some say eta should be pronounced “ee” as in “meet”, others “ey” as in “whey” (why they bring Little Miss Tuffet into this I have no idea. I assume it’s the same “ey” as in “they” or “ay” in “way”). Still others say epsilon and eta equate to short and long Latin “e”.
I picked up a smattering of Modern Greek years ago and of course there epsilon is pronounced as “e” in “bell” while ita is pronounced as “ee” in “meet” (‘but kept short’).
My problem as a beginner trying to decide how to pronounce Ancient Greek is the lack of a fixed model. I have 2 questions:
Do modern (academic) Greeks pronounce Ancient Greek eta as “ee” as in “meet”?
When did the global academic community switch from earlier pronunciations to the “hairy” version of eta?
When did the global academic community switch from earlier pronunciations to the “hairy” version of eta?
I’m not sure how global this is. How ancient Greek got pronounced differed in different places. The Erasmian pronunciation tried to come to terms with the existence of 7 vowels and diphthongs which are pronounced identically in Modern Greek — ι (iota) — but then that Erasmian pronunciation went through the Great Vowel Shift in English, bringing eta back into the ‘ee’ camp among English scholars. In the last century the Erasmian was reasserted in English speaking countries.
The Erasmian pronunciation remains the most common by far in non-modern-Greek scholarly circles. A few use a reconstructed pronunciation described in Allen’s Vox Graeca, and a few other more technical works.
Greek pronunciation remains a hotly debated subject. There’s a good overview of the best evidence for the ancient pronunciation at Ancient Greek Phonology.
To answer your question about Greeks, including academic ones, they pronounce ancient Greek with the modern Greek pronunciation. Note that when they want to demonstrate how the sound shifted or how ancient Greek possibly to probably sounded they go for a sound between /i/ and /e/ really, something close to the French example you gave (the ones I’ve heard and myself at least ).
Why don’t make a consensus and speak it like Modern Greek does? You won’t waste your time anymore disgussing things that are not worth mentioning beyond some few pages in grammar books. Really, so would you speak a language that is still vivid and not only in books covered by dust. (My note on Modern Greek is only a suggestion)
Both books are fairly technical. I am less certain about Vox Latina, but Vox Graeca remains the standard text on the subject of how Attic Greek was pronounced. I can’t say it belongs in everyone’s library, except for people deeply interested in the subject or intending to adopt the reconstructed pronunciation. L.R. Palmer’s The Greek Language and The Latin Language both discuss the ancient phonologies of these languages, but have much other interesting lingustic and literary material, and might be better for the general reader.
again the choice is yours but i advise using the modern pronounciation. This pronounciation is what (like it or not) the language which we learn here has become. Its just evolved and changed but it’s still the same language. Learning with the modern pronounciation will let you also understand parts of spoken modern greek, particularly if you go on to learn MG. Also from a learning point of view, knowing and speaking modern greek makes it alot easier to actually ‘read’ ancient greek and not get into the habit of just ‘translating’. After doing a year of ancient greek (mainly homeric), i can read the koine bible just as i would a bible in english.
Completely anachronistically I use the reconstructed pronunciation for all Greek I read. My motivation for using that is because my main interest is in classical and pre-classical verse. Poetry is fundamentally a phonetic art, and I expect the verse I’m reading to scan correctly, something only the reconstructed pronunciation offers. If I were to suddenly get interested in late Byzantine or Modern Greek verse I’d adjust as appropriate.
One might worry about the phonetic effects of prose, but it’s far down the list of things that make prose authors interesting. I use the reconstructed pronunciation always because I’ve better things to worry about that mastering a half-dozen pronunciation schemes.
This would be a really bad idea, since all kinds of morphological phenomena in the classical language make no sense at all if you pronounce things the modern way. Let’s face it, the language has changed. We don’t (well, I don’t) pronounce Latin as Italian either. For the same reason. Get over it. Modern Greek and Italian are languages in their own right, with literatures in their own right as well.
The interesting thing (to me at least) is that all three options are historically valid at some point (as long as the “whey” versions is meant to, as I think it is, the French é, so without the glide at the end of the English sound), since η must have become a more close vowel before it became short, else it would have merged with ε instead of ι. In fact, that’s the value for η reconstructed for the Koine period by Randall Buth here.
Well, since no one speaks ancient greek, I would advise you to learn the Erasmian accent so you will not have any problems with orthography. I think ä is more adequate than anything else. There is a spurious “ει” as well, it sounds as a german “e”, but I don’t know if erasmians pronounce it, because I use the modern greek accent.
However shall you ever wish to learn modern greek as well, you might face some difficulties.
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