The pronunciation by Socrates of Ancient Greek in Bill and Ted’s Excellent adventure seems pretty good. What do you all think? Its seens like a form of modern pronunciation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XJKUITfiv4
ἠμέραι βίων ἠμετέρων οἴον ὕδρα τῆς κλεψύδρης
Per a random YouTube comment:
My Greek professor Steve Reece translated a pseudo-Socratic text into classical Attic in grad school. Segments of it were chopped up and pronounced in modern fashion by Socrates in this film. He got a four-foot bottle of champagne for it.
That’s Steve Reece of St. Olaf College.
Peter Gainsford has this to say on Tony Steedman’s pronunciation:
Vowels are a mix of Modern Greek and something else, consonants are British, and he doesn’t even make an attempt at the pre-Hellenistic pitch accent. But certainly not laughable.
I could understand the off-screen actor at the beginning of the clip (:17 seconds in “δηλος εστι, Σωκρατες”) a bit better than Steedman, but he sounded more British/American. At :52 it sounds like “ως υδωρ της κλεψυδρας <αἱ δυουσ’?> ἡμων ἡμεραι”. I skipped around in the clip, so I probably didn’t catch all of the Greek.
Just watched the clip at 0:50. The pronunciation approximates reconstructed classical, done painful slow and with English accent. Only υ is as in modern Greek, but presumably not meant to be. Accented syllables stressed; that’s the way I do it (and Steve Reece too at least as a grad student).
I’d guess the unintelligible bit, αἱ (?β)οῦ, was meant to be αἱ τοῦ βίου but he messed up.