https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcIvDUehsfE
I’m not familiar with the “map” of extant modern ways of reading Ancient Greek, so would be grateful for a simple characteristic of this one vis-à-vis (some) others.
Whether this reading is representative of any particular tradition I can’t say. However, there is another reading here http://juliustomin.org/apologyingreek.html, so you can compare the two aural versions for yourself. There are more readings from this reader (Julius Tomin, as referenced here http://discourse.textkit.com/t/plan-of-action/67/1).
This is a mix of Modern and the scientifc/Erasmian/recovered pronunciation of Ancient Greek. Some of the things to notice: 1) ει and η are iotacized [Modern] 2) φ,θ,χ as fricatives rather than aspirates [Modern/Erasmian], 3) stress accent rather than pitch [more Erasmian than Modern because he screws up sometimes], 4) vowel length is correct [Erasmian, but he makes vowels long on heavy syllables with short vowels, which is incorrect], 5) ᾳ,ῃ,ῳ as α,η,ω [Modern/Erasmian-sometimes].
Overall, I love it, except for the iotacism. Allen in Vox Graeca actually recommends 2,3,5 as the best realistic choice for English speakers.
Thanks a lot, Joel! One thing I missed is why “accent rather than pitch” is “more Erasmian than Modern.” Also, by “heavy syllables”, did you mean the stressed ones? Also, does not Allen say something about iotacizing to the effect that it, actually, emerged early (which would mean that the ancients were already reading Plato this way)? Or this might be my memory glitch…
One thing I missed is why “accent rather than pitch” is “more Erasmian than Modern.”
Don’t cut off my sentence and you’ll have your answer. “More Erasmian than Modern because he screws up sometimes”. A modern Greek never screws up the stress accent.
Also, by “heavy syllables”, did you mean the stressed ones?
Heavy syllables in poetry. That includes both syllables with long vowels and syllables with short vowels that are followed by two consonants. He mistakenly lengthens the short vowel in the later cases.
Also, does not Allen say something about iotacizing to the effect that it, actually, emerged early (which would mean that the ancients were already reading Plato this way)
You are probably thinking of Horrocks, who follows Teodorsson on this. Allen disagreed with Teodorsson. See Ruijgh’s 1978 review of Teodorsson in Mnemosyne. (French).
Thanks again! Sorry for being slow. I did not realize that Erasmian implies pitch, not stress accent; never heard this implemented in the academia. Will try to catch where this reader replaces stress by pitch…
“I did not realize that Erasmian implies pitch, not stress accent”
Who said that? I said this reader uses stress which is Erasmian and Modern. But more Erasmian because he screws up where he places the stress.
But how is misplacing the stress “more Erasmian” than placing it correctly?
To quote myself again:
“More Erasmian than Modern because he screws up sometimes”. A modern Greek never screws up the stress accent.
“A modern Greek never screws up the stress accent.”–I got that. But I thought you mean that Erasmian, on the other hand, (sometimes) does. So my question is how precisely Erasmian screws up the stress accent.
No, “Erasmian” doesn’t screw up the stress accent. But non-native speakers do. If you didn’t learn Greek in infancy, you put stress on the wrong syllable every now and then. This reader, if you listen, sometimes put stress on long vowels that don’t have the accent.
Got it. Thanks!
One of the things I learned during my time at the TLG is that learnèd Byzantine Greek systematically misaccentuates words, accenting syllables where neither Ancient nor Modern Greek would put them. There have been instances of accent shift between Ancient and Modern Greek—and indeed between dialects of Ancient Greek, notably the -της agentive suffix; but the pattern in Byzantine Greek is endemic.
(It’s also one of the things I worry about, having left the TLG: that noone will object any more to these misaccentuations being corrected in proofreading, prior to posting new texts online.)
I don’t know that anyone’s ever remarked on this tendency, let alone accounted for it. It’s too frequent to be mere scribal error or misreading. It includes Church Fathers in Migne, but it also includes recent scholarly editions. I can only conclude it’s some sort of affectation of the time.
It’s actually quite difficult as a native American English speaker not to place stress on long vowels. This was pointed out to me by several Korean students I had when teaching beginning Greek in seminary – up until that time I had no idea I was doing it. The non-Korean American students didn’t even notice… I then worked hard at not doing that when reading Greek.
By also includes recent scholarly editions are you saying that modern Greeks still make the same errors? I’d be interested in hearing more about any patterns you see here. Have you ever read Allen’s theory of a secondary Greek accent?
It includes Church Fathers in Migne
I would be grateful for some examples of this. My first training in Greek was in Byzantine one, then I had some Modern Greek (taught by a native speaker) and did not catch any discrepancies in accentuation vis-à-vis Byzantine. Wish I could learn what I missed. Needless to say, I was not taught to pronounce long vowels as long.
Shifting patterns in the accent of words is not one of the standard criteria that are used to differentiate Greek dialects, cf.
http://www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/modern_greek/studies/dialects/thema_a_1_1en/index.html
That being said however, there is an obvious difference between Ancient and Modern Greek in that the accent doesn’t move forward for the genitive forms of nouns, such as; άθρωπος - άνθρωπου.
By > also includes recent scholarly editions > are you saying that modern Greeks still make the same errors?
No, on the contrary: these are misaccentuations that make no sense in either Ancient or Modern Greek. They are what the scribes have written, and I’m saying that recent editions are respecting what the scribes have written: we can’t just blame these on Migne’s shoddiness. (Nor indeed are they restricted to church fathers.)
I’d be interested in hearing more about any patterns you see here. Have you ever read Allen’s theory of a secondary Greek accent?
Alas, no patterns. Not familiar with Allen’s theory, but I doubt that anything Allen says would be relevant here: this is a scribal pattern that postdates the shift to stress accent, and is not to be explained via Modern Greek, so I do think it’s just an affectation: fantasy morphology, just like the Hiberno-Latin fantasy forms of the same time were.
Here’s some examples I’ve noted down in my time; citation forms and not the actual forms, but you should be able to find these on the TLG.
- ἀβλάβης
Ἀβύδοθι
ἀβύσσος
ἄγαθος
ἁγαπή
ἀγάπητος
ἀγγελός
ἄγγειον
ἀγέλαιος
ἀγεννητός
ἀγενώρ
ἄγητος
ἁγιός
ἁγκαλή
ἄγκων
ἄγμος
ἀγνώσια
ἀγόρα
ἀγοράνομος
ἀγοράστης
ἀγορήτης
ἀγραυλός
ἄγρος
ἀγρύπνια
ἀγρωστίς
ἀγυρτής
ἀγχινοῦς
ἄγχου
ἄγωγος
ἀγώνια
Forms like ἀγαπή are real head-scratchers, so I had noted some examples down when I had access to the TLG; it’s there in Origen, Leontius of Neapolis, Basil of Caesaria, Theodore Studites, and Theodore of Mopsuesta, among others. Many of them are Migne editions, but not all.
Origen (2042.034): ὁ δὲ καρπὸς τοῦ πνεύματός ἐστιν ἀγαπή, χαρά, εἰρήνη… (published 1908)
Origen (2032.044): τὸ δὲ ποιῆσαι τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἡ ἀγαπὴ προστάσσει (published 1883)
Leontius of Neapolis (2913.001): διὰ τὸ πληθυνθῆναι τὴν ἀνομίαν ψυγήσεται ἡ ἀγαπὴ τῶν πολλῶν (published 1974)
Theodore of Mopsuesta (4135.025): ἔτι γὰρ τολμῶ τῆς ὑμετέρας ἀγαπῆς καταθαρρεῖν (published 1966)
Basil of Caesarea (2040.048): ἐν αἷς πᾶσα ἀλήθεια τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ ἀγαπῆς κατορθοῦται (Migne)
Theodore Studites (2714.009): καὶ πάντα δεύτερα ἡγούμενοι τῆς τοῦ Θεοῦ ἀγαπῆς. (published 1891)
Scholia on Oppian (5032.002): Φιλότητος ἔρωτι· τῇ τῆς φιλίας ἀγαπῇ. (published 1849)
The reflex reaction to these will be to dismiss them as scribal nonsense, and to dismiss 19th century editors for tolerating them. But Byzantine scribal practice is still a fact about the transmission of Greek; and Festugière/Rydén’s edition of Leontius of Neapolis (a work significant in that it is one of the few attestations of anything like the vernacular from the 7th century) was 20th century editorial competence incarnate.
Interesting. I do notice that the ἁγαπή-forms in TLG always show up before a vowel or unvoiced/fricative plosives (θ,χ,π,τ,κ). Never before δέ, which would normally be frequent. But with <30 examples, you’d have to investigate other words as well
In your list, 14/30 fall on the syllable that Allen would predict for stress (compared to 10/30 by random chance). That’s not much of a signal, unfortunately.
In fact, one dialectal shibboleth is that Modern Cretan accents ἄνθρωποι as αθρώποι. The romantic hypothesis has been advanced that this is an inheritance from Doric; the much more plausible account is that this is mere analogy from ἀνθρώπους.