Learning ancient-greek with modern-greek pronunciation?

Greek Learning Greek
1

I have just started learning ancient-greek and had a few lessons so far using the Erasmian pronunciation.

However, I just had a lesson with an ancient-greek teacher who is from Greece. She advised me to learn ancient-greek with a new-greek pronunciation, although she didn’t give many arguments.

What do people think? Are there any advantages? Disadvantages?

I do not speak modern greek and also have no real ambitions to learn it, -although I wouldn’t mind not sounding like a complete fool when visiting Greece one day and ordering some food. Any advice?

2

The problem with the Modern Greek pronunciation is, as you will soon find out, that so many phonemes sound like in tree. For example,

ι ει υ οι η ῃ

That means that it will be difficult to understand the meaning of many Ancient Greek words (not to speak of moods and tenses of verbs) by hearing their sounds as pronounced by a Modern Greek speaker. Of course, if you don’t intend to communicate in Ancient Greek ever, this will be of little or no concern to you.

3

I wonder if it doesn’t affect your silent reading as well. I had a lot of trouble distinguishing words with φ and π for about a year because I wasn’t very good at pronouncing them differently (I try to use the aspirated). I’d actually recommend the modern fricative pronunciation for θφχ for that reason (although I believe that even in modern times there have been regions of Greece that had an aspirated pronunciation for some of them).

So even if you read silently, and your brain is doing something related to aural processing behind the scenes, the modern Greek confusion could affect comprehension (and probably does). You can sort of live with it in the Koine because of the prepositions everywhere, but it strikes me as something that would make Attic much harder.

Also, what precisely is the list of conflated sounds? Starting with bedwere’s: ι ει υ οι η ῃ αι. I think that we need to add the non-graphically distinct doubtful vowels α/ι/υ, which were either long or short. Also α, ᾳ, ῳ, ω. ο and ω and ε and η. I have listened to a number of hours of modern Greek, but I’m not sure if I’m 100% correct on the above list.

4

Small correction: αι sounds actually [e]. See table

5

You will be able to easily understand the magnificent videos of Paul Nitz, who uses a slightly modified Modern Greek pronunciation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw89SOC8yjk

When I first started learning Greek, nothing like this was available. If you do decide to go with MG, use Paul early and often.

You won’t understand quite as well the magnificent audios of Bedwere, who uses a slightly modified Erasmian pronunciation.

https://archive.org/details/Esafx

When I first started learning Greek, nothing like this was available. If you decide to go with Erasmian, use Bedwere early and often.

I guess what I am saying is, you can’t go wrong either way.

6

Short: ε ο
Long/Short: α ι υ
Long: η ω

Dipthongs: αι ει οι υι ευ ου αυ ηυ
Special Dipthongs: ᾳ ῃ ῳ

Going by the bedwere’s table, modern Greek pronounces them:

a – ᾰ, ᾱ, ᾳ
(av) – αυ
e – ε, αι
(ev) – ευ
i – ῐ, ῑ, ῠ, ῡ, η, ει, οι, υι, ῃ
(iv) – ηυ
o – ο, ω, ῳ
u – ου

So modern Greek is trying replace 21 sounds with just 8.

7

I cannot at all recommend pronouncing Ancient Greek the modern way. Knowing Modern Greek adds to the understanding of Ancient Greek a little, so if you have the strength, do teach yourself both. But keep them separated. The academe of Greece is somewhat foreign to me, but I know that many non-academic Greeks have primaevally and primitively fanciful ideas of language. They will say poetic things such as foreign people cannot understand Ancient Greek (let alone modern) because they have not been nurtured by the Greek soil and climate, even though they may only have superficial understanding of the ancient variety. They might be very reluctant to admit that pronunciation could have changed over the centuries and millennia.

I really do not wish to speak ill of Greeks, and my words above shall be read only in the context of linguistics amongst non-linguist Greeks. I find it immensely hard to believe that an Englishman who has no linguistic education would argue with a foreign scholar of Old English about how Bēowulf reads and what it actually means.

With modern pronunciation you will lose all the grasp of poetic metre. All poetry will cease to work (in the meter). [fenetemikinosisosθeʲsin / emenonirotisenantʲosti / izðanikeplasʲonaðifoni / sasipakui] (Something like that.)

Disadvantages? If you try to pronounce Modern Greek in the Ancient Greek way in Greece, you may be taken as a supporter of the junta. This is due to how katharevusa was used and what kind of connotations using it has.

8

You can learn modern Greek or you can learn ancient Greek (or best of all, both, as Timothée says). I wouldn’t mix the two. To learn ancient Greek with a modern Greek pronunciation is perverse and will only confuse you, as bedwere indicated. Only Greeks do that; it’s not so very perverse for them since they’re only applying their native phonology to an earlier stage of their language.

It’s ill-advised for a non-Greek learning ancient Greek to erase so many functional phonetic and phonemic vowel distinctions. For one thing, as Timothée stresses, you lose the binary quantitative differentiation characteristic of ancient Greek, e.g. short vs. long α, ι, ο/ω, υ.

With the consonants, it doesn’t matter so much, since modern Greek preserves their distinctions even while slightly changing their sounds, but you might as well approximate the ancient sounds rather than the modern, except perhaps in the case of φ, which English-speakers hear as π unless pronounced as /f/ as in English. I have nothing nothing against using English phonology, analogously with modern Greek practice. It’s virtually inevitable. Anything other than modern Greek pronunciation will sound barbaric to a Greek, however, and it’s useless to argue.

As to ordering food in Greece, most of the words are different from ancient Greek anyway (some of them Turkish, though it’s best not to say so), so it’s best to learn the modern Greek. It won’t do you much good to use the ancient words with modern pronunciation.

9

In my experience, less educated Greeks have much more common sense about it. I have conversations every now and then with an older gentleman from Cyprus (living in the US) who is a pleasure to talk to about Greece, Greek, and Greek pronunciations. The Cyprus part helps, I am sure. I have another correspondent who lives in Greece, who communicates with me in modern Greek (I use Google Translate to understand him), and I write back my best attempt at Koine. We sort of understand each other. His parents taught the ancient language in University, but he never studied it. But he really enjoys the idea of a foreigner studying Greek. The only hard experience I had was with an older woman who stopped by our reading group (she was of Greek extraction, but spoke only English), and she couldn’t understand why we would use a different pronunciation than the people at her Orthodox Church (or that there might in fact be any language differences between classical and modern Greek).

On the other hand, I have found that I need to use a lot of patience speaking with anyone who took the classical track in school and shows up at the reading group. Generally I try to emphasize how much I enjoy the sound of Modern Greek (I do), and patiently repeat myself that I use “Allen’s pronunciation” whenever I’m corrected by them (which is often), and eventually try to turn the conversation to scripture (to demonstrate that I can understand the language), and to poetry (to demonstrate why I might consider a different pronunciation than the modern). With some patience, you will eventually get them onto the topic of how most modern Greeks don’t know how to scan poetry, and then you can just nod your head.

EDIT:

My archeologist friend tells me that in areas with lots of German tourists (at least a couple of decades ago), the waiters can take orders in Ancient Greek if you use a German accent.

10

Just to throw my hat in the ring…

people get way too excited about the pronunciation debate. Whatever you do, my top advice is to try to speak the language and listen to the language as much as possible, so that your brain gets to use oral/aural parts of memory in addition to visual. The more of the brain engaged, the better! It’s especially helpful to listen to recordings, as Markos says, “early and often!”

The other most important advice I’d give you, is find a way to make learning Greek FUN so you stay motivated. Greek is difficult, and the number one reason most people fail is simply because they stop working at it. For me, a book called Thrasymachus has made all the difference, because it is fun short little stories that are easy to read once you get a little Greek under your belt. Anything that is fun and keeps you motivated is priceless for learning Greek, regardless of the pronunciation.

Those two points are far more important than any pronunciation choices.

That said, people here really are unfairly biased against a modern pronunciation. I learned with a modern pronunciation, and it has not caused me any trouble. In fact, as Markos mentions, it makes a variety of helpful resources more accessible, such as Randall Buth’s Greek as a Living Language course, most communicative Greek videos on youtube, the entire New Testament as read by Spiros Zodhiates, and a host of ecclesiastical materials and chants from the Greek Orthodox Church. I am an Orthodox Christian, so if I am ever at a Greek church or monastery, I am able to actually listen to the services and understand - which is basically the last context where ancient Greek continues to be used almost as a living language. The other big benefit here is that you can actually listen to materials pronounced with a fluid, natural intonation by people who basically understand what they are saying (though there are certainly some Erasmian/reconstructed type recordings which also accomplish this, most notably, Christopher Rico’s Polis course, Bedwere’s excellent recordings, and some others).

I also want to point out an often overlooked point in these sorts of discussions, which is that it really isn’t that hard to learn how to understand people who are using an alternate pronunciation scheme. It is helpful to be familiar with all the schemes, and I think it is very good practice to listen to examples from all of them. It only takes a little effort and a brief immersion to begin to recognize the differences, which are mainly vowels - and we are actually quite adept at deciphering different vowel values in different English accents, for example. So don’t be scared, as though learning one pronunciation will mean that you absolutely can’t understand the others.

DO, however, pick ONE scheme and stick to it when you are SPEAKING, or you will probably end up confusing yourself. It is far easier to navigate between the different ones you are hearing than to try to learn to SPEAK 2 or 3 different pronunciation schemes.

Best of luck, and happy learning!

11

For nearly forty years I have used BOTH. :sunglasses:

12

When I first visited Athens in 2008, a local gentleman gave me a lecture about the error of the Erasmian pronunciation. All I did (honestly!) was asking “Excuse me please, is that the temple of Hephaistus?” I don’t know how I pronounced it, but apparently at least not Ífestos!

13

Do not feel badly. I would have made the same “error” myself. :laughing:

14

Let me tell you a few things from my experience.

I started in Bible College with Erasmian (Greek limited to English phonemes + χ chi) for 3 years. Then I went to University (part-time) and started with Modern Greek. In the second or third year, I started Classical Greek with an Attic pronunciation. After two years of maintaining 3 pronunciation systems, I simplified to Modern only for every period. My reason for adopting just one pronunciation was for ideological reasons rather than out of any practical difficulty in maintaining different pronunciations concurrently. During the same period, I studied Polish, Arabic, Coptic, Sanskrit, Dutch, Old Church Slavonic, Latvian, comparative Baltic and Slavonic linguistics, and Old English. Aside from a couple of adverbs that felt they could poke their heads up in a number of languages, there was no problem with learning different languages concurrently or - in the case of English and Greek - with learning the same “language” with different pronunciation systems (if we are to understand that a language can be called by the same name when so many changes in vocabulary, structure and the speech community have taken place).

Currently, I am trying to use the Restored Koine pronunciation for all Koine and earlier periods of Greek, and of course using Modern Pronunciation for the Modern Greek. What I have been finding in doing that is that I can speak okay and automatically with people in Modern Greek, but when I listen to talk-back radio or the news or something, that I “hear” things in Restored Koine where it is different to the Modern - that is to say that when someone says ikogenia, I process that as ükogenia, and so too with the eta. That is similar to the way that I process American English - an American pronunciation of “fast” sounds like “fest” to my ears, but the little interpreter in my head sparks up with “fast”, or even the same way for variant words like “Cilantro”, which invoke an equivalent “coriander” in processing. I think that in learning the same word in different pronunciations for different periods, it is a little like processing dialects of the same language.

Moving on to a different point now…

People who talk about Modern Greek pronunciation and how using it might affect comprehension, but have not grappled with the difficulties themselves seem to always talk about the simplification of the vowel system as the biggest disadvantage. It’s not. There are no vowels in Modern Greek that are not more or less in English. The problem in pronunciation is in the consonants. The rough-sounding consonants, the voicing of consonants in the right combinations within words and across word boundaries, and the timing of syllables is where it gets difficult to pronounce with a Modern Greek pronunciation.

It is the usual thing for language learners to simplify their target language to not go beyond their mother tongue (mother dialect actually), and even in L3, 4, etc. learning, the phonetic structure of the target language or dialect has to be built again from the mother tongue, even if the phonemes were learnt for an earlier additional language - of course more readily. In the case of the difference between Modern Greek and English that means consonants and the rules of consonantal assimilation (going the other way from Greek to English, the main problem would be the reduced quality of vowels in some unstressed situations - which conversely for some English speakers using a Modern Greek pronunciation means that some vowels are reduced unnecessarily. Those are features of cross-linguistic interference.

Back to the original point now …

I met an older gentleman Mr Zhao from Shanghai in Sydney some years ago, who had been taught English by a teacher who had a mentality like Erasmus. On the assumption that his students were basically learning English to read it, not speak it, he had taught them to say every letter as a sound. He pronounced “knife” as “ke(r)-'knee-fe(r)”, and “come” as “co(r)-me(r)” [the “r” not prononced, but marking that the character of the preceding vowel is short]. Once I realised what was happening, as a speaker of Modern English, I had minimal difficulty following what he was trying to say. Which leads to the final point that I want to say here.

If you learn Greek with the Modern Greek pronunciation, you will need to learn spelling as something additional. That can be both good practice and it can be a right pain. It is what hundreds of millions of people who learn English have to do. It will give you time to dwell longer on what you are learning, it wil be a skill that you will have acquired and closer affinity to the written form of the language, but it will take some extra time in your study.

Those then are the two drawbacks in learning Modern pronunciation, the production of consonants and the need to master spelling.

15

I don’t feel strongly about pronunciation, since so much of it is uncertain with both Ancient Greek and Classical Latin, but there is a reason why some words have changed spelling in Modern Greek - for example pronouncing Akhilleus in Modern would give Ahilefs, which sounds pretty bad - hence why it’s been shifted to Ahileas.

But in some cases I find myself using Modern pronunciation just for the sake of euphony, particularly with words that have an upsilon (eg. mythos rather than muthos). There’s of course a “reconstructed” way to pronounce the upsilon, but we just don’t have that sound in English.

16

In the South-Italian dialect of Modern Greek (Κατωιταλιωτικά) ψυχή is pronounced φσυχή. That is hard for me to get the tongue around.

17

It is not the same at all. Erasmus is unlikely to be the exact sounds of early Attic Greek but almost certainly does represent the phonemes of that era. English spelling does not however represent an early archaic form of the language. It is such a mess because it is a mix of spelling systems with various groups imposing different phoneme grapheme mapping from the Normans onward. Hence attempting to speak English as it is spelt results in a spoken form that not merely never has been spoken by native speakers but could never be a spoken form.

Many native speakers of English, myself included, never master the spelling system of their own language. Using modern pronunciation forces one to learn spelling as something additional as you say. Why would one make learning Greek harder by doing such a thing when it can be avoided by using either Erasmus or restored pronuciation? What hope have I got in managing that when I can’t do it even for English?

18

Χαῖρε!

First of all, let me clarify: what we call “modern” pronunciation is not modern at all. It’s traditional. When the Greek scholars from Constantinople like Chrysoloras, Chalcocondyles, Argyropoulos, and Gazes (who all spoke ancient Greek conversationally might I add) fled the Turk to Western Europe in the 15th century, they used the only pronunciation that they knew, the one which had been handed down to them generation after generation. And that’s the one that was universally used in Europe during the Renaissance.

However, it didn’t take long for the Europeans to start suspecting that the Greek of their masters had been “corrupted.” First Aldus Manuntius, then Erasmus pointed out that Greek spelling was not phonetic, and they suggested that the true pronunciation should be “restored”. At that time, the estimate was that the “corruption” was relatively recent, and due to Turkish influence. The scholars elaborated many different arguments to prove their thesis, mostly by comparisons to Latin and by collecting anecdotes from ancient authors. By todays’ standards, most of these “proofs” would be laughed out of the room. For instance, diphthongs were considered to be more “manly,” whereas iotacism was “feeble” and “feminine.” The ancient sounds were “delicate” and “noble”, the modern ones “vicious”.

The most infamous example, of course, is Cratinus’ βῆ βῆ imitating the sound of bleating sheep, which is commonly taken to be “proof” that β = [ b] and η = [e] in Antiquity. But in English, don’t sheep say “bah, bah”? So by that logic, η = [a]. In Hebrew, by contrast, sheep say “ma, ma” and in Modern Greek they also say “me, me.” That would prove that β = [m]! The most that can be surmised from these transliterations is that sheep bleats sound roughly like a labial followed by a front vowel. But whether that labial is a plosive, a nasal, or a fricative or what the value of that vowel is we cannot deduce categorically. Different languages have different conventions. It is also interesting to note that the only reason this particular quote from Cratinus was preserved was because it was a linguistic curiosity. The usual transliteration of sheep sounds for the Greeks was βαὶ βαὶ. Cratinus’ quote was used as an illustration of a peculiarly Attic form.

In any case, for better or for worse the debate had begun, and partisans gathered on either side. In England, Chancellor Stephen Gardiner of Cambridge called the arguments in favour of the new pronunciation “an ape robed in purple” (simiam purpura indutam). He fully acknowledged that language may change over time. However, he held that a scholar ought to use the pronunciation consecrated by long tradition and the universal usage of the educated men of his age. In 1542, Gardiner passed an edict banning the new pronunciation in Cambridge, threatening any professor who used it with fines and expulsion from the university.

On the other side, the Erasmians continued developing new and ever stranger theories. For instance, in 1684, a certain German classicist called Heinrich Henning (Latinized as Henninius) wrote a treatise arguing that the ancients did not use accents, and that Greek should be pronounced according to the stress-rules of Latin (!).

Thankfully, however, since that time, linguistics, epigraphy, and papyrology have undoubtedly proved that the pronunciation we call “modern” is extremely ancient. Take a look at these Imperial-era mosaics (1st to 3rd centuries AD). The first is from Sparta:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-fO4PxW0AAXwMR.jpg

The second is a mosaic from Zeugma in Asia Minor:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/29/5e/5b/295e5bacccc39fc5c18887a2c6f5677f.jpg

You will notice that Ἀλκιβιάδης is spelled Ἀλκηβειάδης, Ἴκαρος is spelled Εἴκαρος, and Δαίδαλος is spelled Δέδαλος. So clearly, η = ι = ει and αι = ε.

This is how Greek was pronounced at the time of the Caesars. But how was it pronounced at the time of Pericles?

Sven-Tage Teodorsson, a Greek scholar for the University of Gothenberg, has done much research into the epigraphical corpora of ancient Attica. What he has found is that H alternates with I from the 6th century BC onwards, and EI frequently alternates with I from as early the 7th century BC. In fact, the latter should come as no surprise, given that the Romans always transliterated EI as I, e.g. Ἀτρείδης → Αtrides.

In the 1st c. BC, we have Dionysius of Halicarnassus transliterating the Latin names Titus Herminius and Aricini as Τῖτος Ἑρμήνιος and Ἀρικηνοί respectively, and Strabo transliterating Scipio as Σκηπίων.

What about the diphthong OI? According to Thucydides, when plague befell Athens during the Peloponnesian War, the people remembered an old oracle. However, they were unsure if the oracle had in fact predicted a λοιμός (plague) or a λιμός (famine):

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0199%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D54

If οι was sounded as two distinct vowels, then there never would have been any confusion. The great antiquity of this monophthongal pronunciation of οι is further proved by Homer, who uses the Ionic word ξυνός, meaning κοινός (common). The fact that this variant existed means that οι was homophonous to υ.

What about the consonants? Well, in the Doric dialect, one often finds words with a B standing in place of the digamma F, thought to represent the sound [w]. For example ἀFέλιος (the sun) becomes ἀβέλιος . This is very strong evidence that B was a fricative, not a stop. The fact that Greek B was transliterated in Latin by B does not prove how the sound was pronounced in Greek. In Spanish, the most common realization of B is [β] but when non-Spanish speakers try to speak Spanish, they often resort to [ b]. German W is pronounced [v] but when German words containing W are borrowed into English (e.g. Volkswagen), they’re frequently pronounced with a [w] following the phonology of English.

Ancient Athenian inscriptions show alternations between the letters Φ and Θ, very understandable if they were fricatives, but quite unusual if they were stops:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40265986?seq=1

In the Cratylus, Plato classifies the letters Φ, Ψ, Σ, and Z together as “breathy” (πνευματώδη), another indication that Φ was a fricative:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0171%3Atext%3DCrat.%3Apage%3D427

One of the most popular arguments touted by the Erasmians in favour of the plosive value of Φ and the aspirates is an anecdote recounted by Quintilian about a Greek at the time of Cicero who was unable to pronounce the name Fundanius:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2007.01.0059%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D4%3Asection%3D14

Quintilian uses this anecdote to comment on how Latin F is pronounced differently from Greek Φ. But all this proves is that the letters did not have their modern values, not what those values were. As it turns out, the usual reconstruction for Latin F at this time is not a labio-dental fricative [f] but a bilabial fricative [φ](pronounced as if you’re blowing the candles on a birthday cake). Now one of the features of voiceless bilabial fricatives when followed by a rounded vowel like o or the u in Fundanius is that they often become h. This is even attested in Old Latin, which has the form horctis besides the usual forctis (strong). Given this, it is very likely that Fundanius actually sounded like Hundanius, which is why the Greek could not pronounce it. If anything, this anecdote only proves that by Cicero’s time, Greek had already lost the rough breathing. Which brings me to my next point.

One main feature of the ancient pronunciation which undoubtedly has changed is the rough breathing [h], which has become silent. However, there are indications that its disappearance is quite ancient. In his Rhetoric to Alexander, Aristotle says the following:

“First, name everything by its proper name whatever you say, avoiding ambiguity…The following is an instance of avoiding ambiguities: some words for many things are the same, such as the ὀδός (smooth breathing) of doors and the ὁδός (rough breathing) on which one walks. In such instances you must always include the particular context. Our wording will be clear if we do these things, and we shall express two things through the earlier method.”

Rhetorica ad Alexandrum, Loeb 317 (Aristotle Problems, Volume II), pp. 563-564

When one abandons the traditional pronunciation, one actually misses out on a lot of puns and wordplay. Here are four examples:

1- Diogenes criticized the philosopher Aristippus for spending a lot of money on a prostitute, telling him: “Aristippus, you live with a common (κοινή) whore; either follow the Cynic way like me (κύνιζε) or stop.” If you say koiné and kunize, you miss the whole joke, but if you say kini and kinize, it’s crystal clear.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0405%3Abook%3D13%3Achapter%3D55

2- In his 28th epigram, Callimachus rhymes ἔχει with ναίχι:

Λυσανίη, σὺ δὲ ναίχι καλός, καλός, ἀλλὰ πρὶν εἰπεῖν
τοῦτο σαφῶς, Ἠχώ φησί τις « ἄλλος ἔχει ».

"Lysanias, you are fair, yes fair, but before
this is said clearly, some Echo says, “he is another’s.”

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0226%3Atext%3Depigrams%3Apoem%3D28

3- In the Life of Aesop, there’s an episode where Aesop’s master Xanthus tells Aesop that he has invited guests over for a banquet, and that he wants him to stand behind the entrance and only let in the wise. Aesop does as he’s told, and every time someone knocks on the door, he asks, τί σείει ὁ κύων (what does the dog move?), which all the guests except one misunderstand for τίς σὺ εἶ ὧ κύων (who are you, you dog?) and, insulted, leave. The one wise guest who understands the question answers correctly, “the tail and the ears,” and is let in. The only way this episode could have taken place is if υ and ει were close in pronunciation:

https://archive.org/details/fabulaeromanense01eberuoft/page/272/mode/2up

4- In his Peace (ll.922ff), Aristophanes employs a series of rhymes for comedic effect. Among them, he rhymes βοΐ (bull) with βοηθεῖν (to help), and ὑΐ (pig) with ὑηνία (swinishness):

Oἰκέτης
ἄγε δὴ τί νῷν ἐντευθενὶ ποιητέον;

Τρυγαῖος
τί δ’ ἄλλο γ’ ἢ ταύτην χύτραις ἱδρυτέον;

Xορός
χύτραισιν, ὥσπερ μεμφόμενον Ἑρμῄδιον;

Τρυγαῖος
τί δαὶ δοκεῖ; βούλεσθε λαρινῷ βοΐ;

Χορός
βοΐ; μηδαμῶς, ἵνα μὴ βοηθεῖν ποι δέῃ

Τρυγαῖος
ἀλλ’ ὑῒ παχείᾳ καὶ μεγάλῃ;

Χορός
μὴ μή.

Τρυγαῖος
τιή;

Χορός
ἵνα μὴ γένηται Θεογένους ὑηνία.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0037%3Acard%3D922

The whole idea that the “modern” pronunciation is unfit to use because it creates homophony is simply ridiculous. Every living language has homophones. So Greek pronounces ἡμεῖς and ὑμεῖς the same. So what? Doesn’t modern English have there, their, and they’re, here and hear, where and wear, meet and meat, right and write, son and sun? Isn’t “you” both second person singular, and second person plural? I would add that the Hellenistic grammarians were fully aware of homophonous sounds (which they called ἀντίστοιχα) and used these to rhetorical effect to embellish their compositions.

As for being unsuitable because of the lack of long vowels, that is just a disingenuous claim. Those following the Erasmian method do not pronounce the long vowels consistently. There is nothing preventing someone who uses the modern pronunciation from pronouncing the long vowels when reciting poetry. That’s what the Byzantines did and their Greek poetry is eons ahead of what anyone is capable of composing now.

Another point worth stressing is simply the fact that if one is to follow the principles of the “restored” pronunciation consistently, one should employ a different pronunciation when reading works from different periods, e.g. Homer, Plato, Callimachus, Polybius, the New Testament, Cassius Dio, etc. which is extremely impractical to say the least.

Given all of this, I find the choice of modern pronunciation a no-brainer. It’s not only extremely close to the ancient pronunciation, but it can also serve as a standard for scholars to pronounce Greek in a consistent manner, as opposed to an idiosyncratic hodgepodge coloured by one’s native accent. And on that note, I end with a quote:

“Actual pronunciation…is not a matter of theory, but of praxis: real sound, not a description of sound. Often confusing the two, most classicists, I suspect, would claim that we know fairly accurately what sounds the Greek alphabet represented, yet no two of us would sound alike in reading a given passage of prose or poetry. Our students, if they are interested, have no consistent models to follow. As a result, the pronunciation of Ancient Greek today generally bears no relation to any language, living or dead; it is an embarrassment. The less said aloud, the better. After all, the printed text provides enough challenges as it is: grammar, substance, theme (all much easier to write about); who has class time to spend on pronunciation? Where’s the benefit?.. Reading silently is not so much the problem; it is unavoidable. Rather, it is reading aloud badly. But who can teach us to do it well? By themselves, books cannot. We need living models…”

Matthew Dillon, “The Erasmian Pronunciation of Ancient Greek: A New Perspective.” Classical World 94, no. 4 (2001), p.323

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Can a modern Greek (who has studied the ancient language) understand Plato when read aloud by another modern Greek speaker? Without a text in front of him, or having read the particular dialogue before?

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I think this would depend on the extent to which the modern Greek speaker is familiar with the ancient language. A similar question came up on a facebook group, can modern Greek speakers understand ancient Greek? I responded:

This comes up too often. The simple answer is “sometimes” but not as often as you might think. If the modern Greek is similar to the ancient, then yes, but often it’s not. If the modern Greek speaker has studied ancient Greek, or is very familiar with certain texts such as liturgy of Chrysostom, then he or she can often recognize similar expressions in other contexts. Once out of that comfort zone, however, it becomes a bit more dicey. Anecdotes (which I may have shared before):

  1. Once at a Greek church food festival they included a tour of the church, and the two young men leading the tour were quite enthusiastic for the icons. Someone asked about a particular one, which had a write up in Greek associated with it. He gave a translation of the text, which was actually a citation from what I think was an early Byzantine father. I said, “Actually that’s not at all what it says. It says…” To which the response was “Oh no, we know Greek, and you’re wrong.” One of the priests happened to be nearby, and they called him over to settle the dispute. He looked at the text and said “Actually he (pointing at me) is right – your modern Greek has led you astray here.” We talked afterward and it turned out he had formally studied Classics before entering the priesthood.

  2. At my undergraduate school, we had a large population of students from Greece doing various study and exchange programs. We would sometimes get them in our little Classics department for “easy” courses such as New Testament or Xenophon. Those who had some prior training in ancient Greek tended to do well, and those who didn’t dropped the course.

I had some discussion about this with Maria Pantelia, now at the University of CT, when we were in grad school. Her conclusion was that modern Greek speakers have a distinct advantage out of the starting gate, but that after a time, it levels out. “The Greek reading his Greek New Testament” doesn’t necessarily know it better than the scholars who have done all their work in an American setting.