5 ms·

What you call "classical pronunciation" is really at best an approximation of the ancient Greek pronunciation, but mixed heavily with English (after some frolic

What you call "classical pronunciation" is really at best an approximation of the ancient Greek pronunciation, but mixed heavily with English (after some frolicking around in Latin). As far as I know, this is limited to English speakers only. For example, π is pronounced "πι", or probably closed to "pee" in modern and in ancient Greek. It's never pronounced like "pie". Same with all letters that end with "i", for example "φ,χ,ψ" (pronounced as phee, chee, psee, never rhyming with pie). T (τ) was never pronounced as "ta-oo", either, not in ancient nor modern Greek. There are differences between modern and ancient Greek of course. For example "β" (beta), originally pronounced more like it's now in English, only with a longer "e", while in modern Greek it's more like "vita")

nephihaha 4mo ago
I'm well aware it is an approximation, but there is a traditional classical pronunciation in use as there is with Latin (or Sanskrit, Pali and classical Hebrew), which is still in use whether or not it is authentic.
- thaumasiotes 4mo ago
  You're confusing different terminology. There is a traditional pronunciation. And there's a classical pronunciation. But the traditional pronunciation is not classical. For Latin, there's a handy wikipedia page telling you all about the difference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_English_pronunciation_of_Latin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_English_pronunciat... .
  - nephihaha 4mo ago
    No I'm not. I do know the difference.
FarmerPotato 4mo ago
I had a native Italian professor who said "β" more like "vita". One day he tried to write "ξ" on the whiteboard and said "whatever the hell this is?". I was the only person who spoke up.
epestr 4mo ago
The modern academic consensus is that "η" was likely pronounced like the "e" in "met" but longer. In IPA, it'd be /e:/. And thus "β" as /be:ta/. What you are saying is how it is done in modern Greek though.
- gschizas 4mo ago
  Yes, that's what I said. Beta sounded more like the English pronunciation than what modern Greek pronunciation is.
  - epestr 4mo ago
    Oops, I thought your claim was about the consonant sound /b/ vs /v/. I had the British /bi:tə/ in my mind, and forgot that Americans used /beɪtə/, which I agree is closer to the American pronunciation if your 'ay's are not diphthongised. Funny enough, I went to double-check the IPA and realized the textbook classical Attic should be reconstructed as /ɛ/, so /bɛːta/ anyway. Which is still closer to the American version as both are open front vowels. BUT, I just went down a rabbit hole and found this video on the history of the letter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS5POB2rLsw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS5POB2rLsw It turns out that while /bɛːta/ is the old academic reconstruction, statistical analyses of spelling mistakes from then shows that Athenians had already closed that vowel to /e:/ or even all the way to the modern /i:/ sound as early as 500 BC. So the how they spoke daily was even messier.
    - gschizas 4mo ago
      You're right, I guess American English is too common and I didn't consider that British English pronounce it differently (and one step closer to modern Greek) Attic/Athenian Greek were considered a bit weird by other Greeks at the time, especially with replacing "ss" with "tt". But if there was nothing else to connect us modern Greeks to ancient Greeks, the constant infighting and bickering would be enough :) Doric Greek had replaced η with α in the same time period (eg ή ταν ή επί τας which would be ή την ή επί της in other ancient Greek dialects of the time.
thaumasiotes 4mo ago
> For example, π is pronounced "πι", or probably close[?] to "pee" in modern and in ancient Greek. No. In ancient Greek, π contrasts with φ. Φ is the one that indicates the sound an English speaker would hear as "p"; it's the one you would pronounce "pee". You'd hear the name of π as "bee". > T (τ) was never pronounced as "ta-oo", either, not in ancient nor modern Greek. That's exactly how it was pronounced in ancient Greek (modulo the same issue as π), unless you meant to indicate a disyllabic pronunciation.
- gschizas 4mo ago
  I'm talking about the vowel sound, not the consonant sound. Of course φ was more like an aspirated π, that's why the letter φ is transliterated as ph (p with an aspiration mark which is the h). χ was also originally transliterated as kh, as it sounded more than an aspirated "k". I'm not sure about the consonant sound of "ψ" though. Certainly not "s" of course (the "p" in "ps" is not silent in modern Greek, and it most certainly wasn't silent in ancient Greek either). π, φ, χ, ψ never rhymed with pie though. That was my focus there. Regarding the "αυ" sound: Same as all the original diphthongs such as "ου", "αι", "οι" etc. sounds, the "ι", "υ" etc were mostly supplemental/modifiers to the first vowel (also υ sounded more like e.g. modern German ü or indeed modern German y Ι guess). They were indeed never disyllabic. EDIT: I think the transformation of some diphthongs had already started by the time the Roman empire conquered Greece, so ta-oo might have been closer to the pronunciation at that time. But Roman times are not classical times, they are after the Hellenistic times which changed so much already (I think iotacisation happened during that time?). Koine Greek started off as more like Ancient Greek pronunciation and ended up as Modern Greek pronunciation.
  - thaumasiotes 4mo ago
    > Regarding the "αυ" sound: Same as all the original diphthongs such as "ου", "αι", "οι" etc. sounds, the "ι", "υ" etc were mostly supplemental/modifiers to the first vowel (also υ sounded more like e.g. modern German ü or indeed modern German y Ι guess). > EDIT: I think the transformation of some diphthongs had already started by the time the Roman empire conquered Greece, so ta-oo might have been closer to the pronunciation at that time. Vox Graeca says the opposite in regard to upsilon: >> In both αυ and ευ the υ preserved its original quality as a back [u], i.e. it was not fronted to [ü] as elsewhere https://archive.org/details/allen-vox-graeca-the-pronunciation-of-classical-greek/Allen%20Vox%20Graeca%20the-Pronunciation-of-Classical-Greek/page/76/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/allen-vox-graeca-the-pronunciati... [page 76] (The reason this statement isn't also applied to ου is not that the upsilon is fronted - it's that in ου, the upsilon is lost.) Upsilon by itself began as [u] and developed into [y], but diphthongs ending in it didn't follow that development. Tau starts with the pronunciation /tau/ and stays that way.

nephihaha 4mo ago

I'm well aware it is an approximation, but there is a traditional classical pronunciation in use as there is with Latin (or Sanskrit, Pali and classical Hebrew), which is still in use whether or not it is authentic.

thaumasiotes 4mo ago
You're confusing different terminology. There is a traditional pronunciation. And there's a classical pronunciation. But the traditional pronunciation is not classical. For Latin, there's a handy wikipedia page telling you all about the difference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_English_pronunciation_of_Latin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_English_pronunciat... .
- nephihaha 4mo ago
  No I'm not. I do know the difference.

FarmerPotato 4mo ago

I had a native Italian professor who said "β" more like "vita". One day he tried to write "ξ" on the whiteboard and said "whatever the hell this is?". I was the only person who spoke up.

epestr 4mo ago

The modern academic consensus is that "η" was likely pronounced like the "e" in "met" but longer. In IPA, it'd be /e:/. And thus "β" as /be:ta/. What you are saying is how it is done in modern Greek though.

gschizas 4mo ago
Yes, that's what I said. Beta sounded more like the English pronunciation than what modern Greek pronunciation is.
- epestr 4mo ago
  Oops, I thought your claim was about the consonant sound /b/ vs /v/. I had the British /bi:tə/ in my mind, and forgot that Americans used /beɪtə/, which I agree is closer to the American pronunciation if your 'ay's are not diphthongised. Funny enough, I went to double-check the IPA and realized the textbook classical Attic should be reconstructed as /ɛ/, so /bɛːta/ anyway. Which is still closer to the American version as both are open front vowels. BUT, I just went down a rabbit hole and found this video on the history of the letter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS5POB2rLsw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS5POB2rLsw It turns out that while /bɛːta/ is the old academic reconstruction, statistical analyses of spelling mistakes from then shows that Athenians had already closed that vowel to /e:/ or even all the way to the modern /i:/ sound as early as 500 BC. So the how they spoke daily was even messier.
  - gschizas 4mo ago
    You're right, I guess American English is too common and I didn't consider that British English pronounce it differently (and one step closer to modern Greek) Attic/Athenian Greek were considered a bit weird by other Greeks at the time, especially with replacing "ss" with "tt". But if there was nothing else to connect us modern Greeks to ancient Greeks, the constant infighting and bickering would be enough :) Doric Greek had replaced η with α in the same time period (eg ή ταν ή επί τας which would be ή την ή επί της in other ancient Greek dialects of the time.

thaumasiotes 4mo ago

> For example, π is pronounced "πι", or probably close[?] to "pee" in modern and in ancient Greek. No. In ancient Greek, π contrasts with φ. Φ is the one that indicates the sound an English speaker would hear as "p"; it's the one you would pronounce "pee". You'd hear the name of π as "bee". > T (τ) was never pronounced as "ta-oo", either, not in ancient nor modern Greek. That's exactly how it was pronounced in ancient Greek (modulo the same issue as π), unless you meant to indicate a disyllabic pronunciation.

gschizas 4mo ago
I'm talking about the vowel sound, not the consonant sound. Of course φ was more like an aspirated π, that's why the letter φ is transliterated as ph (p with an aspiration mark which is the h). χ was also originally transliterated as kh, as it sounded more than an aspirated "k". I'm not sure about the consonant sound of "ψ" though. Certainly not "s" of course (the "p" in "ps" is not silent in modern Greek, and it most certainly wasn't silent in ancient Greek either). π, φ, χ, ψ never rhymed with pie though. That was my focus there. Regarding the "αυ" sound: Same as all the original diphthongs such as "ου", "αι", "οι" etc. sounds, the "ι", "υ" etc were mostly supplemental/modifiers to the first vowel (also υ sounded more like e.g. modern German ü or indeed modern German y Ι guess). They were indeed never disyllabic. EDIT: I think the transformation of some diphthongs had already started by the time the Roman empire conquered Greece, so ta-oo might have been closer to the pronunciation at that time. But Roman times are not classical times, they are after the Hellenistic times which changed so much already (I think iotacisation happened during that time?). Koine Greek started off as more like Ancient Greek pronunciation and ended up as Modern Greek pronunciation.
- thaumasiotes 4mo ago
  > Regarding the "αυ" sound: Same as all the original diphthongs such as "ου", "αι", "οι" etc. sounds, the "ι", "υ" etc were mostly supplemental/modifiers to the first vowel (also υ sounded more like e.g. modern German ü or indeed modern German y Ι guess). > EDIT: I think the transformation of some diphthongs had already started by the time the Roman empire conquered Greece, so ta-oo might have been closer to the pronunciation at that time. Vox Graeca says the opposite in regard to upsilon: >> In both αυ and ευ the υ preserved its original quality as a back [u], i.e. it was not fronted to [ü] as elsewhere https://archive.org/details/allen-vox-graeca-the-pronunciation-of-classical-greek/Allen%20Vox%20Graeca%20the-Pronunciation-of-Classical-Greek/page/76/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/allen-vox-graeca-the-pronunciati... [page 76] (The reason this statement isn't also applied to ου is not that the upsilon is fronted - it's that in ου, the upsilon is lost.) Upsilon by itself began as [u] and developed into [y], but diphthongs ending in it didn't follow that development. Tau starts with the pronunciation /tau/ and stays that way.