This is fundamentally the biggest waste of two and a half hours I have ever witnessed. Open up your Herbert Weir Smyth's Greek grammar, flip to the back to the section called "Hyllage", then remorse.
@@iberius9937 This clearly is not. Classical and ancient Greek are not standardized. Not even the cases were standardized. What we assign to dialects were further subdivided into localized patterns that may have been more dominant than the writings that survived. Even worse, the subdialects were so divided that in many cases Greek authors (and speakers) were simply picking "rules" that they felt were the most aesthetic. Basing anything on modern Greek is worthless as well. The traditions did not survive intact.
That's true of Italian or really any language even today. That doesn't really make it a waste of time. At a certain point you have to choose how granular it's worthwhile to go. Everyone is aware that in real life it was much more chaotic and complex than these conventions. Same with the greek myths, we have a *vastly* oversimplified view of them, compared to how the various cults actually worshipped across space and time. Doesn't make it a waste of time to pick out some main versions and learn about them.
@polyMATHY_Luke Did the vowel quality difference between long and short vowels maybe emerge, at some later Roman period? Because it seems to have been the case; at least, at some point of Romance evolution. For example, a lot of Romance languages merge the short ”Ĭ”, with ”E”, and quite a few have 7 vowels (i, e, ε, ɑ, ɔ, o, u); instead of 5, like Classical Latin. 🤔
I am merely 42 minutes in and I dare anyone to find a better video on TH-cam about Ancient Greek pronunciation. Excellent research and presentiation, as always. Quality content!!!
The modern Greek in the beginning was flawless. The only tiny mistake my native ear could detect was saying something closer to 'προφόρεται' instead of προφέρεται (is pronounced).
@@polyMATHY_Luke Greek preposition προ- in English is pre Προφέρω= προ+ φέρω Should be pre-nounce Pronounce= pro+ nounce Why in English is pro-nounced instead of pre-nounced Do you know?
A couple months ago I started learning phonemic vowel length. One mistake I made and sometimes still make is to overexaggerate the long vowels. The main point is that they have to sound noticably longer than the short ones, but no longer than that, otherwise you end up just sounding strange, and the rhythm of the words is awkward.
Absolutely. It’s of course just fine to exaggerate them when starting out, and in Japanese they are quite distinct so it’s not out of the question to have a 2:1 ratio. The key is to make the shorts short.
Honestly, the (American) English word that truly made me realize the meaning of LONG and UNSTRESSED is... "dumbass." "Dumb" is clearly stressed and "ass" is clearly long; if you pronounce it short, you get something that sounds more like "dumbis" -- not the same word. I think it also sounds incorrect if "dumb" is pronounced long -- that sounds like a feigned Southern accent almost. To me, it's clearly short-long. Once I understood that "dumbass" has a similar cadence to words like "agō", I felt like I finally 'got' phonemic vowel length.
I cannot stress this enough, Mr. Ranieri: This is the best video on Ancient Greek phonology on TH-cam or anywhere else on the web, along with all your other excellent videos on the subject. A true labor of love and philological endeavor.
Started yesterday, and finally finished today. What a great video, not only for reference, but even to watch straight through. Now that the firehose of information has washed over my novice brain, I imagine I will watch this a second time in the future and take detailed notes. I especially appreciated your remarks on Buthian pronunciation (given that I now own both of Kantor's books), and the comments on geographic distribution of the Lucian variants. I am most especially interested in the pronunciation of the New Testament authors, whether it be St. Paul the Apostle or St. Matthew the Evangelist, and so knowing that Romaic Lucian is most likely the way to go is very helpful in that regard. Thanks again for all your hard work. This is all immensely valuable and interesting to boot.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment! I'm glad that the video is useful as a reference, as that was what I had hoped: in the future, if viewers wish to look up a topic like pitch accent or Classical Attic Pronunciation or one of the conventions I recommend, they can go to the relevant chapter. I'm also glad if the whole video holds up as a single entity as well. Ben Kantor's books are fabulous, perhaps the best scholarship yet on the topic. I was actually impressed by what I observe to be a change of mind that Ben undergoes as he writes PNTG. From the beginning he refers to Buthian Pronunciation as General Koine - I attempted in the above video to politely present my opposing opinion regarding this terminology - but allows himself to concede that, in effect, the pronunciation of the Biblical figures of the New Testament was indeed closer to Romaic Lucian than Buthian. Based on the data, he usually assumes changes in phonology took place about 50-100 years before they appear as spelling errors. I take a slightly more conservative approach. At the very end of PNTG there is a fabulous set of IPA transcriptions for changes every 50 years. I agree with those as being very reasonable reconstructions, though I believe each of them is about 50 years too early. That's just my opinion though based on the data he presented in the book.
Christophe Rico of the Polis Institute, as well as other academics that teach Ancient Greek, especially in a comprehensible, conversational matter, need to watch this video in its entirety. Ancient Greek pronunciation needs a major reform in schools, and this video presents the solution and the better alternative to Erasmian.
I consider Dr. Rico a dear colleague, and I have the highest opinion of his work, so I wouldn't presume to foist my ideas on a man of such erudition. To my knowledge he is aware of my alternative pronunciation conventions. Something I have learned from experience is that it's very hard to change one's convention, even willingly, much less when there is no obvious need for it. Having spent years with a certain convention, anyone should feel free to keep doing what they're doing. We'll see my if my proposals gain any enthusiastic support or adoption. If not, I'm happy that I've pointed to some evidence that I think helps us reconstruct the sound of Koine Greek.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Dr. Rico ought to come to the realization that Academia is wrong, as it pertains to pronunciation of Greek. Greek is a living, thriving language and there is no reason to pursue this travesty, not only for the sake of Greeks, but in the name of historical accuracy. The Iliad was sung. As a poem. Passed through the generations orally. Try reciting Homer in an Erasmian phonology. Erasmian is not Greek, it's Erasmian and students ought to seek out schools and profs that have the decency to be linguistically accurate.
40:06 it's a detail, but *thank you* for including this, the transition from ‹οι› to /y/, only vaguely waved at in most entry-level Attic manuals, always bugged me. You demonstrate it brilliantly.
Thanks for your encouragement, Jason! I hope this video meets the expectations you impressed on your friends. May Pompeian Lucian be a good place for them to land while recovering from Erasmian.
My headcannon remains that "Lucian" comes from "Luke". I'll die on that hill. On another sidenote, I base the version of Greek in my worldbuilding project on the Lucian pronunciation (will see which variant after I finish watching the video) because it makes sense in context. Alexandrine and Antiochene, it seems...
That is what I had though too, that you named the pronunciation system after yourself. In my view it does the system no discredit owing to the scholarly work you’ve done.
Native German speaker who recently started learning Ancient Greek here - I have actually never struggled with properly distinguishing aspirated plosives from non-aspirated ones, and I like the contrast between the forceful aspirates and the less strong non-aspirated plosives. I'm not saying there isn't something to the claim that this contrast may be hard to acquire; however, I didn't find it particularly challenging. I will say, though, that I have undergone some phonetic training in college, and I also had some experience learning Italian and French (though my knowledge of both languages is mostly passive by now), as well as Latin, so I was already subconsciously aware of the contrast between languages like German or English that do aspirate initial plosives and languages like Italian or Latin that don't - all I needed to do was to transfer that contrast into a new language, which did require some acclimation but wasn't that bad in the end. What I had more of an issue with, though, is the distinction between voiced and unvoiced non-aspirated plosives, which, of course, I do know from Latin, except that it's not a contrast that carries a huge semantic load there, and my Italian in particular gives me some intuition about voicing b, d, and g because the languages sound quite similar; transferring that to Ancient Greek proved surprisingly difficult, so I ultimately decided to evolve β, γ, and δ into fricatives to get a clearer contrast. There are other elements of later pronunciations that I personally like better than their Classical Attic equivalents, even if I don't necessarily struggle to articulate the older variant: elements like monophthongizing long diphthongs or evolving ει into /i:/ and ου into /u:/, for example. In the end, I feel I'm fairly comfortable from both a pragmatic and an aesthetic point of view with a somewhat conservative imperial pronunciation that retains the diphthongs (with a more closed off-glide - as in, /aj/ over /ae/ and /ew/ over /eu/ (apologies, by the way, for the limitations of my phone keyboard; I hope the intended IPA symbols are clear) -, as is also very common in English; conventional transcriptions are a bit behind in this regard, as Geoff Lindsey likes to rant about on his lovely TH-cam channel) and aspirates but evolves the voiced plosives, monophthongizes long diphthongs, and sets ου to /u:/ and ει to /i:/ in all positions. In other words, your system of Alexandrine Lucian pronunciation definitely corresponds very closely with the conventions I've found work well for me, so I'll be consciously adopting it from now on. I'm definitely not perfect (I continue to find pitch accent difficult because I don't know it from any language I've learned, for example; your crash course was certainly helpful, but I still don't know if I'm doing it right. Another mistake I often made at the beginning was to unconsciously apply the penultimate stress rule from Latin to a word like θάλαττα, which was definitely enabled by the fact that I reflexively applied stress accent.), but I do feel like my choices on a segmental level at the very least provide few difficulties for myself and make for a pronunciation I personally enjoy using.
Αncient Greek θάλαττα transformed into modern Greek θάλασσα. So, it went from "thalatta" to "thalassa". Similar minor transformations of ancient words prove beyond reasonable doubt that modern Greek is a living language and a direct successor of ancient Greek, which renders Greek to be the oldest continuously evolving written = attested language on Earth, surpassing even the Chinese language, which was first written down approximately 100-200 years after Greek. Linear B writing system was used to write Greek since 1400-1450 BCE... This script includes characters that already existed in Linear A script. Linear A included many more characters that did not pass on to Linear B. Finally, note that while Linear B appeared in the 15th century BC, as the first writing system used to attest archaic Greek, Linear A is much older: Initially, Linear A dated back to 1800-1900 BC but after several discoveries on Greek islands with artifacts (pottery, for the most part) depicting Linear A characters (symbols), it is now evident that Linear A actually goes back further in time, all the way to 2300 - 2400 BC.
@Seventh7Art "Similar minor transformations of ancient words prove beyond reasonable doubt that modern Greek is a living language and a direct successor of ancient Greek" - this makes Modern Greek no different from Italian which comes from Latin, German that comes from Proto-Germanic, or Modern English that comes from Old English. Greek is amazing, but it is not special. Ancient Greek pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary is drammatically different from Modern Greek. Watch the video to learn more.
@beatoriche7301 I'm delighted you like Alexandrine Lucian! You can certainly call it anything you like, and I encourage you to modify it in all kinds of ways, as you seem to be doing, so that's fantastic. Geoff Lindsey is a delight; he has helped me as well. You're also absolutely right that the challenge with the three-way contrast is as much with the initial "voiced" stops in English/German, which oftentimes are in fact voiceless [p t k], as with the aspirated stops. Researching this topic during the video, and thinking of your previous comment, I found Voice Onset Time, described nicely here: th-cam.com/video/KkiuV8GGKUw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=BnJ7Q3ZimO8oulgx The corresponding wiki page is helpful too. Essentially, an initial voiced stop in Ancient Greek was distinctly voiced (you'd see the sound waves on the voice sonogram at the occlusion of the [b]). My hypothesis is that, much as German and English progressively eliminated initial voicing of stops, since the aspiration contrast became primary, Ancient Greek needed initial aspiration (φ, VOT+), occlusion with no following aspiration (π, VOT-zero), and pre-voicing during the occlusion (β, VOT-); once VOT became more important than occlusion, γ δ β were permitted to undergo lenition and become fricatives, leaving voiceless unaspirated and aspirated stops the only occlusives, as in Egypt. Thanks for the comment. Keep having fun experimenting! I'm not very good at Alexandrine (I find it really challenging), so it'll be awesome if you feel like publishing some recordings of your take on it in the future. EDIT: Dogen has a great video on pitch accent in Japanese, which is essentially the same system I present in this video: th-cam.com/video/O6AoilGEers/w-d-xo.htmlsi=WbgotOVTxrC9oHyr His presentation is somewhat more detailed and specific to Japanese, but the principal of downstep on the mora that follows the accented mora is identical.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Well, no English person can understand Old English from 1000 AD. Every Greek person can understand Greek that is equally old. That makes Greek Very Special. I am certain that you ignored this simple example. The evolution of the Greek language is the slowest on Earth, by far. I dare you to compare how much ancient Chinese a modern Chinese person can understand, compared to a Greek. You are in for a huge surprise. Same applies to Italian trying to understand Latin, etc. etc. The comparison won't be even close, dear friend.
@@Seventh7Art Italian hasn't evolved more than Greek has since 1000 AD, nor has Icelandic or Persian or Georgian (Persian and Georgian have arguably evolved less than Greek since 400AD, though Persian has evolved more since 0AD). Since 0AD Greek and Italian have evolved about as much as each other - Greek is more conservative in some ways, but less in others. Personally I'd consider Greek a bit more conservative, but the difference is not huge. Tamil is probably more conservative to its earliest literature (~300 BCE) than Modern Greek is to literature of the same period.
I like how you addressed Modern Greek pronunciation being different in the very beginning _in Modern Greek._ That's gotta shut up any Modern Greeks insisting you're doing pronunciation wrong.
Thanks! I may hope so, and that was the intent, to show Greeks that I at least know a bit of Modern Greek and (as best as I can) how to pronounce it. This is to respond to a common accusation lobbed by Greeks: “you are using Erasmian pronunciation because you are an Anglophone and cannot pronounce our language.” My comments in Modern Greek do not necessarily establish that the Ancient Greek language had a different pronunciation, but I’m hopeful the rest of the video will support that conclusion.
"That's gotta(!) shut up any Modern Greeks..."!!! Really??? Don't you have more serious issues in your life instead of this??? 😝😝😝 Why don't you start from the pronunciation of Modern English and its crappy idioms like "gotta", "gonna", "outta" and such Yankish😝 stuff???
@@polyMATHY_Luke well, it seems to have worked. I didn’t notice one individual, not one! tirading and ranting about it the way they normally do in these types of videos.
That eu is pronounced as [ ɔ͜ʏ ] in German, is due to the Old Germanic // becoming first [ ʏ(:) ] and then [ ɔʏ ] in Modern Standard German, while still written eu in all positions. But in Middle High German, there where the convention of eu/eo/iu/io.
@@polyMATHY_Luke serious question, how did you acquire all these languages while being a helicopter pilot? I try to do French or maintain my Koine Greek (from seminary) but fail. I’m an army chaplain and I struggle with keeping a study plan for SLA. Any advice or videos to point me to?
You seem to have an very high level of knowledge on this subject, at least at the level of a Greek philologist. Hopefully, Erasmian will be thrown in the dust bin of linguistic history. Thank you.
1:50:40 Also; at least, for me, as a Finn (and a Krasnian Forestic), it’s so much easier to pronounce [æe] & [øy], because they follow vowel harmony, which is built in to Finnish, Forestic & Krasnian.
Interestingly; when doing my own phonetic analysis/categorization/etc. of my own language: Finnish (and its descendents: Forestic & Krasnian), and others I was familiar with, like English & Russian; before being acquainted to the technical phonetic & phonological terms; I often called the ”continuous” consonants (non-plosives): ”semivowels” _(”Puolivokaalit”,_ in Finnish & Forestic; _”Puoliääntiöt”,_ in Krasnian) 😅.
Hello Luke, thanks for the great video. I was wondering, how much information is there and how much can we reconstruct about clitics in ancient Greek. Which words functioned as clitics, how were they pronounced together with other words and how did they affect the flow of speech. I imagine that if I consider long and sort vowels, the flow and rythm of the language is really different from modern Greek and consequently clitics would be somewhat different as well. When I heard your rendition from True Story, one thing that sounded unnatural to my ears as a modern greek speaker is the pronunciation of clitics, because if I read it with a modern greek accent I would emphasise less the timing between some words.
Ευχαριστώ για τὸ σχόλιο! That's a great question; γε τε σε etc. are many common clitics. Modern Greek has a very lovely feature where the lengths of vowels in unstressed words are often highly reduced to the point of almost vanishing, something I try to do in my own spoken Modern Greek. This is also a feature I intend to incorporate into my spoken Ancient Greek as I improve. Thanks for the observation; if I understood what you mean, I agree with you, and your comment has encouraged me to really try to make this aspect of my Ancient Greek sound more like Modern Greek.
Just a sidenote: Considering the presence of doubled consonants, words like νυμφη and άνθρωπος should be pronounced as /nýf:e:/ and /áθ:ropos/,if you are using a variant which has fricatives for φ,χ, and θ. As evident in cypriot greek, ν and μ assimilated into the following fricative. Pronunciations like /nýmfe:/ or /anθropos/ are wrong even though they sre present in standard modern greek (they are kf course not demotic)
That's a really great observation. So the nasal is indeed lost often, such as in σύν + ἵστημι = σύστημι, which is one reason we can assertain that most of Ancient Greek did not have fricative φ θ χ. However, the loss of the nasal is not immediate; in Italian, for example, some words inherited from Proto-Romance have lost the nasal, as in mese > mēnsis, but others have retained it, as in insegnare; in such words, the 'n' is rendered as the nasalization of the preceding vowel, precisely as we reconstruct for Classical Latin. Thus νύμφη [nýɱ.fe̞ː] or [nỹ́ː.fe̞ː]. I think complete loss is fine too; that's certainly the ultimate result. But I'm okay with a somewhat more conservative pronunciation for these conventions, as they are meant to straddle the whole eight centuries of Ancient Greek.
the pompeiian pronunciations are all so beautiful, which makes sense, considering how magical pompeii is even to this day. thanks for the great video 🤌
Being bilingual in Mandarin, which distinguishes voiceless unaspirated vs. voiceless aspirated stops, and English, which distinguishes voiced unaspirated vs. voiceless aspirated, makes learning a 3-way contrast within a single language feel like forbidden language mixing 😅 I tried learning reconstructed pronunciation out of Pharr's Homeric Greek and have been learning a bit of Taiwanese Hokkien, and it's still awkward for me to pronounce reconstructed β/π/φ (or b/p/ph in Taiwanese) too close to each other despite natively knowing the difference between all 3. Was there any evidence of regional variation for pitch accent? Japanese pitch accent varies from place to place and even closely related Sinitic dialects can have completely opposite tone contours. It seems strange that there wouldn't be some different pitch accent systems within Ancient Greek.
@@glossonauta I hope you keep doing more! If you like any of the Lucian Pronunciation variants, feel free to use them too, or develop your own variant based on the commentary in the second half of the video. Or keep doing Butihan because you do it really really well and I love listening to it.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Ok, I'll do more, maybe in Buthian pronunciation or maybe in a different system, with vowel length and pitch accent. However, I'd need the text with macrons, since I might find some vowels whose quantity I'm not sure about (sadly, that happens to me much more often in Greek than it does in Latin haha), and I don't want to have to open Wiktionary every that happens. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hi, have you considered publishing your research in any journals? You and Raphael have put in a great deal of effort and thought into the Lucian system, and it would be great to have other scholars cite your work :)
By far the most comprehensive and well made video on ancient Greek pronunciation! Thank you for this! 🤗 As a New Testament Greek student I have adopted Buth's convention believing it was closest to 1cAD koine Greek. After seeing your video I am now convinced Buth represents a later koine convention. So my question is then: which convention is closest to the New testament writers based on the latest research? (Mostly meaning Paul, being a roman Greek speaking Jew from Cilicia, but also other Greek speaking Jews from Judea). Is it simply Somasotene or rather a variation of it?
Hi Anders! Thanks for the kind words. The best representation of Koiné phonology during the 1cAD (the time of Paul) is Romaic Lucian Pronunciation. This is confirmed by the data collected in Ben Kantor’s book PNTG. One could certainly play with using more innovative features or sets of features, but the most likely and most conservative guess is Romaic Lucian Pronunciation, whose features are dramatically well attested in numerous geographies and registers in that century.
@@polyMATHY_Luke thanks for the quick and clear reply! Finally, a confident and solid based guideline. I must admit it is hard to convert to phonemic long vowels and pitch accent when all teachers and text books have taught and stressed the opposite, so all my memorised glossary is in an awkward Buthian/Erasmian mix 😅 What's the best resource to learn and rehearse these elements based on this background? What I find most hard is adjusting to the pitch accent instead of stress (especially when different TH-cam videos does this differently), as well as keeping the long vowels when not accented. Including how to know when alpha, iota and omikron is long! Also distinguishing the aspirated, e.g. X from kappa without having kappa becoming g is very challenging in my Norwegian ears 😅
I would argue that Greek was definitely the English of its time in Classical antiquity, having had such a diverse dialectical and phonological variety depending on the region and also being a major lingua franca, just as English has been in modern times. I also feel it is far richer than Modern Greek, as beautiful and worthy of studying as the latter may also be.
I’m watching your video for the 8th (or is it 9th?) time. I’ve learned my lesson about Erasmian (aka “Cringe”) pronunciation. I’ve been using Pompeian Lucian for a while now (while insisting it was Erasmian). I’ve written a question for you on Patrion asking about the difference between “pronunciation” and the more elusive “quality” of accent. I hope to cross paths with you one day when my Koine and Latin are better. Thank you again for your help with my journey!
19:30 As a Finn, I’m honoured that you mentioned Finnish, as the first example of a modern language that phonemic vowel length. 🇫🇮😊 19:50 Also; in a language I have evolved, through the extreme isolation I grew up in, from Finnish, through Proto-Forestic*, called: ”Krasnian”; accenting vowels (and most consonants**) means, exclusively, lengthening said vowels; and Krasnian marks stress***, on a later syllable (usually), with a dot below the ”stress-carrying vowel” (the 1st vowel of the syllable); for example: ”Reakcio” (”(Chemical) Reaction”; stress on the 1st syllable: ”Re-”) vs. ”Re’ạkcio” (”Response”; stress on the 2nd syllable: ”-ạk-”). So, I would naturally pronounce those accented vowels as long, but not necessarily stressed 😅. *Proto-Forestic was a language that my Friend and I evolved (from Finnish), in our childhood, through the extreme isolation that we lived in; and which served, as an ancestor to both Modern Forestic and (Modern) Krasnian. **The only exception is the consonant: ”Ẃ” (”Ẃé”), which is pronounced simply as a voiceless variant of ”W”, as a voiceless bilabial fricative [φ]; and it’s the only accented letter in the Latin-based Krasnian alphabet (”Lacịƞḱa”) that’s its own distinct letter. The reason behind this is that; when I developed a standardized printed form for Krasnian, I had a problem: There is no accented ”F”, in the Unicode; so, writing a lengthened ”F” (not to be confused with long ”F” or double-”F”) seemed impossible. However, I remembered that, in Old and Early Middle Krasnian, ”W” was pronounced as an ”F” (from the contemporary Forestic); so, I settled on ”Ẃ”, which IS in the Unicode, for lengthened ”F”, in print. However; an even older Krasnian (Early Old Krasnian) had a different pronunciation, for ”W”: voiced bilabial fricative [β] or approximant [β̞] (depending on the ”phonetic environment” / surrounding sounds), which had also been revitalized around that time; so, this bilabial pronunciation ”bled” into the pronunciation of ”Ẃ”, shifting the labiodental [f]-pronunciation into a bilabial [φ]-pronunciation: A new f-sound had emerged in Krasnian. This new [φ]-sound needed its own letter, to minimize allophones; and so, I decided to make ”Ẃ” a distinct letter for this sound, for the following reasons: *1)* ”W” already denotes a bilabial sound ([β]/[β̞]); *2)* The voiced ”W” has no long variant, in Krasnian; and: *3)* The lengthened phonemes can vary between ~1 and ~2 * the duration of a short sound, in Krasnian, anyways; depending on the word. ***Krasnian actually has 5 distinct stress-levels (whilst Finnish has 3, and, to my understanding, most stress-based languages, English included, have 2), which are marked with the (previously mentioned) dot below the ”stress-carrying vowel”, a ring below the ”stress-carrying vowel”, a capital initial, or dot and ring below the ”stress-carrying vowel”. The stress-levels are: *1)* ”Unstressed” (Unmarked) *2)* ”Weak Stress” (Capital Initial) *3)* ”Semi-Strong Stress” (Ring Below) *4)* ”Strong Stress” (Dot Below) *5)* ”Overstrong Stress” (Dot & Ring Below) The ”Weak Stress” occurs on the 1st syllable of a definite noun (where English would use the definite article: ”The”), where there might also be slight falling intonation (or, to better fit it for the theme of this video, pitch), which is especially noticable in a long syllable, and is denotable with a grave accent, on the first vowel, as in: ”Tùuli” (”the wind”), versus: ”tuuli” (”(a) wind”); and it also occurs on the 1st syllable of a verb, in its courtesy-form. The ”Semi-Strong Stress” occurs on a normally stressed syllable; when the word is, either modified, such that the modification requires its own stress, or in the ”Romantive” form (1 of the 3 Krasnian ”Emotive” forms). 🟩🟥 🟦🟨
Thank You, for the heart (❤), and (presumably), for the like, too, Mr. Luke Ranieri 😊😌👍🏻. Also; some additional notes, I forgot to mention, in my original post, include the usage of the ”Overstrong Stress”, the transcription of ”Ẃ”, the marking of the ”Romantive” form, the usefulness of ”Ẃ”, and the optionality of the grave accent and, indeed, the falling pitch: *1)* The ”Overstrong Stress” is used in situations, where ”Strong Stress” and ”Semi-Strong Stress”coincide / occur on the same syllable; such as, when an emphatic stress is used, on an already stressed syllable; or, when a polysyllabic word, whose final syllable is already stressed, is in the ”Romantive” form, whose ”suffix” is (i.e. which is marked with) the ”Strong Stress” on the final syllable, and the associated ”Stress Dot” below the ”Stress-Carrying Vowel”. Also; the default position of ”Strong Stress” is the 1st syllable; so, when the 1st syllable *_IS_* stressed, it’s not marked; unless it’s being emphasized, or we’re dealing with phonetic transcriptions. It’s also treated as a ”Null Stress”; so, in a definite noun, whose 1st syllable is already stressed, the ”Strong Stress” is not replaced by or reduced to ”Weak Stress”, but the ”Weak Stress” is added on top of the ”Strong Stress”; so, technically, it’s an ”Overstrong Stress”; but it’s treated as a ”Weak Stress”; like, in the aforementioned example of: ”Tùuli”. *2)* Speaking of ”Tùuli”; the grave accent is entirely optional, and it mostly has educational and pedagogic uses. The falling pitch doesn’t necessarily even occur, on a short syllable; such as, in this grammatically correct sentence: _”Tilanne’ Tilanne’ Tilanne’.”_ (”Consider ordering the situation up to the farm.”); where (going by the default word order) the 1st ”Tilanne’” is the verb: _”Tilata’”,_ (= ”To Order”, as in: ”Ordering food”), in the ”Considerative” mood (a ”Compound Mood”, composed of: ”Imperative” (-’ [ʔ]) + ”Potential” (-nee)), and in courtesy-form; the 2nd ”Tilanne’” is the definite noun: _”Tilanne’”_ (= ”The Situation”), in the Nominative case (despite being the object, of the sentence); and the 3rd ”Tilanne’” is the definite noun: _”Tila”_ (= ”The Farm”), in the ”Terminative case” (= ”Up to” / ”Until”); though, because Krasnian has a free word order, any ”Tilanne’” can really mean any of these things; thus, this sentence exhibits something, I like to call: ”Super-Symmetry”: ”A sentence composed entirely of words with identical spelling & pronunciation, and interchangeable meaning, or role/function, in the sentence.”; a.k.a. ”A sentence, all of whose words can be rearranged, in any way, whatsoever; without affecting the spelling, pronunciation, or meaning, of that sentence.” 😌. *3)* ”Ẃ” is, preferably, also transcribed into English and other languages, with the ”PH” -digraph, and vice versa. This is also indicated, in ”Krásnịca”, a featural Krasnian alphabet I’ve developed, for Krasnian, where all the letters are designed to reflect their phonetic features, kind of like the Korean hangŭl; and where it is marked, as a composite letter, as a square (like all consonants) with the top-right dot of ”P” (= ”Clear (top), front-of-the-mouth (right), strong (dot), consonant (square) sound”; a.k.a. Voiceless bilabial plosive) and the top-left ring of ”H” (= ”Clear (top), back-of-the-mouth (left), weak (ring), consonant (square) sound”; a.k.a. Voiceless glottal fricative). ”Ẃ” (and the associated sound [φ]) is, also very useful, for an ”f”-sound, following a bilabial sound, in words, such as: _”Kamẃeri”_ [ˈkɑm.φˑe̞.ɾi] (”Camphor”), _”Pamẃletti”_ [ˈpɑmφ.le̞t.ti] (”Pamphlet”), _”Memẃis”_ [ˈme̞m.φˑis̠] (”Memphis”), &: _”Amẃora”_ [ˈɑm.φˑo̞.ɾɑ] (”Amphora”). Connected to that; I find it very easy to pronounce the bilabial [φ]-sound; especially, in those environments (after a bilabial sound [p]/[b]/[m]). So, I’m definitely in the minority, there 😅. Krasnian even has ”Ẃ” [φ], in a native word: ”Ẃuki” [ˈφu.ki] (the _”Kansaƞkielinen”_ (”Vernacular”) version of: ”Vuoro” = ”Turn”, as in: ”My turn!”). Likewise; Krasnian has ”W” [β]/[β̞], in native words that normally have ”V” [v], in ”Old-School Speech” (reflecting the fact that Finnish used to have the German ”W”, for [v], before discarding it, in favour of ”V”; thus, using ”W”, in the place of ”V”, gives the text a more ”Old-School” -feel), and Krasnian mostly uses spelling-pronunciations; thus: [v] -> [β]/[β̞], in this register/mode of speech & text. *EDIT: BONUS NOTE:* ”Also; in a language I have evolved, through the extreme isolation I grew up in, from Finnish, through Proto-Forestic*, called: ”Krasnian”; accenting vowels (and most consonants**) means, exclusively, lengthening said vowels; - - ” That statement is actually incomplete; and thus, it’s inaccurate. Krasnian actually has a bit of a pitch accent, which is actually quite common, on a final extended (accented) vowel (or sonorant); such as, in the newer variant of _”File’”_ [ˈfi.le̞ʔ]: _”Filé”_ [ˈfi.le̞ˑ˩˥] (”Fillet”), where the final ”É” has a slightly rising pitch; in this case, to imitate the final phrase accent of French, where the word: _”Filé”_ is, of course, from. ”19:30 As a Finn, I’m honoured that you mentioned Finnish, as the first example of a modern language that phonemic vowel length. 🇫🇮😊” Also, what the Hell(ene) happened here? This should be: ”19:30 As a Finn, I’m honoured that you mentioned Finnish, as the first example of a modern language that has phonemic vowel length. 🇫🇮😊” Where did the ”has” in ”…that *_HAS_* phonemic vowel length. 🇫🇮😊” go 🤔? I’m pretty sure I wrote it, originally. 😅
I'll be honest, most of this goes over my head, but am I to understand you developed this script for your native dialect of Finnish that previously didn't have one? Is it for personal use or did anyone else pick it up?
@@VoidLantadd That’s about correct. The script is primarily meant for myself and my inner circle, who would use the dialect the script is for (like my Friend), as it has about ten superfluous letters, if used for Standard Finnish; but it could be adapted, relatively easily, not just for Standard Finnish, but for other languages, as well. On the other hand; its obscurity from mainstream usage or knowledge has definite advantages: I could write down my passwords for any of my accounts, in this script, and I think they’d be pretty safe; for one. So, I’m obviously not going to spoonfeed it to just everyone. So far, it has sparked some interest; especially, among the more linguistically oriented people I know (including my Friend, whom I mentioned above, my Indian online friend, and some of my former ”coursemates”, from university); but I think none of them are exactly fluent at it, yet, as it takes quite a bit of time and effort to get used to. That is specifically for the indigenous, featural script: ”Krásnịca” [krɑˑsˈni.t͡sɑ]; though some of the statements stay true, for the ”normal”, Latin-based script, too: ”Lacịƞḱa” [lɑˈt͡siŋ.kˑɑ], and even the 3rd script (though, the least relevant, as for the discussion, at hand): the Cyrillic ”Kiriĺịca” [ˌki.ɾilˈli.t͡sɑ], which I made, mostly, to honour my Russian family roots. Thank you, for your comment, and your interest 🙏🏻😌.
2:05:00 Finnish has the same issue, as Italian; as no native Finn speaks Standard Finnish, outside of public speeches, and other formal contexts. Yet, at the same time; pretty much all Finnish courses and other education for foreigners, I reckon, teach Standard Finnish; and non-natives have to learn the, often *_VERY_* different, regional dialect, through language immersion. The reason is also pretty much the same: The many dialects are so different that linguists created a standard variety conglomerating all the major dialects, without it being *_”TOO”_* biased, for any one dialect.
Λαμπρότατος! Διδόσθω γέρας ἀνδρί τούτῳ! I love both the Classical Attic and the Rhomaic conventions: which one I prefer actually depends on my mood: when I feel at best and optimistic, I opt for the classical one; when I feel like living in a decadent age, identifying myself with the scientists and philologists of Alexandria around 150 BC, I go for the Rhomaic one. I agree that the Pompeian standard is far easier and has many didactic benefits (it's a really good transition from real or pseudo-Erasmian, but I don't care very much because I took learning the aspirates as a challenge). I also very much like the Samosatene convention, because of its elegance, ecumenicism and "mediocritas": when I feel particularly sympathetic towards Modern Greeks and Biblical scholars, I even entertain the idea of choosing that standard for myself. I wouldn't consider choosing the Alexandrine convention, but when you recited the text at 8:42 I though: "Wow! Alexandrine is absolutely lovely! It can contend with Rhomaic for the most beautiful-sounding standard!" I also really appreciate the deep research and effort of synthesis you made. The other two Lucian standards I find historically interesting, but they don't please my ear very much. I noticed you cited all kinds of alternatives and deviations, but you didn't mention the "Heraclean variant" you theorised in your book "Judgement of the Goddesses" and the ɲɟ rendition of "γγ + front vowel", which you identified as the only (?) pronunciation of Greek during the Koine period in your spreadsheet. Did you trash those standards/variants?
Ὦ φίλε Ῥίκχαρδε, χάριτας πολλά̄ς σοι οἶδα! I am very grateful for you generous reply, and pleased to hear about your subjective preferences too. Good comment on the spreadsheet: it's a bit outdated, and was first designed to take a single route from Classical to Modern. This is the same route taken by virtually everyone else, from Gignac to Horrocks to Buth. But Kantor has been among the first of serious scholars to say that, look: there are probably many different phonologies going on. Thus my spreadsheet needs to be updated. I had a long section on Heraclean for this video, but I decided to delete it, in favor of a textual comment on screen for the part on Romaic: that the ει+V was almost certainly higher than η even when they tended to merge, because if ει and η truly had merged, then they would have moved together. But they didn't: ει went to /iː/ in all positions, and η wouldn't make that shift for a century or two, depending on dialect, region, etc. The Heraclean variant was meant to essentially resolve that conflict; but ultimately, the only way for it to work as a phase change of the phonology, was for ει+V and ει+C to have slightly different pronunciations -- that would defeat the purpose of the simplicity of the model, and wouldn't easily explain the consistency with which Romans transcribed Dēiopēa < Δηϊόπεια vs Hēraclītus < Ἡράκλειτος. Alternatively, if ει were always just [eː] or even [e̝ː] in all positions, then the convention would essentially just be that of Classical Attic (but with fricatives for φ θ χ, or other modifications), with two few differences to make it seem justified as a separate entity, especially from the point of view of historical reconstruction. And ultimately, as you read in the my Judgement of the Goddesses pronunciation guide (thanks again for reading it, by the way), my motivation was to appease the ear of those accustomed to Erasmian. But perhaps this attempt to placate Erasmian users is too far of a stretch of the historical evidence, I reasoned before publishing the video, and ultimately they should be the ones to adapt. Ultimately, I found myself unconvinced by my own argument, so I deleted it (I had spent many hours editing the graphics for that section I deleted, so I did not make the choice lightly!). I'm not opposed to people trying it if they like - even I might try it again - but it seemed only to add bloat to an already enormously long video, and to detract from the other conventions which I think are better both historically and practically. If I run more experiments with Heraclean in the future with Heraclean, I figured, I might make a follow-up video recommending it. That said, given that Heraclean was becoming weirdly close to Classical Attic, I've been sensing increased ambition among competent speakers of Attic, much much better than I especially in their command of the spoken idiom, who are successfully realizing that phonology with great precision to the point of flawlessness. Perhaps if a critical mass develops around a strong Attic style and pronunciation with many competent speakers, as has happened with Classical Latin, it can be an even better alternative than these Lucian Pronunciation variants. I would happily support such an outcome, and I hope to participate in it. I have spent the past few years on this Lucian Pronunication project since I found Buthian to be lovely but inadequate for Panhellenic studies of the ancient literature, and also insufficient as a historical reconstruction to represent the voices of the Koine period. I feel the Lucian system fills that role. Some of the variants, like Pompeian, can also be good places for Erasmian users to alight, which is probably the most important value my proposed conventions can bring. In addition to those two central goals of the project, this video and many of my arguments recommending Lucian Pronunciation are indeed attempts to disuade people from attempting Classical Attic Pronunciation by helping them realize that they probably are not doing it justice -- yet, if people really can do Classical Attic, and they're confident that their phonetics are strong, I highly encourage this. Thanks again. Χαῖρε πολλά!
I feel like one of the things that gets overlooked in NT Greek discussions is the transliterations of Hebrew names. David’s name (pronounced Dawid in Hebrew) is transliterated as δαυιδ most times I can find. I saw Bouth claim that “his name was changed from δαβιδ to match erasmian pronunciation (which feels like something Carthigounis would’ve written), and I also couldn’t find any source to back up his claims, as he neither provided one that I could see, and I couldn’t find anyone else talking about this. But if that’s not convincing, there’s also the name Saul. Transliterated as…σαυλ. And Paul’s name is universally pronounced as Paul (which would make sense if he has the name Saul), not pavl or pabl or something. So the idea that αυ and ευ were af/Av and ef/ev in the first century doesn’t hold up for me. I feel like Bouths goal with his pronunciation was to make it as close to modern Greek as possible while making exceptions for things that would be necessary, like ημεις υμεις, because they’d be indistinguishable (which he states as a goal in his paper, so people can “communicate with modern Greek speakers,” which also doesn’t work because they have a different vocabulary from NT Greek and a different grammar system). I have others issues with his paper claiming it’s THE koine pronunciation (such as focusing on NT Greek, while using spelling variations from the 6th century), but my comment is long enough.
You have my full agreement. Naturally I esteem Buth very highly, as I state in the video, but these are among some of the more significant issues with his theses. He dismisses observations such as you make here as spelling pronunciations or remnants of some conservative phonology only used by bookish types. In any case, I regard his proposals as out-of-date, as Ben Kantor’s recent book The Pronunciation of New Testament Greek validates essentially all of my responses to Buth’s claims. My conclusion in 2020 was that the real “Koine” pronunciation was necessarily more conservative. Examining the data in much more detail, it’s clear we have different phonological systems in different geographies simultaneously in any given century. For Buth and those who espouse Buthian, much is made of the Egyptian evidence, while ignoring the influence of Coptic, and ignoring the Egyptian evidence when it does not accord with a sound more like that of Modern Greek (the aspirates rendered as fricatives being one of the more egregious of these), often for practical or aesthetic reasons. So Buthian Pronunciation is a combination of historical, papyrological evidence mixed with a number of aesthetic preferences, making for a historically accurate phonology, but for a highly restricted time in Koine - it’s essentially the early Mediaeval pronunciation. And that’s just fine for a convention. My system of conventions that I call “Lucian” are similarly developed as a balance of historical data and practical implementation. What I oppose is the assertion that Buthian must be quite ancient, since the data do not lead to that conclusion.
@@polyMATHY_Lukefor me, as someone trying to learn to read the Greek NT fluently, I’m more interested in coming the closest to how Paul may have preached to the Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, etc. Since Romaic seems the way to go, I’m trying to learn to do the aspirates, but I think I’m going to lean more into the Pompean variety, since fricatives are more natural for me.
Greeks really need to get over their hatred for other Europeans and Americans trying to reconstruct the pronunciation of their ancient tongue. At times, they are almost as bad as Hindu nationalists when discussing the Indo-European FACT, and almost as aggressive. I thought Greece regarded themselves as a Western civilization, west of the Turks. I've always regarded their ancient tongue as a beautiful one, almost lacking any imperfections. It really disappoints me sometimes, but I know not all are like this. People really just need to get along instead of having fights over things that don't need to be fought over. Anyway, great video! I really enjoyed it. I've had issues finding videos that explain the pitch accent system.
I understand your point and I myself get often very tired of the constant denial of many Greeks. But nothing contributes to a healthy solution if it seems to be one-sided when giving the blame. When it comes to reconstruction, Europeans/Americans are actually pretty horrible at it. There are a lot of western "classicists" who love to judge modern Greeks for using their native accent to pronounce the words, while appropriating everything of value and claiming authenticity for themselves. Even though they do not reconstruct at all, or lay any real effort into it, but simply apply their own native sounds to the supposed "erasmian" phonetic values. As of now I have seen merely one person who was able to convincingly apply any genuine reconstruction. And he is a native Cretan named Ioannis Stratakis who only needed around 30 years of excessive research and practice to pull it off. It's also naive to think that authenticity or reconstruction has anything to do with the whole thing. It is rather a clash of established conventions. In the West we even go as far as pronouncing middle/late Koine and even medieval and Byzantine Greek texts, names, terminology etc. just as the supposed erasmian attic of the 5th century B.C. If reconstruction was the main purpose of it all then we wouldn't say things like "HEraklios", ManuEl KomnEnos, DEmEtrios Chalkokondyles or EUstathios of ThessalonikE...
As an English speaker, it seems to help to move my tongue towards the back while trying unaspirated stops for k, t, & p. It seems to prevent aspirating, but i dont know if Im really making the right sound. Fun trying, though.
Salve Magister Luce, I felt that here was a proper place to ask if you plan to record any audio for Logos and the updated Alexandros, both from Cultura Clasica. I've been trying to do an "approximate" (See the pun! Okay, okay, okay. I'll stop.) pronunciation of yours, but it's a bit discouraging because I can find no audio of Logos that I am 100% satisfied with. The two teachers that I am aware of whose diction I find most pleasing to my ears for varying reasons are yourself and Mr. Ioannis Stratakis. I look forward to your response. Vale PS: You probably already answered this question; if so, I apologize and must simply state that I forgot. Would Greek speakers in 1st century CE Athens have had an accent that sounded closer to Classical Athenian, or would their accent have been more innovative? What would the "cultural" and "economic heartland" of Ancient Greek culture be at this time: Antioch or Alexandria? Is that the wrong question? I'm asking because I'm currently weighing the options between choosing a more conservative accent (Romaic) or one that's closer to what most people would've actually sounded like in the eastern part of the Empire. From my limited historical knowledge, I am aware that Alexandria and Antioch were both cultural centers for the Hellenes. I'm also aware of the role that Egypt played for the Romans when it came to grain. I hope that you can shed some light on this issue for me.
I enjoyed the pun! I may look at those books in the future; I've read Logos through, and contributed to the edits of the recently released 2nd edition. Thanks for the compliment. I think Romaic Lucian is the right reconstruction for Athenians of the 1cBC and 1cAD. Attic remains the prestige dialect throughout the Koine Period, and as I show in the video, Philostratus tells people in the 2cAD to go to Athens to learn the "right" pronunciation. Those were indeed important cultural centers. As far as preference for style in writing and accent in speech, anyone who comments on the subject in antiquity vehemently pushes for a more conservative, Attic way of employing the language. This doesn't mean Koine should be thought us as "decadent," either in style or in phonology, because we ought to be more descriptivist than prescriptivist. Yet, we would not be out of step with our ancient peers - the educators, the public speakers, the scholars - to employ relatively few innovations, and prefer "Classical" Attic (probably like the convention I call Romaic). That's my read on the given material.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you for the response! I think that you mentioned several times in the video how you saw Samosatene Lucian as kind of an intermediary between the Classical Attic pronunciation and the Antiochean or Reuchlinian pronunciations. When I was in college, I studied Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Would I be accurate in thinking that you see Samosatene Lucian as a kind of Greek MSA?
Hello! Spaniard here. I’m going to use the pompeian pronunciation but I want to do some changes. In particular I would like to treat b d g as in spanish with the pompeian pronunciation but, should I treat intervocalic g before e or i like in spanish or like in samosetan? Another question: could I change oe to øy for the oi diphtong? It’s because it’s easier for me and more aesthetic. The same goes for b d g.
¡Hola! I'm excited to hear you like the Hesperian Option! As I said in the video, I think it has a lot of validity as a historical reconstruction, so I'll be excited to hear your version of it if you make any recordings (Forvo is a good place if you want to play around). I also imagined Pompeian Lucian to be the basis of the Hesperian Option (I should have mentioned that in the video; it gives you essentially the same consonant inventory), just as you suggest. You could definitely use a more narrow diphthong for οι. As for γι γε γη γυ γοι (which would be a front vowel if you use [ø͡y̯]), they would only become [ʝi ʝe̞ ʝe̞ː ʝy ʝø͡y̯] intervocalically and [ɟi ɟe̞ ɟe̞ː ɟy ɟø͡y̯] initially if you also palatalize velars κ χ before the same front vowels: κι κε κη κυ κοι [ci ce̞ ce̞ː cy cø͡y̯], χι χε χη χυ χοι [çi çe̞ çe̞ː çy çø͡y̯], otherwise they would be γι γε γη γυ γοι [ɣi ɣe̞ ɣe̞ː ɣy ɣø͡y̯] intervocalically and [gi ge̞ ge̞ː gy gø͡y̯]. I'm very fond of palatalization aesthetically, and it is a key feature of Modern Greek; you might like it too because it would give your Ancient Greek a Modern Greek sound, but that's up to you. Show us your recitations if you like as you play with these options.
Well, Luke, I wouldnt say that in Greece they teach that modern Greek pronunciation is identical to the classical one, *but rather that* they focus into understanding the ancient language excluding pronunciation. To a linguist this might seem bizarre, but, not being a linguist myself, I can understand why they do this: it is very difficult and time consuming for the student to learn the (correct?) pronuciation of his ancient language, when most students of that age (12÷18) dont care much in learning anything, not mention that they need to prepare for their University studies and very few choose this field (linguistics).
Γεια, ευχαριστώ για τὸ σχόλιο. It's true that this idea isn't taught universally in Greek schools, but it is taught, as I said in the video, "alarmingly often," which I have seen in actual lessons recorded and posted on TH-cam. I also have testimony from you and other Greeks that there is some commentary made in schools that there was a different ancient pronunciation. However, the Ancient Greek language does not make sense morphologically or grammatically without this information; thus I would indeed put some of this into the curriculum.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Fair... Though to my defense I must say that throughout my highschool years none of my teachers ever claimed that the classical Greeks used the same pronunciation we use. I also know that in Universities things are different and the pronunciation issue is being taught thoroughly. I can fully accept of course that in the absence of an official narrative on this issue in schools, anyone can claim what he/she wants on this matter. We all know Luke that ancient Greek was pronounced differently than modern Greek. We all have been taught some ancient Greek, and we all use words like ημών & υμών in everyday life, which in our pronunciation exactly because "η" & "υ" sound almost the same, when using these words in everyday life we have to determine the first letter: when we use the word ημών we say exactly _"ημών με ήτα"_ in order for our interlocutor to get what we mean. This shouts different pronunciation and you dont need to use more examples to prove it. So we are aware. Yet, though the information should enter highschool I find it very difficult for pronunciation of the ancient Greek to be taught in this level.
It could be argued that students of that age are not ready to learn a new phonetic system accurately and so it is better to hold off on introducing it than to create bad habits due to inaccurate acquisition. Not sure if that argument would be persuasive, but it could be argued.
Thanks a lot for this video. I will keep returning to it. A completely unrelated question: I have noticed that you say ὕψιλον. Was this a common variant of the letter name? I haven't come across it but I'm not surprised that it existed, given the old name, ὕ, and the fact that it is more or less the only Greek word with an initial υ without /h/.
Thanks! Ah, that’s just my Hellenization of the Greek term: ὗ ψῑλόν. Thus we ought to spell it hypsilon in English, while upsilon is the normal spelling. If I were consistent I would also say heta for eta, which also had an initial /h/ in antiquity. In Ancient Greek it’s a bit stricter, since all υ must be aspirated when initial.
I have a question. This I understood: after an acute accent, the pitch falls. What I did not comprehend is whether the pitch rises again, and, if so, when. It would be strange if the pitch just kept on falling in a sentence like "Ἐξάλειφε τὰς φαντασίας". Thanks so much in advance for your responce
Nobody who makes the tape recorder comment will have made it far enough in your video to hear your rebuttal :) I like your Samosatene and Antiochene pronunciations. I'm going to try and experiment with switching vowel length on and off. There are a few places in the NT text where vowel length's presence or absence might have an impact on interpretation. Pitch accent is, ATM, quite beyond me. Vowel length is hard enough.
I will point out that modern Standard Southern British English has phonemic vowel length distinction; more widespread in some variants than others but present in virtually all to some degree."Bed"/"bared" is one such minimal pair which works in most such accents (/bɛd/ vs /bɛːd/); "bid"/"beard" is one which works in some but not all (/bɪd/ vs /bɪːd/, though some accents pronounce the latter as two-syllable /bɪjəd/; these accents are more likely to use the long vowel variant in "bearded" so this would then be a minimal pair with the nonstandard word "bidded"). All examples using Geoff Lindsey broad transcription.
Absolutely. The reason this is not helpful for Latin or Ancient Greek is that this same phenomenon in German, as southern British English, only occurs on stressed vowels (or almost entirely on stressed vowels). In order to develop a practical intuition for Latin and Ancient Greek languages like Japanese, Finnish, Czech, Hungarian, Sanskrit, are much more useful, where the vowel lengths can occur in any syllable.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Perhaps for some; I feel though intuitively like I have a good feeling for unstressed length distinctions though for the words where it *does* occur (eg "thunderbird" has an unstressed long vowel in the last syllable); I can trivially construct unstressed length distinction minimal pairs (albeit quite unnatural ones) by using English's compound noun stress rule, for instance "Neckbeard" vs "Neck bid", and I do indeed pronounce these with different lengths and reckon I would probably notice if someone used the "wrong" length (even if I'd probably still understand what they were trying to say, much as I can usually understand ESL speakers who have trouble with some vowel distinctions that native speakers make). Indeed what I think I struggle more with as a native English speaker attempting to pronounce foreign words is getting out of the habit of reducing unstressed vowels to schwa in certain situations.
I have had native Greeks get VERY upset, when I try to pronounce Classic Greek texts with anything other than the modern pronunciation rules. They are like "at my Greek Orthodox church they use Koine in the liturgy with the modern pronunciation, and that's the way it's always been...and oh btw Erasmus was a western idiot." Basically, that's the gist of it, and it makes it very hard to know who or what to believe.
Indeed, that's the sort of comment I often receive here from Greeks as well. Hopefully this video is able to show them more of what is really going on.
So as an Orthodox Christian who is not Greek, perhaps I can shed a little light on this reaction- it's not scholarly, it's visceral. Ancient, Koine, and Classical Greek words and phrases aren't just a field of study for them, they're still living and quoted parts of their modern culture. Imagine having a Greek friend who is a scholar of Middle through Elizabethan English literature and every. single. time. he reads or quotes from Shakespeare or the Authorized Version he does so in some modern reconstruction that might be more accurate to how English was pronounced at the time but is in no way how we are familiar with hearing these things to this day. That's the way a native Greek feels when we use a reconstructed pronunciation to quote Plato - it might be more accurate, it just sounds wrong.
It's because in Greece they present the Erasmian pronunciation as like Erasmus guessed how Ancient Greek sounded. They view it that it's a hypothesis that ancient Greek sounded different than modern Greek and not a fact. You won't hear any scholar or expert saying the opposite in Greece, at least publicly, and even in school when teachers of ancient Greek are asked they downplay the difference in pronunciation between modern and ancient Greek. There are a lot of complexes among modern Greeks about their connection to the Ancient Greek past. They don't see it as being normal that Greek changed over time. As their cultures changed, too. Like a living organism it evolved in the span of almost 3000 years but it has to be exactly the same because otherwise, it might mean that they aren't directly related to Ancient Greeks and that they aren't as great as them. Saw some silly videos where modern Greeks claim that the average modern Greek can read classical Greek without translation and understand the full meaning of a script. Silly things. This inferiority complex was partially the fault of the West. Since the modern Greek state came into existence the West always compared the modern Greeks to the ancient ones and expected them to be as "great" as them and if not identical they had to be very similar to them. In some cases that perception of "Greekness" was used by some Westerners to deny the "Greekness" of modern Greeks. Everything they did, ate, danced, and spoke had to be 100% Ancient Greek otherwise they weren't really Greek. But that's not how cultures and ethnic groups work and exist.
@polýMATHY_Luke I find it interesting, how you, as an American, pronounce the cluster ”wh”, as: /ʍ/, or: [w̥], or: [xʷ]; *”[w̥]ich”* is pretty conservative, even for Brits 🙂.
2:07:00 I mean; it’s not exactly accurate, or pedagogically productive, in my opinion, to think of the Trochaic tetrameter / _”Kalevalamitta”_ (”Kalevala-metre”), in the old Finnish poems, runes, and songs(/chants); or the Iambic pentametre, in Shakespearean English poetry, as an artificial tool or add-on. In both cases, the poetic metre (or, rather, the rhythm of speech) is already baked into the language. It shows up, in common speech, all the time. 🇬🇷🇫🇮🇬🇧
Take your time and watch this one in pieces. It’s meant for partial viewing, and consultation, so you can go to the section that interests you specifically and see the rest later.
You know, you video made me realise that I realise my English dental fricatives as affricates! Well, i dont have much issue with the affricates, so i think ill use those.
Regarding that 2-way plosive contrast in English; according to this* video by Dr Geoff Lindsey, that contrast is really about aspiration, rather than voicing; and I’ve been noticing this empirically, myself: Hearing a recording, for example, of someone saying: ”Stream”, starting right after the ”S”, sounds exactly like they’re saying: ”Dream”; which suggests that the ”voiced” stops, in English, are actually merely unaspirated, voiceless stops; so, perhaps, either ”Stream” should really be spelled: ”Sdream”, or ”Dream” should really be spelled: ”Tream”. * Here’s the link to the video: th-cam.com/video/U37hX8NPgjQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Z2nWjW_8K__Zeu-m
Just curious, in the Addams Family, Morticia Addams utters their family credo in Pig Latin: "We gladly feast on those who would subdue us." What would this phrase be in actual Latin?
Here it’s not Pig Latin, but what is instead called Dog Latin, meaning bad Latin written by those who either don’t know the language very well and think they do, or who are deliberately mangling it for comic purposes (Harry Potter’s spells are Dog Latin): addamsfamily.fandom.com/wiki/Credo#:~:text=The%20credo%20of%20The%20Addams,beside%20The%20Addams%20Family%20Mansion. In English, it’s already iambic, which is quite poetic. That would demand dactylic hexamter, the epic meter of Latin. Fēlīcēs īs vescimur omnibu’ nōs domitūrīs. That’s dactylic hexameter, such as Vergil or Ovid used.
@@polyMATHY_Luke When I read that credo, first silently, and then aloud; I noticed I had intuitively been using the Penultimate Stress Rule; and this has also been the case for many other Latin text samples I’ve read, over the years; before even knowing about the Penultimate Stress Rule 😌.
1:25:33 I guess the Romans really were very descriptive, when it came to contemporary Greek. Meanwhile, languages, like Thai and Tibetan that didn’t natively have retroflex consonants, pronounced the retroflex consonants they borrowed from Sanskrit and Pali, as regular alveolar consonants. 🤔
Of course, the Capital city/region often has a greater variety of speakers of different dialects, than a backwater, rural village of only a few hundred people; and that can, naturally, influence the innovativeness of the Capital dialect in interesting ways: It’s a melting pot of dialects. In Finland, the Helsinki slang isn’t even a natural Finnish dialect; but rather, something, closer to a pidgin or a creole of Finnish, Swedish, and Russian; as, I’m sure, are the Capitals of many countries, with a similar history of being under the rule of at least 2 other countries. For example; the Tallinn variety of Estonian is probably inundated with loanwords from Swedish, Danish, Russian, and German; and probably some structure from them, too. Even Berlin and Paris have some of the more innovative varieties of German and French, respectively; compared to the countryside. 🤔
Pardon me if you covered this, Luke, and I missed it but I was wondering if the breathing before the masc and fem definite articles and before the initial vowel of any word is pronounced in Lucian? Thanks so much for what you do for Ancient Greek! We are all very much in your debt!
Hi there, yes it is; the aspiration (the /h/ sound) is regularly maintained in Romaic, Pompeian, Alexandrine, and Samosatene, while Memphite and Antiochene are psilotic.
Three minutes in, and I’ve already had two thoughts. Just after 2 min, and I like the Rustic Capitals. But at 3 min, we come to the aspirated stops. In English, we generally pronounce ‘ph’ as ‘f’. But this morning, watching an astronomy video about Halley’s comet, which reaches its furthest distance from the Sun this weekend, I heard the word ‘aphelion’ pronounced as ‘afelion’. I parse this in my mind as ‘ap-helion’. Any thoughts? The channel is also in the habit of pronouncing ‘reionization’ meaning being ionized again as ‘ray-o-nization’. But then again, chemistry has its own special vocabulary.
Cool questions! Thanks for the comment; feel free to post others as you make your way through this long video essay. I think /afilion/ is the better pronunciation in English since it’s consistent with other ph words like ephemeral. ἀπὸ ἡλίου from sun ἐπὶ ἡμέρᾳ on day That said, I also like variety in English (I pronounce “Lucian” two different ways in this video, deliberately, because I like the variety). I would say /ri.aian…/ is the better pronunciation in English for reionization. Glad you like the Rustic Capitals.
@@polyMATHY_Luke "Afilion" is correct, however "apilion" is the original pronunciation and here is why: Ήλιος is pronounced "ilios"(the first ' i ' is pronounced as 'ee' like tree) in greek but in english it's written as "helios" and not elios nor ilios. So, the english version has the letter 'h' which doesn't exist in the greek one. "Από τον ήλιον"(apo ton helion=from the sun) just shows some distance(usually unspecified) and "από του ηλίου"(apo tou heliou=from the sun's...🤔?) or "από ηλίου"(apo heliou=from sun's...🤔?) or "απ' ηλίου"(ap' heliou) defines the sun's😎 position as a reference point for a specific reason. So, we have the word απ+ήλιον=απήλιον which is written ap+helion=aphelion in english but in greek it's pronounced ap+ilion=apilion. Greetings from Greece😉.
@@polyMATHY_Luke A Greek gentleman once asked me “Why do the English put an H in front of Όμηρος?” When I suggested that it was historical. he was quite impervious to the idea. I wonder, did we learn it from Latin-as-she-is-spelled? I remember a conductor telling us not to sing the H in front of Hosanna. Now that’s correct, because we were singing in Ecclesiastical Latin. But he remarked that it was an English aberration, and I wasn’t going to argue in front of the choir that it was in the original Hebrew.
Now this does raise an interesting question, in light of the profusion of localized sound changes in Ancient Greek spoken across the Mediterranean. You say the Romaic prescription is accurate for Judea, and the Alexandrian prescription for the Nile Delta, but now I begin to wonder. Which one is best suited to the *Septuagint*? Alexandria is traditionally said to be the place where the Torah was first translated to Greek (3rd-2nd century BC), so Alexandrian? And then one has to take into account textual history - copying the Greek texts over the centuries across the eastern Mediterranean - would that also justify Romaic/Judean, Samosatene, Antiochene for these?
Just wanna make a correction (sorry to be nitpicky): [t] and [d] are alveolars, not dentals. The point of articulation is the alveolar ridge, near but not quite on the teeth. But [θ] is dental cos it does articulate on the teeth.
They’re alveolars in English, but dentals in Greek. There exist diacritics to distinguish alveolar from dental in IPA, but these are usually left out for the sake of haplography.
Hi, Luke! I just had a quick question. How do you type ancient Greek/Romanized Greek? I personally use the US International Keyboard to get access to a lot of diacritics, but it sadly lacks anyway to type macrons. I really don't want to commit to memorizing alt codes to type them, so I'm wondering which keyboard software you use.
53:30 Also; Erasmian is even worse, than Reuchlinian, in that you can’t even reverse engineer the Ancient Greek sounds, from a vast array of Erasmian conventions of different countries. Just think of the ”R”-sounds of English, German, and French. How are you going to restore the (voiced & voiceless) alveolar trills, from those 🤯?! None of them even have voiceless or geminated variants; and none of them are alveolar trills.
26:19 I don't see how this explanation can really be strictly correct, I'm afraid. Surely it's not physically possible to create another, different vocal sound literally at the same time you are emitting a plosive? The aspiration may _feel_ like it's happening at the same time, but surely it really is in the follow-through.
Your idea is a very common one, but indeed it is as I have described in the video. If you look at the waveform of plosives, there is a range of events in the creation of a single phone: occlusion and release are these two events, but they are still considered the fundamental building blocks of the same phone. Another element is voice onset time, also easily observed in the waveform, yet is ultimately still part of the same phone. VOT determines whether the plosive is aspirated or not. While these things are sequential in terms of milliseconds, it is not useful for the sake of production or education to consider them separate. And most critically when it comes to syllabification, it is very important not to treat them as separate phones.
Wonderful video! What I really struggle though, is to replicate pitch accent. I guess it just take training, but I would appreciate more material on that with examples, contrasts etc. I follow Dogen's channel about Japanese and there was a video about pitch accent in this language. I wonder what are your thoughts on that and how this would compare to Lucian pronunciation of Greek: th-cam.com/video/O6AoilGEers/w-d-xo.html
I love Dogen too. Use Japanese as your pitch accent model as it works great for Ancient Greek. There are other models (and I tried to simplify it here), but Japanese is a good one.
Because it’s not kappa, which is /k/ but chi, which is /kʰ/; these are different phonemes in Classical Greek. They might sound similar to you, but to speakers of a language that distinguish them, they sound as different as k and g or d and t.
Rufus isn't flawless in pronunciation at all, but he can't hide his true intentions of this channel: Teach us Latin for the Roman Empire to conquer us in the future 😅
Great question. There have been many studies on this, and I have started a 600-page book that I haven’t finished, all about Greek prosody in comparison with living languages, so I may have a more definitive answer soon. But the short answer is that it can safely be ignored; a grave is merely an acute that is not before a pause (before the end of a phrase). The grave may thus not show no rise in pitch, or a slight rise. I tend to do a slight rise. But it’s safe to start by treating it as invisible before incorporating that kind of subtlety.
The Copts used ο for [ɔ] and ω for [o:] - but that doesn't tell us anything about the qualities of those letters in Greek. They had no choice if they wanted to have a letter for a short o and one for a long o.
Right, so while some dialects of Coptic did have phonemic vowel length, most did not, and the vowel letters borrowed into Coptic were for vowel quality purposes, not quantity (this is consistent with how letters are borrowed between languages; almost every time it’s for quality, not quantity). Moreover, the Greek inscriptional evidence in Egypt and elsewhere points to the closure of both η and ω, and the opening of ε ο; indeed, some ancient ω have been passed on into modern Demotic as ου. See Teodorsson, Gignac, Horrocks, James Allen. While I am very open to numerous possible realizations of Koine phonology as spoken in Egypt, ο [ɔ] > ⲟ, ω [oː] > ⲱ as a general phenomenon (even if not exclusive) is one of the safest bets one can make. Thanks very much for the comment, as this is a valuable point to reinforce.
regarding pompeian, how is it known that an interdental wasnt being substituted for f, is there good evidence that a pompeian wouldve prefered to pronounce it t or s?
Hi there, great question. The letters in question are LASFE, and from context we know the corresponding Greek word was λάσθη. If a Greek wrote it, he used the closest Latin letter available him to present the [θ]. If a Latin speaker wrote it, it’s possible he said the word /lasfe/ whenever he spoke. But in any case the sound he heard had to have been /θ/ and not /t/ or /tʰ/, nor /s/.
It hasn't been asked yet; happy to answer. The first are the ruins of the Roman Camps at Masada, Israel, and the second is the Roquefavour, France, acqueduct: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roquefavour_Aqueduct
The way that the unvoiced, unaspirated consonants κ, π etc are being pronounced sound to my novice ears like they’re being ‘voiced’. i.e. «και» is sounding like «γαι». I’m sure they’re not but I’m not sure I can distinguish between these sounds.
Great question. There doesn’t appear to be any evidence for this, thus Latin and Ancient Greek have the exact opposite phonetic realization: gm [gm] tegmen [ˈte̞g.me̞n] γμ [ŋm] εἴλεγμαι [ěː.leŋ.ma͡i̯] gn [ŋn] magna [ˈmaŋ.na] γν [gn] ἔγνω [ég.nɔː]
Do you have any insight into the pronunciation of the Koine spoken by St. Paul? Or, in fact, that spoken by Jesus? Yes, there is good reason to think that Jesus used Koine for much of his public discourse (Aramaic being his domestic tongue). Is there any evidence of how Greek was spoken in 1st century Galilee and Judea, and how it might have been pronounced by an educated Jew from Tarsus?
Yes, as I demonstrate in the video, the best approximation is the Romaic Lucian Pronunciation. This is confirmed by the data gathered by Kantor in his book, linked in the description. It’s possible there were more innovative developments among any of the speakers in that region, which is what the other variants are there to represent.
Not observing proper vowel length, gemination, or pitch accent definitely appears to have been a very eastern characteristic, namely that of non-native speakers of Greek IN the Eastern Empire. Palestinian Koine pronunciation is definitely evidence of this. Also, I highly doubt that Palestinian Koine, and hence the Greek spoken by the authors of the New Testament, would have had a retracted S given it is not a native phoneme in Semitic languages and definitely not in their native Aramaic. Hence, for Benjamin Kantor to not pronounce his S in a retracted manner makes perfect sense, in that context. I also notice that speakers of Cypriot Greek also don't have a retracted S, which permits phemomena like σκύλος being pronunced "shkílos," the S before P, T and K transforming into a SH being a very common phenomenon in the evolution of the world's languages, as was the case with German, for example.
The retracted S in native speakers of Aramic or even Hebrew is a very interesting question. Those languages don't have /y/ either though, right? Which non-Semitic sounds would they make, and which not? I don't know. That's up to the individual modern scholar to reconstruct. Ben Kantor actually recommends retracted s in his new books. I think he's borrowed one or two of my ideas (well, not my ideas, probably mostly just ideas I learned from Raphael Turrigiano, hehe) to improve Buthian to a more historical standard. Before (circa 2020), I used to declaim that Buthian made too many compromises to be historical, like not prescribing palatalization for all velars before front vowels. I regard Ben Kantor's books to now be the authority on Buthian, and those are his recommendations, thus I am comfortable celebrating Buthian as a historical representation of Ancient Greek, just in latest antiquity.
I think we have to stop calling “ancient Greek” as Greek. I mean it is like calling Latin as Ancient Italian. First, the modern Greek language is not the only or only living descendant of Hellenic language. Second, even in the antiquity there were many Hellenic languages and many of them are recorded. Third, this terminology makes most of the people think like that language is the same one because they share the same name.
I share your opinion in part. You're absolutely right that having Standard Modern Greek, which is fundamentally Dimotiki, and the standard form of Ancient Greek, essentially Attic (Koine is based on Attic), both get called "Greek" does create a lot of confusion, especially for Greeks who take so much pride in their past. Italians have a similar amount of pride and ownership for Latin, but by dint of the fact that Latin and Italian have different names, it's that much easier to convince them that the phonologies can be different. We do have various names: Attic. Demotic or Dimotiki. Koine. Mediaeval. And like you mention, Aeolic, Doric, and Ionic were Classical dialects. One of the problems with the Classical dialects is that some learning of all of them is a mandatory part of Ancient Greek literary studies. As they were dialects in Greece, they are called Greek dialects, the ancient Greek dialects, or Classical Greek dialects. Koine is a dialect, and Mediaeval and Modern Demotic are dialects. Thus, by this terminology, they're all dialects of the same "language" - but, naturally, despite their differences, the Ancient Greek dialects (Attic, Doric, Koine, Aeolic, Ionic) all have more in common with each other than they do with Modern Greek in vocabulary, grammar, and phonology, thus identifying Modern Greek as its own language is appropriate. I don't have an easy solution here, especially since the difference between dialect and language is not easily defined. Greeks could have changed the name of their language to separate themselves from the historical dominance of the ancient language, as Italians did with Latin, to create a new identity, but in reality Greeks have consistently desired the opposite: to assert their strong connexion with the past. These are really interesting arguments. I don't have an easy solution. Thanks for the comment.
As a native Greek speaker, I can understand almost everything whenever I read byzantine texts because medieval greek and modern greek are very close but the first one was the evolution of koine greek which is the pure descendant of ancient greek! Do you understand now why modern greek and ancient greek are both called greek??? I hope you will.
Reminds me of "but I read it online!" Dumb Republican Rome aristocrat trying to say χαίρε (and with no tilde) in Athens be like: th-cam.com/users/shortsEi6fho2MR34?feature=shared
@@polyMATHY_Luke Lucian Pronunciation does not sound artificial and fake. It sounds very authentic and historical. It sounds believeable. Erasmian Pronunciation certainly sounds fake and artificial. Erasmian Greek sounds so dead and ugly.
🏛 Learn Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Old English at the Ancient Language Institute! Sign up today: ancientlanguage.com ⬅ 📜
This is fundamentally the biggest waste of two and a half hours I have ever witnessed.
Open up your Herbert Weir Smyth's Greek grammar, flip to the back to the section called "Hyllage", then remorse.
@@Arnaere You're kidding, right? I hope this is just a very bad joke.
@@iberius9937 This clearly is not. Classical and ancient Greek are not standardized. Not even the cases were standardized. What we assign to dialects were further subdivided into localized patterns that may have been more dominant than the writings that survived. Even worse, the subdialects were so divided that in many cases Greek authors (and speakers) were simply picking "rules" that they felt were the most aesthetic. Basing anything on modern Greek is worthless as well. The traditions did not survive intact.
That's true of Italian or really any language even today. That doesn't really make it a waste of time. At a certain point you have to choose how granular it's worthwhile to go. Everyone is aware that in real life it was much more chaotic and complex than these conventions. Same with the greek myths, we have a *vastly* oversimplified view of them, compared to how the various cults actually worshipped across space and time. Doesn't make it a waste of time to pick out some main versions and learn about them.
@polyMATHY_Luke Did the vowel quality difference between long and short vowels maybe emerge, at some later Roman period? Because it seems to have been the case; at least, at some point of Romance evolution. For example, a lot of Romance languages merge the short ”Ĭ”, with ”E”, and quite a few have 7 vowels (i, e, ε, ɑ, ɔ, o, u); instead of 5, like Classical Latin. 🤔
this guy travels so much that the channel feels half academic half travel show
I myself am surprised Luke doesn’t have a show on the travel/history channel
I am merely 42 minutes in and I dare anyone to find a better video on TH-cam about Ancient Greek pronunciation. Excellent research and presentiation, as always. Quality content!!!
Thanks, brother! This is just an obsession of mine and I’m happy if others find it interesting.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Well, it's also an obsession of mine, so no small wonder! Better obsession than most!
I looked for a better video. Can confirm, there is none. This is it.
@@riverhayden5550I completely agree bro.
The modern Greek in the beginning was flawless. The only tiny mistake my native ear could detect was saying something closer to 'προφόρεται' instead of προφέρεται (is pronounced).
Thanks for the correction! I’ll work on it for next time.
@@polyMATHY_Luke
Greek preposition προ- in English is pre
Προφέρω= προ+ φέρω
Should be pre-nounce
Pronounce= pro+ nounce
Why in English is pro-nounced instead of pre-nounced
Do you know?
@@hvar-pharosisland2268from Latin "pronuntio"
Τα ελληνικά σου είναι άπταιστα. Συγχαρητήρια, μπράβο μεγάλε
A couple months ago I started learning phonemic vowel length. One mistake I made and sometimes still make is to overexaggerate the long vowels. The main point is that they have to sound noticably longer than the short ones, but no longer than that, otherwise you end up just sounding strange, and the rhythm of the words is awkward.
Absolutely. It’s of course just fine to exaggerate them when starting out, and in Japanese they are quite distinct so it’s not out of the question to have a 2:1 ratio. The key is to make the shorts short.
Honestly, the (American) English word that truly made me realize the meaning of LONG and UNSTRESSED is... "dumbass." "Dumb" is clearly stressed and "ass" is clearly long; if you pronounce it short, you get something that sounds more like "dumbis" -- not the same word. I think it also sounds incorrect if "dumb" is pronounced long -- that sounds like a feigned Southern accent almost. To me, it's clearly short-long. Once I understood that "dumbass" has a similar cadence to words like "agō", I felt like I finally 'got' phonemic vowel length.
I cannot stress this enough, Mr. Ranieri: This is the best video on Ancient Greek phonology on TH-cam or anywhere else on the web, along with all your other excellent videos on the subject. A true labor of love and philological endeavor.
Grātiās, Alexander! A labor of love is true. I'm glad if it brings some value to the discussion.
Praised be Luke Ranieri!
I am honoured to be contemporary with such an eloquent author.
That’s very kind of you. I’m not much of an author, just an enthusiast and student of language. Thanks for watching.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Your modesty is a laudable trait, sir, but I insist that you are truly an author!
This video can easily be re-titled or sub-titled "The Only Ancient Greek Pronunciation Video You'll Ever Need. The Two Hours Are Worth It!" lol.
Haha very kind.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Started yesterday, and finally finished today. What a great video, not only for reference, but even to watch straight through. Now that the firehose of information has washed over my novice brain, I imagine I will watch this a second time in the future and take detailed notes.
I especially appreciated your remarks on Buthian pronunciation (given that I now own both of Kantor's books), and the comments on geographic distribution of the Lucian variants. I am most especially interested in the pronunciation of the New Testament authors, whether it be St. Paul the Apostle or St. Matthew the Evangelist, and so knowing that Romaic Lucian is most likely the way to go is very helpful in that regard.
Thanks again for all your hard work. This is all immensely valuable and interesting to boot.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment! I'm glad that the video is useful as a reference, as that was what I had hoped: in the future, if viewers wish to look up a topic like pitch accent or Classical Attic Pronunciation or one of the conventions I recommend, they can go to the relevant chapter. I'm also glad if the whole video holds up as a single entity as well.
Ben Kantor's books are fabulous, perhaps the best scholarship yet on the topic. I was actually impressed by what I observe to be a change of mind that Ben undergoes as he writes PNTG. From the beginning he refers to Buthian Pronunciation as General Koine - I attempted in the above video to politely present my opposing opinion regarding this terminology - but allows himself to concede that, in effect, the pronunciation of the Biblical figures of the New Testament was indeed closer to Romaic Lucian than Buthian. Based on the data, he usually assumes changes in phonology took place about 50-100 years before they appear as spelling errors.
I take a slightly more conservative approach. At the very end of PNTG there is a fabulous set of IPA transcriptions for changes every 50 years. I agree with those as being very reasonable reconstructions, though I believe each of them is about 50 years too early. That's just my opinion though based on the data he presented in the book.
Optime recitāvistī fābulam!! Etiam ignōrāns omnibus modīs Graecē audīre possum tē laudandum esse!
Christophe Rico of the Polis Institute, as well as other academics that teach Ancient Greek, especially in a comprehensible, conversational matter, need to watch this video in its entirety. Ancient Greek pronunciation needs a major reform in schools, and this video presents the solution and the better alternative to Erasmian.
I consider Dr. Rico a dear colleague, and I have the highest opinion of his work, so I wouldn't presume to foist my ideas on a man of such erudition. To my knowledge he is aware of my alternative pronunciation conventions. Something I have learned from experience is that it's very hard to change one's convention, even willingly, much less when there is no obvious need for it. Having spent years with a certain convention, anyone should feel free to keep doing what they're doing.
We'll see my if my proposals gain any enthusiastic support or adoption. If not, I'm happy that I've pointed to some evidence that I think helps us reconstruct the sound of Koine Greek.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Dr. Rico ought to come to the realization that Academia is wrong, as it pertains to pronunciation of Greek.
Greek is a living, thriving language and there is no reason to pursue this travesty, not only for the sake of Greeks, but in the name of historical accuracy.
The Iliad was sung. As a poem. Passed through the generations orally. Try reciting Homer in an Erasmian phonology. Erasmian is not Greek, it's Erasmian and students ought to seek out schools and profs that have the decency to be linguistically accurate.
What a remarkable Christmas gift I see here 😍
It was 1am here, I was going to go to sleep, and this gem just dropped!
40:06 it's a detail, but *thank you* for including this, the transition from ‹οι› to /y/, only vaguely waved at in most entry-level Attic manuals, always bugged me. You demonstrate it brilliantly.
Thanks! Glad that this was helpful.
Something of the romaic and pompeian lucian pronounciation each hit a core with me, they just sounds soooo good. ❤
Yay! Christmas has come early for me! I’ve been so excited for this video and now it’s here! Thanks Luke! ❤
Thanks for your encouragement, Jason! I hope this video meets the expectations you impressed on your friends. May Pompeian Lucian be a good place for them to land while recovering from Erasmian.
My headcannon remains that "Lucian" comes from "Luke". I'll die on that hill.
On another sidenote, I base the version of Greek in my worldbuilding project on the Lucian pronunciation (will see which variant after I finish watching the video) because it makes sense in context.
Alexandrine and Antiochene, it seems...
That’s awesome! As for your head canon, I address that towards the end of the video.
That is what I had though too, that you named the pronunciation system after yourself. In my view it does the system no discredit owing to the scholarly work you’ve done.
Native German speaker who recently started learning Ancient Greek here - I have actually never struggled with properly distinguishing aspirated plosives from non-aspirated ones, and I like the contrast between the forceful aspirates and the less strong non-aspirated plosives. I'm not saying there isn't something to the claim that this contrast may be hard to acquire; however, I didn't find it particularly challenging. I will say, though, that I have undergone some phonetic training in college, and I also had some experience learning Italian and French (though my knowledge of both languages is mostly passive by now), as well as Latin, so I was already subconsciously aware of the contrast between languages like German or English that do aspirate initial plosives and languages like Italian or Latin that don't - all I needed to do was to transfer that contrast into a new language, which did require some acclimation but wasn't that bad in the end. What I had more of an issue with, though, is the distinction between voiced and unvoiced non-aspirated plosives, which, of course, I do know from Latin, except that it's not a contrast that carries a huge semantic load there, and my Italian in particular gives me some intuition about voicing b, d, and g because the languages sound quite similar; transferring that to Ancient Greek proved surprisingly difficult, so I ultimately decided to evolve β, γ, and δ into fricatives to get a clearer contrast. There are other elements of later pronunciations that I personally like better than their Classical Attic equivalents, even if I don't necessarily struggle to articulate the older variant: elements like monophthongizing long diphthongs or evolving ει into /i:/ and ου into /u:/, for example. In the end, I feel I'm fairly comfortable from both a pragmatic and an aesthetic point of view with a somewhat conservative imperial pronunciation that retains the diphthongs (with a more closed off-glide - as in, /aj/ over /ae/ and /ew/ over /eu/ (apologies, by the way, for the limitations of my phone keyboard; I hope the intended IPA symbols are clear) -, as is also very common in English; conventional transcriptions are a bit behind in this regard, as Geoff Lindsey likes to rant about on his lovely TH-cam channel) and aspirates but evolves the voiced plosives, monophthongizes long diphthongs, and sets ου to /u:/ and ει to /i:/ in all positions. In other words, your system of Alexandrine Lucian pronunciation definitely corresponds very closely with the conventions I've found work well for me, so I'll be consciously adopting it from now on. I'm definitely not perfect (I continue to find pitch accent difficult because I don't know it from any language I've learned, for example; your crash course was certainly helpful, but I still don't know if I'm doing it right. Another mistake I often made at the beginning was to unconsciously apply the penultimate stress rule from Latin to a word like θάλαττα, which was definitely enabled by the fact that I reflexively applied stress accent.), but I do feel like my choices on a segmental level at the very least provide few difficulties for myself and make for a pronunciation I personally enjoy using.
Αncient Greek θάλαττα transformed into modern Greek θάλασσα. So, it went from "thalatta" to "thalassa". Similar minor transformations of ancient words prove beyond reasonable doubt that modern Greek is a living language and a direct successor of ancient Greek, which renders Greek to be the oldest continuously evolving written = attested language on Earth, surpassing even the Chinese language, which was first written down approximately 100-200 years after Greek. Linear B writing system was used to write Greek since 1400-1450 BCE... This script includes characters that already existed in Linear A script. Linear A included many more characters that did not pass on to Linear B. Finally, note that while Linear B appeared in the 15th century BC, as the first writing system used to attest archaic Greek, Linear A is much older: Initially, Linear A dated back to 1800-1900 BC but after several discoveries on Greek islands with artifacts (pottery, for the most part) depicting Linear A characters (symbols), it is now evident that Linear A actually goes back further in time, all the way to 2300 - 2400 BC.
@Seventh7Art "Similar minor transformations of ancient words prove beyond reasonable doubt that modern Greek is a living language and a direct successor of ancient Greek" - this makes Modern Greek no different from Italian which comes from Latin, German that comes from Proto-Germanic, or Modern English that comes from Old English.
Greek is amazing, but it is not special. Ancient Greek pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary is drammatically different from Modern Greek. Watch the video to learn more.
@beatoriche7301 I'm delighted you like Alexandrine Lucian! You can certainly call it anything you like, and I encourage you to modify it in all kinds of ways, as you seem to be doing, so that's fantastic.
Geoff Lindsey is a delight; he has helped me as well.
You're also absolutely right that the challenge with the three-way contrast is as much with the initial "voiced" stops in English/German, which oftentimes are in fact voiceless [p t k], as with the aspirated stops.
Researching this topic during the video, and thinking of your previous comment, I found Voice Onset Time, described nicely here: th-cam.com/video/KkiuV8GGKUw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=BnJ7Q3ZimO8oulgx
The corresponding wiki page is helpful too.
Essentially, an initial voiced stop in Ancient Greek was distinctly voiced (you'd see the sound waves on the voice sonogram at the occlusion of the [b]). My hypothesis is that, much as German and English progressively eliminated initial voicing of stops, since the aspiration contrast became primary, Ancient Greek needed initial aspiration (φ, VOT+), occlusion with no following aspiration (π, VOT-zero), and pre-voicing during the occlusion (β, VOT-); once VOT became more important than occlusion, γ δ β were permitted to undergo lenition and become fricatives, leaving voiceless unaspirated and aspirated stops the only occlusives, as in Egypt.
Thanks for the comment. Keep having fun experimenting! I'm not very good at Alexandrine (I find it really challenging), so it'll be awesome if you feel like publishing some recordings of your take on it in the future.
EDIT: Dogen has a great video on pitch accent in Japanese, which is essentially the same system I present in this video: th-cam.com/video/O6AoilGEers/w-d-xo.htmlsi=WbgotOVTxrC9oHyr
His presentation is somewhat more detailed and specific to Japanese, but the principal of downstep on the mora that follows the accented mora is identical.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Well, no English person can understand Old English from 1000 AD. Every Greek person can understand Greek that is equally old. That makes Greek Very Special. I am certain that you ignored this simple example. The evolution of the Greek language is the slowest on Earth, by far. I dare you to compare how much ancient Chinese a modern Chinese person can understand, compared to a Greek. You are in for a huge surprise. Same applies to Italian trying to understand Latin, etc. etc. The comparison won't be even close, dear friend.
@@Seventh7Art Italian hasn't evolved more than Greek has since 1000 AD, nor has Icelandic or Persian or Georgian (Persian and Georgian have arguably evolved less than Greek since 400AD, though Persian has evolved more since 0AD). Since 0AD Greek and Italian have evolved about as much as each other - Greek is more conservative in some ways, but less in others. Personally I'd consider Greek a bit more conservative, but the difference is not huge. Tamil is probably more conservative to its earliest literature (~300 BCE) than Modern Greek is to literature of the same period.
I like how you addressed Modern Greek pronunciation being different in the very beginning _in Modern Greek._ That's gotta shut up any Modern Greeks insisting you're doing pronunciation wrong.
Thanks! I may hope so, and that was the intent, to show Greeks that I at least know a bit of Modern Greek and (as best as I can) how to pronounce it. This is to respond to a common accusation lobbed by Greeks: “you are using Erasmian pronunciation because you are an Anglophone and cannot pronounce our language.”
My comments in Modern Greek do not necessarily establish that the Ancient Greek language had a different pronunciation, but I’m hopeful the rest of the video will support that conclusion.
"That's gotta(!) shut up any Modern Greeks..."!!! Really??? Don't you have more serious issues in your life instead of this??? 😝😝😝 Why don't you start from the pronunciation of Modern English and its crappy idioms like "gotta", "gonna", "outta" and such Yankish😝 stuff???
I noticed and thought the exact same thing too and had quite a chuckle over it.
@@polyMATHY_Luke well, it seems to have worked. I didn’t notice one individual, not one! tirading and ranting about it the way they normally do in these types of videos.
That eu is pronounced as [ ɔ͜ʏ ] in German, is due to the Old Germanic // becoming first [ ʏ(:) ] and then [ ɔʏ ] in Modern Standard German, while still written eu in all positions. But in Middle High German, there where the convention of eu/eo/iu/io.
Interesting
That short circuit clip was great! I haven’t seen that movie in ages!
Glad you liked it! Given how much I talk about input based approaches, I should have thought of it sooner.
@@polyMATHY_Luke serious question, how did you acquire all these languages while being a helicopter pilot? I try to do French or maintain my Koine Greek (from seminary) but fail. I’m an army chaplain and I struggle with keeping a study plan for SLA. Any advice or videos to point me to?
You seem to have an very high level of knowledge on this subject, at least at the level of a Greek philologist. Hopefully, Erasmian will be thrown in the dust bin of linguistic history. Thank you.
Very kind
1:50:40 Also; at least, for me, as a Finn (and a Krasnian Forestic), it’s so much easier to pronounce [æe] & [øy], because they follow vowel harmony, which is built in to Finnish, Forestic & Krasnian.
Теперь я всё знаю про греческое произношение. Спасибо Поли́Мати😊
Пожалуйста!
The longest video I ever watched. Truly epic! Και πολύ ενδιαφέρον!
Ευχαριστώ, φίλε!
Interestingly; when doing my own phonetic analysis/categorization/etc. of my own language: Finnish (and its descendents: Forestic & Krasnian), and others I was familiar with, like English & Russian; before being acquainted to the technical phonetic & phonological terms; I often called the ”continuous” consonants (non-plosives): ”semivowels” _(”Puolivokaalit”,_ in Finnish & Forestic; _”Puoliääntiöt”,_ in Krasnian) 😅.
Hello Luke, thanks for the great video. I was wondering, how much information is there and how much can we reconstruct about clitics in ancient Greek. Which words functioned as clitics, how were they pronounced together with other words and how did they affect the flow of speech. I imagine that if I consider long and sort vowels, the flow and rythm of the language is really different from modern Greek and consequently clitics would be somewhat different as well. When I heard your rendition from True Story, one thing that sounded unnatural to my ears as a modern greek speaker is the pronunciation of clitics, because if I read it with a modern greek accent I would emphasise less the timing between some words.
Ευχαριστώ για τὸ σχόλιο! That's a great question; γε τε σε etc. are many common clitics. Modern Greek has a very lovely feature where the lengths of vowels in unstressed words are often highly reduced to the point of almost vanishing, something I try to do in my own spoken Modern Greek. This is also a feature I intend to incorporate into my spoken Ancient Greek as I improve.
Thanks for the observation; if I understood what you mean, I agree with you, and your comment has encouraged me to really try to make this aspect of my Ancient Greek sound more like Modern Greek.
Just a sidenote: Considering the presence of doubled consonants, words like νυμφη and άνθρωπος should be pronounced as /nýf:e:/ and /áθ:ropos/,if you are using a variant which has fricatives for φ,χ, and θ. As evident in cypriot greek, ν and μ assimilated into the following fricative. Pronunciations like
/nýmfe:/ or /anθropos/ are wrong even though they sre present in standard modern greek (they are kf course not demotic)
That's a really great observation. So the nasal is indeed lost often, such as in σύν + ἵστημι = σύστημι, which is one reason we can assertain that most of Ancient Greek did not have fricative φ θ χ. However, the loss of the nasal is not immediate; in Italian, for example, some words inherited from Proto-Romance have lost the nasal, as in mese > mēnsis, but others have retained it, as in insegnare; in such words, the 'n' is rendered as the nasalization of the preceding vowel, precisely as we reconstruct for Classical Latin.
Thus νύμφη [nýɱ.fe̞ː] or [nỹ́ː.fe̞ː]. I think complete loss is fine too; that's certainly the ultimate result. But I'm okay with a somewhat more conservative pronunciation for these conventions, as they are meant to straddle the whole eight centuries of Ancient Greek.
the pompeiian pronunciations are all so beautiful, which makes sense, considering how magical pompeii is even to this day. thanks for the great video 🤌
Being bilingual in Mandarin, which distinguishes voiceless unaspirated vs. voiceless aspirated stops, and English, which distinguishes voiced unaspirated vs. voiceless aspirated, makes learning a 3-way contrast within a single language feel like forbidden language mixing 😅 I tried learning reconstructed pronunciation out of Pharr's Homeric Greek and have been learning a bit of Taiwanese Hokkien, and it's still awkward for me to pronounce reconstructed β/π/φ (or b/p/ph in Taiwanese) too close to each other despite natively knowing the difference between all 3.
Was there any evidence of regional variation for pitch accent? Japanese pitch accent varies from place to place and even closely related Sinitic dialects can have completely opposite tone contours. It seems strange that there wouldn't be some different pitch accent systems within Ancient Greek.
you should record yourself singing adeste fideles or something like that in latin this christmas. that'd be fun
Great suggestion.
The Pompeiic one resonates the most with me. I think I will stick to that one.
Right on! Thanks for the feedback
As a native modern Greek speaker, I love the Antiocheians.
Χαίρομαι!
1:06:45 Thanks for recommending my video! :)
I absolutely adore it! It's one of the best recordings in Buthian Pronunciation I've heard.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you very much!
@@glossonauta I hope you keep doing more! If you like any of the Lucian Pronunciation variants, feel free to use them too, or develop your own variant based on the commentary in the second half of the video. Or keep doing Butihan because you do it really really well and I love listening to it.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Ok, I'll do more, maybe in Buthian pronunciation or maybe in a different system, with vowel length and pitch accent. However, I'd need the text with macrons, since I might find some vowels whose quantity I'm not sure about (sadly, that happens to me much more often in Greek than it does in Latin haha), and I don't want to have to open Wiktionary every that happens.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Email me any time if you need tips on how to find the macrons: Scorpio Martianus at gmail
I love this channel! God bless you and your work!
Thanks for the kind words!
Hi, have you considered publishing your research in any journals? You and Raphael have put in a great deal of effort and thought into the Lucian system, and it would be great to have other scholars cite your work :)
By far the most comprehensive and well made video on ancient Greek pronunciation! Thank you for this! 🤗
As a New Testament Greek student I have adopted Buth's convention believing it was closest to 1cAD koine Greek. After seeing your video I am now convinced Buth represents a later koine convention. So my question is then: which convention is closest to the New testament writers based on the latest research? (Mostly meaning Paul, being a roman Greek speaking Jew from Cilicia, but also other Greek speaking Jews from Judea).
Is it simply Somasotene or rather a variation of it?
Hi Anders! Thanks for the kind words. The best representation of Koiné phonology during the 1cAD (the time of Paul) is Romaic Lucian Pronunciation. This is confirmed by the data collected in Ben Kantor’s book PNTG.
One could certainly play with using more innovative features or sets of features, but the most likely and most conservative guess is Romaic Lucian Pronunciation, whose features are dramatically well attested in numerous geographies and registers in that century.
@@polyMATHY_Luke thanks for the quick and clear reply! Finally, a confident and solid based guideline. I must admit it is hard to convert to phonemic long vowels and pitch accent when all teachers and text books have taught and stressed the opposite, so all my memorised glossary is in an awkward Buthian/Erasmian mix 😅 What's the best resource to learn and rehearse these elements based on this background? What I find most hard is adjusting to the pitch accent instead of stress (especially when different TH-cam videos does this differently), as well as keeping the long vowels when not accented. Including how to know when alpha, iota and omikron is long! Also distinguishing the aspirated, e.g. X from kappa without having kappa becoming g is very challenging in my Norwegian ears 😅
I would argue that Greek was definitely the English of its time in Classical antiquity, having had such a diverse dialectical and phonological variety depending on the region and also being a major lingua franca, just as English has been in modern times. I also feel it is far richer than Modern Greek, as beautiful and worthy of studying as the latter may also be.
Quite so.
I’m watching your video for the 8th (or is it 9th?) time. I’ve learned my lesson about Erasmian (aka “Cringe”) pronunciation. I’ve been using Pompeian Lucian for a while now (while insisting it was Erasmian). I’ve written a question for you on Patrion asking about the difference between “pronunciation” and the more elusive “quality” of accent. I hope to cross paths with you one day when my Koine and Latin are better. Thank you again for your help with my journey!
Luke! And all this time I thought "Lucian" pronunciation was named after you!
Hi James! No indeed, though I comment on this at the end.
19:30 As a Finn, I’m honoured that you mentioned Finnish, as the first example of a modern language that phonemic vowel length. 🇫🇮😊
19:50 Also; in a language I have evolved, through the extreme isolation I grew up in, from Finnish, through Proto-Forestic*, called: ”Krasnian”; accenting vowels (and most consonants**) means, exclusively, lengthening said vowels; and Krasnian marks stress***, on a later syllable (usually), with a dot below the ”stress-carrying vowel” (the 1st vowel of the syllable); for example:
”Reakcio” (”(Chemical) Reaction”; stress on
the 1st syllable: ”Re-”) vs. ”Re’ạkcio” (”Response”; stress on the 2nd
syllable: ”-ạk-”).
So, I would naturally pronounce those accented vowels as long, but not necessarily stressed 😅.
*Proto-Forestic was a language that my Friend and I evolved (from Finnish), in our childhood, through the extreme isolation that we lived in; and which served, as an ancestor to both Modern Forestic and (Modern) Krasnian.
**The only exception is the consonant: ”Ẃ” (”Ẃé”), which is pronounced simply as a voiceless variant of ”W”, as a voiceless bilabial fricative [φ]; and it’s the only accented letter in the Latin-based Krasnian alphabet (”Lacịƞḱa”) that’s its own distinct letter. The reason behind this is that; when I developed a standardized printed form for Krasnian, I had a problem: There is no accented ”F”, in the Unicode; so, writing a lengthened ”F” (not to be confused with long ”F” or double-”F”) seemed impossible. However, I remembered that, in Old and Early Middle Krasnian, ”W” was pronounced as an ”F” (from the contemporary Forestic); so, I settled on ”Ẃ”, which IS in the Unicode, for lengthened ”F”, in print. However; an even older Krasnian (Early Old Krasnian) had a different pronunciation, for ”W”: voiced bilabial fricative [β] or approximant [β̞] (depending on the ”phonetic environment” / surrounding sounds), which had also been revitalized around that time; so, this bilabial pronunciation ”bled” into the pronunciation of ”Ẃ”, shifting the labiodental [f]-pronunciation into a bilabial [φ]-pronunciation: A new f-sound had emerged in Krasnian. This new [φ]-sound needed its own letter, to minimize allophones; and so, I decided to make ”Ẃ” a distinct letter for this sound, for the following reasons:
*1)* ”W” already denotes a bilabial sound
([β]/[β̞]);
*2)* The voiced ”W” has no long variant, in
Krasnian; and:
*3)* The lengthened phonemes can vary
between ~1 and ~2 * the duration of a
short sound, in Krasnian, anyways;
depending on the word.
***Krasnian actually has 5 distinct stress-levels (whilst Finnish has 3, and, to my understanding, most stress-based languages, English included, have 2), which are marked with the (previously mentioned) dot below the ”stress-carrying vowel”, a ring below the ”stress-carrying vowel”, a capital initial, or dot and ring below the ”stress-carrying vowel”. The stress-levels are:
*1)* ”Unstressed” (Unmarked)
*2)* ”Weak Stress” (Capital Initial)
*3)* ”Semi-Strong Stress” (Ring Below)
*4)* ”Strong Stress” (Dot Below)
*5)* ”Overstrong Stress” (Dot & Ring Below)
The ”Weak Stress” occurs on the 1st syllable of a definite noun (where English would use the definite article: ”The”), where there might also be slight falling intonation (or, to better fit it for the theme of this video, pitch), which is especially noticable in a long syllable, and is denotable with a grave accent, on the first vowel, as in: ”Tùuli” (”the wind”), versus: ”tuuli” (”(a) wind”); and it also occurs on the 1st syllable of a verb, in its courtesy-form. The ”Semi-Strong Stress” occurs on a normally stressed syllable; when the word is, either modified, such that the modification requires its own stress, or in the ”Romantive” form (1 of the 3 Krasnian ”Emotive” forms).
🟩🟥
🟦🟨
Thank You, for the heart (❤), and (presumably), for the like, too, Mr. Luke Ranieri 😊😌👍🏻.
Also; some additional notes, I forgot to mention, in my original post, include the usage of the ”Overstrong Stress”, the transcription of ”Ẃ”, the marking of the ”Romantive” form, the usefulness of ”Ẃ”, and the optionality of the grave accent and, indeed, the falling pitch:
*1)* The ”Overstrong Stress” is used in situations, where ”Strong Stress” and ”Semi-Strong Stress”coincide / occur on the same syllable; such as, when an emphatic stress is used, on an already stressed syllable; or, when a polysyllabic word, whose final syllable is already stressed, is in the ”Romantive” form, whose ”suffix” is (i.e. which is marked with) the ”Strong Stress” on the final syllable, and the associated ”Stress Dot” below the ”Stress-Carrying Vowel”. Also; the default position of ”Strong Stress” is the 1st syllable; so, when the 1st syllable *_IS_* stressed, it’s not marked; unless it’s being emphasized, or we’re dealing with phonetic transcriptions. It’s also treated as a ”Null Stress”; so, in a definite noun, whose 1st syllable is already stressed, the ”Strong Stress” is not replaced by or reduced to ”Weak Stress”, but the ”Weak Stress” is added on top of the ”Strong Stress”; so, technically, it’s an ”Overstrong Stress”; but it’s treated as a ”Weak Stress”; like, in the aforementioned example of: ”Tùuli”.
*2)* Speaking of ”Tùuli”; the grave accent is entirely optional, and it mostly has educational and pedagogic uses. The falling pitch doesn’t necessarily even occur, on a short syllable; such as, in this grammatically correct sentence: _”Tilanne’ Tilanne’ Tilanne’.”_ (”Consider ordering the situation up to the farm.”); where (going by the default word order) the 1st ”Tilanne’” is the verb: _”Tilata’”,_ (= ”To Order”, as in: ”Ordering food”), in the ”Considerative” mood (a ”Compound Mood”, composed of: ”Imperative” (-’ [ʔ]) + ”Potential”
(-nee)), and in courtesy-form; the 2nd ”Tilanne’” is the definite noun: _”Tilanne’”_ (= ”The Situation”), in the Nominative case (despite being the object, of the sentence); and the 3rd ”Tilanne’” is the definite noun: _”Tila”_
(= ”The Farm”), in the ”Terminative case” (= ”Up to” / ”Until”); though, because Krasnian has a free word order, any ”Tilanne’” can really mean any of these things; thus, this sentence exhibits something, I like to call: ”Super-Symmetry”: ”A sentence composed entirely of words with identical spelling & pronunciation, and interchangeable meaning, or role/function, in the sentence.”; a.k.a. ”A sentence, all of whose words can be rearranged, in any way, whatsoever; without affecting the spelling, pronunciation, or meaning, of that sentence.” 😌.
*3)* ”Ẃ” is, preferably, also transcribed into English and other languages, with the ”PH” -digraph, and vice versa. This is also indicated, in ”Krásnịca”, a featural Krasnian alphabet I’ve developed, for Krasnian, where all the letters are designed to reflect their phonetic features, kind of like the Korean hangŭl; and where it is marked, as a composite letter, as a square (like all consonants) with the top-right dot of ”P” (= ”Clear (top), front-of-the-mouth (right), strong (dot), consonant (square) sound”; a.k.a. Voiceless bilabial plosive) and the top-left ring of ”H” (= ”Clear (top), back-of-the-mouth (left), weak (ring), consonant (square) sound”; a.k.a. Voiceless glottal fricative). ”Ẃ”
(and the associated sound [φ]) is, also very useful, for an ”f”-sound, following a bilabial sound, in words, such as: _”Kamẃeri”_ [ˈkɑm.φˑe̞.ɾi] (”Camphor”), _”Pamẃletti”_ [ˈpɑmφ.le̞t.ti] (”Pamphlet”), _”Memẃis”_ [ˈme̞m.φˑis̠] (”Memphis”), &: _”Amẃora”_ [ˈɑm.φˑo̞.ɾɑ] (”Amphora”). Connected to that; I find it very easy to pronounce the bilabial [φ]-sound; especially, in those environments (after a bilabial sound [p]/[b]/[m]). So, I’m definitely in the minority, there 😅. Krasnian even has ”Ẃ” [φ], in a native word: ”Ẃuki” [ˈφu.ki] (the _”Kansaƞkielinen”_ (”Vernacular”) version of: ”Vuoro” = ”Turn”, as in: ”My turn!”). Likewise; Krasnian has ”W” [β]/[β̞], in native words that normally have ”V” [v], in ”Old-School Speech” (reflecting the fact that Finnish used to have the German ”W”, for [v], before discarding it, in favour of ”V”; thus, using ”W”, in the place of ”V”, gives the text a more ”Old-School” -feel), and Krasnian mostly uses spelling-pronunciations; thus: [v] -> [β]/[β̞], in this register/mode of speech & text.
*EDIT: BONUS NOTE:* ”Also; in a language I have evolved, through the extreme isolation I grew up in, from Finnish, through Proto-Forestic*, called: ”Krasnian”; accenting vowels (and most consonants**) means, exclusively, lengthening said vowels; - - ”
That statement is actually incomplete; and thus, it’s inaccurate. Krasnian actually has a bit of a pitch accent, which is actually quite common, on a final extended (accented) vowel (or sonorant); such as, in the newer variant of _”File’”_ [ˈfi.le̞ʔ]: _”Filé”_ [ˈfi.le̞ˑ˩˥] (”Fillet”), where the final ”É” has a slightly rising pitch; in this case, to imitate the final phrase accent of French, where the word: _”Filé”_ is, of course, from.
”19:30 As a Finn, I’m honoured that you mentioned Finnish, as the first example of a modern language that phonemic vowel length. 🇫🇮😊”
Also, what the Hell(ene) happened here? This should be:
”19:30 As a Finn, I’m honoured that you mentioned Finnish, as the first example of a modern language that has phonemic vowel length. 🇫🇮😊”
Where did the ”has” in ”…that *_HAS_* phonemic vowel length. 🇫🇮😊” go 🤔? I’m pretty sure I wrote it, originally. 😅
I'll be honest, most of this goes over my head, but am I to understand you developed this script for your native dialect of Finnish that previously didn't have one? Is it for personal use or did anyone else pick it up?
@@VoidLantadd That’s about correct. The script is primarily meant for myself and my inner circle, who would use the dialect the script is for (like my Friend), as it has about ten superfluous letters, if used for Standard Finnish; but it could be adapted, relatively easily, not just for Standard Finnish, but for other languages, as well. On the other hand; its obscurity from mainstream usage or knowledge has definite advantages: I could write down my passwords for any of my accounts, in this script, and I think they’d be pretty safe; for one. So, I’m obviously not going to spoonfeed it to just everyone. So far, it has sparked some interest; especially, among the more linguistically oriented people I know (including my Friend, whom I mentioned above, my Indian online friend, and some of my former ”coursemates”, from university); but I think none of them are exactly fluent at it, yet, as it takes quite a bit of time and effort to get used to. That is specifically for the indigenous, featural script: ”Krásnịca” [krɑˑsˈni.t͡sɑ]; though some of the statements stay true, for the ”normal”, Latin-based script, too: ”Lacịƞḱa” [lɑˈt͡siŋ.kˑɑ], and even the 3rd script (though, the least relevant, as for the discussion, at hand): the Cyrillic ”Kiriĺịca” [ˌki.ɾilˈli.t͡sɑ], which I made, mostly, to honour my Russian family roots. Thank you, for your comment, and your interest 🙏🏻😌.
5:55 Also; that ”Βαβαι!” sounds very much like the English ”Buh bye!”, which makes it very fitting, for the end of the quote. 😅
Haha true
2:05:00 Finnish has the same issue, as Italian; as no native Finn speaks Standard Finnish, outside of public speeches, and other formal contexts. Yet, at the same time; pretty much all Finnish courses and other education for foreigners, I reckon, teach Standard Finnish; and non-natives have to learn the, often *_VERY_* different, regional dialect, through language immersion. The reason is also pretty much the same: The many dialects are so different that linguists created a standard variety conglomerating all the major dialects, without it being *_”TOO”_* biased, for any one dialect.
I really love your videos, glad to be here after long time tribune :) Good Day Luke
Λαμπρότατος! Διδόσθω γέρας ἀνδρί τούτῳ!
I love both the Classical Attic and the Rhomaic conventions: which one I prefer actually depends on my mood: when I feel at best and optimistic, I opt for the classical one; when I feel like living in a decadent age, identifying myself with the scientists and philologists of Alexandria around 150 BC, I go for the Rhomaic one. I agree that the Pompeian standard is far easier and has many didactic benefits (it's a really good transition from real or pseudo-Erasmian, but I don't care very much because I took learning the aspirates as a challenge). I also very much like the Samosatene convention, because of its elegance, ecumenicism and "mediocritas": when I feel particularly sympathetic towards Modern Greeks and Biblical scholars, I even entertain the idea of choosing that standard for myself. I wouldn't consider choosing the Alexandrine convention, but when you recited the text at 8:42 I though: "Wow! Alexandrine is absolutely lovely! It can contend with Rhomaic for the most beautiful-sounding standard!" I also really appreciate the deep research and effort of synthesis you made. The other two Lucian standards I find historically interesting, but they don't please my ear very much. I noticed you cited all kinds of alternatives and deviations, but you didn't mention the "Heraclean variant" you theorised in your book "Judgement of the Goddesses" and the ɲɟ rendition of "γγ + front vowel", which you identified as the only (?) pronunciation of Greek during the Koine period in your spreadsheet. Did you trash those standards/variants?
Ὦ φίλε Ῥίκχαρδε, χάριτας πολλά̄ς σοι οἶδα! I am very grateful for you generous reply, and pleased to hear about your subjective preferences too.
Good comment on the spreadsheet: it's a bit outdated, and was first designed to take a single route from Classical to Modern. This is the same route taken by virtually everyone else, from Gignac to Horrocks to Buth. But Kantor has been among the first of serious scholars to say that, look: there are probably many different phonologies going on. Thus my spreadsheet needs to be updated.
I had a long section on Heraclean for this video, but I decided to delete it, in favor of a textual comment on screen for the part on Romaic: that the ει+V was almost certainly higher than η even when they tended to merge, because if ει and η truly had merged, then they would have moved together. But they didn't: ει went to /iː/ in all positions, and η wouldn't make that shift for a century or two, depending on dialect, region, etc.
The Heraclean variant was meant to essentially resolve that conflict; but ultimately, the only way for it to work as a phase change of the phonology, was for ει+V and ει+C to have slightly different pronunciations -- that would defeat the purpose of the simplicity of the model, and wouldn't easily explain the consistency with which Romans transcribed Dēiopēa < Δηϊόπεια vs Hēraclītus < Ἡράκλειτος. Alternatively, if ει were always just [eː] or even [e̝ː] in all positions, then the convention would essentially just be that of Classical Attic (but with fricatives for φ θ χ, or other modifications), with two few differences to make it seem justified as a separate entity, especially from the point of view of historical reconstruction.
And ultimately, as you read in the my Judgement of the Goddesses pronunciation guide (thanks again for reading it, by the way), my motivation was to appease the ear of those accustomed to Erasmian. But perhaps this attempt to placate Erasmian users is too far of a stretch of the historical evidence, I reasoned before publishing the video, and ultimately they should be the ones to adapt. Ultimately, I found myself unconvinced by my own argument, so I deleted it (I had spent many hours editing the graphics for that section I deleted, so I did not make the choice lightly!). I'm not opposed to people trying it if they like - even I might try it again - but it seemed only to add bloat to an already enormously long video, and to detract from the other conventions which I think are better both historically and practically. If I run more experiments with Heraclean in the future with Heraclean, I figured, I might make a follow-up video recommending it.
That said, given that Heraclean was becoming weirdly close to Classical Attic, I've been sensing increased ambition among competent speakers of Attic, much much better than I especially in their command of the spoken idiom, who are successfully realizing that phonology with great precision to the point of flawlessness. Perhaps if a critical mass develops around a strong Attic style and pronunciation with many competent speakers, as has happened with Classical Latin, it can be an even better alternative than these Lucian Pronunciation variants. I would happily support such an outcome, and I hope to participate in it.
I have spent the past few years on this Lucian Pronunication project since I found Buthian to be lovely but inadequate for Panhellenic studies of the ancient literature, and also insufficient as a historical reconstruction to represent the voices of the Koine period. I feel the Lucian system fills that role. Some of the variants, like Pompeian, can also be good places for Erasmian users to alight, which is probably the most important value my proposed conventions can bring.
In addition to those two central goals of the project, this video and many of my arguments recommending Lucian Pronunciation are indeed attempts to disuade people from attempting Classical Attic Pronunciation by helping them realize that they probably are not doing it justice -- yet, if people really can do Classical Attic, and they're confident that their phonetics are strong, I highly encourage this.
Thanks again. Χαῖρε πολλά!
@@polyMATHY_Luke Ὦ φίλε Λούκιε, ὡς καλὸν τὴν ἀντιγραφήν σου ἀναγιγνώσκειν! Ἐπίστασο τοὔνομά μου Ἀναξικράτην ὄν Ἑλληνιστί (Ἀναξι- ὡς *Rik- καὶ -κράτης ὡς -*harthu). Ὁπόταν σχολάσῃς, σέ παρακαλῶ ἀναγιγνώσκειν καὶ τὴν ἐπιστολὴν μου ἐν τῷ Προσωποβιβλίῳ!
@@RiccardoRadici Νῦν ζητήσω, ὦ Ἀναξικράτη φίλε!
I feel like one of the things that gets overlooked in NT Greek discussions is the transliterations of Hebrew names. David’s name (pronounced Dawid in Hebrew) is transliterated as δαυιδ most times I can find. I saw Bouth claim that “his name was changed from δαβιδ to match erasmian pronunciation (which feels like something Carthigounis would’ve written), and I also couldn’t find any source to back up his claims, as he neither provided one that I could see, and I couldn’t find anyone else talking about this.
But if that’s not convincing, there’s also the name Saul. Transliterated as…σαυλ. And Paul’s name is universally pronounced as Paul (which would make sense if he has the name Saul), not pavl or pabl or something.
So the idea that αυ and ευ were af/Av and ef/ev in the first century doesn’t hold up for me. I feel like Bouths goal with his pronunciation was to make it as close to modern Greek as possible while making exceptions for things that would be necessary, like ημεις υμεις, because they’d be indistinguishable (which he states as a goal in his paper, so people can “communicate with modern Greek speakers,” which also doesn’t work because they have a different vocabulary from NT Greek and a different grammar system).
I have others issues with his paper claiming it’s THE koine pronunciation (such as focusing on NT Greek, while using spelling variations from the 6th century), but my comment is long enough.
You have my full agreement. Naturally I esteem Buth very highly, as I state in the video, but these are among some of the more significant issues with his theses. He dismisses observations such as you make here as spelling pronunciations or remnants of some conservative phonology only used by bookish types. In any case, I regard his proposals as out-of-date, as Ben Kantor’s recent book The Pronunciation of New Testament Greek validates essentially all of my responses to Buth’s claims.
My conclusion in 2020 was that the real “Koine” pronunciation was necessarily more conservative. Examining the data in much more detail, it’s clear we have different phonological systems in different geographies simultaneously in any given century.
For Buth and those who espouse Buthian, much is made of the Egyptian evidence, while ignoring the influence of Coptic, and ignoring the Egyptian evidence when it does not accord with a sound more like that of Modern Greek (the aspirates rendered as fricatives being one of the more egregious of these), often for practical or aesthetic reasons. So Buthian Pronunciation is a combination of historical, papyrological evidence mixed with a number of aesthetic preferences, making for a historically accurate phonology, but for a highly restricted time in Koine - it’s essentially the early Mediaeval pronunciation. And that’s just fine for a convention. My system of conventions that I call “Lucian” are similarly developed as a balance of historical data and practical implementation.
What I oppose is the assertion that Buthian must be quite ancient, since the data do not lead to that conclusion.
@@polyMATHY_Lukefor me, as someone trying to learn to read the Greek NT fluently, I’m more interested in coming the closest to how Paul may have preached to the Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, etc. Since Romaic seems the way to go, I’m trying to learn to do the aspirates, but I think I’m going to lean more into the Pompean variety, since fricatives are more natural for me.
Sounds like a reasonable choice. I’ll be making more videos in future about how to do aspirates.
There was also a famous ancient scholar and warrior named Λούκιος Ουρανοβάτης
ϝῑ̀ς μετὰ σοῦ γε γένοιτο τʼ ἔφη.
@@polyMATHY_LukeFις ??
@@cyganskadywizjapiechoty digamma
Greeks really need to get over their hatred for other Europeans and Americans trying to reconstruct the pronunciation of their ancient tongue. At times, they are almost as bad as Hindu nationalists when discussing the Indo-European FACT, and almost as aggressive. I thought Greece regarded themselves as a Western civilization, west of the Turks. I've always regarded their ancient tongue as a beautiful one, almost lacking any imperfections. It really disappoints me sometimes, but I know not all are like this. People really just need to get along instead of having fights over things that don't need to be fought over. Anyway, great video! I really enjoyed it. I've had issues finding videos that explain the pitch accent system.
I understand your point and I myself get often very tired of the constant denial of many Greeks. But nothing contributes to a healthy solution if it seems to be one-sided when giving the blame.
When it comes to reconstruction, Europeans/Americans are actually pretty horrible at it. There are a lot of western "classicists" who love to judge modern Greeks for using their native accent to pronounce the words, while appropriating everything of value and claiming authenticity for themselves. Even though they do not reconstruct at all, or lay any real effort into it, but simply apply their own native sounds to the supposed "erasmian" phonetic values.
As of now I have seen merely one person who was able to convincingly apply any genuine reconstruction. And he is a native Cretan named Ioannis Stratakis who only needed around 30 years of excessive research and practice to pull it off.
It's also naive to think that authenticity or reconstruction has anything to do with the whole thing. It is rather a clash of established conventions.
In the West we even go as far as pronouncing middle/late Koine and even medieval and Byzantine Greek texts, names, terminology etc. just as the supposed erasmian attic of the 5th century B.C.
If reconstruction was the main purpose of it all then we wouldn't say things like "HEraklios", ManuEl KomnEnos, DEmEtrios Chalkokondyles or EUstathios of ThessalonikE...
As an English speaker, it seems to help to move my tongue towards the back while trying unaspirated stops for k, t, & p. It seems to prevent aspirating, but i dont know if Im really making the right sound. Fun trying, though.
That's an interesting observation.
Which of all your variants of Ancient Greek pronunciation do you consider to be the best for pronouncing the Iliad?
My vote is for neither of these. The Elliot is written in archaic Greek. It predates the Koine stuff he’s talking about by nearly 1000 years.
Salve Magister Luce,
I felt that here was a proper place to ask if you plan to record any audio for Logos and the updated Alexandros, both from Cultura Clasica. I've been trying to do an "approximate" (See the pun! Okay, okay, okay. I'll stop.) pronunciation of yours, but it's a bit discouraging because I can find no audio of Logos that I am 100% satisfied with. The two teachers that I am aware of whose diction I find most pleasing to my ears for varying reasons are yourself and Mr. Ioannis Stratakis. I look forward to your response.
Vale
PS: You probably already answered this question; if so, I apologize and must simply state that I forgot. Would Greek speakers in 1st century CE Athens have had an accent that sounded closer to Classical Athenian, or would their accent have been more innovative? What would the "cultural" and "economic heartland" of Ancient Greek culture be at this time: Antioch or Alexandria? Is that the wrong question? I'm asking because I'm currently weighing the options between choosing a more conservative accent (Romaic) or one that's closer to what most people would've actually sounded like in the eastern part of the Empire. From my limited historical knowledge, I am aware that Alexandria and Antioch were both cultural centers for the Hellenes. I'm also aware of the role that Egypt played for the Romans when it came to grain. I hope that you can shed some light on this issue for me.
I enjoyed the pun! I may look at those books in the future; I've read Logos through, and contributed to the edits of the recently released 2nd edition. Thanks for the compliment.
I think Romaic Lucian is the right reconstruction for Athenians of the 1cBC and 1cAD. Attic remains the prestige dialect throughout the Koine Period, and as I show in the video, Philostratus tells people in the 2cAD to go to Athens to learn the "right" pronunciation.
Those were indeed important cultural centers. As far as preference for style in writing and accent in speech, anyone who comments on the subject in antiquity vehemently pushes for a more conservative, Attic way of employing the language. This doesn't mean Koine should be thought us as "decadent," either in style or in phonology, because we ought to be more descriptivist than prescriptivist.
Yet, we would not be out of step with our ancient peers - the educators, the public speakers, the scholars - to employ relatively few innovations, and prefer "Classical" Attic (probably like the convention I call Romaic). That's my read on the given material.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you for the response! I think that you mentioned several times in the video how you saw Samosatene Lucian as kind of an intermediary between the Classical Attic pronunciation and the Antiochean or Reuchlinian pronunciations. When I was in college, I studied Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Would I be accurate in thinking that you see Samosatene Lucian as a kind of Greek MSA?
@@davidross2004 Yet, you managed to sneak in 1 more pun, in ”I’ll *_STOP.”_* 😅.
Hello! Spaniard here. I’m going to use the pompeian pronunciation but I want to do some changes. In particular I would like to treat b d g as in spanish with the pompeian pronunciation but, should I treat intervocalic g before e or i like in spanish or like in samosetan? Another question: could I change oe to øy for the oi diphtong? It’s because it’s easier for me and more aesthetic. The same goes for b d g.
¡Hola! I'm excited to hear you like the Hesperian Option! As I said in the video, I think it has a lot of validity as a historical reconstruction, so I'll be excited to hear your version of it if you make any recordings (Forvo is a good place if you want to play around). I also imagined Pompeian Lucian to be the basis of the Hesperian Option (I should have mentioned that in the video; it gives you essentially the same consonant inventory), just as you suggest.
You could definitely use a more narrow diphthong for οι.
As for γι γε γη γυ γοι (which would be a front vowel if you use [ø͡y̯]), they would only become [ʝi ʝe̞ ʝe̞ː ʝy ʝø͡y̯] intervocalically and [ɟi ɟe̞ ɟe̞ː ɟy ɟø͡y̯] initially if you also palatalize velars κ χ before the same front vowels: κι κε κη κυ κοι [ci ce̞ ce̞ː cy cø͡y̯], χι χε χη χυ χοι [çi çe̞ çe̞ː çy çø͡y̯], otherwise they would be γι γε γη γυ γοι [ɣi ɣe̞ ɣe̞ː ɣy ɣø͡y̯] intervocalically and [gi ge̞ ge̞ː gy gø͡y̯]. I'm very fond of palatalization aesthetically, and it is a key feature of Modern Greek; you might like it too because it would give your Ancient Greek a Modern Greek sound, but that's up to you.
Show us your recitations if you like as you play with these options.
Thanks a lot Luke!
Well, Luke, I wouldnt say that in Greece they teach that modern Greek pronunciation is identical to the classical one, *but rather that* they focus into understanding the ancient language excluding pronunciation. To a linguist this might seem bizarre, but, not being a linguist myself, I can understand why they do this: it is very difficult and time consuming for the student to learn the (correct?) pronuciation of his ancient language, when most students of that age (12÷18) dont care much in learning anything, not mention that they need to prepare for their University studies and very few choose this field (linguistics).
Γεια, ευχαριστώ για τὸ σχόλιο. It's true that this idea isn't taught universally in Greek schools, but it is taught, as I said in the video, "alarmingly often," which I have seen in actual lessons recorded and posted on TH-cam. I also have testimony from you and other Greeks that there is some commentary made in schools that there was a different ancient pronunciation.
However, the Ancient Greek language does not make sense morphologically or grammatically without this information; thus I would indeed put some of this into the curriculum.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Fair... Though to my defense I must say that throughout my highschool years none of my teachers ever claimed that the classical Greeks used the same pronunciation we use. I also know that in Universities things are different and the pronunciation issue is being taught thoroughly. I can fully accept of course that in the absence of an official narrative on this issue in schools, anyone can claim what he/she wants on this matter.
We all know Luke that ancient Greek was pronounced differently than modern Greek. We all have been taught some ancient Greek, and we all use words like ημών & υμών in everyday life, which in our pronunciation exactly because "η" & "υ" sound almost the same, when using these words in everyday life we have to determine the first letter: when we use the word ημών we say exactly _"ημών με ήτα"_ in order for our interlocutor to get what we mean. This shouts different pronunciation and you dont need to use more examples to prove it.
So we are aware.
Yet, though the information should enter highschool I find it very difficult for pronunciation of the ancient Greek to be taught in this level.
It could be argued that students of that age are not ready to learn a new phonetic system accurately and so it is better to hold off on introducing it than to create bad habits due to inaccurate acquisition.
Not sure if that argument would be persuasive, but it could be argued.
Thanks a lot for this video. I will keep returning to it.
A completely unrelated question: I have noticed that you say ὕψιλον. Was this a common variant of the letter name? I haven't come across it but I'm not surprised that it existed, given the old name, ὕ, and the fact that it is more or less the only Greek word with an initial υ without /h/.
Thanks! Ah, that’s just my Hellenization of the Greek term: ὗ ψῑλόν. Thus we ought to spell it hypsilon in English, while upsilon is the normal spelling. If I were consistent I would also say heta for eta, which also had an initial /h/ in antiquity. In Ancient Greek it’s a bit stricter, since all υ must be aspirated when initial.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Makes sense.
I have a question.
This I understood: after an acute accent, the pitch falls. What I did not comprehend is whether the pitch rises again, and, if so, when. It would be strange if the pitch just kept on falling in a sentence like "Ἐξάλειφε τὰς φαντασίας". Thanks so much in advance for your responce
Nobody who makes the tape recorder comment will have made it far enough in your video to hear your rebuttal :)
I like your Samosatene and Antiochene pronunciations. I'm going to try and experiment with switching vowel length on and off. There are a few places in the NT text where vowel length's presence or absence might have an impact on interpretation. Pitch accent is, ATM, quite beyond me. Vowel length is hard enough.
You're probably right, heh.
Thanks, I appreciate the feedback.
I will point out that modern Standard Southern British English has phonemic vowel length distinction; more widespread in some variants than others but present in virtually all to some degree."Bed"/"bared" is one such minimal pair which works in most such accents (/bɛd/ vs /bɛːd/); "bid"/"beard" is one which works in some but not all (/bɪd/ vs /bɪːd/, though some accents pronounce the latter as two-syllable /bɪjəd/; these accents are more likely to use the long vowel variant in "bearded" so this would then be a minimal pair with the nonstandard word "bidded"). All examples using Geoff Lindsey broad transcription.
Absolutely. The reason this is not helpful for Latin or Ancient Greek is that this same phenomenon in German, as southern British English, only occurs on stressed vowels (or almost entirely on stressed vowels). In order to develop a practical intuition for Latin and Ancient Greek languages like Japanese, Finnish, Czech, Hungarian, Sanskrit, are much more useful, where the vowel lengths can occur in any syllable.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Perhaps for some; I feel though intuitively like I have a good feeling for unstressed length distinctions though for the words where it *does* occur (eg "thunderbird" has an unstressed long vowel in the last syllable); I can trivially construct unstressed length distinction minimal pairs (albeit quite unnatural ones) by using English's compound noun stress rule, for instance "Neckbeard" vs "Neck bid", and I do indeed pronounce these with different lengths and reckon I would probably notice if someone used the "wrong" length (even if I'd probably still understand what they were trying to say, much as I can usually understand ESL speakers who have trouble with some vowel distinctions that native speakers make). Indeed what I think I struggle more with as a native English speaker attempting to pronounce foreign words is getting out of the habit of reducing unstressed vowels to schwa in certain situations.
I thought I was seeing Geoff Lindsey’s broad transcription; especially, in ”beard” /bɪjəd/. 😊
I have had native Greeks get VERY upset, when I try to pronounce Classic Greek texts with anything other than the modern pronunciation rules. They are like "at my Greek Orthodox church they use Koine in the liturgy with the modern pronunciation, and that's the way it's always been...and oh btw Erasmus was a western idiot." Basically, that's the gist of it, and it makes it very hard to know who or what to believe.
Indeed, that's the sort of comment I often receive here from Greeks as well. Hopefully this video is able to show them more of what is really going on.
So as an Orthodox Christian who is not Greek, perhaps I can shed a little light on this reaction- it's not scholarly, it's visceral. Ancient, Koine, and Classical Greek words and phrases aren't just a field of study for them, they're still living and quoted parts of their modern culture. Imagine having a Greek friend who is a scholar of Middle through Elizabethan English literature and every. single. time. he reads or quotes from Shakespeare or the Authorized Version he does so in some modern reconstruction that might be more accurate to how English was pronounced at the time but is in no way how we are familiar with hearing these things to this day. That's the way a native Greek feels when we use a reconstructed pronunciation to quote Plato - it might be more accurate, it just sounds wrong.
It's because in Greece they present the Erasmian pronunciation as like Erasmus guessed how Ancient Greek sounded. They view it that it's a hypothesis that ancient Greek sounded different than modern Greek and not a fact. You won't hear any scholar or expert saying the opposite in Greece, at least publicly, and even in school when teachers of ancient Greek are asked they downplay the difference in pronunciation between modern and ancient Greek. There are a lot of complexes among modern Greeks about their connection to the Ancient Greek past. They don't see it as being normal that Greek changed over time. As their cultures changed, too. Like a living organism it evolved in the span of almost 3000 years but it has to be exactly the same because otherwise, it might mean that they aren't directly related to Ancient Greeks and that they aren't as great as them. Saw some silly videos where modern Greeks claim that the average modern Greek can read classical Greek without translation and understand the full meaning of a script. Silly things. This inferiority complex was partially the fault of the West. Since the modern Greek state came into existence the West always compared the modern Greeks to the ancient ones and expected them to be as "great" as them and if not identical they had to be very similar to them. In some cases that perception of "Greekness" was used by some Westerners to deny the "Greekness" of modern Greeks. Everything they did, ate, danced, and spoke had to be 100% Ancient Greek otherwise they weren't really Greek. But that's not how cultures and ethnic groups work and exist.
@polýMATHY_Luke I find it interesting, how you, as an American, pronounce the cluster ”wh”, as: /ʍ/, or: [w̥], or: [xʷ]; *”[w̥]ich”* is pretty conservative, even for Brits 🙂.
2:07:00 I mean; it’s not exactly accurate, or pedagogically productive, in my opinion, to think of the Trochaic tetrameter / _”Kalevalamitta”_ (”Kalevala-metre”), in the old Finnish poems, runes, and songs(/chants); or the Iambic pentametre, in Shakespearean English poetry, as an artificial tool or add-on. In both cases, the poetic metre (or, rather, the rhythm of speech) is already baked into the language. It shows up, in common speech, all the time. 🇬🇷🇫🇮🇬🇧
If only there were more hours in the day!
Take your time and watch this one in pieces. It’s meant for partial viewing, and consultation, so you can go to the section that interests you specifically and see the rest later.
You know, you video made me realise that I realise my English dental fricatives as affricates!
Well, i dont have much issue with the affricates, so i think ill use those.
2:14:52 How did this approximation of stops carry over to modern greek?
Regarding that 2-way plosive contrast in English; according to this* video by Dr Geoff Lindsey, that contrast is really about aspiration, rather than voicing; and I’ve been noticing this empirically, myself: Hearing a recording, for example, of someone saying: ”Stream”, starting right after the ”S”, sounds exactly like they’re saying: ”Dream”; which suggests that the ”voiced” stops, in English, are actually merely unaspirated, voiceless stops; so, perhaps, either ”Stream” should really be spelled: ”Sdream”, or ”Dream” should really be spelled: ”Tream”.
* Here’s the link to the video:
th-cam.com/video/U37hX8NPgjQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Z2nWjW_8K__Zeu-m
Absolutely right. A future video will cover VOT in more detail.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you, for the response, and the heart, Mr Ranieri. I’ll be tuned in to watch that video. 😌
Just curious, in the Addams Family, Morticia Addams utters their family credo in Pig Latin: "We gladly feast on those who would subdue us." What would this phrase be in actual Latin?
Here it’s not Pig Latin, but what is instead called Dog Latin, meaning bad Latin written by those who either don’t know the language very well and think they do, or who are deliberately mangling it for comic purposes (Harry Potter’s spells are Dog Latin):
addamsfamily.fandom.com/wiki/Credo#:~:text=The%20credo%20of%20The%20Addams,beside%20The%20Addams%20Family%20Mansion.
In English, it’s already iambic, which is quite poetic. That would demand dactylic hexamter, the epic meter of Latin.
Fēlīcēs īs vescimur omnibu’ nōs domitūrīs.
That’s dactylic hexameter, such as Vergil or Ovid used.
@@polyMATHY_Luke When I read that credo, first silently, and then aloud; I noticed I had intuitively been using the Penultimate Stress Rule; and this has also been the case for many other Latin text samples I’ve read, over the years; before even knowing about the Penultimate Stress Rule 😌.
1:25:33 I guess the Romans really were very descriptive, when it came to contemporary Greek. Meanwhile, languages, like Thai and Tibetan that didn’t natively have retroflex consonants, pronounced the retroflex consonants they borrowed from Sanskrit and Pali, as regular alveolar consonants. 🤔
Indeed!
So I figured 😌.
Of course, the Capital city/region often has a greater variety of speakers of different dialects, than a backwater, rural village of only a few hundred people; and that can, naturally, influence the innovativeness of the Capital dialect in interesting ways: It’s a melting pot of dialects. In Finland, the Helsinki slang isn’t even a natural Finnish dialect; but rather, something, closer to a pidgin or a creole of Finnish, Swedish, and Russian; as, I’m sure, are the Capitals of many countries, with a similar history of being under the rule of at least 2 other countries. For example; the Tallinn variety of Estonian is probably inundated with loanwords from Swedish, Danish, Russian, and German; and probably some structure from them, too. Even Berlin and Paris have some of the more innovative varieties of German and French, respectively; compared to the countryside. 🤔
Pardon me if you covered this, Luke, and I missed it but I was wondering if the breathing before the masc and fem definite articles and before the initial vowel of any word is pronounced in Lucian? Thanks so much for what you do for Ancient Greek! We are all very much in your debt!
Hi there, yes it is; the aspiration (the /h/ sound) is regularly maintained in Romaic, Pompeian, Alexandrine, and Samosatene, while Memphite and Antiochene are psilotic.
Thanks very much, Luke!@@polyMATHY_Luke
Three minutes in, and I’ve already had two thoughts. Just after 2 min, and I like the Rustic Capitals.
But at 3 min, we come to the aspirated stops. In English, we generally pronounce ‘ph’ as ‘f’. But this morning, watching an astronomy video about Halley’s comet, which reaches its furthest distance from the Sun this weekend, I heard the word ‘aphelion’ pronounced as ‘afelion’. I parse this in my mind as ‘ap-helion’. Any thoughts? The channel is also in the habit of pronouncing ‘reionization’ meaning being ionized again as ‘ray-o-nization’. But then again, chemistry has its own special vocabulary.
Cool questions! Thanks for the comment; feel free to post others as you make your way through this long video essay.
I think /afilion/ is the better pronunciation in English since it’s consistent with other ph words like ephemeral.
ἀπὸ ἡλίου from sun
ἐπὶ ἡμέρᾳ on day
That said, I also like variety in English (I pronounce “Lucian” two different ways in this video, deliberately, because I like the variety).
I would say /ri.aian…/ is the better pronunciation in English for reionization.
Glad you like the Rustic Capitals.
@@polyMATHY_Luke "Afilion" is correct, however "apilion" is the original pronunciation and here is why: Ήλιος is pronounced "ilios"(the first ' i ' is pronounced as 'ee' like tree) in greek but in english it's written as "helios" and not elios nor ilios. So, the english version has the letter 'h' which doesn't exist in the greek one. "Από τον ήλιον"(apo ton helion=from the sun) just shows some distance(usually unspecified) and "από του ηλίου"(apo tou heliou=from the sun's...🤔?) or "από ηλίου"(apo heliou=from sun's...🤔?) or "απ' ηλίου"(ap' heliou) defines the sun's😎 position as a reference point for a specific reason. So, we have the word απ+ήλιον=απήλιον which is written ap+helion=aphelion in english but in greek it's pronounced ap+ilion=apilion. Greetings from Greece😉.
@@polyMATHY_Luke A Greek gentleman once asked me “Why do the English put an H in front of Όμηρος?” When I suggested that it was historical. he was quite impervious to the idea. I wonder, did we learn it from Latin-as-she-is-spelled?
I remember a conductor telling us not to sing the H in front of Hosanna. Now that’s correct, because we were singing in Ecclesiastical Latin. But he remarked that it was an English aberration, and I wasn’t going to argue in front of the choir that it was in the original Hebrew.
Now this does raise an interesting question, in light of the profusion of localized sound changes in Ancient Greek spoken across the Mediterranean. You say the Romaic prescription is accurate for Judea, and the Alexandrian prescription for the Nile Delta, but now I begin to wonder. Which one is best suited to the *Septuagint*?
Alexandria is traditionally said to be the place where the Torah was first translated to Greek (3rd-2nd century BC), so Alexandrian? And then one has to take into account textual history - copying the Greek texts over the centuries across the eastern Mediterranean - would that also justify Romaic/Judean, Samosatene, Antiochene for these?
Hi there, great question. The safe answer is Romaic. In that time the iota subscripts were still pronounced, so that would be my recommendation.
Just wanna make a correction (sorry to be nitpicky): [t] and [d] are alveolars, not dentals. The point of articulation is the alveolar ridge, near but not quite on the teeth. But [θ] is dental cos it does articulate on the teeth.
They’re alveolars in English, but dentals in Greek. There exist diacritics to distinguish alveolar from dental in IPA, but these are usually left out for the sake of haplography.
Hi, Luke! I just had a quick question. How do you type ancient Greek/Romanized Greek? I personally use the US International Keyboard to get access to a lot of diacritics, but it sadly lacks anyway to type macrons. I really don't want to commit to memorizing alt codes to type them, so I'm wondering which keyboard software you use.
Hi there, happy to help. I use the Latin Extended for the macrons (it's under the tilde), and Sophokeys on Mac for Greek.
you can use " ukelele " to simply create your own keyboard layouts. you can take any existing one and add macrons however you see fit
Another way of doing the macrons is to install a Maori font
53:30 Also; Erasmian is even worse, than Reuchlinian, in that you can’t even reverse engineer the Ancient Greek sounds, from a vast array of Erasmian conventions of different countries. Just think of the ”R”-sounds of English, German, and French. How are you going to restore the (voiced & voiceless) alveolar trills, from those 🤯?! None of them even have voiceless or geminated variants; and none of them are alveolar trills.
26:19 I don't see how this explanation can really be strictly correct, I'm afraid. Surely it's not physically possible to create another, different vocal sound literally at the same time you are emitting a plosive? The aspiration may _feel_ like it's happening at the same time, but surely it really is in the follow-through.
Your idea is a very common one, but indeed it is as I have described in the video. If you look at the waveform of plosives, there is a range of events in the creation of a single phone: occlusion and release are these two events, but they are still considered the fundamental building blocks of the same phone. Another element is voice onset time, also easily observed in the waveform, yet is ultimately still part of the same phone. VOT determines whether the plosive is aspirated or not.
While these things are sequential in terms of milliseconds, it is not useful for the sake of production or education to consider them separate. And most critically when it comes to syllabification, it is very important not to treat them as separate phones.
Wonderful video! What I really struggle though, is to replicate pitch accent. I guess it just take training, but I would appreciate more material on that with examples, contrasts etc. I follow Dogen's channel about Japanese and there was a video about pitch accent in this language. I wonder what are your thoughts on that and how this would compare to Lucian pronunciation of Greek: th-cam.com/video/O6AoilGEers/w-d-xo.html
I love Dogen too. Use Japanese as your pitch accent model as it works great for Ancient Greek. There are other models (and I tried to simplify it here), but Japanese is a good one.
@@polyMATHY_Luke thank you, Luke!
Luke, I'm wondering, if this χ sound is pronounced this way
in 5th c. BC, why wouldn't they just use the letter κ (kappa) in these words????
Because it’s not kappa, which is /k/ but chi, which is /kʰ/; these are different phonemes in Classical Greek. They might sound similar to you, but to speakers of a language that distinguish them, they sound as different as k and g or d and t.
Rufus isn't flawless in pronunciation at all, but he can't hide his true intentions of this channel: Teach us Latin for the Roman Empire to conquer us in the future 😅
In the part about pitch accent you showed the acute accent, the circumflex accent (the tilde) and their functions. What about the grave accent?
Great question. There have been many studies on this, and I have started a 600-page book that I haven’t finished, all about Greek prosody in comparison with living languages, so I may have a more definitive answer soon. But the short answer is that it can safely be ignored; a grave is merely an acute that is not before a pause (before the end of a phrase). The grave may thus not show no rise in pitch, or a slight rise. I tend to do a slight rise. But it’s safe to start by treating it as invisible before incorporating that kind of subtlety.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Cool! Thank you so much. When you have the definite answer will you make a video about it?
The Copts used ο for [ɔ] and ω for [o:] - but that doesn't tell us anything about the qualities of those letters in Greek. They had no choice if they wanted to have a letter for a short o and one for a long o.
Right, so while some dialects of Coptic did have phonemic vowel length, most did not, and the vowel letters borrowed into Coptic were for vowel quality purposes, not quantity (this is consistent with how letters are borrowed between languages; almost every time it’s for quality, not quantity). Moreover, the Greek inscriptional evidence in Egypt and elsewhere points to the closure of both η and ω, and the opening of ε ο; indeed, some ancient ω have been passed on into modern Demotic as ου. See Teodorsson, Gignac, Horrocks, James Allen.
While I am very open to numerous possible realizations of Koine phonology as spoken in Egypt, ο [ɔ] > ⲟ, ω [oː] > ⲱ as a general phenomenon (even if not exclusive) is one of the safest bets one can make.
Thanks very much for the comment, as this is a valuable point to reinforce.
If only half of my colleagues had been half as erudite as you back when i was PhD candidate.
That's very kind of you. I'm just a student of languages, and enjoy sharing my ideas.
regarding pompeian, how is it known that an interdental wasnt being substituted for f, is there good evidence that a pompeian wouldve prefered to pronounce it t or s?
Hi there, great question. The letters in question are LASFE, and from context we know the corresponding Greek word was λάσθη. If a Greek wrote it, he used the closest Latin letter available him to present the [θ]. If a Latin speaker wrote it, it’s possible he said the word /lasfe/ whenever he spoke. But in any case the sound he heard had to have been /θ/ and not /t/ or /tʰ/, nor /s/.
Apologies if this was asked and answered already but where oh where is the place depicted at 1:17??
It hasn't been asked yet; happy to answer. The first are the ruins of the Roman Camps at Masada, Israel, and the second is the Roquefavour, France, acqueduct: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roquefavour_Aqueduct
I think you misinterpreted 1:17 as 1 hour 17 minutes, instead of 1 minute 17 seconds 😅@@polyMATHY_Luke
Ah! It’s in Turkey; I don’t have it in front of me at the moment to check.
Managed to find it, Side Ancient City for anyone else interested.
Valdē gaudeō gratiāsque tibi agō propter hanc pelliculam!
Gaudeō tibi eam placēre!
4:36
The way that the unvoiced, unaspirated consonants κ, π etc are being pronounced sound to my novice ears like they’re being ‘voiced’. i.e. «και» is sounding like «γαι». I’m sure they’re not but I’m not sure I can distinguish between these sounds.
That’s indeed how we realize initial g d b in English: [k t p]. A future video will address this.
Do you recommend the book(s) ‘Vox Graeca’ and ‘Vox Latina’?
Absolutely! Linked in the description
I thought the Lucian Varieties were named after you! TBH! lol!
Haha, a common misconception. The chapter Nicknames goes into more detail.
@@polyMATHY_Luke ho loukie!
I thought that all Greeks of all ages used the shhh s like they do in Spanish 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
That’s right.
Did the sequence of gamma + nu have a velar nasal in classic Attic?
Great question. There doesn’t appear to be any evidence for this, thus Latin and Ancient Greek have the exact opposite phonetic realization:
gm [gm] tegmen [ˈte̞g.me̞n]
γμ [ŋm] εἴλεγμαι [ěː.leŋ.ma͡i̯]
gn [ŋn] magna [ˈmaŋ.na]
γν [gn] ἔγνω [ég.nɔː]
@@polyMATHY_Luke Interesting, thanks!
47:00 is it not common to pronounce skew too identical to this
Indeed
Do you have any insight into the pronunciation of the Koine spoken by St. Paul? Or, in fact, that spoken by Jesus? Yes, there is good reason to think that Jesus used Koine for much of his public discourse (Aramaic being his domestic tongue). Is there any evidence of how Greek was spoken in 1st century Galilee and Judea, and how it might have been pronounced by an educated Jew from Tarsus?
Yes, as I demonstrate in the video, the best approximation is the Romaic Lucian Pronunciation. This is confirmed by the data gathered by Kantor in his book, linked in the description. It’s possible there were more innovative developments among any of the speakers in that region, which is what the other variants are there to represent.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thanks!
I tuoi nonni da che parte dell' Abruzzo provengono?
Ciao Giovanni, da provincia Chieti, Roccaraso e Guardiagrele!
Salve, Luca,
His diebus carmen latinum natalicium graece reddidi, et communicare tecum velim. Quomodo id facere possim?
Bellē! Scorpio Martianus at gmail
easiest thing to do: pronounce everything as orthographically-if no changes happened
Not observing proper vowel length, gemination, or pitch accent definitely appears to have been a very eastern characteristic, namely that of non-native speakers of Greek IN the Eastern Empire. Palestinian Koine pronunciation is definitely evidence of this. Also, I highly doubt that Palestinian Koine, and hence the Greek spoken by the authors of the New Testament, would have had a retracted S given it is not a native phoneme in Semitic languages and definitely not in their native Aramaic. Hence, for Benjamin Kantor to not pronounce his S in a retracted manner makes perfect sense, in that context. I also notice that speakers of Cypriot Greek also don't have a retracted S, which permits phemomena like σκύλος being pronunced "shkílos," the S before P, T and K transforming into a SH being a very common phenomenon in the evolution of the world's languages, as was the case with German, for example.
The retracted S in native speakers of Aramic or even Hebrew is a very interesting question. Those languages don't have /y/ either though, right? Which non-Semitic sounds would they make, and which not? I don't know. That's up to the individual modern scholar to reconstruct.
Ben Kantor actually recommends retracted s in his new books. I think he's borrowed one or two of my ideas (well, not my ideas, probably mostly just ideas I learned from Raphael Turrigiano, hehe) to improve Buthian to a more historical standard. Before (circa 2020), I used to declaim that Buthian made too many compromises to be historical, like not prescribing palatalization for all velars before front vowels. I regard Ben Kantor's books to now be the authority on Buthian, and those are his recommendations, thus I am comfortable celebrating Buthian as a historical representation of Ancient Greek, just in latest antiquity.
@@polyMATHY_Luke καλώς γε! I hope to read BOTH of Kantor's books, someday.
Διδάσκεται σήμερα η Λουκιανή προφορά των Ελληνικών;.Εγω βέβαια θα την ονόμαζα κοινή ή Αλεξανδρινή.
What Latin font do you use for your videos' text?
Gentium, it’s great. The other font in this video is called Pompeii, it’s a type of Rustic Capital, for which see my video on the subject.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Ahh, right, Gentium! Thank you so much man!
Gentium is an excellent font.
I think we have to stop calling “ancient Greek” as Greek. I mean it is like calling Latin as Ancient Italian. First, the modern Greek language is not the only or only living descendant of Hellenic language. Second, even in the antiquity there were many Hellenic languages and many of them are recorded. Third, this terminology makes most of the people think like that language is the same one because they share the same name.
I share your opinion in part. You're absolutely right that having Standard Modern Greek, which is fundamentally Dimotiki, and the standard form of Ancient Greek, essentially Attic (Koine is based on Attic), both get called "Greek" does create a lot of confusion, especially for Greeks who take so much pride in their past. Italians have a similar amount of pride and ownership for Latin, but by dint of the fact that Latin and Italian have different names, it's that much easier to convince them that the phonologies can be different.
We do have various names: Attic. Demotic or Dimotiki. Koine. Mediaeval. And like you mention, Aeolic, Doric, and Ionic were Classical dialects.
One of the problems with the Classical dialects is that some learning of all of them is a mandatory part of Ancient Greek literary studies. As they were dialects in Greece, they are called Greek dialects, the ancient Greek dialects, or Classical Greek dialects.
Koine is a dialect, and Mediaeval and Modern Demotic are dialects. Thus, by this terminology, they're all dialects of the same "language" - but, naturally, despite their differences, the Ancient Greek dialects (Attic, Doric, Koine, Aeolic, Ionic) all have more in common with each other than they do with Modern Greek in vocabulary, grammar, and phonology, thus identifying Modern Greek as its own language is appropriate.
I don't have an easy solution here, especially since the difference between dialect and language is not easily defined. Greeks could have changed the name of their language to separate themselves from the historical dominance of the ancient language, as Italians did with Latin, to create a new identity, but in reality Greeks have consistently desired the opposite: to assert their strong connexion with the past.
These are really interesting arguments. I don't have an easy solution.
Thanks for the comment.
As a native Greek speaker, I can understand almost everything whenever I read byzantine texts because medieval greek and modern greek are very close but the first one was the evolution of koine greek which is the pure descendant of ancient greek! Do you understand now why modern greek and ancient greek are both called greek??? I hope you will.
These "Erasmian" pronunciations for Ancient Greek and Latin (especially the American English one) are so hilarious!
Agreed. Lucian Pronunciation is meant to replace it.
Reminds me of "but I read it online!"
Dumb Republican Rome aristocrat trying to say χαίρε (and with no tilde) in Athens be like: th-cam.com/users/shortsEi6fho2MR34?feature=shared
@@polyMATHY_Luke Lucian Pronunciation does not sound artificial and fake. It sounds very authentic and historical. It sounds believeable. Erasmian Pronunciation certainly sounds fake and artificial. Erasmian Greek sounds so dead and ugly.
🙏👍