[Poll] Which accent do you use for Attic?

Greek Learning Greek
1

Putting aside the endless discussions about the real sound of the Attic Greek, we all have to make choices to make the Greek sound in our heads (or better: if we decide to read or speak aloud) when we are using it (actively or passively). In that point, we must make compromises and every accomplished user of Ancient Greek here (I’m a beginner) must have made some kind of compromise in the things which have from some reasons “more solutions” (be it a part for you of a traditional pronunciation or just not fully resolved problem giving you more options).

I’m exactly interested what is your default choice.

This thread doesn’t want to question the way you do it (even though it could happen), it only desires to get some data for curious philologists as I am one :slight_smile:

To make the poll more clear:
Even the restituted pronunciation has some opinions on the stress (some form of it) in the Attic Greek, as it is impossible to omit the stresses completely in a statement, be it a language with melodic/tonic accent or not. But this stress had nothing to do with the syllables having the diacritics. The stressed syllable was not marked (and it’s not necessary for every word to have some - or for a short word… but rather for a tonal unit the statement is made of).
So the poll is concerned with your realization of THAT syllable which has the diacritics (acute, circumflex, grave).

1) the option #1 supposes that you apply the melodic accent without helping yourself by also stressing the syllable that has the diacritics and you may perform some kind of a necessary stress in a statement or a longer word independently on the melodic accent (but it may happen that the stress and melodic accent coincide in some word). Your melodic accent is as independent as it is possible.

2) the option #2 supposes that you help yourself (maybe unintentionally) to make the tonal/melodic accent also by stressing the syllable which has the diacritics.

3) the option #3 supposes that you consciously perform a dynamic accent (on the marked syllable), but you may help yourself in doing it by making the syllable slightly more “colored/distinct” than other syllables.

4) the option #4 supposes that you consciously perform a dynamic accent (on the marked syllable) and you don’t especially change the intonation to make the marked syllable even more distinct (you may even change the vowel quantity/the length… but it’s not a condition and sometimes maybe not desired)

*Also for the tonal users: I understand there are still uncertainties about the grave accent… the only opinions I got on that so far (for those who read it tonally) is that it is probably just an ortographical issue and that such word wouldn’t have a distinct tonal accent at all (but only having ‘somewhere’ the default stress/the dynamic accent most of the words have and which is not written, is ‘less important for a learner (who reads it tonally)’ and which position and force is a question to debate).
So if you use melodic accent but don’t agree with the way I described the realization of the grave accent, please ignore that description and still select the number 1.

(I also thought about a poll whether you normally read zdeta or dzeta… so if you want, you can share // Edit: or zeta).


Thank you very much!

2

…or just zeta. :slight_smile:

3

Right :wink:

4

Mine:
Acute: short: high tone; long: low-high combination(=acute on the latter mora. sounds like a raising tone)
Grave: always low/mid tone (i.e. no heightening, flat)
Circumflex: high-low combination(=acute on the former mora, sounds like a falling tone)

Under certain circumstances I would pronounce the acutes and the circumflexes on long vowels as pure raising/falling tones though. e.g. ὦ
PS: I’ve read somewhere that the grave diacritic was once written on ALL “un-toned” syllables, so I think that that the grave accent is a tone unchanged in pitch (in other words, ancient Greeks simply did not pronounce the acute accent of the last syllable of words being immediately followed. i.e. there was a tone sandhi) is correct.

=
Correction:
All the slashes (“/”) used above mean “or”, not “and then”

5

I try to use the tonal accent as far as I can:

  • acute: for a short vowel, high; for a long vowel, rising.
  • grave: treat it as if the original acute is ignored, i.e., just flat. I see some authors simply drop it.(http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/Archilochus.pdf)
  • circumflex: high and the falling, (in my mind it’s rise-and-fall but that’s not easy to do in practice, unless you do the long vowel unnaturally long)

I also try to pronounce iota subscript as an i-glide for memory’s sake, (also justified by its use before 5th century BCE as explained in Vox Graeca.)

6

Thank you all so far for your votes and some of you for your opinions, I’m hoping more of them (votes mainly) will come :slight_smile:.

In my original post I don’t distinguish between “rising tone” and “higher tone”, but I guess it was concluded…

Good, that seems to be identical with what I have deduced later on from my own practice!

Under certain circumstances I would pronounce the acutes and the circumflexes on long vowels as pure raising/falling tones though. e.g. ὦ

The problem for me here would be probably, that in order to produce the rising and falling tone in one syllable (2 moras) it would require even more time (marking audibly the transition would consume more time). Even ‘jumping to the higher tone and getting back’ already seems to make a normally long vowel even longer… But interesting!

PS: I’ve read somewhere that the grave diacritic was once written on ALL “un-toned” syllables, so I think that that the grave accent is a tone unchanged in pitch (in other words, ancient Greeks simply did not pronounce the acute accent of the last syllable of words being immediately followed. i.e. there was a tone sandhi) is correct.

Yeah, that’s basically the best argument there is (from what I’ve read to this point) for some practical advice for the grave accent (I expressed it by the word “neutral” in my own post)…
I also thought that it wouldn’t be a bad experiment to do a research if the grave accent evolved into the same kind of dynamic accent in “grave accent phrases” as it evolved in “non grave accent phrases”… but it would have to be probably a phrase constantly in use through the language evolution (i.e. if we can deduce something about the grave accent diachronically using the today’s Greek - but probably the result/the conclusions would be fallacious).

My native language is Czech (western Slavic language, IE) and we have phonemically long and short vowel pairs (something quite rare in Europe and quite ‘classical-languages connecting’), so I naturally happen to distinguish long and short vowels (even in a rapid speech: we never get this wrong) and I also naturally produce them in the desired length and I must absolutely agree with your observation about the vowel length of the circumflex syllables! It indeed seems to me (from my tonal pronunciation realizations I have done to this point), that if I want to make the circumflex “real” (to apply properly the two tonal changes on each mora) I have to make the long vowel at least by 1/3 (or 1/2) longer that what is for me a “normal natural length of a long vowel”. And I’m glad that we, though disconnected from each other normally and having different lingual backgrounds, arrive independently at the same result :slight_smile:

I also try to pronounce iota subscript as an i-glide for memory’s sake, (also justified by its use before 5th century BCE as explained in Vox Graeca.)

Yes, that would be an interesting poll again: how do you normally read subscripted iota. But for me personally (the little bits I have read) there seems to be a clear recommendation (for the reconstructed pronunciation users) for pronouncing it (if that is what you say… maybe I’ve got lost in some terminology you have used)

I have done so far only a “quick” reading of Vox Graeca (mainly of the parts that got me interested the most).
(So right now I pronounce all the subscripted vowels as long diphtongs)

7

Also what drove me to make this kind of inquiry (the poll) was some kind of realization that when I tried to emulate (and I still do) the melodic accent, I suddenly noticed that I liked to “help” myself also by putting there some extra stress and I thought “that’s not Attic!” (in terms of the reconstructed pronunciation). (maybe I have changed by now, but I still voted for the option #2 to keep the poll true :wink: )

It is also a question if it is possible to produce a dynamic accent only by sheer help of the respiratory force… I think that often also a variable speed of saying the unstressed and stressed syllables, and the alternated word melody plays some role in the realization of a dynamic accent in languages described as having a distinctive one. (By alternating the melody I mean that the word (if polysyllabic) has always some “default” melody when you utter it… let’s say from up to down and if you alternate it, you can make two “ups” two “amplitudes” (or the second “up/amplitude” upper/higher than the first one and call it then a dynamic accent :slight_smile: ). ← But already the change of melody could be described as a manipulation with the tones, granted a little one.
Others may just change the quantity of the syllable (which is dangerous for the meter).

But… that’s just an innocent contemplation of what really “is” a dynamic accent.

8

So currently

  • 34% for a melodic/tonal accent in some form
  • 66% for a dynamic accent in some form

Not so bad for a melodic accent, which is generally considered for future graecists as a kind of ugly duckling :smiley:

I’m curious if it’s going to move!

9

First post! :smiley:

My accent is completely dynamic, because I do not use reconstructed pronunciation. I learned Modern Greek before I even started to look at any of the Ancient dialects, so that’s the Hellenic pronunciation that I use for all Greek, ancient or modern. I have tried to learn reconstructed, but it’s too quirky for me.

10

Calepinus septem linguarum, Gallicciolli (1778): (source)

Z > littera Graeca est, qua in Latinis dictionibus non utimur. Est semovicalis, ex genere literarum duplicium. Valet enim > sd> . Ejus loco nos substituimus interdum geminum > ss> , ut > patrisso > pro πατ[ε]ρίζω, > pitisso > pro π[ο]τίζω, interdum > sd> , ut > Esdras > pro Ἐζρας. Antiqui loco ejus unicum aliquando > s > scribebant, ut > Sacynthus > pro Ζάκυνθος, > Sethus > pro Ζῆθος. Nonnunquam etiam > d > literam loco ejus usurpabant, ut > Medentius > pro > Mezentius> . Sed hoc tantum apum antiquissimos, qui peregrinas nullas literas recipiebant.

Zabŭlus> , ī, m. idem quod > Diabolus> , ea ratione, qua > zeta > pro > dieta > dicitur. > Lactant. de mortib. persecut. c. 16.

N.B. This information may be way outdated, but is still amusing. Usually, I pronounce ζ ut “zd”, but in this case “dzabulus” seems more comfortable.

11

I went for option 3, as I try to raise my tone as well as putting, I suppose inevitably, a little stress on the marked vowel; I use a trick I read of in connection with Chinese (which I have no knowledge of, just looking from curiosity). To raise your tone level, raise your eyebrows a bit and the vowel you’re pronouncing should rise too. I find it works though I would think that as you get used to raising your tone on a lot of words you’d come to do it without the help of your eyebrows :unamused: . The advice re tones was only to try them in conversation if you can get it right, as Chinese listeners find it easier (or not so difficult) to understand toneless speakers than those who get the tones wrong, and I would guess the same would most likely have been the case for the Greeks. So ultimately the tones in Greek aren’t of such vital importance :question: As for Zeta I learned it as “zd”.