No, no, I mean controlling for that. For me, it’s hard for me to distinguish grammatical forms when listening to modern Greek speakers reading ancient texts. (Which I have done a fair amount of.) They are easy enough to understand when they speak modern Greek, but the modern Greek phoneme repertoire is just too low for the ancient language.
The homophony is greatly exaggerated. Ancient Greek has plenty of homophones, even more than Modern Greek:
ἡ = demonstrative particle, ἥ = relative article, ᾗ = whither, where, ᾗ = he let
ἦ = surely, ἦ = he said, ἤ = or
εἰ = if, εἶ = you are, εἶ = you go
It’s just like English there, their, and they’re and to, two, and too. If one knows the language fluently, the context allows you to decipher.
Take the pronouns ἡμεῖς and ὑμεῖς. We have papyrological evidence dating to the 2nd century BC that these words were homophones at that time. However, the modern analogical form of the second person plural, σεῖς (you), only appeared in the 6th century AD. That means that for 800 years, and probably more, native Greek speakers used the identical forms ἡμεῖς and ὑμεῖς dozens, perhaps hundreds of times in their daily conversation without hindrance to comprehension.
In modern Greek, the masculine nominative plural of nouns and the feminine nominative singular are often identical, e.g. οἱ καλοὶ sounds the same as ἡ καλή. Again, this might be a pain for new language learners but for those who already speak the language it poses no problem.
I would add that the scholars of Byzantium and the Renaissance not only read Ancient Greek, they conversed in it. It is said that John Argyropoulos once heard Johann Reuchlin lecturing on Thucydides so eloquently that he exclaimed, “Graecia transvolavit Alpes!” Needless to say, Reuchlin’s lecture was delivered in Ancient Greek.
In 1707, a certain Greek scholar called Anastasios Michael gave a speech (part of which is extant) in pure Attic at the Brandemberg Academy of Berlin on the occasion of his honourary nomination. We know the speaker used modern pronunciation because that’s partly what the subject of the speech was. And yet, we can only suppose that the majority of his audience were Germans.
If there is any difficulty in listening to Plato, it’s stylistic and thematic. To give you a comparison, take a look at this excerpt I selected from a random philosophy book:
Contrasted with both is the attitude of mind which regards itself as selfhood trying to achieve orientation; the object of clarifying the situation being to comprehend as clearly and decisively as possible one’s own development in the particular situation. Human existence cannot be wholly cognised either as past or as present. Contrasted with the real situation of the individual, every generally comprehended situation is an abstraction, and its description is no more than the description of a type. Measured by this standard there will be much that is lacking to the concrete situation, and much will be added which has no bearing upon definitive knowledge.
-Karl Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age (1933), p. 31
An average English speaker will certainly understand the words of the text, but what the passage actually means will be almost impenetrable.
Those (mostly) weren’t homophones in ancient Greek, of course.
There is nothing very difficult about the Jaspers paragraph (though the first sentence is bad grammar, “this” should be “is the”), but Plato is far more accessible than Jaspers. There is a reason that Plato is such an enduring classic, after all.
Perhaps in Attic there was some subtle difference (as there still is in modern Greek between ἡ and ἤ), but that doesn’t change the fact that for most people using the Erasmian pronunciation today, the differences are entirely obliterated. So if the charge against modern Greek is homophony, the Erasmian pronunciation is really not immune from it either.
Also, regarding the iota subscript in ᾳ, ῳ, and ῃ, we have good reason to believe it was silent. An early Greek loan to Latin was the word τραγῳδία, in which the iota shows up as an e: tragoedia. But by the time Latin borrowed ῥαψῳδία the ι was gone: rhapsodia (not rhapsoedia).
We also have written testimony:
“Περισπωμένων δὲ ῥημάτων συζυγίαι εἰσὶ τρεῖς, ὧν…ἡ δὲ δευτέρα διὰ τῆς αι διφθόγγου, προσγραφομένου τοῦ ι, μὴ συνεκφωνουμένου δέ, οἷον βοῶ βοᾶις βοᾶι.”
-Dionysius Thrax, Τέχνη Γραμματική, II.14
“Many persons write the dative cases without the ι, and reject the usage, as not founded on any natural reason.”
-Strabo, Book XIV:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0239%3Abook%3D14%3Achapter%3D1%3Asection%3D41
EDIT
I forgot a few:
ᾖ = it be
οἱ = definite article, οἵ = relative pronoun, οἱ = to/for him
οἶ = a sheep, οἷ = where/whither
Indeed, the iota subscript was pronounced at the time when Latin borrowed τραγῳδία (try to think when that must have been), and was not pronounced by the time of Thrax. (For the same, see also the Latin comoedus and melodus).
You might even get the idea that the Greek language had changed over the centuries between Pericles and Christ.
Tell that to 90% of classicists who go on pronouncing texts written as late as Cassius Dio, Plotinus, and Laertius in the exact same way as they do Homer and Plato. They pronounce ει as a diphthong, when the Athenians were pronouncing it as a monophthong from at least 600 BC and the Romans always transliterated Greek EI as a long I. Or what about Thucydides’ λοιμός and λιμός? The evidence has been in front of our noses for hundreds of years and yet people refuse to acknowledge it in the name of I don’t know what historical bias.
Also, the grammarians like Thrax simply codified the existing tradition. I see no evidence of a cataclysmic shift in pronunciation between Pericles and Augustus’ age. If we are looking for a period of sound change, it is most likely to be found in the Archaic period, where the language was characterized by low literacy, high population mobility, and dialect fragmentation. So that’s when I would date the form tragoedia.
The shift from quantitative poetry to political verse would seem like very good evidence of something having happened to the language in the centuries between Babrius and Tzetzes. But you seem to be arguing contradictory points in your posts. You complain about Classicists attempting to use the same pronunciation of Demosthenes for both Homer and Cassius Dio – introducing anachronisms of a few hundred years – and then you suggest solving that by importing a pronunciation several millennia removed.
Most of all, I think it may be more helpful for you to argue with real classicists rather than imaginary versions of them. Read Allen, read Horrocks. You may find their arguments more persuasive than you think.
You’re equivocating. I never said anything about vowel quantity. I referred specifically to the quality of the vowels and the diphthongs and I provided a whole meticulously-documented post further up setting forth my argument. Specifically, I was addressing your argument about homophony and showed you that ancient Greek had tons of it.
In case you didn’t know, λοιμός can be pronounced [lymos] with a long [y] leaving the meter unchanged. It doesn’t need to be a diphthong.
I have read Allen and Horrocks. I’ve also read Erasmus, Cheke, Sturtevant, and Blass and have seen how unscientific, politicized ideas can be peddled for centuries. Have you read Teodorsson? Have you even seen what the actual inscriptions say? If we’re looking to avoid anachronisms, the traditional pronunciation is what we should favour.
Here’s an illustration of what I mean. Based on the evidence, λέγεις, λέγῃς, λέγοις was pronounced something like legis, legés, legys in Attic times. There was a slight difference in quality between the 3 vowels, similar to how in English several dialects have different “a” sounds as in the words father, bother, and caught. By the 1st century BC the 3-way distinction was reduced to two: legis and legys, with the y tending towards i. Finally, the current received Greek pronunciation merges them into legis. By contrast, the Erasmian turns them into legeis, legēis, legois. So if anything, its the Erasmian pronunciation that’s the anachronism. Not to mention the consonants, which were never pronounced as the Erasmian pronunciation holds.
The pronunciation of the Alexandrian grammarians who edited the classical works and that of the educated Romans of the Imperial period who spoke Greek was almost identical to Modern Greek. If it was good enough for Claudius, it’s good enough for me.
I offered my comment in the interest of scientific accuracy and practicality. If you want to ignore the truth and keep on sounding silly, be my guest. If it wasn’t for the likes of Gazes and Chrysoloras who taught the Europeans with their “wrong” pronunciation you wouldn’t even know Greek right now.
I have not read Teodorsson. I would if I could, but I have no access to an academic library, I’m afraid, and I have never found PDFs of his books. I have, however, read what Allen, Ruijgh, and Horrocks have had to say about Teodorsson’s evidence, and also Sommerstein’s criticisms in his review of Teodorsson’s Attic Phonemic System book. (I can forward you a copy of the PDF if you don’t have access to it.)
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009840X00222208
Sommerstein, especially, does not paint a pretty picture.
I am not as knowledgable as you guys on these issues, but let me ask a question: isn’t the Erasmian vs the modern pronunciation a false dichotomy? I thought that it was believed now that they are both unlike the classical pronunciation.
Thanks I’ll take a look at the review. But a book that challenges the status quo is bound to get some push-back. As I pointed out in my first comment, back in the Renaissance the scholars thought iotacism was 100 years old. Then people pointed out to them that Eustathius of Thessalonica in the 12th century used a iotacistic pronunciation. Then they discovered that there were uncial manuscripts from the 5th century with iotacisms. In the 19th century they discovered the Herculaneum papyri, which dated iotacism to the 1st century. Then Oxyrhynchus turned up and we got access to papyri from the 3rd century BC showing iotacism. All Teodorsson has done is push the date even further back. And as far as I can tell, his findings are corroborated nicely by other evidence. E.g. If EI was a diphthong, why did the Romans always transliterated it as I?
Not that I agree with all of Teodorsson’s conclusions, but what he’s done is collect inscriptional variants from existing epigraphical corpora like the CIG and organize them by frequency. I can scan and send you the inscriptional section so you can draw your own conclusions (it’s about 40 pages). Cheers
Well the debate is considered to be a moot issue since the 1870s when Friedrich Blass published a book on Ancient Greek pronunciation which seemed to “settle” things in favour of the Erasmian. Since that time, however, fields like papyrology have advanced greatly and new evidence has come to light. The standard textbook on the subject, Allen’s Vox Graeca basically summarizes the 19th century arguments with a few modifications like a value [e] for the diphthong EI. In other respects, however, it really does not differ much from what Erasmus proposed in the 16th century, even reprising many of the Renaissance arguments like Cratinus’ βῆ βῆ.
But apart from the inscriptional and papyrological evidence, there are a good many comments in ancient authors (Thucydides and Plato for example), that give us some really good hints about the pronunciation. So personally I still think it’s very much an open question.
Mostly yes, although Erasmian wasn’t that very wrong or terrible by any stretch, compared to what is known now. However, in England and America, the great vowel shift led to some very weird pronunciations of Greek between 1700-1900 or so, which were called “Erasmian”, but had diverged.
But you are right. A serious critique would begin with Allen or Horrocks and there are a certain number of weak points to do it at.
Yes, please do. You should have my email already.
Hey, for anyone interested, I strongly recommend the following website on the pronunciation question:
Having read Teodorsson, Sommerstein does not provide a strong critique.
He objects at first to Teodorsson’s principle that “'The more reliable our knowledge is of the development of a phonemic system during periods later than the one investigated, the more positive phonemic conclusions may be drawn from orthographic data from that period” on the grounds that E alternates with I more than H alternates with I, and so on those grounds we should just disqualify the misspellings. But the whole point of Teodorsson’s principle is to devise a way to rank the evidential value of misspellings. So if Teodorsson’s principle is reasonable, then even a few cases of H alternating with I will be very revealing.
Sommerstein cursorily discounts the λιμός/λοιμός homophony by calling it “strained” and saying that it “[does] not lend [Teodorsson’s analysis] positive support” but he does not justify his claim.
He ends by suggesting that some of the vowel features noted by Teodorsson may be due to the heavy influence of “Boiotians across the border.” But this oft-repeated explanation is specious. To quote Angelos Kanlis:
While the gradual spread of sound change from one dialect to the other may work for decentralised languages, like pre-Lutheran German, the analogy does not apply in Greek. Attic (and to a lesser extend Ionic), being adopted as official by the Macedonians and spread to the end of the (then) known world, was the basis for the common language and the other dialects had a marginal role, if at all. Thus, the claim that a marginal dialect, like Boeotian for the monophthongisation of the diphthongs and Laconian for the fricativization of the aspiratae, set the trend for mainstream Greek is one that must be strongly substantiated; however, no [one has] felt the need to go beyond a mere assertion of the influence that the (heavily outnumbered, strongly marginalised and utterly insignificant) Boeotians and Laconians would never have on the Koine. The developments in these dialects can, therefore, have nothing to do with those in the Koine and, should the thesis hold true, it would mean that the same sound change occurred independently both in the dialects and in the common language, as if sound change…is a one-way street.
Thanks you for drawing my attention to this article. Dillon doesn’t actually suggest modern Greek as the way to pronounce Ancient Greek. He suggests a two tier approach.
Daitz wrote a reply to this article (Further Notes on the Pronunciation of Ancient Greek, Stephen G. Daitz, The Classical World, Vol. 95, No. 4 (Summer, 2002), pp. 411-412). I will quote his concluding remarks in which he points out the difficulties with Dillon’s approach.
“As a means of making ancient Greek pronunciation easier for students, Dillon suggests that there be “two registers of pronunciation, a conservative, quantitative level for poetry, and a more demotic level for prose.” I see two problems with this suggestion. First, it would require students to learn two different pronunciations (comparable to a foreigner having to learn both American and British pronunciations), which would probably end up making the learning process more difficult rather than easier. Secondly, it is historically improbable. When Demosthenes delivered an oration in the Assembly, he presumably did not use one pronunciation for his own words in prose, but another pronunciation when he quoted Homer. Likewise, in more recent times, it is most improbable that Churchill, in delivering a speech in Parliament, used one pronunciation for his own words in prose, but another pronunciation when quoting Shakespeare. There would, of course, in both cases be rhythmic differences, but that, as Gorgias said, is precisely the difference between prose and poetry: rhythm (but not pronunciation).”
It is also worth noting what Daitz says about Teodorsson in the same article:
"S. Teodorsson, on whom Dillon relies, has shown that some changes in Greek pronunciation occurred as early as during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E. But these changes, as Teodorsson makes clear, apply primarily to everyday, popular speech (demotic), and not necessarily to what he terms “High Greek,” the pronunciation used for formal speech (oratory, historiography, philosophy) and presumably for the recitation of poetry. Teodorsson, in a personal conversation several years ago, agreed that this formal, literary pronunciation remained relatively unchanged for many centuries. (my underlining).
I hope this provides some balance to what can be a highly charged discussion.
That was not only Teodorsson’s private belief, but his published belief too. He explained conservative features in the language by a demotic/literary pronunciation divide that persisted for centuries. Daitz thought it unlikely.
Two remarks:
#1 Imagine several centuries in the future some linguists are trying to figure out what English in the 21st century sounded like. Looking at the formal writings of the period (newspaper articles, books, etc.) they notice that English speakers used a consistent spelling which goes back more or less to the 14th century.
However, by studying illiterate graffiti scrawled on brick walls, the linguists notice that the spelling used here is often different. “Night” is spelled “nait”, “because” is spelled “becuz” and “place” is spelled “pleis”.
Based on this evidence, these diligent future linguists determine that in 2020 there were two forms of English spoken: “High English” which pronounced the words as they were spelled: [nɪxt], [bɪcauzə], [pla:s], and “Demotic” English which pronounced these same words as [naɪt], [bɪcʌz] and [pleɪs].
Of course, this would be a reasonable hypothesis were it not completely and laughably false.
If this reasoning fails for English, why should it apply to Greek?
According to our oldest sources, the Phoenician Alphabet was introduced into Greece in 1,400 BC. Do you not think it is possible that the language changed in the 1,000 years between then and the Classical period?? I thought that was the whole argument against Modern Greek. I find it hard to believe that at the same time that Attic was contracting two or three vowels into one (φάος → φῶς, τιμάουσα → τιμῶσα, ἀείδω → ᾄδω, ἀργυρέοιο → ἀργυροῦ), it left the diphthongs αι, οι, and ει untouched.
So if dozens upon dozens of inscriptions show us a divergent phonology ΑΝD this phonology is hinted at through puns in classical literature, I see no reason not to accept it at face value and assume that that’s simply how people spoke. To cite my previous examples:
Thucydides states that λοιμός was homophonous to λιμός.
Aesop rhymes σὺ εἶ with σείει.
Callimachus rhymes ναίχι with ἔχει.
Aristotle says that ὁδός (rough breathing) was homophonous to ὀδός (smooth breathing).
Here are two new ones: when Diogenes the Cynic once caught a thief at the public bath, he asked him:
ἐπ’ ἀλειμμάτιον ἢ ἐπ’ ἄλλ’ ἱμάτιον;
Did you come for a greasing or a garment?
(quoted in Diogenes Laertius VI.52)
A proverb ascribed to the comic poet Callias:
Kέρδος αἰσχύνης ἄμεινον· ἔλκε μοιχόν εἰς μυχόν.
The profit of shame is better: drag an adulterer into a hidden place.
#2 As regards poetry and oratory, there was one major difference which separates ancient from modern poetry. Today, poetry is recited. In Antiquity, poetry was sung. And the ancient sources tell us that these two modes of pronunciation were quite different:
Aristotle (On Rhetoric):
The form of diction [in oratory] should be neither metrical nor without rhythm. If it is metrical, it lacks persuasiveness, for it appears artificial, and at the same time it distracts the hearer’s attention, since it sets him on the watch for the recurrence of such and such a cadence…Now all things are limited by number, and the number belonging to the form of diction is rhythm, of which the metres are divisions. Wherefore prose must be rhythmical, but not metrical, otherwise it will be a poem. (1408b)
Aristoxenus (On Harmony):
Continuous motion we call the motion of speech, as in speaking the voice moves without ever seeming to come to a standstill. The reverse is the case with the other motion, which we designate motion by intervals (διαστηματικήν): in that the voice does seem to become stationary, and when employing this motion one is always said not to speak but to sing. Hence in ordinary conversation we avoid bringing the voice to a standstill, unless occasionally forced by strong feeling to resort to such a motion; whereas in singing we act in precisely the opposite way. (1.9-10)
Starting from these definitions and classifications we must seek to indicate in outline the nature of melody. We have already observed that here the motion of the voice must be by intervals; herein, then, lies the distinction between the melody of music and of speech — for there is also a kind of melody in speech (λογῶδες τι μέλος) which depends upon the accents of words, as the voice in speaking rises and sinks by a natural law. (1.18)
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (On Composition):
Music, further, insists that the words should be subordinate to the tune, and not the tune to the words…Ordinary prose speech does not violate or interchange the quantities in any noun or verb… But the arts of rhythm and music alter them by shortening or lengthening… (XI)
Longinus (Prolegomena to Hephaestion’s On Metre):
Many meters, being silenced, happen to go under cover in prose…At any rate, someone would be able to find in Demosthenes the orator hidden heroic verse, which is able to go unnoticed on account of the prosaic pronunciation (πεζὴν οὖσαν τὴν προφοράν).
Now, as Aristoxenus says above, the defining feature of prose rhythm, as opposed to poetry, is the placement of word accents. This is corroborated by Aristotle:
Now delivery is a matter of voice, as to the mode in which it should be used for each particular emotion; when it should be loud, when low, when intermediate; and how the accents, that is, acute, grave, and intermediate, should be used; and what rhythms are adapted to each subject. (Rhetoric, 1403b)
Some examples of prose rhythm:
Ιsocrates, To Demonicus:
Ἐὰν ᾖς φιλομαθής, ἔσει πολυμαθής.
Βουλεύου μὲν βραδέως, ἐπιτέλει δὲ ταχέως.
Gorgias, Encomium to Helen:
Kόσμος πόλει μὲν εὐανδρία, σώματι δὲ κάλλος, ψυχῇ δὲ σοφία.
Θεοῦ γὰρ προθυμίαν ἀνθρωπίνῃ προμηθίᾳ ἀδύνατον κωλύειν.
The rhythmical placement of accent in prose became a defining characteristic of the flashy “Asianic” style of oratory which developed in the 3rd century BC, reaching a peak in the Second Sophistic of the 2nd century AD. Some examples:
Onomarchus of Andros:
Ἀνέραστε καὶ βάσκανε, πρὸς πιστὸν ἐραστὴν ἄπιστε. (fragment, Norden 1898, 413)
Αelius Aristides:
Ὦ πάντα ὑπομείνας ἐγώ, ποῦ γῆς νυνὶ μονῳδῶ; (Monody to Smyrna)
Philostratus:
Xαῖρε, κἂν μὴ θέλῃς, χαῖρε κἂν μὴ γράφῃς. (Norden 1898: 415)
Apollonius of Athens:
Oὐ κατάγει νεκρούς, ἀλλ’ ἀνάγει θεούς. (quoted by Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists)
Maximus of Tyre:
Kαὶ γὰρ ποιητικὴ τί ἄλλο ἢ φιλοσοφία, τῷ μὲν χρόνῳ παλαιά, τῇ δὲ ἁρμονία ἔμμετρος, τῇ δὲ γνώμη μυθολογική; Καὶ φιλοσοφία τί ἄλλο ἢ ποιητική, τῷ μὲν χρόνῳ νεωτέρα, τῇ δὲ ἁρμονία εὐζωνοτέρα, τῇ δὲ γνώμη σαφεστέρα; (Oration 4)
Αchilles Tatius:
Eὐρώπης ἡ γραφή, Φοινίκων ἡ θάλασσα, Σιδῶνος ἡ γῆ. (Leucippe and Clitophon, 1.2-3)
Τhis prose rhythm was even occasionally used in verse by making the ictus fall on the same syllable as the natural accent:
ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε Μοῦσα πολύτροπον (Odyssey I.1)
μάντι κακῶν οὐ πώποτε μοὶ τὸ κρήγυον εἶπας (Iliad I.106)
ἵππους δὲ ξανθὰς ἑκατὸν καὶ πεντήκοντα (Iliad XI.680)
In Latin, this type of accentual verse was called versus quadratus. Suetonius cites the following examples as being sung by Roman soldiers after the conquest of Gaul:
Urbani servate uxores, moechum calvum adducimus
Aurum in Gallia effutuisti, hic sumpsisti mutuum.
Gallos Caesare in triumphum ducit, idem in curiam.
Galli bracas deposuerunt, latum clavum sumpserunt.
Which taking the elision into account would probably have been pronounced:
Úrbaní servát’ uxóres, moéchum cálv’ addúcimús
Aúr’ in Gálli’ effútuísti, híc sumpsísti mútuúm.
Gállos Caésar’ ín triúmphum dúcit, íd’ in cúriám.
Gálli brácas déposuérunt, látum clávum súmpserúnt.
Based on this evidence, these diligent future linguists determine that in 2020 there were two forms of English spoken: “High English” which pronounced the words as they were spelled: [nɪxt], [bɪcauzə], [pla:s], and “Demotic” English which pronounced these same words as [naɪt], [bɪcʌz] and [pleɪs].
Even more diligent scientists would quickly notice that “night” can rhyme with “write”, “height” or even “megabyte”, or “place” with “plaice”, or “because” with “buzz”, “was”, “does” etc., so I suspect they would refrain from drawing any clear-cut conclusion about the pronunciation of those words (and maybe of English in general).
Disclaimer: I’m not knowlegeable enough to meaningfully participate in this (very interesting) discussion, it’s just a point that sprang to my mind.