@@Αναστάσιος-σ8υ I'm sorry this caused you pain. As you can get from the discussion, the Erasmian is not necessarily the most accurate rendering of Ancient Greek (certainly not for all the periods this language encompasses), but it's the one that is taught and mostly used in universities around the globe. Hence it's importance, because it allows you to communicate your research in Ancient Greek making sure others will understand you, regardless of their nationality and local accent.
Είμαι από την Αργεντινή και έμαθα τα Νέαελληνικά γιατί μ'αρέσει πολύ αυτή η γλώσσα. I know little about Ancient Greek and am used so much to the modern pronunciation that it is difficult for me to read with Erasmian pronunciation. I encourage everyone to learn Modern Greek, it's a great language!
You are better off. Erasmian pronunciation was pretty much a pedantic approach as to how Ancient Greek was pronounced to satisfy largely the phonetic esthetics of a germanic audience.
Ωραίος bro...το βασικό είναι να μάθεις νέα ελληνικά...τα οποία είναι μια απλούστευση των αρχαίων ελληνικών...λιγότερες λέξεις, λιγότερες φωνές, κάποιες διάφορες στις καταλήξεις, την γραμματική κτλ... Επίσης πιο απλό λεξιλόγιο... Αλλά εάν καταφέρεις να μάθεις καλά τα νέα ελληνικά τότε θα καταλαβαίνεις κ Αι αρχαία και θα μπορείς να τα διαβάσεις απ το αρχικό κείμενο...αυτά
in Italy you study ancient greek in the “classical” highschool, (as well as latin) and so you end up being able to translate Homerus from the original text
As someone who speaks Greek at the level of learning it in a Greek home in Canada, I thank you for not sounding too "Scandinavian" as has been my experience of listening to ancient Greek 🤣
Hahaha, thank you! It would be nice for me to know what you mean with "too Scandinavian". This is the first time I get a comment like this on my way of pronouncing ancient Greek.
@@sevincylmaz2608 yasou sevinc. You written Greek is very good. You know Greek? It seem you do. Very good. Long time ago. 20-30 years ago the Turkish Gov instructed their Turkish tourist guides who took tourist around the ruin to say all these ancient monuments were done by people called pre Turks. When people would ask them what about the inscription written in Greek they were to denie that call them another race of people. The Turkish tourist guides knew nothing of the Greek language or Greece
@@ChihonTeaches It is crazy to see that you a assumingly a spanish native speaker however I must also say that you indeed have swedish sounding aspects in your accent imo at least. I think most of it is because you make some pauses or let some sounds become a bit more stretched than normal, it is hard to explain. I really liked the video btw! As a Greek native living in Germany and learning Spanish and being interested in ancient Greek this was very enjoyable to watch :D Hope some more collaborations will come in the future :)
Hello , I am a native Greek speaker. For someone that has a deep knowledge of modern greek it would be more easy and convenient for him to find the old classical frames and books and try to read them. It is very useful because you learn the philosophy behind the order of the words in a phrase , you get the real idea of words that have been changed in modern Greek , etc. A good start for this , is the few quotes of Heraclitus. Poets like Tileklos are a very trustworthy source for that. The upper level , I think that is all the magnificent works of Plato , Aristotle, Protagoras , Epikourous and of course , Thoukidedes. Unfortunately , I discovered that a bit too late..
Αδερφέ, που μπορώ να βρω τα πρωτότυπα κείμενα με νεοελληνική μετάφραση; Όλα τα βιβλία που βρίσκω, ο καθένας γράφει το μακρύ και το κοντό του, γράφουνε ιστορίες άσχετες και διάφορες με την έννοια του κειμένου, παραθέτοντας τις απόψεις τους. Κανείς δεν τους το ζήτησε. Έχεις να προτείνεις κάτι;
I'm an Ancient Greek student who just this morning was pleasantly surprised to find Greek Wikipedia relatively easy to read. Great video highlighting the similarities and differences with Ancient and Modern Greek.
This is very interesting. I understand that Shakespeare as it is pronounced today is unrecognizable to how it was spoken in Elizabethan times. Some of the jokes and rhymes only make sense when you use the original pronunciation.
Yes, this is also true in Spanish (my native language). Transitions are normal, so it's not surprising that after so many years they look like two different languages, despite having the same name.
@@ChihonTeaches My grandmother studied Old English as a foreign language and it certainly is. It is closer to modern Icelandic than to modern English. Here's a sample. Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. The first line of Beowulf.
@@andrew_owens7680 Ufff, yes, I remember having taken a glance at Beowulf and feeling immediately helpless, hahaha. For practical reasons, I stayed with present-day English, of course.
It's going a bit far to say that the English of Shakespeare's time would be unrecognizable to us today; it's perfectly comprehensible (there are many resources for hearing the plays and sonnets with their original pronunciation), it just sounds different. It's as intelligible to contemporary English speakers as the text is comprehensible.
I am not an expert in any way, I am not even a classics student, but I am Greek, and I think that some changes at least between the classical pronunciation that Erasmus recreated and the modern Greek phonetics, happened as far back as the hellenistic ages and probably definitely during the roman and byzantine times, which spans approx1400 years. So for instance, the readers of the new testament would be probably not very far from reading the koine greek like we moderns do.
I think one of the reasons why Greek pronunciation did not change much over the last twenty centuries is than the original texts of the New and Old Testament are being read in the Greek Orthodox Churches and Monasteries almost every day since then and we know how "conservative" are the priests and monks in changing orthography and phonology. Mind you, the Old Testament Greek is even older since it was translated from Hebrew to Greek in Alexandria and Jerousalem in 285 B. C. for the Jews of the then Diaspora.
@@hmldjr which one is closer?.... 100AD or 1500AD? the monks have spoken greek with 'modern' pronunciation way before erasmus invented his own pronunciation using latin as a base
@@georgefournarakis9002 1500 AḌ 100 AD they weren't pronouncing it like they do today eitheṛ Whatś the optative tense how do you use participles in an ancient greek text what is the dative case. Ask the monks thaṭ. They don't know and neither do you because you don't speak ancient Greek and you don't pronounce it the same way eitheṛ
''The man'' in Ancient Greek (declension) ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ἄνθρωπε, τὸν ἄνθρωπον, τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ. ''The man'' in Modern Greek : ο άνθρωπος, , άνθρωπε, τον άνθρωπο, του ανθρώπου. So, many things disappeared, but what remained is just incredible. I know no other language that kept so much ancient stuff and diclensions, conjugations, etc.
Well, may some Romance or Germanic languages. Or you can compare Old Slavonic with some modern Slavic language and you might be surprised how a lot much more is preserved. Actually this is explainable in the case of Slavic languages because the oldest record of what is considered Old slavonic today is way later than the first records if Greek or Latinand the slavic people withspread a lot later around Europe. I read in a book by a linguist, who affirmed that Modern Greek is more divergent from Ancient Greek than some Romance languages are from Latin.
Great video! Thank you for respecting us on this subject and having a Greek there representing us. To all of you out there who learn Ancient Greek, i want you to know, that our facial expresions which scream "noooo, please, i beg you, what have i done to you?😭😭😭😭😭" when listening to your Erasmian pronunciation doesnt mean that we dont appreciate deeply that you choose to learn our language. It's just that we can't withhold the natural internal outburst that we experience at that moment😅
This couldn't be more precise!!! That's actually my experience with Greek people. I've been fortunate enough to be surrounded by them, and they always struggle with the Erasmian pronunciation. They simply can't understand what I say. However, they are still among my best friends in this world. Never confuse passion with hatred!
Είμαστε οι μόνοι σε όλη την Ευρώπη που έχουμε το προνόμιο να λέμε τον ουρανό ”ουρανό” και τη θάλασσα ”θάλασσα”, όπως την έλεγαν ο Όμηρος και ο Πλάτωνας πριν 2.500 χρόνια. Δεν είναι λίγο αυτό. ΟΔΥΣΣΕΑΣ ΕΛΥΤΗΣ. We are the only tribe in europe that we call sea and sky using the same words as Homer and Plato 2500 ago. Ulysses Elytis
Συμφωνώ μαζί σου, απλά για την ιστορία σε μερικές Αρχαίες Ελληνικές διαλέκτους το "σσ" γίνεται "ττ". Ο Πλούταρχος αναφέρει περί της ότι κατά την εκστρατεία του Κύρου στην επιστροφή τους οι Έλληνες στρατιώτες μόλις είδαν την Μαύρη Θάλασσα φώναξαν "θάλαττα θάλαττα". Όπως και το "γ" γίνεται "δ", για παράδειγμα στο: Γη/Γαν+ Μήτρα -> Δη/Δαν+ Μήτρα -> Δήμητρα, και πολλά άλλα!
@@emiliosnic όχι εγώ Οδυσσέας Ελύτης.και το η στα δωρικά δεν υπάρχει είναι α Σπάρτα όχι Σπάρτη Τσάκωνας = Λακωναςο Αλέξανδρος στον Νεαρχο ( Κρητικός) μιλα παλαιοδωρικα η γλώσσα είναι ζωντανή αλλάζει μένει ίδια τι αυτούς που φεύγουν χωρίζουν από τον τόπο και την παίρνουν μαζί τους
@@axelexiscus8660 go back to grammar school one day you might end up reaching the truth. All composites are ancient Greek. Then you do not even think more than 500greek words even after taken up loans from sorts of Langs. Then you wish to be "european" by using words and derivatives as elevator (in french), paint ( in Persian) or even glamourous=( instead of) stupidity as an actual fitting word in the greek context applied due to the participants status of mind. As an idiotis you might need to lean that the cook in modern greek ( for instance, mageiros ) is a Macedonian word of Archelaos attempt to unify all Greeks even in Lang under the koini greek dialect ( Isocrates- Philip - Cimon- Homer sharing the idea ). ( Taught by prof SC). You need schooling up to 20 years just to finish Grammar
@@nezperce2767 Έλληνας είμαι βρε σούργελο, την ξέρω μια χαρά την γλώσσα μου Το Θάλασσα/ Θάλαττα και Ουρανός/Ωρανός είναι λέξεις που οι πρώτοι ομιλητές των ελληνικών δανείστηκαν από τους πληθυσμούς που ζούσαν στον Ελλαδικό χώρο πριν από εμάς, κάπου το 2100 π.Χ Ψαξτο αν θες, «προελληνικές ρίζες», θα βρεις και το «άνθρωπος» εκεί
Plato's cave story. I got some parts of it from Chihon's read but Ioanna's read was much easier to comprehend. That been said Chihon's accent is closer to the right ancient greek pronunciation while Ioanna's is like a modernized ancient greek pronunciation.
Your such an idiot...his pronunciation was totally false...he knew that..ioanna corrected him and very politely cause he made a lot mistakes.......he can't even spell the ΕΙ or ΑΥ or ΕΥ or ΟΙ...but at least he tries..your an absolute ignorant expressing opinion for something he can't understand....cause ancient Greek is a foreign language for you mate but not for us...it's our mother language part of the language we still speak nowadays same words nouns verbs ext and please stop spreading bs
This is a complex topic which has been exhaustively treated in the scholarly literature. Still, there is no absolute consensus on exactly how the different forms of Ancient Greek were actually pronounced. What most people mean by “Ancient Greek” is Attic Greek: the formal, literary form of the language which was used in Athens during the High Classical Period - its “Golden Age” - the time of Socrates and Plato. But in reality, when we talk of Ancient Greek, we must bear in mind that we are in fact referring to an exceedingly complex language with many different forms and dialects which developed (and kept evolving) over a period of at least a full millennium-and-half before Plato, and for another thousand years after. What follows is an oversimplification, but these are my thoughts on the matter: Ancient Greek of the Classical Period (Attic) was certainly NOT pronounced in the same way as either Modern Greek or the Erasmic convention. Briefly, the broad scholarly view currently is that Modern Greek pronounces some things more correctly, while the Erasmic canon remains a useful tool for reconstructing the metrics and stresses of Ancient Greek, as well as for helping to approximate some of the phonetic values of the ancient language, particularly the vowels and diphthongs. Another way to look at it: our best guess on how an Athenian would have spoken his native language twenty five centuries ago, is that it would likely have resembled a strange phonetic hybrid between Modern Greek and Erasmic pronunciation. A fifth century BCE Greek would probably instantly recognize both pronunciations as some bizarre species of Greek, but he would certainly not have accepted any as the proper way of pronouncing his own native tongue. That said, it is important to note that the Erasmic canon is an artificial construct - a sort of “reverse engineering” for Ancient Greek - while the Greek of today is an organic evolution of the ancient Hellenic language. After the conquests of Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE), Greek gradually became the ‘lingua franca’ of the whole Mediterranean and the Near Eastern world. During the Hellenistic Age, beginning in the late fourth century (just a few generations after Socrates and Plato), a new “internationalized” form of Attic Greek, the Koine (Κοινή), which later became the language of the Gospels, came into use. Almost overnight Greek went from being a national language, spoken almost exclusively by native speakers, to an international language of culture, administration, and commerce spoken by dozens of different ethnicities spanning three continents. The whole process, and the particular mechanisms of precisely how this transformation occurred over such a relatively short span of time, is not fully understood, but it did. What is understood, is that this international “Hellenistic” form of Greek was a natural progression of Attic Greek; but during the course of its development and rapid dissemination the language somehow underwent a dramatic shift that altered its pronunciation; this, moreover, happened over the course of only about a century or two. We don’t precisely know what forces were at work when this linguistic shift happened, but as Greek expanded into regions far beyond the Classical Greek world, the form of the language (its grammar, syntax, morphology, phonology) gradually became more simplified; to use an anachronistically modern turn of phrase, it became more “user friendly” (perhaps partly as a means of accommodating the native phonology of non-native speakers). In fact, by the 1st century CE its pronunciation had already begun to resemble what we today would recognize as that of standard “Modern” Greek. When I teach Ancient Greek, I prefer to use the Erasmic pronunciation (for several reasons) but I always tell students that this is definitely not the way the ancients pronounced it; however, it is a more convenient way to learn the language if you’re not a native Greek speaker. At the same time, I advise my Greek compatriots to also learn the conventional Erasmic pronunciation because it does a brilliant job at explaining away many of the anomalies and irregularities of Ancient Greek grammar which often stump Greek students. To me, Greek is Greek is Greek: there is no “Ancient”, “Medieval” or “Modern”...it’s all Greek to me...such chronological delineations are just convenient historical constructs: the self-same language at different stages of life - just as a person is in a sense the same individual whether in infancy, youth, or old age. BUT I think it a good idea for native speakers of Greek to learn the language as they would a foreign one - ‘ab initio’ with the Erasmic pronunciation. Ancient Greek is a superb and intellectually rewarding language, but it is also fiendishly difficult to learn well. I was once of a different mind on this issue, but as a Greek and as a teacher of Greek, my current position is in defence of the Erasmic convention over the Modern Greek pronunciation. The reason is mainly this: I think Greek is hard enough; don’t complicate things further by squabbling over the authenticity of its pronunciation. Learn it the way the whole Western tradition has been doing it (with stellar results) for well-nigh six centuries; you can debate the finer points of phonetic authenticity later. I hope this helps clear up things a bit, at least the main points. If you’re planning on learning Ancient Greek, I congratulate you in advance: kudos! - you’re a hero! I also wish you the best of luck: you’ll need it...
I like your explanation here. Because Greek is a living, ever evolving, language, the best we can hope to do is examine it as through little incremental windows of time like "snapshots'. To make dogmatic statements about how it was pronounced over a broad spectrum is like an attempt to store fluid in a cardboard box.
Ancient Greek Language comprises more dialects, so the accurate way to say is "Attic Dialect", which is the one taught and studied in the universities and faculties. Along with the Hellenistic Greek, aka Koiné (κοινή = common, public).
The text is from Plato, η αλληγορία του σπηλαίου το διάβαζα στις πανελλήνιες αυτό και πάντα ήταν το αγαπημένο μου γιατί συγκριτικά με τα υπόλοιπα κείμενα και ειδικά του Αριστοτέλη ήταν πιο εύκολο στην μετάφραση. 🙂💙🤍
Well done guys! It is indeed a very hot debate, for all of us Greeks living abroad « suffering » every time we hear someone pronouncing Greek words (because they think we read modern Greek the same way) :)
@@kurade1096 So, if someone, say, goes to study in another country, you think they stop being their nationality and just become whichever nationality they go to? Like, if say I go to the UK to study for a few years, then go to Germany to work for another two and then back to my home country, should I have an existential crisis? My,, God....Who am I???
@@kurade1096 that's a strange idea. it's not like you travelled back in time to be born in a different country, you still are from the country you were born. if you were born in slovenia it doesn't matter if you go to korea or spain or whatever, you don't stop being slovenian, you don't become korean or spanish.
Something strange happens when you study two related modern languages, you learn words and phonems that point to the ancient common language and you don't realize it until you pick up a text from the old language and you read it again after a few years. My native language is spanish and as I read passages from El Cantar del Mío Cid I had a smoother experience understanding it than I did when I was in highschool. for instance the word "Ainda" (Still) is commonly used in modern portuguese, while it was replaced by "todavía" in modern spanish. I know this because I studied a little portuguese in college. I often wonder if the same phenomenon happened to greeks.
Hi! Thanks for your comment. That indeed happens a lot. If you study Latin, for instance, after reaching certain proficiency in it you start noticing that Spanish is FULL of expressions and roots that come from it. Many times some prefixes are lost, for example in "oscuro", where the prefix "ob-" from Latin dropped the "b" not many decades ago. Greeks have this same feeling when they engage in the study of Ancient Greek. You see many roots of very common words already working in the ancient version. However, although it is compulsory for them to study Ancient Greek, in my experience not many of them remember much of what they studied. But sometimes you are lucky to find an amazing and knowledgeable friend like Ioanna. Y bueno, mi lengua nativa también es el español, así que te agradezco muchísimo por el comentario y el apoyo. ¡Que estés muy bien!
This video it's great. It's interesting for me to notice that he pronounces English with British pronunciation, while her pronunciation is American. She reads Greek with modern pronunciation, while he uses the Erasmian pronuntiation. Amazing exchange of pronunciations! I realize aswell that her pronunciation sounds as if she were speaking Spanish from Spain, with kind of retroflex sounds and a similar musicality. I'm a Spanish native speaker by the way. From Mexico. I teach Christian Greek in a seminary. Greetings!
¡Pero qué gusto leer esto! Sí, es verdad lo que dices, este video es un zoológico de acentos. Como comentario adicional, al ser también nativo de español (de Chile), mi manera de leer con pronunciación erasmiana es mucho más latinoamericana que la pronunciación erasmiana de los británicos. Al final del día uno trata de seguir el estándar, pero la lengua materna es siempre muy fuerte. ¡Un abrazo!
I totally agree. I am Spanish learning Greek and every time I go to Greece people think I am Greek. No matter how many times I say " δεν καταλαβαίνω γιατί είναι από την Ισπανία " They still speak to me so so fast expecting me understand!!! It is so lovely. Gradually I am getting there
It's because greek and spanish languages share some sounds that other languages don't use. I am a native greek speaker by the way, and when I went to London with some friends the English people thought we were Spanish...
8:56 Just to say that ancient Greeks did not use accent marks at all at the beginning (neither any other diacritics or even lowercase letters)... Accent marks started getting introduced after 200 BC in Alexandria and were intended for non-native Greek speakers/learners... By the way, people who use this "Erasmian" pronunciation(s) often fail to abide by stressing marks, when the stressing mark is on diphthongs. For example in 5:38 in the word Θαυματοποιοίς the stressing sounded as if it was on the last /ο/ instead of the last /ι/...
And diacritics where very much different optional enhancements to writing after that. They wouldn't become standardised and mandatory until the medieval period, by which point they had already lost their usefulness as far as I know
They also wrote in CAPITAL letters with no...space between them! Lower case letters were used only for Mathematics and as Music symbols. Hence, the "accent' argument is totally redundant=stupid.
Hi there, Chihon. I hope you'll be very well. Also, very interesting video. I wanted say you that once I had the opportunity finding someone who actually was learning modern greek. She is a Dutchwoman that I met in a epistemology class. It was very interesting because I remembered that she was reading a letter from a greek friend she get, and she let me read some part of it. I could decode many words that i knew it because of my ancient greek classes. She was impressed, I remembered. There was a lot of words relating to philosophy that I already knew it. But, actually she does not tell me anything about the pronunciation. After a while, I realized that the pronunciation is totally different. Notwithstanding, I think knowing ancient greek is very useful if you want to learn modern greek, I would say from my point of view. I hope seeing many other videos like this one. Regards from Chile, Chihon!
I'm an American of Greek ancestry and studied modern Greek before any form of ancient and thus when I go to koinē (kini) or ancient I use the modern pronunciation
Bro, the Hellenic language has different conjugation of verbs then 19 century invention of new Greece or “ modern Greece” so be carefull with your advice !
Before a voiceless consonant (i.e. where the vocal cords don't vibrate) you get af/ef, before vowels and voiced consonants (vocal cords vibrating) you get av/ev.
Very interesting. Made me think of the many parallels with ancient vs modern Hebrew (which I'm more familiar with). 1. Kids learn it in school as an almost-foreign language. 2. Schools, radio and high-brow institutions fight to conserve classic grammar and pronunciation (just like the Katharevousa experiment except we haven't thrown the towel in yet). 3. Israelis write without the diacritical signs and if asked to do so, will do it quite inaccurately. 4. But unlike Greek, there's no big difference between the pronunciation of foreign scholars and that of Israelis. (Allowing, of course, for national accents.)
Thank you so much for sharing this! Yes, I agree that your first 3 points apply a lot to Greek nowadays. The point of the national accents is also interesting, because in academia you find that everyone agrees on using the Erasmian pronunciation, but a French scholar will pronounce everything very differently from an English one.
One comparison for those who might know French also, is that the writing didn’t follow the phonetic evolution for etymological reasons. That’s why you have in French like in Modern Greek, many words for which when you just hear them with the modern pronunciation, you can’t spell them unless you already know the word. Such was not the case with ancient languages which had a spelling closer to their original pronunciation. In French, you have É, AI, AY or ET with the same pronunciation. In older times we all know it was pronounced differently and the spelling kept record of this. In Spanish and in Italian, people favoured another approach: they let the spelling evolve too, in order to catch up with the pronunciation. And that’s why among Latin-based languages, Spanish and Italian are easier to spell when being heard, while French fails on that point. To be honest, even in English, many words are spelled for reasons that were relevant during Middle English era, but are pronounced differently today. One small point about the ‘upsilon’. In Attic and Ionic Greek, when Υ follows another vowel like Ε, it doesn’t really keep its [y] sound but rather takes a more ancient [w] sound - probably because the letter evolved from a Phoenician letter which was pronounced like this. The word 「ἐλευθερία」 would then be rather pronounced [eleʷtʰería]. But of course, the digraph ΟΥ has its special [u] sound.
I get the idea but technically speaking ancient Greek orthography was only fossilised in the Alexandrian times when the grammarians of the time (especially in Alexandria) opted for the Attic orthography ... but then Attic itself had a different orthography up to the times of the Peloponnese War when Athenians opted for the Ionian orthography. And even if Attic was a sub-dialect of the Ionian dialectic group it still had differences. Not to mention that most Greeks up to Alexandrian times spoke Dorian-related dialects including first and foremost Macedonian (note this), not Ionian. And you had also the Aeolian and Arcadian ones, completely different as well. To be noted today after lots of findings of the Macedonian dialect we know for sure that the development of Koini Greek came out of a mix of oral Macedonian with written Attic - it is not an accident that one of the easiest texts to translate from the 5th century BC for modern Greeks is Pella Katadesmos, a text written by a Macedonian woman, and rather a mid-lower class one it seems, during the last phase of the Peloponnesian war. So that makes the idea that "ancient Greek orthography" was "historical" completely erroneous. We find very different orthographies between e.g. pottery annotations and classical texts of the very same period, precisely because while medieval Greek grammarians (often those nerdy orthodox monks! in love with their Classical Greek heritage!) tended to copy the ancient Greek texts correcting the orthography with the official one as it was established in the times of Hellenistic period, as said, in the cultural centers of Alexandria, Pergamon, Antioch, Seleucia, Athens, etc. This held true even for "Holy Texts" such as the Iliad and Odyssey. While medieval Greeks tended to copy these with their original language (capital sin to change a single comma!) still that was one altered during the 6tth century, 2 centuries after Homer wrote the Iliad by the Athenians who wanted "an official version" of it, and then again during Hellenistic times - words were not changed but the orthography of them yes. The story of the Greek alphabet itself is very obscured by fossilised ideas about its alleged origins from the Phoenician alphabet. It is a nice theory and explains some questions but yet all is not clear since it was never verified archaeologically with Greek findings being both more ancient than the oldest Phoenician findings as well as coming from middle to lower-class backgrounds rather than the case of Phoenicians (oldest findings are in high-class items) and then earliest findings of Greek alphabet are simultaneously found all over the Greek world from Greece (oldest attest in Attica, the Dipylon vase, 2nd oldest, the Pieria cups, in Macedonia - please! LOL!) to South Italy (Nestor's cup). The very existence of multiple variants since day 1 rather points out to at least 2-3 centuries of development which gets us back to the 1000s BC a time when Phoenicians show no usage of the Phoenician writing (e.g. in Cyprus they brought no writing system and adopted the local Arcado-Cypriot syllabary, an earlier Greek Bronze age system)
Fabulous conversation. As a Bible scholar, in seminary I learned Koine Greek using the Erasmus system of pronunciation, which makes a great deal of sense to me as a theoretical way that ancient Greeks might have pronounced the language, but historically we also learned that by the Hellenic period, the ancient Attic pronunciation was already beginning to evolve into the iota craze that exists today. I learned to pronounce it both ways in the end, because I was torn between the logic of both sides of the argument. In my opinion, Erasmian pronunciation has a much richer and fuller spectrum of sounds, and is generally more "pleasing" to the ear, but the problem with that is the fact that very few Erasmian Greek scholars can speak it or read it effectively enough to make it sound like a genuine language when they pronounce it. If you want to hear someone speaking Greek and also have it make sense to your ear AS A LANGUAGE rather than as a code for English (or whatever the scholars native language might be) then you almost always have to find a Greek person to read it, and then of course when you do that, they invariable pronounce it with the modern Greek scheme. So its a bit of a mixed bag really. The first problem I noticed about that, however is that it plays havoc with spelling, as you pointed out. If everything sounds like EE no matter how it is spelt, it really kills the point of having so many letters at one's disposal, not to mention, that Erasmus' scheme is SO phonetic, that even when one doesn't know the meaning of the vocabulary, he or she can still pronounce it correctly. No so with modern Greek. If you don't know the word, there is also a much lesser chance that you will pronounce it to the satisfaction of your Greek listener. But I digress, anyway, very interesting topic and so glad that you posted it here. Obviously I could talk about this subject for hours, but luckily for you, I will restrain myself :)
@@Kwstas_Vagias In my experience, I have found that very few people can do it properly. I have no doubt that to the native ear it sounds terrible. Much the same cringe that I feel when I hear a foreigner speaking English. I have known scholars (mostly native speakers of English) who have tremendous utility of the ancient Greek in terms of reading comprehension, but when they speak it, it sounds ridiculous. But I have little doubt that these same people would slaughter the sounds of modern Greek as well. If I put myself in your place, I can not blame you at all for feeling that way. If a native speaker of Greek for instance, were to approach me with a theory of what middle English sounded like, and started rattling off a Chaucer text with a thick Greek accent mixed in with an attempt to speak an "authentic" middle English accent, it would seem just as absurd to me, so I totally understand your objection. It would be interesting to know what Erasmus himself sounded like when he spoke it. Probably like a Dutchman trying to speak Greek. lol
@@TheMinisterofDefence Here is a Greek Speaker with the Erasmian pronunciation, you can visit his channel ua-cam.com/video/MOvVWiDsPWQ/v-deo.html&ab_channel=Podium-Arts
@@thrakiamaria thanks for the link. I havnt watched all of it yet, but just in the first few lines i noticed what i would call "Scandanavian sounds" in his reading. It doesnt sound Greek to me either. It sounds like the native child of a Greek and a Norseman. I wouldn't call it really terrible, as you say, but if I were a Greek person, I would see your point. It does make me think that capturing ancient Greek pronunciation is a somewhat futile endeavor. Although to be fair, as long as the attempt is internally consistent , I really dont feel like any pronunciation system is a bad thing. But regarding Modern Greeks and their feelings toward this idea: Yeah I see very little point of using any pronunciation other than Modern Greek.
As a Greek who is very interested in linguistics, the one thing I have to say to everyone learning the language is that the modern Greek have almost the same pronunciation as Spanish and the ancient Greek sound more like a northern language like Danish. I am sure you too have noticed that.
It is absolutely not true that Ancient Greek was sounding like a Scandinavian. The reason it sounds like Scandinavian is because of the Erasmian method that was clearly looking for a way to "describe" the language in a way that Germanic language speaking people could understand. Simply put, have you heard how a Greek person speaks English? If yes would you expect that is the way English is spoken? Obviously not.
@@polytrelaras1 Εγώ πάλι πιστεύω ότι βγάζει απόλυτο νόημα ότι π.χ. το όμικρον προφερόταν "ο" αλλά το ωμέγα "οο", όπως άλλωστε καταλαβαίνουμε απ'τα ονόματα των γραμμάτων. Ή ότι το ύψιλον προφερόταν όπως το γαλλικό "ου" στη λέξη "vu".
Qué entretenido verte en tu faceta de youtuber Chihon! :D Lo poco de griego que sé lo aprendí a través de amigos y guías en internet sobre cómo leer el griego moderno. Al principio obviamente tenía la interferencia del español que me hacía leer las palabras más como mostraste tú al principio (auto como en español), pero cuando me familiaricé más con el griego al verte pronunciar así esas palabras tuve reacciones como las de Ioanna jajajajja ahora mi mente dice automáticamente "afto"
Jajajaja, qué bueno saber que entiendes mi sufrimiento (y el de los griegos). Yo llevo ya muchos años trabajando el griego antiguo con esa pronunciación, así que las bromas en mi contra no las pude evitar. Al menos ahora mi griego moderno ha mejorado un poco y ya puedo adaptarme si es que hay otros griegos conmigo.
Me pasa lo mismo. Al tener la influencia de mi idioma me lío un montón. Aunque con tiempo y dedicación ya me voy adaptando. ¿Te llevó mucho tiempo aprender? Yo pronto haré un año pero aún soy principiante.
So, let's say that we ignore all the sound evolution of English and we start to read English texts exactly as they are written ( or maybe according the Latin value of each letter)....can you imagine how English would sound? The same difference exists between modern and ancient Greek...When we Greeks hear the Erasmian pronunciation, it is like pronouncing English as it is written.... ignoring the great vowel shift of the 15./16. century of English...how would an Englishman pronounce a text of Shakespeare today? I think they would read it according the modern English phonetic rules... that's what Greeks do with ancient Greek texts....
In my latest video about diphthongs and breathings I address this issue of the pronunciation again. Do check it out: ua-cam.com/video/95C-7iCCbRo/v-deo.html&t
The general rule for pronouncing υ in αυ / ευ as [v] or [f] is: use the voiced sound [v] if the following letter is voiced (including vowels, nasals and λ, ρ), otherwise use [f]
Is β pronounced between a "b" and a "v" in Modern Greek similar to how it is pronounced it Spanish? I would also recommend Lucian pronunciation for ancient Greek pronunciation as another commenter mentioned. Erasmian seems quite off. Specifically I have heard that ει was never pronounced as a diphtong but always as one sound. I think this guy's pronunciation is probably less egregious to Greeks because he seems to be a native Spanish speaker.
In modern Greek the beta is pronounced like the "v" in French, which is a language that respects more the differences between "b" and "v". In Spanish, which is my native language, as you well spotted, we don't make much of a difference between the two consonants, but we recognise they are different letters. Sound-wise, it is the "v" in which you bite your lower lip.
No, Spanish is still in the transition/lenition that took place over a millenium ago in Greek, with a few exceptions (below). Modern Greeks hear the difference strongly, to the extent they change the spelling of words pronounced the ancient way. So ancient κόμβος is Now spelled κόμπος to account for the unchanged pronunciation!
It's still egregious because Erasmian is incredibly outdated as an approximation of ancient Greek pronunciation. Reconstructed Attic already exists; use that instead of bringing pain to our ears with this meterless abomination that is Erasmian. I mean, if you don't find it to be an abomination from an aesthetic standpoint... sure, tastes are subjective. But it seems to me that the person who made this video is actually claiming that Greeks actually used to speak like Erasmus suggested, which is a historical _falsehood._
@@karlpoppins To be fair very few people can master a reconstructed pronunciation and mix features from different time periods. Honestly for the vast majority of people they should just go with modern pronunciation as it is way more available and less guess work.
I think the main distinction is that a Greek person is able to understand the context of every word, so they now when to accelerate their speech at the right moment, For me the way you read it sounds like you are isolating every word and removing tonality and expression out of the language. This is very common. when you compare how Italian or Spanish people read Greek, they read it more naturally because their languages have similar cadence. In pretty much every language accents are more and indication than a rule, because accentuation is very dependent on the context and Emotion and their use is more for the people that are learning the language for the first time. As example most Spanish people don't really use the tilde when they write, because it is already natural for them to localize the accent on the right spot, similar to Italians, we use it for writing formally thou, I think accents in ancient Greece were treated in a similar way.
Thanks for your comments! Yes, I think you are right when you spot that my reading lacks a bit of emotion, since I'm trying to read correctly in the way I was taught Ancient Greek. My friend Ioanna, on the other hand, just approaches the words naturally and with the emotion you mention. However, the comparison between Ancient Greek and Spanish, Italian, and even Modern Greek is not quite the same in terms of accents. Accents in Spanish (the tildes), for example, mark the stress in a word, but they can also be used as diacritics, to tell words apart that sound exactly the same, like "como" and "cómo", or "tú" and "tu". Those are four different words and we tell them apart in Spanish with tildes. Accents in Ancient Greek, though, unlike its modern counterpart, are not accents of stress, but of pitch. I devote a video to this topic here: ua-cam.com/video/z8gTz051euU/v-deo.html Thank you very much for watching and commenting!
8:30 you are referring to the language dispute in Greece. Katharevousa (pure Greek) Greek v Demotic Greek (the Greek of the simple people). Accents were abolished in the 80s because they were mostly cosmetic with the way modern Greek pronunciation developed. Kavafis’ language was Demotic, with strong Katahrevousa inputs, which is why he was critiqued by poets (idiot modernists) from Greece eg. Palamas. I believe in poetry, the creator has the liberty of writing as modern/archaic as they want. Why judge?
Μπράβο Ιωάννα καλά τα είπες..απλά πρέπει να καταλάβουν ότι πρώτα πρέπει να πάνε φροντιστήριο 4 με 5 χρόνια για να μάθουν νέα ελληνικά κ μετά από κει αν έχεις μεράκι τα αρχαία σε 3, 4 χρόνια δεν είναι κάτι δύσκολο..για τα βασικά τουλάχιστον..αυτά...συνεχίστε έτσι...!
Here some examples of their differences by an italian guy who study ancient greek at school: 1: the letter ēta (Ηη, īta, in modern greek) was pronounced as a long ē sound, not as an i sound 2: the letter gamma (Γγ) was always a hard g sound, it wasn’t an aspirated h sound as it’s today 3: the diphtongs “ει” and “οι” were pronounced as they were written, not as “i”, as it’s in modern greek Edit: oh yeah, another thing. 4: the letter ypsilon (Υυ) was a frech u sound, or a german ü sound, it was like a y, but not quite, while today is just an i sound; also, this letter never had the “f” sound. Then, the letter beta (Ββ) was a b sound, not a v sound
That's bs. I agree with u up to a certain point, but ei was simply not pronounced as written there is countless evidence and the y also was not a German Ü. Erasmus's pronunciation was simply aiming to make it easier for Germans to pronounce, I'm not saying it's completely wrong, in fact it's mostly wright. I would recommend watching a video of polymathy about ει, he explains it perfectly. much love to u GR❤IT
i love greek people, some of the most intelligent people in this world. They should be allowed to set the standard for education for their own language.
Thanks for your comment! What you suggest is actually the main and strongest argument many Greeks give in this debate. From the professional side, people who have specialised in Ancient Greek know that the pronunciation of the language has evolved over time. My pronunciation, for instance, is closer to that of the V and early IV centuries BC. After that, Ancient Greek quickly evolved to something closer to the modern pronunciation, especially at the time of Koine Greek. If you look online for Greek academics speaking in Ancient Greek, you'll find that many also use the reconstructed pronunciation I show in all my videos.
Just a reminder: the itacism was already present in the ancient koine version of the language (so already before Christ!). Proven by the many spelling "mistakes" in texts and presentation of Greek words in Latin. So from a historical point of view that is not really a difference. So yes, there is probably a difference (we have no audio recordings, only spelling mistakes), and no, it is was present for a long time. It depends on the period of time. So I understand why they pronounce ancient Greek in the modern way (actually Greek just pronounce it that way, because it is counterintuitive otherwise ?), but some things in ancient Greek just do not feel right when you pronounce it the modern way. Like the word βῆκος in a story of Herodotos that would be pronounced as "viekos" instead of "bèèkos": a child has been raised by sheep, and one morning he starts saying βῆκος, the sound of sheep. "viekos" would sound like a crazy sheep ;-)
Every "i" version in modern Greek has not the same "i" pronunciation, but modern Greeks as native speakers do not realize that, thus adding in to the confusion by (and they falsely agree with) the non-greek speakers opinion. "I,ι" is high pitched, "Η,η" is more baritone (δασύ), and "Υ,υ" is more deep and round, somewhat the same as in ancient Greek but, but then we have to talk... about the Greek politics as well and then the whole story will be too long to tell here.
A modern Greek does not need to learn an “Ancient Greek alphabet” because it has been the same alphabet throughout time. The Greek of Hellenistic times was pronounced the way modern Greek is pronounced. We know this because the accents were introduced in 240 BC by Aristophanes of Byzantium to emulate the way Homeric and Classical Greek may have sounded before the aspirations disappeared and the diphthongs became iotacized. So, by Alexander the Great’s time, Greek was pronounced the way it is spoken today. We know this because the less educated Greeks of 2000 years ago wrote many diphthongs phonetically with iota or epsilon, as many surviving parchments attest. Modern Greek is a direct continuum of the ancient form with all the natural changes sustained by a living language. Actually, it is the only living classical language in Europe, unlike Latin, which is dead to Italian, although Italian and the Romance languages evolved from Latin. Good presentation, kids!
If the accent had changed, then why would the diacrìtics even be used? It really doesn't make sense to me. Also, I don't know about inscriptions, most likely ⲉⲓ ⲁⲓ̀ and the like had already changed, however we do know from several sources, mostly transfers of words into other languages, that some futures had not evolved yet. Think for instance of greek names in Latin, during the Roman rule such as Aenias, Cepheas, whereas with modern pronunciation it would be Enias and Kifeas. So to say that Alexander pronounced greek the exact same way as Nikos from Thesaloniki is quite a stretch, at least from the knowledge that I, currently have
@@ΒασίληςΒλάχος-τ3κ We have ample of evidence from Hellenistic times when many speakers of Greek, whether Greek or foreign, use single vowels in place of diphthongs , like Nilus instead of Neilus (Greek Νείλος) by the Latins, etc. This attest to a closer association between modern Greek and Hellenistic koine than with the perceived pronunciation of classical times.
We speak English and Spanish in Gibraltar. From Spanish we understand WRITTEN Portuguese fairly easily, but SPOKEN Portuguese we find quite difficult to understand. What you say about ancient and modern Greek makes a lot of sense to me. I am trying to learn classical Greek. As. A rough rule of thumb it seems to me that if I try to pronounce the words with a ‘Spanish accent’ it works better. An English accent is dire, as it is in most Romance languages! Of course, there is then the fine tuning you speak about: breathing’s, accents, etc. What a very interesting conversation you have posted! Thank you.
Thank you so much for your comment!!! I completely understand what you say here, since I'm a Spanish native speaker as well, hahaha. I also don't have any problems reading Portuguese content, but speaking is always something really different. As for what you say about Classical Greek, yes, from Spanish the pronunciation is easier than from English, with the exceptions you mentioned. Te deseo mucha suerte en tu aventura por el griego antiguo. ¡Que estés muy bien!
διατι η μη την ερασμιαν διαλέξωλογιαν φερουσα ειπείν νομίζειν ότι ευκρινως επιτασσει ερμηνείαν...ενώ τοσουτως επροσπαθησεν απέτυχεν καθότι ού δύναται αντιλαβουσιν τοις βαρβάροις την χιλιετηρίδων συνέχειαν του Έλληνος έθνους και κατ ' επέκτασιν της αρίστης δωροθεούσης γλώσσης των
For what it is worth, I have been learning Ancient Greek as an anglophone, and have never learned the Erasmian system. Most of the books I have been reading teach the restored classical pronunciation and one teaches one particular restored koine pronunciation, but none of them teach Erasmian. It is no longer the default assumption (which is good, since it does not reflect the way it was ever spoken at any point in history).
In my latest video about diphthongs and breathings I address this issue of the pronunciation again. Do check it out: ua-cam.com/video/95C-7iCCbRo/v-deo.html&t
I am 60 years and we did ancient greek for 6 years in highschool back in the late 70s We never used Erasmus pronunciation but the Modern Greek pronunciation !!! Nowdays Αβγό is acceptale as well !! Before 1977 the official language of the state was Katharevousa ( a kind of modernized koine ) and this was what they tought us in highschool !! . Then we changed officially to Demotiki ( the widely spoken way of Greeks ) !!
Hello! Thanks very much for this insight, it's always good to have these testimonies. In my experience in academia doing ancient philosophy, only Greek scholars sometimes tend to pronounce ancient texts with the Modern Greek pronunciation, but they normally manage to pronounce it in the Erasmian way. When in the video I said it is the standard way of pronouncing Ancient Greek, I meant that it is the way that scholars all over the world read the language. The only differences in pronunciation come from the accent each person has depending on their own native language.
Ioanna is lovely. Hope to see her back again....If you do a round two of this (with her or someone else), could you talk a little more systematically about grammatical/syntactical differences, e.g., the way modern Greek forms the future tense, or the infinitive, in contrast to classical Greek? Also the loss of some cases endings. Of particular interest to me is to what degree a modern speaker of Greece can understand classical Greek word order. I believe modern Greek's word order has (like English) lost some of its flexibility.
Modern Greek word order is sometimes different than the ancient word order, but it doesn't sound too strange when you use the ancient one cause it still makes sense and CAN be used today too, it just sounds more formal in a way, if you get what i mean.
At first read my first comment..it's a little big..but whatever..and secondary..you MUST learn modern(meaning simplified greek) first and then go to ancient...like you first ride a bicycle and then a motorcycle...you don't even know to ride a bicycle and try to explain the way a motorcycle engine works and which components are better or easier to dismantle...guys..mean and ioanna could understand how I'm.telling that...:::ΈΛΕΟΣ mercy
@@apollontv1078 Hi. I've been studying Greek for quite a few years, starting in grad school. I began with Koine, which is simpler than classical Attic, but then moved on to the latter. I study it as a written, literary language primarily, not spoken, so it's different. I would like to learn to speak Modern Greek at some point. Thank you.
Ioanna is pronouncing ancient Greek words with modern pronunciation. In fact we don't know how ancient Greek was pronounced. We know the letters but we also know there was a shift in pronunciation from Ancient Greek to Katharevousa to then Modern Greek. So for all we know, it's possible Chihon is actually pronouncing some of the words correctly. We just don't know.
Exactly, this is the drama. It is because of what you point out that my approach to Ancient Greek is more practical than historical. My goal is for people to be able to understand and translate Ancient Greek to their native languages. As you can tell from the views on this video, the debate on the "correct" pronunciation will always be polemic, but in academic practice people have chosen to keep it simple and go for a system of pronunciation that allows us to communicate our ideas.
in german "Y" sounds exactly like ancient greek. many english speakers maybe tempted to pronounce "System" as they would do in english but that would be an error. y is not like spanish/italian "i" but sound more like an "uei" (üi)
Very informative video! You're right that this topic is polemic, which is kind of unfortunate since it can discourage people from learning the language overall. Also, I have a question regarding Greek. If I were to learn Koine Greek (specifically Biblical Greek) would I be able to read texts in Classical Greek? Or is the grammar/syntax entirely different and not possible?
Hello!!! Thanks for your comments. Indeed, I agree that this polemic often discourages people from learning, since from the outside this lack of uniformity in the opinions looks like a mess. About your question, I think the other way around is far easier. The grammatical differences between Classical and Koine are not significant (it's basically the same language), but I find Classical Greek far more complex in vocabulary and literary resources, whereas Biblical Greek is written in simple terms, which probably contributed to the spread of the contents within it. So, if you have Classical Greek training (that's my case), then reading Koine makes you feel really good because you understand almost everything effortlessly. However, I doubt that one would have the same experience the other way around.
I have a tip to share . Any word that is used to describe or contains liquid element and has a i (e) sound usually is written with ύψιλον υ (ypsilon) . For example υδορ (water) υδραυλικός (plumber) πλύση (washing ) κύπελλο(cup) ψυχή(soul) etc . As a matter of facts Υ,υ shape is creating a cavity that could hold water in it . We firstly get introduced with Y letter in Minoan times as an ideogram that describes liquid rain and so forth . According to Pythagorean philosophy the two horns of Y are symbolising two different paths . The one is virtue and the other one is wickedness. My English are kind of rusty also but i hope you got the greater picture
Archaeology of the last century has uncovered many papyrus written by soldiers to their families. These typically have spelling mistakes confirming which vowel sounds had converged at that time. This convergence was largely due to the nation building (dialect merging) of Alexander the Great. The conclusion is that Erasmus would be unintelligible in New Testament times. And with the exception of the Koine Greek for you (plural), a modern Greek speaker would do much better for understanding sounds of words, though there are some issues to do with grammar, false friends and some changes in vocabulary.
for any simple greek speaker of nowdays, the koine greek is simply to understand. basically you can understand over 80% percent of the meaning. if we see texts from the medieval greek then we can understand it almost totally. the things are much more difficult if we try to understand ioanian, doric or aeolic dialect, so we talk about classical greek period and of course before it. although we can understand of course many words or verbs the total conlcusion would be difficult. these types of ancient greek would be easy for someone that studies ancient greek and not for a simple greek speaker. the things of course are worst when we try to understand the homeric greek. so we can say in general that the greek texts of at least 2000 years are understandable for the average greek speaker but not the greek of 2.800 years. koine greek was much more simple already from that period because exactly was offered to the foreign populations that used the greek as lingua franca. although the most words and verbs are the same from the classical greek period, many of them have changed the old meaning already from the koine greek period or the medieval greek period.
When we modern Greeks read ancient Greek, we do it using modern Greek pronunciation (just like Ioanna does), which is of course anachronistic. We don't sound like the ancient Greeks did. And of course the ancient Greek pronunciation has undergone many changes throughout the centuries, so a certain word would sound different in different eras.
I am Greek and I found the video so enjoyable! You are both very charismatic and eloquent. Btw, I totally empathised with Ioanna. It's exactly as she described. What a weird, uncomfortable feeling we get with the Erasmian pronunciation...
Thanks for your comments! For sure, the Erasmian pronunciation is very polemic in many aspects, especially if you are a native Greek speaker. For better or worse, the Erasmian has been the way in which Ancient Greek has been taught internationally and it is therefore a useful reference when working in ancient philosophy or classical studies. Depending on our goal with the language we all have different perspectives about it.
Very enjoyable video. You make a good duo. I have a question particularly the ancient greek pronunciation. Can we be sure for that or is it only assumptions. P.S. Ιωάννα είσαι κούκλα.
As you can see from the comments, it's a very heated topic. For sure when we are tracing things that happened more than two millennia ago, we must bear some inaccuracy in our estimations. However, I wouldn't say it's just assumptions, but rather a reasonable estimation. The thing is that in academia, the way I'm reading Ancient Greek in this video is actually the one employed by almost all scholars in ancient philosophy (accents aside, which come from our native languages). There are good grounds to think that this pronunciation is correct, and I will address these arguments in future videos.
A/α=alfa (pron. always clear Α as in "car" - not ay) B/β=veeta (v sound) as in "valley" Γ/γ=γάμα (like y-es or w-hat) Δ/δ=thelta (like (th-e) E/ε=epsilon (e-pitaph) Ζ/ζ=zeeta (Z-oo) Η/η=eeta (pronounced ee) as "infinit-y" Θ/θ=theeta (as th-uner) Ι/ι=eeota (pronounced ee) as "infinit-y" Κ/κ=kapa /K as "c-at" Λ/λ=lamtha / L as "L-eo" Μ/μ=mee / M as "m-om" Ν/ν=nee / N as "n-ou-n" Ξ/ξ=xee / X (as on e-x-odus) Ο/ο=omikron / O "Door" Π/π=pee / P not paee but as "p-olice" Ρ/ρ=ro /R as "r-egula-r" Σ/σ/ς=siγma / S (ther's no sound like γ in latin, g is complitely wrong) as "s-ound" Τ/τ=taf / Τ as "tea" Y/υ=eepsilon (pronounced ee) as "infinit-y" Φ/φ=fee / F as "fall" Χ/χ=hee / J in spanish / He in english as "h-urry up" Ψ/ψ=psee / ps Ω/ω=omeγa / O (ther's no sound like γ in latin, g is complitely wrong) as "door" Also: μπ=b / ντ=d / τζ=j / γκ=g (G-ary) / ευ=ef or ev / αυ=af or av / ου=ou or u in (Lulu) Ιι / Ηη / Υυ / ει / οι are always ee, only when εϊ = e-ee, and αϊ=a-ee The «ευ» and «αυ», pronounced ef and af, when the letters κ, π, τ, χ, φ, θ, σ, ξ, ψ follow. «ευ» and «αυ» are pronounced "ev" and "av", when the letters β, γ, δ, ζ, λ, μ, ν, ρ and vowels follow. The «ευ» and «αυ», pronounced ef and af, when the letters κ, π, τ, χ, φ, θ, σ, ξ, ψ follow. «ευ» and «αυ» are pronounced "ev" and "av", when the letters β, γ, δ, ζ, λ, μ, ν, ρ and vowels follow.
There are letter/sound shifts from AG to MG. We know the sounds of the AG alphabet from linguistics and history. A few examples: B/β="beta", changed to "veeta"; now to make "β", as above, "μπ" (mp). "μπίρα"..."beer". Δ/δ="delta" changed to "θelta", now to make "δ", "ντ" (nt), but "Δημοκρατία", not "Nτημοκρατία" "democracy". (Tradition?) The "Iotazation" of η and υ; ευ/αυ->εφ (ef) & αφ (af) "αυτός="aftos", and so on, et cetra (ad infinitum). The text of Ancient Greek is fixed, and so is "their" pronunciation.
Νταξει μπρο respect..αλλά χαμένο πάει...ας βάλει ο τυπάς την Ιωάννα να κάνει 5 10 μαθήματα για νεοελληνικα αρχικά κ μετά βλέπουμε...πωωωω πόσο υποαναπτυκτοι ρε που στη μ...γιαυτό μας φορτωσαν κουλη κ ΛΟΙΠΟΥΣ να μας εξαφανισουν πριν την ώρα μας...καλά μας κανουν
Instead of comments, let me quote a Greek proverb. Come, father, let me show you where I came from There is no new and ancient Greek language, the little girl simply cannot hear her own voice when she pronounces a word with different vowels and diphthongs. Listen to the observation of the music composer Dionysis Savvopoulos, regarding this. I am a simple technician and I understand the language of the gospel and the ancient texts in a larger percentage of 80% simply because in the former six-grade high school I was taught the language, grammar and syntax, etymology, etc. correctly and continuously for six years. Today, the Greek state is trying to de-Hellenize us with its policies and the antiNativism of the prime minister.
I am trying to learn both Modern Greek and Koine Greek. It is my impression that Koine is in transition from Classical Greek to modern especially the vocab. As for instance the word for wine.
Indeed!!! Whenever I read Koiné, I always feel it much closer to Modern Greek than Classical (which is the one I read the most), but it is still a form of Ancient Greek. In Koiné, many words and pronunciations are closer to the Modern version, but to understand it it's still more useful to know Ancient Greek.
La secillez y alegría de Ioana son encantadoras, y además tiene razón, cómo alguien no griego va a saber más griego que los griegos (y que disculpe Erasmo o los erasmianos), pero el griego antiguo debería leerse con las convenciones del griego actual. Por ejemplo, los tres acentos del griego antiguo son una dificultad agregada al estudio del griego que en los monosílabos equivalen a que en español se acentuaran siempre este tipo de palabras, ¿y cuál es la diferencia si no llevaran acento?
¡Hola! Bueno, ahí la diferencia es tonal. En la práctica, cuando uno trabaja con griego antiguo en general se pasan por alto estos tonos. Sin embargo, en muchas palabras uno encuentra casos donde el significado cambia radicalmente si el acento cambia. Sacar los acentos sería aumentar la dificultad que per se ya tiene esta lengua. Ahora bien, es interesante notar que la introducción de los acentos en el griego antiguo ocurrió siglos después del Período Clásico. Tocaré este tema en futuros videos, no te preocupes.
Interesting experiment. It would have been endlessly more helpful if you had provided a reference to the ancient source ab initio, together with a screen visual of the Greek text as each of you read: that way those of your viewers who can read Greek could follow your different pronunciations.
Thanks a lot for the suggestion. With time I'll learn how to add the Greek texts in a more aesthetic way. For now, you can still check the Greek text we are reading in the description below the video.
It is amazing how people base their pronunciation not by what they hear but by what they read. She said that her name is Dzho-ah-nah, but you continue to call her Yo-ah-nah. That is because in your language "j" is pronounced as "y". And you cannot help but pronounce not how you hear her say it to you, but how you remember seeing it written.
In some cases, people may base their pronunciation on what they read, but in this case, something different happen. We Greeks when we speak english, often "translate" our names to the closest english "equivalent". So when Ιωάννα (Yo-ah-nah) introduced herself, she said Joanna, which is more or less the equivalent english name. But obviously Chihon knows that her name in greek is Ιωάννα, (plus he kind of speaks greek), so he called her Ιωάννα (Yo-ah-nah) not because of what he read, but because a Greek friend (or a a friend learning greek) would call her like that. Going back to your initial suggestion (how people base their pronunciation not by what they hear but by what they read), makes me think of how the Erasmian pronunciation makes a foreigner who listens ancient greek, be able to write them down, even if he/she doesn't know the words in the first place. I guess that this somehow facilitates learning to read and write at the same time. A German guy may find this to be efficient. I wonder though, if by applying the same principle to foreigners learning english, if they would pick up a Midlands' accent instead of Oxford's.... :-) me smiling at this crazy idea!
An aspect rarely talked is the musicality of the sentence. A great deal of the gramatical realtion between the words is made explicit when the locutor varies the tone and speed of his voice. This is natural for modern Greeks but not at all for foreign speakers. To greek hears the herasmean pronunciation sounds very monotone and monochord. The greek lisners feels a huge lack of information and tries to repeat the sentence in his head adding musucality in order to decypher the grammar.
As someone who doesn't speak Greek (except a few tourist words) Ioanna's reading of ancient Greek sounds exactly the same as modern Greek, I would not be able to tell the two apart. I assume there must be differences in vocabulary and grammar, but not knowing the language I couldn't tell.
Thanks for your comment! You're absolutely right, Ioanna's approach (and that of most Greek people in general) is to read Ancient Greek in the exact same way they talk nowadays. As you can tell in this comment section, the difference is quite controversial for Greek people. However, I'm reading and teaching it here in the way we use it in academic circles worldwide.
As a Greek I do understand the pronunciation issue in learning ancient, but what always annoyed me relatively indipendent of that was that we learn all the diacritics of the polytonic system without actually using them. We are never even taught what they do. So then what's even the point?
Today's diphthongs were pronounced as separate letters but this began to change from within the ancient Greek period to what we have today, so it depends which period of ancient Greek you are talking about. Diphthongs, therefore, are also ancient Greek so if you were around at the time of Christ you would probably hear both ways. I couldn't understand Chihon's reading apart from a few words but Joanna's reading was like reading a passage from the bible. She is reading something from 480BC which means that Chihon's pronunciation of the diphthongs was more accurate.
Precisely. Moreover, bear in mind that my way of reading is the way Ancient Greek is read academically in most countries. At university level at least, that's how it sounds. In the future I'll make a video about the historical accuracy of the different reading systems.
@@ChihonTeaches That would be a great idea. BTW, your vowel pronunciation is perfect. I'm learning Italian and I've noticed that the majority of English learners make no effort to pronounce the vowels correctly.
@@ninelaivz4334 That's a topic of its own, hahaha. Some people in the UK have explicit policies of not pronouncing certain vowels, like the iota subscript, for example. My native language is Spanish and I learnt Greek pronouncing every vowel, something that probably only applied until the end of the Vth century BC or the beginning of the IVth. From a pedagogical perspective, I think this way is more useful since it allows you to learn how to spell new words more quickly.
The Erasmian pronunciation is rather too 'northern' or 'western' European but in truth it is correct in attempting to differentiate, for instance, the various 'I' sounds in modern Greek (and many other sounds besides). One irony is the diacritic marks and accents that - thankfully - disappeared from the Modern Greek writing system about 40 years ago. The irony stems from the fact that those marks/accents were brought in in late antiquity to assist non-Greeks to learn how to speak Greek ... where to raise your pitch ... where there is a rough breath and so on. The language changed over time as did the ancient pronunciation yet Greeks were stuck with the diacritic marks/accents until the 1980s even though they had lost all significance. Many hours were spent uselessly learning by rote when to use the oxeia, when the perispomene etc.
It is interesting, because by the time Greek minuscule and accent marks entered the written language, they had already been lost in most dialects at the time. Rough Breathing was actually the first to disappear. There is a very good reason why the grapheme H represented a vowel and not H, because the Ionic dialect of greek lacked the Rough Breathing as early as 600 BC.
Hello Chihon! I got to admit now, Im deeply confused! :D How did ancient Greek sounded? The way the native Greek girl is pronouncing them? Or the way that you are pronouncing them? Thanks!
Hello!!! Your confusion is completely justified. The answer to your question is tricky, because it's most likely neither! The way I pronounce and teach is a reconstructed version inspired mostly by Erasmus, and it is the standard way to teach Ancient Greek at academic and university level. We pronounce in this way as a consensus because we care more about the contents of what we read rather than how it sounds. On the other hand, Ioanna's pronunciation is modern (and Athenian), which we know from many sources is different from that of ancient past. Now, to answer your question one must choose a specific date to analyse Ancient Greek. My pronunciation is closer to the Classical period (circa V-IV century BC), but we know that already in the Hellenistic period some changes in pronunciation started to occur. Already by the time of Koiné Greek we have something closer to Modern Greek, and this is even more the case for the Byzantine period. So the "correct" pronunciation that many in the comments desire depends greatly on the material you engage with. Which one do you prefer?
I am just starting to learn Modern Greek. I am learning things like egg is αυγό and is pronounced ov-go. What would I here talking with someone on the streets of Greece? Would I hear something more like ow-go? Or a mix of both? What would best be suggested to look out for in travel?
Thanks for your message! From the two pronunciations you saw in this video, Ioanna's is the one you will find in Greece nowadays. Mine is a reconstructed pronunciation of Ancient Greek applicable to the V century BC. As for the word "egg", the pronunciation I've heard the most is "avgó" or "afgó" (the letter "a" pronounced as in "cat"). Sometimes it's hard to tell them apart since both consonants are formed in a similar way, by biting your lower lip.
Gut, Mann. Gute Arbeit. Sehr hübsches Mädchen! I am also studying philosophy, nice to see you‘re trying to engage people and clarify so imp things. Viel Erfolg euch!
Her pronunciation sounds much more Greek and soft instead of the erasmian pronunciation which makes the language heavy and nordic, which should not have been cause it's a mediterranean language so that wouldn't be normal. The erasmian accent probably was created by Romans who speaked in Latin so they could pronounce phthongs and letter combination they couldnt otherwise, so everyone in the western word can learn and study Greek.
It wasn't it was created by Danish classicist Erasmus Roterodamus, who used the modern pronunciation, but developed the Erasmian as a philosophical experiment, since Historical linguistic evidence had not been established at the time, the Erasmian pronunciation has been proven to be wrong in favour of the Reconstructed Attic pronunciation (RAP). The mediterranean feel for languages in the Graeco-Roman world developed in 300 BC. This is the scientific consensus on the topic: RAP 500 BC, Reconstructed Koine, 1-600 AD which had iotacism (save for eta, pronounced like a midway between e and i, upsilon, prounounced like ü), loss of aspiration, frication of phi theta chi beta delta gamma, loss of vowel length and merging of acute and circumflex accents) and Modern Pronunciation 600 AD - present. Koine already sounded a lot like Modern Greek, and by the time of middle Koine, latin sounded a lot like Italian, grammatically too. The Northern West uses Erasmian pronunciation because they like to claim Greek and Latin as the ancestors of their civilisation, while viewing contemporary Greece and Italy as inferior to themselves. That being said, any student of Ancient Greek and Latin should be free to use whatever pronunciation is easiest to them, but unfortunately, this is often accompanied by smugness and dismissal of the people to whom the Latin and Greek tradition belongs.
Speaking as a native, that the only touch with ancient texts I had was those compulsory years of middle and high school, I never would've imagined that there's such a big difference between the two schools of learning them. During the first reading I simply thought that I had completely forgot whatever I was taught in school, hence I couldn't understand but a few words here and there. It really shows a difference in pronounciation philosophy. Very illuminating.
If you want to have a further shock, check the Greek text I left in the description below the video and try to follow the way we pronounce it. You'll have fun, for sure!
The "erasmian way" was not lost in Greece, never existed actually. It was as you said a convention that makes sense to germanic and romance speakers. Even the Greek words that survived through Latin does not agree with this pronunciation, I'm not saying modern Greek is right but I bet you it's closer than the erasmian
¡Muchas gracias! Estaré subiendo videos en la medida en que tenga tiempo sobre griego y otros temas de interés filosófico. Te agradezco mucho tu apoyo.
In ancient times too ει, η, ι, οι sounded the same.. For example λοιμος = disease and λιμός = hunger sounded exactly the same. as Thoukidedes wrote. Ancient greeks used also to make spelling mistakes Αριστείδης, αριστηδης, αριστιδης. Why that? Because ει, η, ι sounded the same.
They weren't the same. The spelling mistakes that you are referring to originated in the late koine period, were people started to confuse ι and η. There are literally ostraca from 5th century B.C. Athens that say ΘΕΜΙΣΤΟΚΛΕΣ, since attic Greek didn't yet adopted the ionic spellings. There is also more than enough evidence that οι wasn't always a monophthong. Latin transcriptions from contemporary ancient Greek (oestrus, Oedipus, oeconomia etc.) first and foremost. But also Greek orthography itself. The verb ΟΙΚΕΩ/οἰκέω for instance becomes ΩΙΚΗΣΑ/ᾤκησα in the aorist.
"Erasmian" accent.... my opinions is, that Greeks never pronounced Δ as D and ai as ae β as b etc. ΔΕΛΤΑ for Greeks was always Δelta, not Delta, but non Greeks don't have these sounds in their languages so that's why it's hard for them and adopted their accent. I'm pretty sure modern Greek is more close to ancient Greek than the "Erasmian" accent.
If β didn't sound like b, how would we explain the fact that in an ancient text it's written that "Sheep go βη βη", when in modern Greek the sheep go "μπεε μπεε"; Should we assume that sheep have changed the way they sound through the years?
@@lambch7144 from your point I guess the title lamp on your profile is totally correct...for the beeeee beer of the ships we used a combination of two letters...the m and the P..which in greek are μ,Μ...and π,Π....together form the sound beeeee...do you see now...and to sum up. If you wanna see the continuation of ancient to modern greek dialect just go to a Greek orthodox church a Sunday morning..any Sunday...the monks and priests preserved all the right pronunciations and sounds...period...bb
@@ΑπόλλωνΘηρευτής όλα ξεκινάνε απ το ότι είναι οπαδοί ακόμα του φαλμεραιερ...που εχθρευεται την ιδέα της αιωνίου συνέχισης της ελληνικής φυλής απ την αρχαιότητα ως τα σήμερα...κ δυστυχώς ειδικότερα αυτοί που ασχολούνται με τα αρχαία σήμερα είναι οι πιο φανατικοί εξ αυτών που θεωρούν εαυτούς συνεχίστες...με.λυπει ότι ο τύπος σε πολλά σχόλια αν προσέξεις λέει ότι η δική του..ΑΚΟΥΣΟΝ ΑΚΟΥΣΟΝ προφορά είναι ορθοτερη κ πιο κοντά..πράγμα που δείχνει που ανήκει...οπότε τι περιμένεις...ελπίζω την επόμενη φορά η Ιωάννα να τον βάλει στη θέση του κ να βρει τρόπο να του εξήγησει...γιατί μπορεί να χει αγαθες προθέσεις αλλά το αποτέλεσμα βγαίνει ανάπηρο
@@apollontv1078 Είναι εντελώς άκυρη η απάντηση που δίνεις, γιατί δεν έχεις πάρει χαμπάρι τι λέει το σχόλιο. Ακόμη κι εάν καταλάβαινες, βέβαια, δεν νομίζω ότι θα ήταν καλύτερη, αλλά τουλάχιστον θα μπορούσαμε να συζητήσουμε σε άλλες βάσεις. Δεν θα κάτσω να σου το εξηγήσω, γιατί δεν έχω ούτε χρόνο να διαθέσω, ούτε τη διάθεση να εξηγώ σε ανθρώπους που δεν υπάρχει περίπτωση να καταλάβουν και εκφράζουν απόψεις που τους είπε ο μπάρμπας του θείου του αδερφού της ξαδέρφης ενός γείτονα χωρίς να έχουν κάτσει να μελετήσουν. Για το επιχείρημα, δε, περί της γλώσσας στην οποία είναι γραμμένη η Αγία Γραφή, εάν ήξερες το πόσο ηλίθιο είναι, πραγματικά δεν θα έμπαινες στον κόπο να το σκεφτείς καν, πόσο μάλλον να το γράψεις.
From hearing the man recite in Ancient Greek now I know why Greek American that take Ancient Greek in an American college often fail the class. Hear the man recite a passage is completely off the wall. It does even sound like it is Greek. But the girl reciting you can catch the sense of what it is said. What I cannot understand is how anglos pronounce omecron iota . It is like hoi palloi. It’s simple : put two dots over the i and you separate the o from the i when pronounced the vowels. Otherwise you pronounce them as eee
They will almost always use the Modern Greek pronunciation. In fact, I doubt there is a single Greek priest who would switch to reconstructed koine pronunciation.
I have never understood why they teach ancient Greek the way they do. It would make more sense to teach it with modern Greek pronunciation, which sounds better and frankly more natural. It's not as though any student of ancient Greek is going to run into an ancient on the streets and needs to approximate the sounds from over 2000 years ago. I lived in Greece for four years and learned modern Greek, but can barely make out 1 word in 50 of ancient Greek when it is pronounced the scholarly way, but when pronounced with modern Greek style around a third is comprehensible.
Very enjoyable presentation. Thanks ! Btw., I am learning Modern Greek with no knowledge of ancient Greek, and I can say that is not easy with 5 different types of 'i' all sounding the same way. You just need to learn the way the words are written. I do not see another way (my own experience). Keep up the good work ! God bless you all !
Thank you for your comments!!! I agree, the many iota sounds in Modern Greek are very difficult to understand, especially at the beginning. In my case, I learnt Ancient Greek first and I have tried to learn Modern Greek from my Greek friends. Very often I need to ask them to spell a word so I can understand the Ancient Greek origin and only then I can incorporate that word into my vocabulary. So, who knows?, maybe some Ancient Greek may help you get through your Modern Greek adventures.
@@ChihonTeachescan you write what you read in Ancient Greek with Latin letters so we will know what you read and we can then conclude it it similar to modern Greek or any other languages?!
So I'm not clear what her answer was at the end, when you asked her if it would make our lives better for those of us who want to learn ancient Greek whether to learn the modern Greek pronunciation first, or just to read the made-up make believe pronunciation of Erasmus. I'm wanting to teach myself Koiné Greek, but am struggling with the idea of learning a make believe pronunciation for a language that I wouldn't then be able to go to Greece and speak with the people there. But then I'm also concerned that if I try to learn Modern Greek pronunciation, then I won't understand the lessons as I get deeper into trying to learn Koiné. Any advice, please, would be welcome.
Hello! There are lots of things that belong to personal preference here, I think. In this channel I teach Classical Greek, mostly, and although koiné is closer to Modern Greek than its Classical counterpart, there are still some pronunciation differences between the two. I'm currently also learning Modern Greek, so I understand your struggle. Our brains want to think about them as the same language, but when the pronunciation issues appear, you notice the huge distance between both systems. What I do is forgetting that they are related. I learn Modern Greek as if I knew nothing about Ancient Greek, and I welcome the similarities as a pleasant surprise. When I keep telling myself that they are different systems (and they are), my brain takes new inputs in a less chaotic way. Let me know if this helps. We can keep discussing the topic. Good luck with your language adventures!
@@ChihonTeaches Thank you. So as far as I can make out, I think maybe it might be better for me to study the Koiné learning it using the Eramus pronunciation because I have a feeling I might not be able to understand words or concepts as the professor gets deeper into the language. While it seems odd to me that we have to use some kind of a made up pronunciation instead of simply how Greek is pronounced today, I'm afraid that I might have to do twice the work just to keep from getting lost. Does that sound reasonable? Or am I misunderstanding about the differences between the two (modern and Koiné)?
@@workinprogress9613 There's no misunderstanding, that is what I'm recommending. Actually, one of the main reasons why I teach the Erasmus pronunciation in my channel is because that's the way that most people use in academia internationally. Accurate or not, it has become the main currency when communicating ancient texts between scholars. However, I assure you it won't be twice the work, as you say. At some point the similarities will kick in and you'll be able to place them in their respective pronunciations as needed.
To me as a Greek, when I hear an English speaker trying to speak in classical Greek my brain explodes. It's like hearing someone spelling every word instead of speaking. None the less I have to admit that the pronunciation of several Greek letters have changed dramatically through the ages so to be honest I don't see the point of using the erasmian way of pronunciation. It might help a foreigner to learn the Greek alphabet but on the other hand, to a Greeks ears will be something like gibberish
I totally agree with you. For better or worse, the Erasmian pronunciation is the one used internationally to study Ancient Greek, and it's the one I learned and teach here. It's important to have these comparisons, since they put the evolution of both the language and its studies in perspective.
@@ChihonTeaches if you really really want to find out how was the Greek pronunciation through the centuries I would suggest you to check a chanel called polymathy the guy that owns the channel even though he's Italian he gives us perfect examples of both ancient and medieval Greek. Ps. In order to understand a Greek try to apply the erasmian pronunciation in English and begin your journey 😂
![Greece Special: 200 Years of Independence + Ancient Greek [SUB ESP]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/mIYXzzX1aps/mqdefault.jpg)
![Greece Special: 200 Years of Independence + Ancient Greek [SUB ESP]](/img/tr.png)
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@@RetrokidBeatmaker Thank you so much!!!
@@ChihonTeacheslistening to you reading with this totally erroneous erasmian pronunciation was a painful experience.
@@Αναστάσιος-σ8υ I'm sorry this caused you pain. As you can get from the discussion, the Erasmian is not necessarily the most accurate rendering of Ancient Greek (certainly not for all the periods this language encompasses), but it's the one that is taught and mostly used in universities around the globe. Hence it's importance, because it allows you to communicate your research in Ancient Greek making sure others will understand you, regardless of their nationality and local accent.
Είμαι από την Αργεντινή και έμαθα τα Νέαελληνικά γιατί μ'αρέσει πολύ αυτή η γλώσσα. I know little about Ancient Greek and am used so much to the modern pronunciation that it is difficult for me to read with Erasmian pronunciation. I encourage everyone to learn Modern Greek, it's a great language!
I'm on it as well!
Γεια σου Αργεντινή ποδοσφαιρομάνα! Keep it going! The language will unveil in time! Χαιρετίσματα από Κρήτη!
Saludos de un griego argento hermano vamoo
You are better off. Erasmian pronunciation was pretty much a pedantic approach as to how Ancient Greek was pronounced to satisfy largely the phonetic esthetics of a germanic audience.
Ωραίος bro...το βασικό είναι να μάθεις νέα ελληνικά...τα οποία είναι μια απλούστευση των αρχαίων ελληνικών...λιγότερες λέξεις, λιγότερες φωνές, κάποιες διάφορες στις καταλήξεις, την γραμματική κτλ... Επίσης πιο απλό λεξιλόγιο... Αλλά εάν καταφέρεις να μάθεις καλά τα νέα ελληνικά τότε θα καταλαβαίνεις κ Αι αρχαία και θα μπορείς να τα διαβάσεις απ το αρχικό κείμενο...αυτά
Very enjoyable. This has been my experience as well. 😃
Ecce, Dominus Lucus est!
Eiiiii Salve Lucī!
ΧΑΊΡΕΤΕ
Γειά σας! Είμαι από την Ινδονησία και έμαθα την νεοελληνική γλώσσα στη Θεσσαλονίκη (AUTH)
Πότε ξα;
@@apollontv1078 τι εννοείς ; δεν κατάλαβα, πότε έμαθα την γλώσσα ;
in Italy you study ancient greek in the “classical” highschool, (as well as latin) and so you end up being able to translate Homerus from the original text
As someone who speaks Greek at the level of learning it in a Greek home in Canada, I thank you for not sounding too "Scandinavian" as has been my experience of listening to ancient Greek 🤣
Hahaha, thank you! It would be nice for me to know what you mean with "too Scandinavian". This is the first time I get a comment like this on my way of pronouncing ancient Greek.
Που στον Καναδά μένεις;
Έχεις δίκιο! Είμαι Τουρκάλα και λέω ακούγεται σαν τα Σουηδικά 🤭
@@sevincylmaz2608 yasou sevinc. You written Greek is very good. You know Greek? It seem you do. Very good. Long time ago. 20-30 years ago the Turkish Gov instructed their Turkish tourist guides who took tourist around the ruin to say all these ancient monuments were done by people called pre Turks. When people would ask them what about the inscription written in Greek they were to denie that call them another race of people.
The Turkish tourist guides knew nothing of the Greek language or Greece
@@ChihonTeaches It is crazy to see that you a assumingly a spanish native speaker however I must also say that you indeed have swedish sounding aspects in your accent imo at least. I think most of it is because you make some pauses or let some sounds become a bit more stretched than normal, it is hard to explain.
I really liked the video btw! As a Greek native living in Germany and learning Spanish and being interested in ancient Greek this was very enjoyable to watch :D Hope some more collaborations will come in the future :)
Hello , I am a native Greek speaker. For someone that has a deep knowledge of modern greek it would be more easy and convenient for him to find the old classical frames and books and try to read them. It is very useful because you learn the philosophy behind the order of the words in a phrase , you get the real idea of words that have been changed in modern Greek , etc. A good start for this , is the few quotes of Heraclitus. Poets like Tileklos are a very trustworthy source for that. The upper level , I think that is all the magnificent works of Plato , Aristotle, Protagoras , Epikourous and of course , Thoukidedes. Unfortunately , I discovered that a bit too late..
The last two being Epicurus and Thucydides in English?
Αδερφέ, που μπορώ να βρω τα πρωτότυπα κείμενα με νεοελληνική μετάφραση; Όλα τα βιβλία που βρίσκω, ο καθένας γράφει το μακρύ και το κοντό του, γράφουνε ιστορίες άσχετες και διάφορες με την έννοια του κειμένου, παραθέτοντας τις απόψεις τους. Κανείς δεν τους το ζήτησε. Έχεις να προτείνεις κάτι;
I'm an Ancient Greek student who just this morning was pleasantly surprised to find Greek Wikipedia relatively easy to read. Great video highlighting the similarities and differences with Ancient and Modern Greek.
Thanks for your words! I'll make more videos about Ancient Greek in the future, so stay tuned.
You’re an Ancient Greek? Χαίρε, ω Πρόγονε φίλτατε! However did you manage to live this long?!
@@dorianphilotheates3769 I'm a student OF Ancient Greek!
ianianianian - Oh, so sorry! - my bad. 🙂
@@dorianphilotheates3769 When I am speaking modern greek, will I able to understand and read ancient greek ?
Ιωάννα was very fun, such a sweet person. Reminds me of my own friends in a weird way, her pronunciation just feels like home
This is very interesting. I understand that Shakespeare as it is pronounced today is unrecognizable to how it was spoken in Elizabethan times. Some of the jokes and rhymes only make sense when you use the original pronunciation.
Yes, this is also true in Spanish (my native language). Transitions are normal, so it's not surprising that after so many years they look like two different languages, despite having the same name.
@@ChihonTeaches My grandmother studied Old English as a foreign language and it certainly is. It is closer to modern Icelandic than to modern English. Here's a sample.
Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
The first line of Beowulf.
@@andrew_owens7680 Ufff, yes, I remember having taken a glance at Beowulf and feeling immediately helpless, hahaha. For practical reasons, I stayed with present-day English, of course.
It's going a bit far to say that the English of Shakespeare's time would be unrecognizable to us today; it's perfectly comprehensible (there are many resources for hearing the plays and sonnets with their original pronunciation), it just sounds different. It's as intelligible to contemporary English speakers as the text is comprehensible.
@@andrew_owens7680 I’ve heard Hwæt translated as “So,” like just to introduce speech. Could you explain further your take?
I am not an expert in any way, I am not even a classics student, but I am Greek, and I think that some changes at least between the classical pronunciation that Erasmus recreated and the modern Greek phonetics, happened as far back as the hellenistic ages and probably definitely during the roman and byzantine times, which spans approx1400 years. So for instance, the readers of the new testament would be probably not very far from reading the koine greek like we moderns do.
This was a very fun video to watch even as a Greek. You guys have a good chemistry on camera
I think one of the reasons why Greek pronunciation did not change much over the last twenty centuries is than the original texts of the New and Old Testament are being read in the Greek Orthodox Churches and Monasteries almost every day since then and we know how "conservative" are the priests and monks in changing orthography and phonology. Mind you, the Old Testament Greek is even older since it was translated from Hebrew to Greek in Alexandria and Jerousalem in 285 B. C. for the Jews of the then Diaspora.
The monks carried the pronunciation that they learned from the Greek communities they came froṃ They didn't learn Greek from 5th century Greekṣ
@@hmldjr which one is closer?.... 100AD or 1500AD? the monks have spoken greek with 'modern' pronunciation way before erasmus invented his own pronunciation using latin as a base
@@georgefournarakis9002 1500 AḌ 100 AD they weren't pronouncing it like they do today eitheṛ Whatś the optative tense how do you use participles in an ancient greek text what is the dative case. Ask the monks thaṭ. They don't know and neither do you because you don't speak ancient Greek and you don't pronounce it the same way eitheṛ
''The man'' in Ancient Greek (declension) ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ἄνθρωπε, τὸν ἄνθρωπον, τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ. ''The man'' in Modern Greek : ο άνθρωπος, , άνθρωπε, τον άνθρωπο, του ανθρώπου. So, many things disappeared, but what remained is just incredible. I know no other language that kept so much ancient stuff and diclensions, conjugations, etc.
What I'm saying all day..thank mate
Well, may some Romance or Germanic languages. Or you can compare Old Slavonic with some modern Slavic language and you might be surprised how a lot much more is preserved. Actually this is explainable in the case of Slavic languages because the oldest record of what is considered Old slavonic today is way later than the first records if Greek or Latinand the slavic people withspread a lot later around Europe.
I read in a book by a linguist, who affirmed that Modern Greek is more divergent from Ancient Greek than some Romance languages are from Latin.
Great video! Thank you for respecting us on this subject and having a Greek there representing us. To all of you out there who learn Ancient Greek, i want you to know, that our facial expresions which scream "noooo, please, i beg you, what have i done to you?😭😭😭😭😭" when listening to your Erasmian pronunciation doesnt mean that we dont appreciate deeply that you choose to learn our language. It's just that we can't withhold the natural internal outburst that we experience at that moment😅
This couldn't be more precise!!!
That's actually my experience with Greek people. I've been fortunate enough to be surrounded by them, and they always struggle with the Erasmian pronunciation. They simply can't understand what I say. However, they are still among my best friends in this world. Never confuse passion with hatred!
It's the same Language
Είμαστε οι μόνοι σε όλη την Ευρώπη που έχουμε το προνόμιο
να λέμε τον ουρανό ”ουρανό” και τη θάλασσα ”θάλασσα”,
όπως την έλεγαν ο Όμηρος και ο Πλάτωνας πριν 2.500 χρόνια.
Δεν είναι λίγο αυτό. ΟΔΥΣΣΕΑΣ ΕΛΥΤΗΣ. We are the only tribe in europe that we call sea and sky using the same words as Homer and Plato 2500 ago. Ulysses Elytis
Συμφωνώ μαζί σου, απλά για την ιστορία σε μερικές Αρχαίες Ελληνικές διαλέκτους το "σσ" γίνεται "ττ". Ο Πλούταρχος αναφέρει περί της ότι κατά την εκστρατεία του Κύρου στην επιστροφή τους οι Έλληνες στρατιώτες μόλις είδαν την Μαύρη Θάλασσα φώναξαν "θάλαττα θάλαττα". Όπως και το "γ" γίνεται "δ", για παράδειγμα στο: Γη/Γαν+ Μήτρα -> Δη/Δαν+ Μήτρα -> Δήμητρα, και πολλά άλλα!
@@emiliosnic όχι εγώ Οδυσσέας Ελύτης.και το η στα δωρικά δεν υπάρχει είναι α Σπάρτα όχι Σπάρτη Τσάκωνας = Λακωναςο Αλέξανδρος στον Νεαρχο ( Κρητικός) μιλα παλαιοδωρικα η γλώσσα είναι ζωντανή αλλάζει μένει ίδια τι αυτούς που φεύγουν χωρίζουν από τον τόπο και την παίρνουν μαζί τους
Γενικά περίεργο γιατί καμιά απ'τις λέξεις αυτές δεν είναι ελληνικές
Ξεχωρίζει αρκετά από άλλες Ινδοευρωπαϊκές γλώσσες αυτό
@@axelexiscus8660 go back to grammar school one day you might end up reaching the truth. All composites are ancient Greek. Then you do not even think more than 500greek words even after taken up loans from sorts of Langs. Then you wish to be "european" by using words and derivatives as elevator (in french), paint ( in Persian) or even glamourous=( instead of) stupidity as an actual fitting word in the greek context applied due to the participants status of mind. As an idiotis you might need to lean that the cook in modern greek ( for instance, mageiros ) is a Macedonian word of Archelaos attempt to unify all Greeks even in Lang under the koini greek dialect ( Isocrates- Philip - Cimon- Homer sharing the idea ). ( Taught by prof SC). You need schooling up to 20 years just to finish Grammar
@@nezperce2767 Έλληνας είμαι βρε σούργελο, την ξέρω μια χαρά την γλώσσα μου
Το Θάλασσα/ Θάλαττα και Ουρανός/Ωρανός είναι λέξεις που οι πρώτοι ομιλητές των ελληνικών δανείστηκαν από τους πληθυσμούς που ζούσαν στον Ελλαδικό χώρο πριν από εμάς, κάπου το 2100 π.Χ
Ψαξτο αν θες, «προελληνικές ρίζες», θα βρεις και το «άνθρωπος» εκεί
Plato's cave story. I got some parts of it from Chihon's read but Ioanna's read was much easier to comprehend.
That been said Chihon's accent is closer to the right ancient greek pronunciation while Ioanna's is like a modernized ancient greek pronunciation.
Ελ σισι? Σαλαμ αλεικουμ
Your such an idiot...his pronunciation was totally false...he knew that..ioanna corrected him and very politely cause he made a lot mistakes.......he can't even spell the ΕΙ or ΑΥ or ΕΥ or ΟΙ...but at least he tries..your an absolute ignorant expressing opinion for something he can't understand....cause ancient Greek is a foreign language for you mate but not for us...it's our mother language part of the language we still speak nowadays same words nouns verbs ext and please stop spreading bs
I recognisd it eventually because I knew the word "spileos" from modern greek. So that made me feel very clever.
This is a complex topic which has been exhaustively treated in the scholarly literature. Still, there is no absolute consensus on exactly how the different forms of Ancient Greek were actually pronounced. What most people mean by “Ancient Greek” is Attic Greek: the formal, literary form of the language which was used in Athens during the High Classical Period - its “Golden Age” - the time of Socrates and Plato. But in reality, when we talk of Ancient Greek, we must bear in mind that we are in fact referring to an exceedingly complex language with many different forms and dialects which developed (and kept evolving) over a period of at least a full millennium-and-half before Plato, and for another thousand years after. What follows is an oversimplification, but these are my thoughts on the matter: Ancient Greek of the Classical Period (Attic) was certainly NOT pronounced in the same way as either Modern Greek or the Erasmic convention. Briefly, the broad scholarly view currently is that Modern Greek pronounces some things more correctly, while the Erasmic canon remains a useful tool for reconstructing the metrics and stresses of Ancient Greek, as well as for helping to approximate some of the phonetic values of the ancient language, particularly the vowels and diphthongs. Another way to look at it: our best guess on how an Athenian would have spoken his native language twenty five centuries ago, is that it would likely have resembled a strange phonetic hybrid between Modern Greek and Erasmic pronunciation. A fifth century BCE Greek would probably instantly recognize both pronunciations as some bizarre species of Greek, but he would certainly not have accepted any as the proper way of pronouncing his own native tongue. That said, it is important to note that the Erasmic canon is an artificial construct - a sort of “reverse engineering” for Ancient Greek - while the Greek of today is an organic evolution of the ancient Hellenic language. After the conquests of Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE), Greek gradually became the ‘lingua franca’ of the whole Mediterranean and the Near Eastern world. During the Hellenistic Age, beginning in the late fourth century (just a few generations after Socrates and Plato), a new “internationalized” form of Attic Greek, the Koine (Κοινή), which later became the language of the Gospels, came into use. Almost overnight Greek went from being a national language, spoken almost exclusively by native speakers, to an international language of culture, administration, and commerce spoken by dozens of different ethnicities spanning three continents. The whole process, and the particular mechanisms of precisely how this transformation occurred over such a relatively short span of time, is not fully understood, but it did. What is understood, is that this international “Hellenistic” form of Greek was a natural progression of Attic Greek; but during the course of its development and rapid dissemination the language somehow underwent a dramatic shift that altered its pronunciation; this, moreover, happened over the course of only about a century or two. We don’t precisely know what forces were at work when this linguistic shift happened, but as Greek expanded into regions far beyond the Classical Greek world, the form of the language (its grammar, syntax, morphology, phonology) gradually became more simplified; to use an anachronistically modern turn of phrase, it became more “user friendly” (perhaps partly as a means of accommodating the native phonology of non-native speakers). In fact, by the 1st century CE its pronunciation had already begun to resemble what we today would recognize as that of standard “Modern” Greek. When I teach Ancient Greek, I prefer to use the Erasmic pronunciation (for several reasons) but I always tell students that this is definitely not the way the ancients pronounced it; however, it is a more convenient way to learn the language if you’re not a native Greek speaker. At the same time, I advise my Greek compatriots to also learn the conventional Erasmic pronunciation because it does a brilliant job at explaining away many of the anomalies and irregularities of Ancient Greek grammar which often stump Greek students. To me, Greek is Greek is Greek: there is no “Ancient”, “Medieval” or “Modern”...it’s all Greek to me...such chronological delineations are just convenient historical constructs: the self-same language at different stages of life - just as a person is in a sense the same individual whether in infancy, youth, or old age. BUT I think it a good idea for native speakers of Greek to learn the language as they would a foreign one - ‘ab initio’ with the Erasmic pronunciation. Ancient Greek is a superb and intellectually rewarding language, but it is also fiendishly difficult to learn well. I was once of a different mind on this issue, but as a Greek and as a teacher of Greek, my current position is in defence of the Erasmic convention over the Modern Greek pronunciation. The reason is mainly this: I think Greek is hard enough; don’t complicate things further by squabbling over the authenticity of its pronunciation. Learn it the way the whole Western tradition has been doing it (with stellar results) for well-nigh six centuries; you can debate the finer points of phonetic authenticity later. I hope this helps clear up things a bit, at least the main points. If you’re planning on learning Ancient Greek, I congratulate you in advance: kudos! - you’re a hero! I also wish you the best of luck: you’ll need it...
Do you know that the Greeks have borrowed words from the Serbs?
Verica Cvetkovic - Perhaps. Examples?
I rather prefer to die than to use erasmian pronuncattion. Everyone, no matter who or why, who uses erasmian is regarded as hostile.
@@dorianphilotheates3769 Verica is trolling you. Greek is the mother of European languages.
I like your explanation here. Because Greek is a living, ever evolving, language, the best we can hope to do is examine it as through little incremental windows of time like "snapshots'. To make dogmatic statements about how it was pronounced over a broad spectrum is like an attempt to store fluid in a cardboard box.
Ancient Greek Language comprises more dialects, so the accurate way to say is "Attic Dialect", which is the one taught and studied in the universities and faculties. Along with the Hellenistic Greek, aka Koiné (κοινή = common, public).
The text is from Plato, η αλληγορία του σπηλαίου το διάβαζα στις πανελλήνιες αυτό και πάντα ήταν το αγαπημένο μου γιατί συγκριτικά με τα υπόλοιπα κείμενα και ειδικά του Αριστοτέλη ήταν πιο εύκολο στην μετάφραση. 🙂💙🤍
Well done guys! It is indeed a very hot debate, for all of us Greeks living abroad « suffering » every time we hear someone pronouncing Greek words (because they think we read modern Greek the same way) :)
well... if you live abroad, surely you aren't greek anymore...?
@@kurade1096 So, if someone, say, goes to study in another country, you think they stop being their nationality and just become whichever nationality they go to? Like, if say I go to the UK to study for a few years, then go to Germany to work for another two and then back to my home country, should I have an existential crisis? My,, God....Who am I???
@@kurade1096 ?
@@stephen5808 if i live in korea, my people back home won't call me slovenian no more
@@kurade1096 that's a strange idea. it's not like you travelled back in time to be born in a different country, you still are from the country you were born. if you were born in slovenia it doesn't matter if you go to korea or spain or whatever, you don't stop being slovenian, you don't become korean or spanish.
Something strange happens when you study two related modern languages, you learn words and phonems that point to the ancient common language and you don't realize it until you pick up a text from the old language and you read it again after a few years. My native language is spanish and as I read passages from El Cantar del Mío Cid I had a smoother experience understanding it than I did when I was in highschool. for instance the word "Ainda" (Still) is commonly used in modern portuguese, while it was replaced by "todavía" in modern spanish. I know this because I studied a little portuguese in college. I often wonder if the same phenomenon happened to greeks.
Hi!
Thanks for your comment. That indeed happens a lot. If you study Latin, for instance, after reaching certain proficiency in it you start noticing that Spanish is FULL of expressions and roots that come from it. Many times some prefixes are lost, for example in "oscuro", where the prefix "ob-" from Latin dropped the "b" not many decades ago. Greeks have this same feeling when they engage in the study of Ancient Greek. You see many roots of very common words already working in the ancient version. However, although it is compulsory for them to study Ancient Greek, in my experience not many of them remember much of what they studied. But sometimes you are lucky to find an amazing and knowledgeable friend like Ioanna.
Y bueno, mi lengua nativa también es el español, así que te agradezco muchísimo por el comentario y el apoyo. ¡Que estés muy bien!
This video it's great. It's interesting for me to notice that he pronounces English with British pronunciation, while her pronunciation is American. She reads Greek with modern pronunciation, while he uses the Erasmian pronuntiation. Amazing exchange of pronunciations!
I realize aswell that her pronunciation sounds as if she were speaking Spanish from Spain, with kind of retroflex sounds and a similar musicality. I'm a Spanish native speaker by the way. From Mexico. I teach Christian Greek in a seminary. Greetings!
¡Pero qué gusto leer esto! Sí, es verdad lo que dices, este video es un zoológico de acentos. Como comentario adicional, al ser también nativo de español (de Chile), mi manera de leer con pronunciación erasmiana es mucho más latinoamericana que la pronunciación erasmiana de los británicos. Al final del día uno trata de seguir el estándar, pero la lengua materna es siempre muy fuerte.
¡Un abrazo!
I totally agree. I am Spanish learning Greek and every time I go to Greece people think I am Greek. No matter how many times I say " δεν καταλαβαίνω γιατί είναι από την Ισπανία " They still speak to me so so fast expecting me understand!!! It is so lovely. Gradually I am getting there
It's because greek and spanish languages share some sounds that other languages don't use. I am a native greek speaker by the way, and when I went to London with some friends the English people thought we were Spanish...
Although i’m a native modern greek once you two laughed about “σπήλαιον" I IMMEDIATELY knew what excerpt it was from Plato’s Republic 😅
8:56 Just to say that ancient Greeks did not use accent marks at all at the beginning (neither any other diacritics or even lowercase letters)... Accent marks started getting introduced after 200 BC in Alexandria and were intended for non-native Greek speakers/learners... By the way, people who use this "Erasmian" pronunciation(s) often fail to abide by stressing marks, when the stressing mark is on diphthongs. For example in 5:38 in the word Θαυματοποιοίς the stressing sounded as if it was on the last /ο/ instead of the last /ι/...
Exactly bro
Hello!
I address this point you are mentioning here: ua-cam.com/video/z8gTz051euU/v-deo.html
Let me know what you think about it!
And diacritics where very much different optional enhancements to writing after that. They wouldn't become standardised and mandatory until the medieval period, by which point they had already lost their usefulness as far as I know
They also wrote in CAPITAL letters with no...space between them! Lower case letters were used only for Mathematics and as Music symbols. Hence, the "accent' argument is totally redundant=stupid.
Hi there, Chihon.
I hope you'll be very well. Also, very interesting video. I wanted say you that once I had the opportunity finding someone who actually was learning modern greek. She is a Dutchwoman that I met in a epistemology class. It was very interesting because I remembered that she was reading a letter from a greek friend she get, and she let me read some part of it. I could decode many words that i knew it because of my ancient greek classes. She was impressed, I remembered. There was a lot of words relating to philosophy that I already knew it. But, actually she does not tell me anything about the pronunciation. After a while, I realized that the pronunciation is totally different. Notwithstanding, I think knowing ancient greek is very useful if you want to learn modern greek, I would say from my point of view.
I hope seeing many other videos like this one.
Regards from Chile, Chihon!
Usually the modern language is simplified over the more ancient version, probably because languages simplify as they travel.
I'm an American of Greek ancestry and studied modern Greek before any form of ancient and thus when I go to koinē (kini) or ancient I use the modern pronunciation
This makes absolute sense, since this version of Ancient Greek is closer to Modern Greek than Classical Greek (that of Plato, for instance).
@Chihon Teaches Well, koinē is close to both classical and modern Greek, it just tends to drop the obscure and complex parts of Attic
Bro, the Hellenic language has different conjugation of verbs then 19 century invention of new Greece or “ modern Greece” so be carefull with your advice !
Before a voiceless consonant (i.e. where the vocal cords don't vibrate) you get af/ef, before vowels and voiced consonants (vocal cords vibrating) you get av/ev.
Very interesting. Made me think of the many parallels with ancient vs modern Hebrew (which I'm more familiar with). 1. Kids learn it in school as an almost-foreign language. 2. Schools, radio and high-brow institutions fight to conserve classic grammar and pronunciation (just like the Katharevousa experiment except we haven't thrown the towel in yet). 3. Israelis write without the diacritical signs and if asked to do so, will do it quite inaccurately. 4. But unlike Greek, there's no big difference between the pronunciation of foreign scholars and that of Israelis. (Allowing, of course, for national accents.)
Thank you so much for sharing this! Yes, I agree that your first 3 points apply a lot to Greek nowadays. The point of the national accents is also interesting, because in academia you find that everyone agrees on using the Erasmian pronunciation, but a French scholar will pronounce everything very differently from an English one.
One comparison for those who might know French also, is that the writing didn’t follow the phonetic evolution for etymological reasons. That’s why you have in French like in Modern Greek, many words for which when you just hear them with the modern pronunciation, you can’t spell them unless you already know the word. Such was not the case with ancient languages which had a spelling closer to their original pronunciation. In French, you have É, AI, AY or ET with the same pronunciation. In older times we all know it was pronounced differently and the spelling kept record of this. In Spanish and in Italian, people favoured another approach: they let the spelling evolve too, in order to catch up with the pronunciation. And that’s why among Latin-based languages, Spanish and Italian are easier to spell when being heard, while French fails on that point. To be honest, even in English, many words are spelled for reasons that were relevant during Middle English era, but are pronounced differently today.
One small point about the ‘upsilon’. In Attic and Ionic Greek, when Υ follows another vowel like Ε, it doesn’t really keep its [y] sound but rather takes a more ancient [w] sound - probably because the letter evolved from a Phoenician letter which was pronounced like this. The word 「ἐλευθερία」 would then be rather pronounced [eleʷtʰería]. But of course, the digraph ΟΥ has its special [u] sound.
I get the idea but technically speaking ancient Greek orthography was only fossilised in the Alexandrian times when the grammarians of the time (especially in Alexandria) opted for the Attic orthography ... but then Attic itself had a different orthography up to the times of the Peloponnese War when Athenians opted for the Ionian orthography. And even if Attic was a sub-dialect of the Ionian dialectic group it still had differences. Not to mention that most Greeks up to Alexandrian times spoke Dorian-related dialects including first and foremost Macedonian (note this), not Ionian. And you had also the Aeolian and Arcadian ones, completely different as well. To be noted today after lots of findings of the Macedonian dialect we know for sure that the development of Koini Greek came out of a mix of oral Macedonian with written Attic - it is not an accident that one of the easiest texts to translate from the 5th century BC for modern Greeks is Pella Katadesmos, a text written by a Macedonian woman, and rather a mid-lower class one it seems, during the last phase of the Peloponnesian war.
So that makes the idea that "ancient Greek orthography" was "historical" completely erroneous. We find very different orthographies between e.g. pottery annotations and classical texts of the very same period, precisely because while medieval Greek grammarians (often those nerdy orthodox monks! in love with their Classical Greek heritage!) tended to copy the ancient Greek texts correcting the orthography with the official one as it was established in the times of Hellenistic period, as said, in the cultural centers of Alexandria, Pergamon, Antioch, Seleucia, Athens, etc. This held true even for "Holy Texts" such as the Iliad and Odyssey. While medieval Greeks tended to copy these with their original language (capital sin to change a single comma!) still that was one altered during the 6tth century, 2 centuries after Homer wrote the Iliad by the Athenians who wanted "an official version" of it, and then again during Hellenistic times - words were not changed but the orthography of them yes.
The story of the Greek alphabet itself is very obscured by fossilised ideas about its alleged origins from the Phoenician alphabet. It is a nice theory and explains some questions but yet all is not clear since it was never verified archaeologically with Greek findings being both more ancient than the oldest Phoenician findings as well as coming from middle to lower-class backgrounds rather than the case of Phoenicians (oldest findings are in high-class items) and then earliest findings of Greek alphabet are simultaneously found all over the Greek world from Greece (oldest attest in Attica, the Dipylon vase, 2nd oldest, the Pieria cups, in Macedonia - please! LOL!) to South Italy (Nestor's cup). The very existence of multiple variants since day 1 rather points out to at least 2-3 centuries of development which gets us back to the 1000s BC a time when Phoenicians show no usage of the Phoenician writing (e.g. in Cyprus they brought no writing system and adopted the local Arcado-Cypriot syllabary, an earlier Greek Bronze age system)
Fabulous conversation. As a Bible scholar, in seminary I learned Koine Greek using the Erasmus system of pronunciation, which makes a great deal of sense to me as a theoretical way that ancient Greeks might have pronounced the language, but historically we also learned that by the Hellenic period, the ancient Attic pronunciation was already beginning to evolve into the iota craze that exists today. I learned to pronounce it both ways in the end, because I was torn between the logic of both sides of the argument. In my opinion, Erasmian pronunciation has a much richer and fuller spectrum of sounds, and is generally more "pleasing" to the ear, but the problem with that is the fact that very few Erasmian Greek scholars can speak it or read it effectively enough to make it sound like a genuine language when they pronounce it. If you want to hear someone speaking Greek and also have it make sense to your ear AS A LANGUAGE rather than as a code for English (or whatever the scholars native language might be) then you almost always have to find a Greek person to read it, and then of course when you do that, they invariable pronounce it with the modern Greek scheme. So its a bit of a mixed bag really. The first problem I noticed about that, however is that it plays havoc with spelling, as you pointed out. If everything sounds like EE no matter how it is spelt, it really kills the point of having so many letters at one's disposal, not to mention, that Erasmus' scheme is SO phonetic, that even when one doesn't know the meaning of the vocabulary, he or she can still pronounce it correctly. No so with modern Greek. If you don't know the word, there is also a much lesser chance that you will pronounce it to the satisfaction of your Greek listener. But I digress, anyway, very interesting topic and so glad that you posted it here. Obviously I could talk about this subject for hours, but luckily for you, I will restrain myself :)
As a Greek the Erasmus system of pronunciation sounds EXACTLY like someone is talking in code and doesn't sound phonetically pleasing at all.
@@Kwstas_Vagias In my experience, I have found that very few people can do it properly. I have no doubt that to the native ear it sounds terrible. Much the same cringe that I feel when I hear a foreigner speaking English. I have known scholars (mostly native speakers of English) who have tremendous utility of the ancient Greek in terms of reading comprehension, but when they speak it, it sounds ridiculous. But I have little doubt that these same people would slaughter the sounds of modern Greek as well. If I put myself in your place, I can not blame you at all for feeling that way. If a native speaker of Greek for instance, were to approach me with a theory of what middle English sounded like, and started rattling off a Chaucer text with a thick Greek accent mixed in with an attempt to speak an "authentic" middle English accent, it would seem just as absurd to me, so I totally understand your objection. It would be interesting to know what Erasmus himself sounded like when he spoke it. Probably like a Dutchman trying to speak Greek. lol
@@TheMinisterofDefence Actually it sounds something like Finnish and really terrible in our ears.
@@TheMinisterofDefence Here is a Greek Speaker with the Erasmian pronunciation, you can visit his channel ua-cam.com/video/MOvVWiDsPWQ/v-deo.html&ab_channel=Podium-Arts
@@thrakiamaria thanks for the link. I havnt watched all of it yet, but just in the first few lines i noticed what i would call "Scandanavian sounds" in his reading. It doesnt sound Greek to me either. It sounds like the native child of a Greek and a Norseman. I wouldn't call it really terrible, as you say, but if I were a Greek person, I would see your point. It does make me think that capturing ancient Greek pronunciation is a somewhat futile endeavor. Although to be fair, as long as the attempt is internally consistent , I really dont feel like any pronunciation system is a bad thing. But regarding Modern Greeks and their feelings toward this idea: Yeah I see very little point of using any pronunciation other than Modern Greek.
I have been through that process. I lived in Greece for 10 years and learned to speak and read it fluently.
Lovely session, thanks from EGYPT
As a Greek who is very interested in linguistics, the one thing I have to say to everyone learning the language is that the modern Greek have almost the same pronunciation as Spanish and the ancient Greek sound more like a northern language like Danish. I am sure you too have noticed that.
This is quite true. As a Spanish speaking native, I can confirm.
@@ChihonTeaches ¡Gracias por el corazón!
Un placer.
It is absolutely not true that Ancient Greek was sounding like a Scandinavian. The reason it sounds like Scandinavian is because of the Erasmian method that was clearly looking for a way to "describe" the language in a way that Germanic language speaking people could understand. Simply put, have you heard how a Greek person speaks English? If yes would you expect that is the way English is spoken? Obviously not.
@@polytrelaras1 Εγώ πάλι πιστεύω ότι βγάζει απόλυτο νόημα ότι π.χ. το όμικρον προφερόταν "ο" αλλά το ωμέγα "οο", όπως άλλωστε καταλαβαίνουμε απ'τα ονόματα των γραμμάτων. Ή ότι το ύψιλον προφερόταν όπως το γαλλικό "ου" στη λέξη "vu".
Qué entretenido verte en tu faceta de youtuber Chihon! :D Lo poco de griego que sé lo aprendí a través de amigos y guías en internet sobre cómo leer el griego moderno. Al principio obviamente tenía la interferencia del español que me hacía leer las palabras más como mostraste tú al principio (auto como en español), pero cuando me familiaricé más con el griego al verte pronunciar así esas palabras tuve reacciones como las de Ioanna jajajajja ahora mi mente dice automáticamente "afto"
Jajajaja, qué bueno saber que entiendes mi sufrimiento (y el de los griegos). Yo llevo ya muchos años trabajando el griego antiguo con esa pronunciación, así que las bromas en mi contra no las pude evitar. Al menos ahora mi griego moderno ha mejorado un poco y ya puedo adaptarme si es que hay otros griegos conmigo.
Me pasa lo mismo. Al tener la influencia de mi idioma me lío un montón. Aunque con tiempo y dedicación ya me voy adaptando. ¿Te llevó mucho tiempo aprender? Yo pronto haré un año pero aún soy principiante.
So, let's say that we ignore all the sound evolution of English and we start to read English texts exactly as they are written ( or maybe according the Latin value of each letter)....can you imagine how English would sound? The same difference exists between modern and ancient Greek...When we Greeks hear the Erasmian pronunciation, it is like pronouncing English as it is written.... ignoring the great vowel shift of the 15./16. century of English...how would an Englishman pronounce a text of Shakespeare today? I think they would read it according the modern English phonetic rules... that's what Greeks do with ancient Greek texts....
In my latest video about diphthongs and breathings I address this issue of the pronunciation again. Do check it out: ua-cam.com/video/95C-7iCCbRo/v-deo.html&t
The general rule for pronouncing υ in αυ / ευ as [v] or [f] is: use the voiced sound [v] if the following letter is voiced (including vowels, nasals and λ, ρ), otherwise use [f]
In modern Greek, that is.
Braaaavo to you from NYC!! I enjoy your channel and your passion for Greek!!
Thank you very much!!! It is always wonderful to know that people enjoy the content. Have a great day!
Is β pronounced between a "b" and a "v" in Modern Greek similar to how it is pronounced it Spanish?
I would also recommend Lucian pronunciation for ancient Greek pronunciation as another commenter mentioned. Erasmian seems quite off. Specifically I have heard that ει was never pronounced as a diphtong but always as one sound.
I think this guy's pronunciation is probably less egregious to Greeks because he seems to be a native Spanish speaker.
In modern Greek the beta is pronounced like the "v" in French, which is a language that respects more the differences between "b" and "v". In Spanish, which is my native language, as you well spotted, we don't make much of a difference between the two consonants, but we recognise they are different letters. Sound-wise, it is the "v" in which you bite your lower lip.
Yeah, I also think Lucian/Koine is the best way to go when it comes to Ancient Greek pronunciation.
No, Spanish is still in the transition/lenition that took place over a millenium ago in Greek, with a few exceptions (below). Modern Greeks hear the difference strongly, to the extent they change the spelling of words pronounced the ancient way. So ancient κόμβος is Now spelled κόμπος to account for the unchanged pronunciation!
It's still egregious because Erasmian is incredibly outdated as an approximation of ancient Greek pronunciation. Reconstructed Attic already exists; use that instead of bringing pain to our ears with this meterless abomination that is Erasmian. I mean, if you don't find it to be an abomination from an aesthetic standpoint... sure, tastes are subjective. But it seems to me that the person who made this video is actually claiming that Greeks actually used to speak like Erasmus suggested, which is a historical _falsehood._
@@karlpoppins To be fair very few people can master a reconstructed pronunciation and mix features from different time periods. Honestly for the vast majority of people they should just go with modern pronunciation as it is way more available and less guess work.
Amazing and super informative video! Well done! :) :) Πολύ μου άρεσε, καλή χρονιά!
Σ'ευχαριστώ πάρα πολύ! Καλή χρονιά!!!
I think the main distinction is that a Greek person is able to understand the context of every word, so they now when to accelerate their speech at the right moment, For me the way you read it sounds like you are isolating every word and removing tonality and expression out of the language. This is very common. when you compare how Italian or Spanish people read Greek, they read it more naturally because their languages have similar cadence. In pretty much every language accents are more and indication than a rule, because accentuation is very dependent on the context and Emotion and their use is more for the people that are learning the language for the first time. As example most Spanish people don't really use the tilde when they write, because it is already natural for them to localize the accent on the right spot, similar to Italians, we use it for writing formally thou, I think accents in ancient Greece were treated in a similar way.
Thanks for your comments!
Yes, I think you are right when you spot that my reading lacks a bit of emotion, since I'm trying to read correctly in the way I was taught Ancient Greek. My friend Ioanna, on the other hand, just approaches the words naturally and with the emotion you mention.
However, the comparison between Ancient Greek and Spanish, Italian, and even Modern Greek is not quite the same in terms of accents. Accents in Spanish (the tildes), for example, mark the stress in a word, but they can also be used as diacritics, to tell words apart that sound exactly the same, like "como" and "cómo", or "tú" and "tu". Those are four different words and we tell them apart in Spanish with tildes.
Accents in Ancient Greek, though, unlike its modern counterpart, are not accents of stress, but of pitch. I devote a video to this topic here: ua-cam.com/video/z8gTz051euU/v-deo.html
Thank you very much for watching and commenting!
8:30 you are referring to the language dispute in Greece. Katharevousa (pure Greek) Greek v Demotic Greek (the Greek of the simple people). Accents were abolished in the 80s because they were mostly cosmetic with the way modern Greek pronunciation developed. Kavafis’ language was Demotic, with strong Katahrevousa inputs, which is why he was critiqued by poets (idiot modernists) from Greece eg. Palamas. I believe in poetry, the creator has the liberty of writing as modern/archaic as they want. Why judge?
Μπράβο Ιωάννα καλά τα είπες..απλά πρέπει να καταλάβουν ότι πρώτα πρέπει να πάνε φροντιστήριο 4 με 5 χρόνια για να μάθουν νέα ελληνικά κ μετά από κει αν έχεις μεράκι τα αρχαία σε 3, 4 χρόνια δεν είναι κάτι δύσκολο..για τα βασικά τουλάχιστον..αυτά...συνεχίστε έτσι...!
Here some examples of their differences by an italian guy who study ancient greek at school:
1: the letter ēta (Ηη, īta, in modern greek) was pronounced as a long ē sound, not as an i sound
2: the letter gamma (Γγ) was always a hard g sound, it wasn’t an aspirated h sound as it’s today
3: the diphtongs “ει” and “οι” were pronounced as they were written, not as “i”, as it’s in modern greek
Edit: oh yeah, another thing.
4: the letter ypsilon (Υυ) was a frech u sound, or a german ü sound, it was like a y, but not quite, while today is just an i sound; also, this letter never had the “f” sound.
Then, the letter beta (Ββ) was a b sound, not a v sound
That's bs. I agree with u up to a certain point, but ei was simply not pronounced as written there is countless evidence and the y also was not a German Ü. Erasmus's pronunciation was simply aiming to make it easier for Germans to pronounce, I'm not saying it's completely wrong, in fact it's mostly wright. I would recommend watching a video of polymathy about ει, he explains it perfectly. much love to u GR❤IT
2 is just wrong
Καλῶς λέγεις, καὶ ἡ δασεῖα (ἡ ) ἐξεφωνεῖτο ‹ h ›.
i love greek people, some of the most intelligent people in this world. They should be allowed to set the standard for education for their own language.
Thanks for your comment!
What you suggest is actually the main and strongest argument many Greeks give in this debate. From the professional side, people who have specialised in Ancient Greek know that the pronunciation of the language has evolved over time. My pronunciation, for instance, is closer to that of the V and early IV centuries BC. After that, Ancient Greek quickly evolved to something closer to the modern pronunciation, especially at the time of Koine Greek. If you look online for Greek academics speaking in Ancient Greek, you'll find that many also use the reconstructed pronunciation I show in all my videos.
Just a reminder: the itacism was already present in the ancient koine version of the language (so already before Christ!). Proven by the many spelling "mistakes" in texts and presentation of Greek words in Latin. So from a historical point of view that is not really a difference. So yes, there is probably a difference (we have no audio recordings, only spelling mistakes), and no, it is was present for a long time. It depends on the period of time. So I understand why they pronounce ancient Greek in the modern way (actually Greek just pronounce it that way, because it is counterintuitive otherwise ?), but some things in ancient Greek just do not feel right when you pronounce it the modern way. Like the word βῆκος in a story of Herodotos that would be pronounced as "viekos" instead of "bèèkos": a child has been raised by sheep, and one morning he starts saying βῆκος, the sound of sheep. "viekos" would sound like a crazy sheep ;-)
Every "i" version in modern Greek has not the same "i" pronunciation, but modern Greeks as native speakers do not realize that, thus adding in to the confusion by (and they falsely agree with) the non-greek speakers opinion. "I,ι" is high pitched, "Η,η" is more baritone (δασύ), and "Υ,υ" is more deep and round, somewhat the same as in ancient Greek but, but then we have to talk... about the Greek politics as well and then the whole story will be too long to tell here.
A modern Greek does not need to learn an “Ancient Greek alphabet” because it has been the same alphabet throughout time.
The Greek of Hellenistic times was pronounced the way modern Greek is pronounced. We know this because the accents were introduced in 240 BC by Aristophanes of Byzantium to emulate the way Homeric and Classical Greek may have sounded before the aspirations disappeared and the diphthongs became iotacized.
So, by Alexander the Great’s time, Greek was pronounced the way it is spoken today.
We know this because the less educated Greeks of 2000 years ago wrote many diphthongs phonetically with iota or epsilon, as many surviving parchments attest.
Modern Greek is a direct continuum of the ancient form with all the natural changes sustained by a living language. Actually, it is the only living classical language in Europe, unlike Latin, which is dead to Italian, although Italian and the Romance languages evolved from Latin.
Good presentation, kids!
If the accent had changed, then why would the diacrìtics even be used? It really doesn't make sense to me. Also, I don't know about inscriptions, most likely ⲉⲓ ⲁⲓ̀ and the like had already changed, however we do know from several sources, mostly transfers of words into other languages, that some futures had not evolved yet. Think for instance of greek names in Latin, during the Roman rule such as Aenias, Cepheas, whereas with modern pronunciation it would be Enias and Kifeas. So to say that Alexander pronounced greek the exact same way as Nikos from Thesaloniki is quite a stretch, at least from the knowledge that I, currently have
@@ΒασίληςΒλάχος-τ3κ We have ample of evidence from Hellenistic times when many speakers of Greek, whether Greek or foreign, use single vowels in place of diphthongs , like Nilus instead of Neilus (Greek Νείλος) by the Latins, etc.
This attest to a closer association between modern Greek and Hellenistic koine than with the perceived pronunciation of classical times.
Beautiful, bring more studies.
Thank you!
I'm currently working on the next videos. I hope to upload them soon!
We speak English and Spanish in Gibraltar. From Spanish we understand WRITTEN Portuguese fairly easily, but SPOKEN Portuguese we find quite difficult to understand. What you say about ancient and modern Greek makes a lot of sense to me. I am trying to learn classical Greek. As. A rough rule of thumb it seems to me that if I try to pronounce the words with a ‘Spanish accent’ it works better. An English accent is dire, as it is in most Romance languages! Of course, there is then the fine tuning you speak about: breathing’s, accents, etc. What a very interesting conversation you have posted! Thank you.
Thank you so much for your comment!!!
I completely understand what you say here, since I'm a Spanish native speaker as well, hahaha. I also don't have any problems reading Portuguese content, but speaking is always something really different.
As for what you say about Classical Greek, yes, from Spanish the pronunciation is easier than from English, with the exceptions you mentioned.
Te deseo mucha suerte en tu aventura por el griego antiguo. ¡Que estés muy bien!
ευγε! ασμενος μοι ακουσαι υμων και δη και φωνω τω Ερασμιαν διαλεκτω. επιμενετε ποιειν κινηματογραφιας ωσπερ αυται. γελων θεωρω υμας.
διατι η μη την ερασμιαν διαλέξωλογιαν φερουσα ειπείν νομίζειν ότι ευκρινως επιτασσει ερμηνείαν...ενώ τοσουτως επροσπαθησεν απέτυχεν καθότι ού δύναται αντιλαβουσιν τοις βαρβάροις την χιλιετηρίδων συνέχειαν του Έλληνος έθνους και κατ ' επέκτασιν της αρίστης δωροθεούσης γλώσσης των
For what it is worth, I have been learning Ancient Greek as an anglophone, and have never learned the Erasmian system. Most of the books I have been reading teach the restored classical pronunciation and one teaches one particular restored koine pronunciation, but none of them teach Erasmian. It is no longer the default assumption (which is good, since it does not reflect the way it was ever spoken at any point in history).
In my latest video about diphthongs and breathings I address this issue of the pronunciation again. Do check it out: ua-cam.com/video/95C-7iCCbRo/v-deo.html&t
I am 60 years and we did ancient greek for 6 years in highschool back in the late 70s We never used Erasmus pronunciation but the Modern Greek pronunciation !!! Nowdays Αβγό is acceptale as well !! Before 1977 the official language of the state was Katharevousa ( a kind of modernized koine ) and this was what they tought us in highschool !! . Then we changed officially to Demotiki ( the widely spoken way of Greeks ) !!
Don't bother about Erasmus pronunciation, it's not accurate. But neither modern Greek is 100% accurate.
Hello!
Thanks very much for this insight, it's always good to have these testimonies. In my experience in academia doing ancient philosophy, only Greek scholars sometimes tend to pronounce ancient texts with the Modern Greek pronunciation, but they normally manage to pronounce it in the Erasmian way. When in the video I said it is the standard way of pronouncing Ancient Greek, I meant that it is the way that scholars all over the world read the language. The only differences in pronunciation come from the accent each person has depending on their own native language.
Ioanna is lovely. Hope to see her back again....If you do a round two of this (with her or someone else), could you talk a little more systematically about grammatical/syntactical differences, e.g., the way modern Greek forms the future tense, or the infinitive, in contrast to classical Greek? Also the loss of some cases endings. Of particular interest to me is to what degree a modern speaker of Greece can understand classical Greek word order. I believe modern Greek's word order has (like English) lost some of its flexibility.
I'll let her know! It would be great to do a follow-up video together.
Modern Greek word order is sometimes different than the ancient word order, but it doesn't sound too strange when you use the ancient one cause it still makes sense and CAN be used today too, it just sounds more formal in a way, if you get what i mean.
@@Kwstas_Vagias Thanks!
At first read my first comment..it's a little big..but whatever..and secondary..you MUST learn modern(meaning simplified greek) first and then go to ancient...like you first ride a bicycle and then a motorcycle...you don't even know to ride a bicycle and try to explain the way a motorcycle engine works and which components are better or easier to dismantle...guys..mean and ioanna could understand how I'm.telling that...:::ΈΛΕΟΣ mercy
@@apollontv1078 Hi. I've been studying Greek for quite a few years, starting in grad school. I began with Koine, which is simpler than classical Attic, but then moved on to the latter. I study it as a written, literary language primarily, not spoken, so it's different. I would like to learn to speak Modern Greek at some point. Thank you.
Ioanna is pronouncing ancient Greek words with modern pronunciation. In fact we don't know how ancient Greek was pronounced. We know the letters but we also know there was a shift in pronunciation from Ancient Greek to Katharevousa to then Modern Greek. So for all we know, it's possible Chihon is actually pronouncing some of the words correctly. We just don't know.
Exactly, this is the drama. It is because of what you point out that my approach to Ancient Greek is more practical than historical. My goal is for people to be able to understand and translate Ancient Greek to their native languages. As you can tell from the views on this video, the debate on the "correct" pronunciation will always be polemic, but in academic practice people have chosen to keep it simple and go for a system of pronunciation that allows us to communicate our ideas.
in german "Y" sounds exactly like ancient greek. many english speakers maybe tempted to pronounce "System" as they would do in english but that would be an error. y is not like spanish/italian "i" but sound more like an "uei" (üi)
Just like y does in all of scandinavia
Very informative video! You're right that this topic is polemic, which is kind of unfortunate since it can discourage people from learning the language overall.
Also, I have a question regarding Greek. If I were to learn Koine Greek (specifically Biblical Greek) would I be able to read texts in Classical Greek? Or is the grammar/syntax entirely different and not possible?
Hello!!!
Thanks for your comments. Indeed, I agree that this polemic often discourages people from learning, since from the outside this lack of uniformity in the opinions looks like a mess.
About your question, I think the other way around is far easier. The grammatical differences between Classical and Koine are not significant (it's basically the same language), but I find Classical Greek far more complex in vocabulary and literary resources, whereas Biblical Greek is written in simple terms, which probably contributed to the spread of the contents within it. So, if you have Classical Greek training (that's my case), then reading Koine makes you feel really good because you understand almost everything effortlessly. However, I doubt that one would have the same experience the other way around.
I love Greek language. I read classical works in the translation in modern Greek.
Plato Politia from the Book The Cave of Plato (The Matrix Movie was based there)
I have a tip to share . Any word that is used to describe or contains liquid element and has a i (e) sound usually is written with ύψιλον υ (ypsilon) . For example υδορ (water) υδραυλικός (plumber) πλύση (washing ) κύπελλο(cup) ψυχή(soul) etc . As a matter of facts Υ,υ shape is creating a cavity that could hold water in it . We firstly get introduced with Y letter in Minoan times as an ideogram that describes liquid rain and so forth . According to Pythagorean philosophy the two horns of Y are symbolising two different paths . The one is virtue and the other one is wickedness. My English are kind of rusty also but i hope you got the greater picture
Μπράβο συνέχισε και κατανοώντας την ελληνική γλώσσα καταλαβαίνεις το δώρο των προγόνων μας. Ευχαριστούμε για την αγάπη και τον σεβασμό στην χώρα μου.
Σ'ευχαριστώ πάρα πολύ!!!
Archaeology of the last century has uncovered many papyrus written by soldiers to their families. These typically have spelling mistakes confirming which vowel sounds had converged at that time. This convergence was largely due to the nation building (dialect merging) of Alexander the Great. The conclusion is that Erasmus would be unintelligible in New Testament times. And with the exception of the Koine Greek for you (plural), a modern Greek speaker would do much better for understanding sounds of words, though there are some issues to do with grammar, false friends and some changes in vocabulary.
for any simple greek speaker of nowdays, the koine greek is simply to understand. basically you can understand over 80% percent of the meaning. if we see texts from the medieval greek then we can understand it almost totally.
the things are much more difficult if we try to understand ioanian, doric or aeolic dialect, so we talk about classical greek period and of course before it. although we can understand of course many words or verbs the total conlcusion would be difficult. these types of ancient greek would be easy for someone that studies ancient greek and not for a simple greek speaker.
the things of course are worst when we try to understand the homeric greek.
so we can say in general that the greek texts of at least 2000 years are understandable for the average greek speaker but not the greek of 2.800 years. koine greek was much more simple already from that period because exactly was offered to the foreign populations that used the greek as lingua franca.
although the most words and verbs are the same from the classical greek period, many of them have changed the old meaning already from the koine greek period or the medieval greek period.
When we modern Greeks read ancient Greek, we do it using modern Greek pronunciation (just like Ioanna does), which is of course anachronistic. We don't sound like the ancient Greeks did. And of course the ancient Greek pronunciation has undergone many changes throughout the centuries, so a certain word would sound different in different eras.
Thank you! Really enjoyed a lot!!
Thanks to you for watching!!!
I am Greek and I found the video so enjoyable! You are both very charismatic and eloquent. Btw, I totally empathised with Ioanna. It's exactly as she described. What a weird, uncomfortable feeling we get with the Erasmian pronunciation...
Thanks for your comments!
For sure, the Erasmian pronunciation is very polemic in many aspects, especially if you are a native Greek speaker. For better or worse, the Erasmian has been the way in which Ancient Greek has been taught internationally and it is therefore a useful reference when working in ancient philosophy or classical studies. Depending on our goal with the language we all have different perspectives about it.
Very enjoyable video. You make a good duo. I have a question particularly the ancient greek pronunciation. Can we be sure for that or is it only assumptions.
P.S. Ιωάννα είσαι κούκλα.
As you can see from the comments, it's a very heated topic. For sure when we are tracing things that happened more than two millennia ago, we must bear some inaccuracy in our estimations. However, I wouldn't say it's just assumptions, but rather a reasonable estimation. The thing is that in academia, the way I'm reading Ancient Greek in this video is actually the one employed by almost all scholars in ancient philosophy (accents aside, which come from our native languages).
There are good grounds to think that this pronunciation is correct, and I will address these arguments in future videos.
Very interesting I had not idea ancient Greek was taught in secondary school nowadays.
A/α=alfa (pron. always clear Α as in "car" - not ay)
B/β=veeta (v sound) as in "valley"
Γ/γ=γάμα (like y-es or w-hat)
Δ/δ=thelta (like (th-e)
E/ε=epsilon (e-pitaph)
Ζ/ζ=zeeta (Z-oo)
Η/η=eeta (pronounced ee) as "infinit-y"
Θ/θ=theeta (as th-uner)
Ι/ι=eeota (pronounced ee) as "infinit-y"
Κ/κ=kapa /K as "c-at"
Λ/λ=lamtha / L as "L-eo"
Μ/μ=mee / M as "m-om"
Ν/ν=nee / N as "n-ou-n"
Ξ/ξ=xee / X (as on e-x-odus)
Ο/ο=omikron / O "Door"
Π/π=pee / P not paee but as "p-olice"
Ρ/ρ=ro /R as "r-egula-r"
Σ/σ/ς=siγma / S (ther's no sound like γ in latin, g is complitely wrong) as "s-ound"
Τ/τ=taf / Τ as "tea"
Y/υ=eepsilon (pronounced ee) as "infinit-y"
Φ/φ=fee / F as "fall"
Χ/χ=hee / J in spanish / He in english as "h-urry up"
Ψ/ψ=psee / ps
Ω/ω=omeγa / O (ther's no sound like γ in latin, g is complitely wrong) as "door"
Also: μπ=b / ντ=d / τζ=j / γκ=g (G-ary) / ευ=ef or ev / αυ=af or av / ου=ou or u in (Lulu)
Ιι / Ηη / Υυ / ει / οι are always ee, only when εϊ = e-ee, and αϊ=a-ee
The «ευ» and «αυ», pronounced ef and af, when the letters κ, π, τ, χ, φ, θ, σ, ξ, ψ follow.
«ευ» and «αυ» are pronounced "ev" and "av", when the letters β, γ, δ, ζ, λ, μ, ν, ρ and vowels follow.
The «ευ» and «αυ», pronounced ef and af, when the letters κ, π, τ, χ, φ, θ, σ, ξ, ψ follow.
«ευ» and «αυ» are pronounced "ev" and "av", when the letters β, γ, δ, ζ, λ, μ, ν, ρ and vowels follow.
There are letter/sound shifts from AG to MG. We know the sounds of the AG alphabet from linguistics and history. A few examples:
B/β="beta", changed to "veeta"; now to make "β", as above, "μπ" (mp). "μπίρα"..."beer".
Δ/δ="delta" changed to "θelta", now to make "δ", "ντ" (nt), but "Δημοκρατία", not "Nτημοκρατία" "democracy". (Tradition?)
The "Iotazation" of η and υ; ευ/αυ->εφ (ef) & αφ (af) "αυτός="aftos", and so on, et cetra (ad infinitum).
The text of Ancient Greek is fixed, and so is "their" pronunciation.
Νταξει μπρο respect..αλλά χαμένο πάει...ας βάλει ο τυπάς την Ιωάννα να κάνει 5 10 μαθήματα για νεοελληνικα αρχικά κ μετά βλέπουμε...πωωωω πόσο υποαναπτυκτοι ρε που στη μ...γιαυτό μας φορτωσαν κουλη κ ΛΟΙΠΟΥΣ να μας εξαφανισουν πριν την ώρα μας...καλά μας κανουν
What was the deal with "Katharevousa". How different was that from Modern/Ancient Greek?
Instead of comments, let me quote a Greek proverb.
Come, father, let me show you where I came from
There is no new and ancient Greek language, the little girl simply cannot hear her own voice when she pronounces a word with different vowels and diphthongs.
Listen to the observation of the music composer Dionysis Savvopoulos, regarding this.
I am a simple technician and I understand the language of the gospel and the ancient texts in a larger percentage of 80% simply because in the former six-grade high school I was taught the language, grammar and syntax, etymology, etc. correctly and continuously for six years.
Today, the Greek state is trying to de-Hellenize us with its policies and the antiNativism of the prime minister.
I am trying to learn both Modern Greek and Koine Greek. It is my impression that Koine is in transition from Classical Greek to modern especially the vocab. As for instance the word for wine.
Indeed!!! Whenever I read Koiné, I always feel it much closer to Modern Greek than Classical (which is the one I read the most), but it is still a form of Ancient Greek. In Koiné, many words and pronunciations are closer to the Modern version, but to understand it it's still more useful to know Ancient Greek.
La secillez y alegría de Ioana son encantadoras, y además tiene razón, cómo alguien no griego va a saber más griego que los griegos (y que disculpe Erasmo o los erasmianos), pero el griego antiguo debería leerse con las convenciones del griego actual. Por ejemplo, los tres acentos del griego antiguo son una dificultad agregada al estudio del griego que en los monosílabos equivalen a que en español se acentuaran siempre este tipo de palabras, ¿y cuál es la diferencia si no llevaran acento?
¡Hola!
Bueno, ahí la diferencia es tonal. En la práctica, cuando uno trabaja con griego antiguo en general se pasan por alto estos tonos. Sin embargo, en muchas palabras uno encuentra casos donde el significado cambia radicalmente si el acento cambia. Sacar los acentos sería aumentar la dificultad que per se ya tiene esta lengua.
Ahora bien, es interesante notar que la introducción de los acentos en el griego antiguo ocurrió siglos después del Período Clásico. Tocaré este tema en futuros videos, no te preocupes.
Interesting experiment. It would have been endlessly more helpful if you had provided a reference to the ancient source ab initio, together with a screen visual of the Greek text as each of you read: that way those of your viewers who can read Greek could follow your different pronunciations.
Thanks a lot for the suggestion. With time I'll learn how to add the Greek texts in a more aesthetic way. For now, you can still check the Greek text we are reading in the description below the video.
Chihon Teaches - So sorry; I completely missed the ‘perseus’ Greek text in your description. Cheers!
@@dorianphilotheates3769 No worries, it was not obvious, hahaha.
It is amazing how people base their pronunciation not by what they hear but by what they read.
She said that her name is Dzho-ah-nah, but you continue to call her Yo-ah-nah. That is because in your language "j" is pronounced as "y". And you cannot help but pronounce not how you hear her say it to you, but how you remember seeing it written.
In some cases, people may base their pronunciation on what they read, but in this case, something different happen. We Greeks when we speak english, often "translate" our names to the closest english "equivalent". So when Ιωάννα (Yo-ah-nah) introduced herself, she said Joanna, which is more or less the equivalent english name. But obviously Chihon knows that her name in greek is Ιωάννα, (plus he kind of speaks greek), so he called her Ιωάννα (Yo-ah-nah) not because of what he read, but because a Greek friend (or a a friend learning greek) would call her like that. Going back to your initial suggestion (how people base their pronunciation not by what they hear but by what they read), makes me think of how the Erasmian pronunciation makes a foreigner who listens ancient greek, be able to write them down, even if he/she doesn't know the words in the first place. I guess that this somehow facilitates learning to read and write at the same time. A German guy may find this to be efficient. I wonder though, if by applying the same principle to foreigners learning english, if they would pick up a Midlands' accent instead of Oxford's.... :-) me smiling at this crazy idea!
An aspect rarely talked is the musicality of the sentence. A great deal of the gramatical realtion between the words is made explicit when the locutor varies the tone and speed of his voice. This is natural for modern Greeks but not at all for foreign speakers. To greek hears the herasmean pronunciation sounds very monotone and monochord. The greek lisners feels a huge lack of information and tries to repeat the sentence in his head adding musucality in order to decypher the grammar.
As someone who doesn't speak Greek (except a few tourist words) Ioanna's reading of ancient Greek sounds exactly the same as modern Greek, I would not be able to tell the two apart. I assume there must be differences in vocabulary and grammar, but not knowing the language I couldn't tell.
Thanks for your comment!
You're absolutely right, Ioanna's approach (and that of most Greek people in general) is to read Ancient Greek in the exact same way they talk nowadays. As you can tell in this comment section, the difference is quite controversial for Greek people. However, I'm reading and teaching it here in the way we use it in academic circles worldwide.
As a Greek I do understand the pronunciation issue in learning ancient, but what always annoyed me relatively indipendent of that was that we learn all the diacritics of the polytonic system without actually using them. We are never even taught what they do. So then what's even the point?
Today's diphthongs were pronounced as separate letters but this began to change from within the ancient Greek period to what we have today, so it depends which period of ancient Greek you are talking about. Diphthongs, therefore, are also ancient Greek so if you were around at the time of Christ you would probably hear both ways.
I couldn't understand Chihon's reading apart from a few words but Joanna's reading was like reading a passage from the bible. She is reading something from 480BC which means that Chihon's pronunciation of the diphthongs was more accurate.
Precisely. Moreover, bear in mind that my way of reading is the way Ancient Greek is read academically in most countries. At university level at least, that's how it sounds. In the future I'll make a video about the historical accuracy of the different reading systems.
@@ChihonTeaches
That would be a great idea. BTW, your vowel pronunciation is perfect.
I'm learning Italian and I've noticed that the majority of English learners make no effort to pronounce the vowels correctly.
@@ninelaivz4334 That's a topic of its own, hahaha. Some people in the UK have explicit policies of not pronouncing certain vowels, like the iota subscript, for example.
My native language is Spanish and I learnt Greek pronouncing every vowel, something that probably only applied until the end of the Vth century BC or the beginning of the IVth. From a pedagogical perspective, I think this way is more useful since it allows you to learn how to spell new words more quickly.
The Erasmian pronunciation is rather too 'northern' or 'western' European but in truth it is correct in attempting to differentiate, for instance, the various 'I' sounds in modern Greek (and many other sounds besides). One irony is the diacritic marks and accents that - thankfully - disappeared from the Modern Greek writing system about 40 years ago. The irony stems from the fact that those marks/accents were brought in in late antiquity to assist non-Greeks to learn how to speak Greek ... where to raise your pitch ... where there is a rough breath and so on. The language changed over time as did the ancient pronunciation yet Greeks were stuck with the diacritic marks/accents until the 1980s even though they had lost all significance. Many hours were spent uselessly learning by rote when to use the oxeia, when the perispomene etc.
Ευτυχώς που τα κατάργησαν
It is interesting, because by the time Greek minuscule and accent marks entered the written language, they had already been lost in most dialects at the time. Rough Breathing was actually the first to disappear. There is a very good reason why the grapheme H represented a vowel and not H, because the Ionic dialect of greek lacked the Rough Breathing as early as 600 BC.
16:23 - and in Pontic Greek it is αΟΥτος
Great video. Thanks for it.
Hello Chihon!
I got to admit now, Im deeply confused! :D
How did ancient Greek sounded? The way the native Greek girl is pronouncing them? Or the way that you are pronouncing them?
Thanks!
Hello!!!
Your confusion is completely justified. The answer to your question is tricky, because it's most likely neither! The way I pronounce and teach is a reconstructed version inspired mostly by Erasmus, and it is the standard way to teach Ancient Greek at academic and university level. We pronounce in this way as a consensus because we care more about the contents of what we read rather than how it sounds.
On the other hand, Ioanna's pronunciation is modern (and Athenian), which we know from many sources is different from that of ancient past. Now, to answer your question one must choose a specific date to analyse Ancient Greek. My pronunciation is closer to the Classical period (circa V-IV century BC), but we know that already in the Hellenistic period some changes in pronunciation started to occur. Already by the time of Koiné Greek we have something closer to Modern Greek, and this is even more the case for the Byzantine period. So the "correct" pronunciation that many in the comments desire depends greatly on the material you engage with. Which one do you prefer?
I am just starting to learn Modern Greek. I am learning things like egg is αυγό and is pronounced ov-go. What would I here talking with someone on the streets of Greece? Would I hear something more like ow-go? Or a mix of both? What would best be suggested to look out for in travel?
Thanks for your message! From the two pronunciations you saw in this video, Ioanna's is the one you will find in Greece nowadays. Mine is a reconstructed pronunciation of Ancient Greek applicable to the V century BC.
As for the word "egg", the pronunciation I've heard the most is "avgó" or "afgó" (the letter "a" pronounced as in "cat"). Sometimes it's hard to tell them apart since both consonants are formed in a similar way, by biting your lower lip.
Gut, Mann. Gute Arbeit. Sehr hübsches Mädchen! I am also studying philosophy, nice to see you‘re trying to engage people and clarify so imp things. Viel Erfolg euch!
Her pronunciation sounds much more Greek and soft instead of the erasmian pronunciation which makes the language heavy and nordic, which should not have been cause it's a mediterranean language so that wouldn't be normal. The erasmian accent probably was created by Romans who speaked in Latin so they could pronounce phthongs and letter combination they couldnt otherwise, so everyone in the western word can learn and study Greek.
It wasn't it was created by Danish classicist Erasmus Roterodamus, who used the modern pronunciation, but developed the Erasmian as a philosophical experiment, since Historical linguistic evidence had not been established at the time, the Erasmian pronunciation has been proven to be wrong in favour of the Reconstructed Attic pronunciation (RAP). The mediterranean feel for languages in the Graeco-Roman world developed in 300 BC.
This is the scientific consensus on the topic:
RAP 500 BC, Reconstructed Koine, 1-600 AD which had iotacism (save for eta, pronounced like a midway between e and i, upsilon, prounounced like ü), loss of aspiration, frication of phi theta chi beta delta gamma, loss of vowel length and merging of acute and circumflex accents) and Modern Pronunciation 600 AD - present. Koine already sounded a lot like Modern Greek, and by the time of middle Koine, latin sounded a lot like Italian, grammatically too.
The Northern West uses Erasmian pronunciation because they like to claim Greek and Latin as the ancestors of their civilisation, while viewing contemporary Greece and Italy as inferior to themselves. That being said, any student of Ancient Greek and Latin should be free to use whatever pronunciation is easiest to them, but unfortunately, this is often accompanied by smugness and dismissal of the people to whom the Latin and Greek tradition belongs.
Speaking as a native, that the only touch with ancient texts I had was those compulsory years of middle and high school, I never would've imagined that there's such a big difference between the two schools of learning them. During the first reading I simply thought that I had completely forgot whatever I was taught in school, hence I couldn't understand but a few words here and there. It really shows a difference in pronounciation philosophy. Very illuminating.
If you want to have a further shock, check the Greek text I left in the description below the video and try to follow the way we pronounce it. You'll have fun, for sure!
The "erasmian way" was not lost in Greece, never existed actually.
It was as you said a convention that makes sense to germanic and romance speakers. Even the Greek words that survived through Latin does not agree with this pronunciation, I'm not saying modern Greek is right but I bet you it's closer than the erasmian
χαῖρε. Me gustó el vídeo por la temática en sí, muy interesante. Te has ganado un suscriptor. Estaré al pendiente de tus otros vídeos. ἔρρωσο.
¡Muchas gracias!
Estaré subiendo videos en la medida en que tenga tiempo sobre griego y otros temas de interés filosófico. Te agradezco mucho tu apoyo.
In ancient times too ει, η, ι, οι sounded the same.. For example λοιμος = disease and λιμός = hunger sounded exactly the same. as Thoukidedes wrote. Ancient greeks used also to make spelling mistakes Αριστείδης, αριστηδης, αριστιδης. Why that? Because ει, η, ι sounded the same.
They weren't the same. The spelling mistakes that you are referring to originated in the late koine period, were people started to confuse ι and η. There are literally ostraca from 5th century B.C. Athens that say ΘΕΜΙΣΤΟΚΛΕΣ, since attic Greek didn't yet adopted the ionic spellings.
There is also more than enough evidence that οι wasn't always a monophthong. Latin transcriptions from contemporary ancient Greek (oestrus, Oedipus, oeconomia etc.) first and foremost. But also Greek orthography itself. The verb ΟΙΚΕΩ/οἰκέω for instance becomes ΩΙΚΗΣΑ/ᾤκησα in the aorist.
"Erasmian" accent.... my opinions is, that Greeks never pronounced Δ as D and ai as ae β as b etc.
ΔΕΛΤΑ for Greeks was always Δelta, not Delta, but non Greeks don't have these sounds in their languages so that's why it's hard for them and adopted their accent.
I'm pretty sure modern Greek is more close to ancient Greek than the "Erasmian" accent.
If β didn't sound like b, how would we explain the fact that in an ancient text it's written that "Sheep go βη βη", when in modern Greek the sheep go "μπεε μπεε"; Should we assume that sheep have changed the way they sound through the years?
στου κουφού την πόρτα όσο θέλεις βρόντα φίλε, δυστυχώς.
@@lambch7144 from your point I guess the title lamp on your profile is totally correct...for the beeeee beer of the ships we used a combination of two letters...the m and the P..which in greek are μ,Μ...and π,Π....together form the sound beeeee...do you see now...and to sum up. If you wanna see the continuation of ancient to modern greek dialect just go to a Greek orthodox church a Sunday morning..any Sunday...the monks and priests preserved all the right pronunciations and sounds...period...bb
@@ΑπόλλωνΘηρευτής όλα ξεκινάνε απ το ότι είναι οπαδοί ακόμα του φαλμεραιερ...που εχθρευεται την ιδέα της αιωνίου συνέχισης της ελληνικής φυλής απ την αρχαιότητα ως τα σήμερα...κ δυστυχώς ειδικότερα αυτοί που ασχολούνται με τα αρχαία σήμερα είναι οι πιο φανατικοί εξ αυτών που θεωρούν εαυτούς συνεχίστες...με.λυπει ότι ο τύπος σε πολλά σχόλια αν προσέξεις λέει ότι η δική του..ΑΚΟΥΣΟΝ ΑΚΟΥΣΟΝ προφορά είναι ορθοτερη κ πιο κοντά..πράγμα που δείχνει που ανήκει...οπότε τι περιμένεις...ελπίζω την επόμενη φορά η Ιωάννα να τον βάλει στη θέση του κ να βρει τρόπο να του εξήγησει...γιατί μπορεί να χει αγαθες προθέσεις αλλά το αποτέλεσμα βγαίνει ανάπηρο
@@apollontv1078 Είναι εντελώς άκυρη η απάντηση που δίνεις, γιατί δεν έχεις πάρει χαμπάρι τι λέει το σχόλιο. Ακόμη κι εάν καταλάβαινες, βέβαια, δεν νομίζω ότι θα ήταν καλύτερη, αλλά τουλάχιστον θα μπορούσαμε να συζητήσουμε σε άλλες βάσεις. Δεν θα κάτσω να σου το εξηγήσω, γιατί δεν έχω ούτε χρόνο να διαθέσω, ούτε τη διάθεση να εξηγώ σε ανθρώπους που δεν υπάρχει περίπτωση να καταλάβουν και εκφράζουν απόψεις που τους είπε ο μπάρμπας του θείου του αδερφού της ξαδέρφης ενός γείτονα χωρίς να έχουν κάτσει να μελετήσουν. Για το επιχείρημα, δε, περί της γλώσσας στην οποία είναι γραμμένη η Αγία Γραφή, εάν ήξερες το πόσο ηλίθιο είναι, πραγματικά δεν θα έμπαινες στον κόπο να το σκεφτείς καν, πόσο μάλλον να το γράψεις.
From hearing the man recite in Ancient Greek now I know why Greek American that take Ancient Greek in an American college often fail the class.
Hear the man recite a passage is completely off the wall. It does even sound like it is Greek. But the girl reciting you can catch the sense of what it is said.
What I cannot understand is how anglos pronounce omecron iota . It is like hoi palloi. It’s simple : put two dots over the i and you separate the o from the i
when pronounced the vowels. Otherwise you pronounce them as eee
Exactly mate
Curious: does anyone know how a Greek Orthodox priest, who was born & raised in Greece, pronounces the koine Greek when he is reading Scripture aloud?
They will almost always use the Modern Greek pronunciation. In fact, I doubt there is a single Greek priest who would switch to reconstructed koine pronunciation.
Good point, @@E45F678 .
They shouldn't have a choice. It's part of their history and who they are. Kudos to the government for making it compulsory.
As an Italian, I also feel “uneasy” when I hear Latin pronounced with the “restituta” pronunciation instead of the ecclesiastical one.
The Reconstructed Latin pronunciation sounds very Italian to my ears. The main differences are the c and qu sounds.
I have never understood why they teach ancient Greek the way they do. It would make more sense to teach it with modern Greek pronunciation, which sounds better and frankly more natural. It's not as though any student of ancient Greek is going to run into an ancient on the streets and needs to approximate the sounds from over 2000 years ago. I lived in Greece for four years and learned modern Greek, but can barely make out 1 word in 50 of ancient Greek when it is pronounced the scholarly way, but when pronounced with modern Greek style around a third is comprehensible.
Very enjoyable presentation. Thanks ! Btw., I am learning Modern Greek with no knowledge of ancient Greek, and I can say that is not easy with 5 different types of 'i' all sounding the same way. You just need to learn the way the words are written. I do not see another way (my own experience). Keep up the good work ! God bless you all !
Thank you for your comments!!!
I agree, the many iota sounds in Modern Greek are very difficult to understand, especially at the beginning.
In my case, I learnt Ancient Greek first and I have tried to learn Modern Greek from my Greek friends. Very often I need to ask them to spell a word so I can understand the Ancient Greek origin and only then I can incorporate that word into my vocabulary. So, who knows?, maybe some Ancient Greek may help you get through your Modern Greek adventures.
I agree with you. It is quite hard getting used to the fact of these combination of vowel plus all the unfamiliar sounds. Σιγά σιγά μαθαίνουμε
@@ChihonTeachescan you write what you read in Ancient Greek with Latin letters so we will know what you read and we can then conclude it it similar to modern Greek or any other languages?!
Can you pronounce ευοιωνος in the erasmian way?
I think, it must be εἰοίωνος /ei-oi-ōnos/
So I'm not clear what her answer was at the end, when you asked her if it would make our lives better for those of us who want to learn ancient Greek whether to learn the modern Greek pronunciation first, or just to read the made-up make believe pronunciation of Erasmus. I'm wanting to teach myself Koiné Greek, but am struggling with the idea of learning a make believe pronunciation for a language that I wouldn't then be able to go to Greece and speak with the people there. But then I'm also concerned that if I try to learn Modern Greek pronunciation, then I won't understand the lessons as I get deeper into trying to learn Koiné.
Any advice, please, would be welcome.
Hello!
There are lots of things that belong to personal preference here, I think. In this channel I teach Classical Greek, mostly, and although koiné is closer to Modern Greek than its Classical counterpart, there are still some pronunciation differences between the two.
I'm currently also learning Modern Greek, so I understand your struggle. Our brains want to think about them as the same language, but when the pronunciation issues appear, you notice the huge distance between both systems. What I do is forgetting that they are related. I learn Modern Greek as if I knew nothing about Ancient Greek, and I welcome the similarities as a pleasant surprise. When I keep telling myself that they are different systems (and they are), my brain takes new inputs in a less chaotic way.
Let me know if this helps. We can keep discussing the topic. Good luck with your language adventures!
@@ChihonTeaches Thank you. So as far as I can make out, I think maybe it might be better for me to study the Koiné learning it using the Eramus pronunciation because I have a feeling I might not be able to understand words or concepts as the professor gets deeper into the language. While it seems odd to me that we have to use some kind of a made up pronunciation instead of simply how Greek is pronounced today, I'm afraid that I might have to do twice the work just to keep from getting lost.
Does that sound reasonable? Or am I misunderstanding about the differences between the two (modern and Koiné)?
@@workinprogress9613 There's no misunderstanding, that is what I'm recommending. Actually, one of the main reasons why I teach the Erasmus pronunciation in my channel is because that's the way that most people use in academia internationally. Accurate or not, it has become the main currency when communicating ancient texts between scholars.
However, I assure you it won't be twice the work, as you say. At some point the similarities will kick in and you'll be able to place them in their respective pronunciations as needed.
@@ChihonTeaches Thank you.
Excellent video
@@user-vh3kj9ri8h Thank you so much!!!
To me as a Greek, when I hear an English speaker trying to speak in classical Greek my brain explodes. It's like hearing someone spelling every word instead of speaking.
None the less I have to admit that the pronunciation of several Greek letters have changed dramatically through the ages so to be honest I don't see the point of using the erasmian way of pronunciation. It might help a foreigner to learn the Greek alphabet but on the other hand, to a Greeks ears will be something like gibberish
I totally agree with you. For better or worse, the Erasmian pronunciation is the one used internationally to study Ancient Greek, and it's the one I learned and teach here. It's important to have these comparisons, since they put the evolution of both the language and its studies in perspective.
@@ChihonTeaches if you really really want to find out how was the Greek pronunciation through the centuries I would suggest you to check a chanel called polymathy the guy that owns the channel even though he's Italian he gives us perfect examples of both ancient and medieval Greek.
Ps. In order to understand a Greek try to apply the erasmian pronunciation in English and begin your journey 😂