Both of those options seem reasonable to me but according to the first school, how is χθ pronounced? k+h+t+h seems impossible to me, or at least I can’t say it, whereas kh+th is easy to say.
Originally (certainly in the classical era) they were aspirated consonants like in Sanskrit, but at some point became like the Russian and English sounds. When exactly this happened I don’t know/remember.
I suppose you shouldn’t try to say “k+h+t+h”; just say “k+t+h” and the right sound should come about automatically. (If that’s something you’re aiming to achieve.)
To add my two cents to what Paul has said, the Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek (CGCG) in section 1.24 gives these tips concerning the pronunciation of θ and χ during the Classical period:
θ was pronounced like the word-initial “t” in the English name “Tom”
χ was pronounced like the “ch” in the word “chorus”
[Personal Note] When I took a New Testament Greek intro course way back during my university days, my instructor taught me the Erasmian pronunciation system. Then when I retired a few years ago and decided to get back into doing some Biblical Greek (NT and also LXX) I switched to using Buth’s Koine pronunciation system, and the change from Erasmian wasn’t too difficult. But then about a year and a half ago when I decided to really learn ancient Greek (CGCG rocks as an intermediate-to-advanced level Greek grammar, way easier to read IMO than Smyth, but the learning curve can be steep at times!) I decided to switch to using Classical Greek pronunciation, and it’s been really hard to rewire my brain for doing this – for example to pronounce μηκετι as “meh-kay-tee” instead of “may-keh-tee” without having to think about it. But the advantage is that the vowel-change laws seem to make a lot more sense (intuitively at least) when you pronounce Classical Greek “properly” instead of using the Koine pronunciation, which blends a lot of vowel stuff together making pronunciation simpler but morphology more mysterious. And let me tell you, if you can struggle through the first chapter of CGCG where it explains all the phonetic stuff like disappearing yods and vanishing sigmas, then mysteriously everything begins to make sense – verb forms that seem irregular in different tenses magically become easy to guess, third-declension nouns seem simpler than 1st and 2nd declension ones, etc. But it may take several tries to climb the hill when you first start reading CGCG!
Thanks for your helpful reply, Paul. I mainly learn languages to enjoy literature, especially in the case of dead languages, so I’m only interested in being “authentic” insofar as it enhances my appreciation and doesn’t cause too many difficulties, In the case of aspirated consontants, the big problem for me is that I don’t easily retain the difference in sound between an unaspirated vs. aspirated t, k, p so it makes it much more difficult to memorize the spelling than if I use the “fricatives” th, ph, kh, and they wouldn’t do too much damage to the pronunciation considering that Greek-speakers adopted them just a few centuries later so they had to be similar. Apart from that issue, I like the Erasmian system.
On the other hand, I would really like to learn correct pitch accents because that would definitely enhance my appreciation of poetry and drama (and even Socratic dialogs, for example).
Of course, no one knows exactly how the pitch accent sounded, but there are scholarly works on the subject, and some discussion on the subject on Textkit. But for starters you could check Ioannis Stratakis on Youtube, he has a lot of material in reconstructed ancient Greek with pitch accent. It’s an educated guess of course, but in my opinion well-founded and unlike most attempts, very nice and natural to listen to.
While there may be a (very slight) puff of air following the first letter of Tom and chorus in British pronunciation, it’s minimal in both cases so it’s basically saying “tau = theta” and “kappa = chi”. I’d rather maintain the differernces by using the “th” for theta and “kh” for chi
That’s an interesting paper, thanks. It’s funny because at one point it said it exactly what was I thinking "No one would insist on using Chaucerian pronunciation when reading Shakespeare, and the situation seems analagous with respect to aspirated consonants. On the other hand, according to the descriptions of Koine Greek in tha paper, especially the diphthongs, I’ll take Erasmian Greek any day, especially since I’m much more interested in Ancient Greek than in the NT.
I’ve been meaning to tell you this before but i’m very skeptical about learning a language from a reference grammar. That’s putting the cart before the horse. I haven’t looked at the CGCG but it certainly has no monopoly on linguistic explanations. I think you might take at look the book I’ve been using:
Betts, Gavin; Henry, Alan. Complete Ancient Greek: A Comprehensive Guide to Reading and Understanding Ancient Greek, with Original Texts (Complete Language Courses). John Murray Press. Kindle Edition.
It’s available as a paperback or e-book (that lets you magnify the font to save your eyesight and has very helpful hyperlinks that let you navigate instantly within the book). It takes a hardcore linguistic approach (e.g., it has detaiiled explainations of the rulles for disappearing yods and vanishing sigmas and breaks down roots into pharyngeal, dental and palatal endings, etc. but instead of just giving the rules and paradigms it has progressive exercises and reviews and lots of authentic readings from a wide range of “real Greek texts” (which you asked about in another post), with very helpful notes (after all, you can’t understand a language of an ancient, completely alien society wiithout notes IMHO) and a giant glossary at the end.
Yeah thanks I understand and somewhat agree but (a) CGCG does include numerous examples of authentic sentences from Classical authors (but no exercises – which is why I’ve begun working through Xenophon’s Anabasis to apply what I’m learning through studying CGCG) and (b) having a scientific background (Physics) I’m also very interested in the morphology and syntax of Classical Greek itself and in this respect CGCG is fulfilling my interest wonderfully (except when I get stuck on something because of my lack of knowledge of English grammatical concepts).
But in the end I suppose different approaches to learning suit different kinds of people, so maybe it’s time that I stop trying to evangelize everyone in this forum to work through CGCG
