Comments?
This is very high quality. Although I might summarize their advice as “the standard classical pronunciation taught in UK/US schools, but pronounce ει as ι.” Were there other differences? (They don’t recommend the aspirate φ θ χ, or to pronounce subscript iota, but that is standard enough, I believe.)
So phi should be more like a “p” sound and theta more like a “t” sound?
Makes sense to me for some reason, the theta pronounced like English speakers say “thick” seems…thin for such a robust language
The ancients pronounced it with aspirated p/t, as we do in English at the beginning of words, according to Allen, and the fricatives came later. If you put your hand in front of your mouth you should feel the puff. It is difficult for English speakers to distinguish them in pronunciation though. (It took me years, and I think that it might have been time better spent.)
The clearest evidence of this aspirate pronunciation is that in Greek spelling, words like απ, κατ, ουκ before a rough breathing change to αφ, καθ, ουχ before a rough breathing.
I am very impressed with Lucian pronunciation and plan on using it. When I was in Divinity College, as well as New Testament Greek, I studied a bit of Homer and Plato. I also took some course in the religious studies department where I met a teaching assistant who was from Greece. I was fascinated by his modern pronunciation when he read passages from the New Testament. I liked the sound of it. When I finally had time in my retirement to revive my study of classical Greek, I tried using the modern pronunciation. Impossible! It was an impediment to my acquisition of the grammar because of the ioticism. So I reverted to the Erasmian system that I had learned in Divinity school. I hated it the sound of it. There was a glimmer of hope when I bought Reading Greek and The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek.
I made a herculean effort to master the sounds of the restored pronunciation. The biggest problem was distingishing between the aspirated and unaspirated consonants. Then I tried listening to the CDs. Quelle horreur! Absolutely barbaric. Not quite as bad as fingernails scraping a chalkboard, but close. Then, I listened to some recordings by Ioannis Stratakis and I must say that his pronunciation seemed very convincing and quite agreeable to my ear. But then again, he’s Greek. Finally, I listened to Luke Ranieri and read his article. I’m sold. I think he bridges the gap between the ancient attic pronuncation and the Koiné. Another advantage is that if one wants to learn Modern Greek it is not such a great step.
I’m quite a big fan myself. As Charlie Parker says, it’s a good bridge between reconstructed ‘Attic’ and modern Greek, and it is very well researched and gives enough flexibility to the speaker to make it versatile.
As for the plosive/fricative issue, listen to modern Greek. The π, κ and τ almost sound like ‘b’, g’ and ‘d’ to an English speaker, but if you listen closely they are not. φ, χ and θ in ancient Greek were probably closer to the modern English ‘p’, k’ and ‘t’.
I spoke too soon! After experimenting with Ranieri’s system for a few weeks, I’ve abandoned it. I’ve come across words like ναῦν. I can’t imagine anyone saying something like navn. One is almost forced to make it a diphthong.I am now thinking that I should invest more time working on the reconstructed pronunciation. I can listen to more of the recordings by Ioannis Stratakis. Distinguishing the aspirate and non aspirated plosives is difficult but not impossible. In any case, one can always compromise by pronouncing φ and χ as fricatives.
Where did you find the word ναυν?
It’s the accusative of ναῦς. Very suggestively (of what?) that final syllable doesn’t show up very often in later centuries in TLG, outside of words like ναῦν and γραῦν. -ευν does show up as a final syllable, but seems confused with -ειν. On Forvo, I find -αϋν in modern Greek loan words, pronounced like -αιν.
Therefore I wonder if it these final syllables when they (rarely) showed up in the modern pronunciation were the equivalent to -αυν or -ειν.
When not final, there is no problem, of course. The ν- adheres to the next syllable, with the preceding syllable pronounced as av/ev, just like normal. There are modern Greek examples of this on Forvo.
Of course, you still can’t scan poetry with this pronunciation of αυ/ευ, which is enough reason for a classicist not to adopt it. But I think ναῦν is not such a large objection.
You could just pronounce the α or ε twice as long. Presumably that’s what people do who are modern Greek speakers and prefer to recite ancient poetry using modern pronunciation.
That would be one way, in front of vowels. [Another would be to double the fricative?] But in every recording I’ve heard, modern Greeks either ignore the meter or at best sort of fake it with syllable counting.
(I’d be extremely pleased and excited to hear examples of it done better. I just haven’t come across them.)
Also, if you’re pronouncing your εὐαγγέλιον like ηfαγγέλιον, you are going to sound neither like moderns nor like ancients, so what’s the point again?
Also also, it may be good to mention the havoc replacing a diphthong with a short vowel + const would play on circumflex syllables in normal prose. (Unless you’re just treating any accent as a simple stress, with circumflex equivalent to acute like modern Greek…which again breaks the meter.)