Greek orthography and syntax topics
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- Pronunciation conventions 1. Modern Greek
- Ancient Greek
- Modern conventions
- The present authors recommendation
- Occurrences of non-British sounds in European languages
- Vowels and Diphthongs
3PronunciationThe tables on the pages following show the (presumed) pronunciation of Ancient Greek, of Modern Greek, and various convenient conventions for pronouncing Ancient Greek. GGT refers to the present author's suggestion, which corresponds largely with many other suggested systems. Pronunciation conventions 1. Modern Greek pronunciation. This has the advantage of being based on a living language, giving the pronunciation a sense of authenticity. The disadvantage is that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between spelling and pronunciation – note for example that 9 vowel/diphthong sounds of ancient Greek have merged into the [i] sound of Modern Greek. In Modern Greek, only the acute accent is used, and it is used for stress, not tone. Any accent in an ancient text will be taken as denoting stress by a modern reader. Greek has developed considerably over the last 2000 years, especially in grammar, so that knowledge of Modern Greek alone will not be sufficient to read Classical or Koiné/New Testament Greek, as native Greek speakers will testify. 2. Ancient Greek pronunciation. In Ancient Greek pronunciation, the accents denote not stress but pitch, as in Chinese. The acute is a rising pitch, the grave (including unaccented syllables) denotes falling pitch, and the circumflex denotes a rising then falling pitch. The length of the 5 vowel sounds was observed (a` e i^ o u^ versus a> h i< w u<). All vowels and diphthong sounds were presumably differentiated. It is not clear whether words were pronounced with stress, and where the stress was. The stress may have been according to the Latin rule, where a word with a long penultimate syllable takes the stress, and a word with a short penultimate syllable is stressed on the antepenultimate. Note that a syllable with a short vowel followed by two consonants counts is a long syllable, as in scansion of verse. In contrast, when determining which accent a vowel/diphthong may take, only the length of the vowel/diphthong is relevant, not the length of the syllable as a whole. 3. Modern conventions are based on a compromise between the convenience of using the sounds of modern English or other languages with an attempt to at least differentiate all the vowel and diphthong sounds as was done in Ancient Greek. The use of pitch is generally ignored. The conventions for pronunciation and stress vary from school to school, though most schools place stress on an accented syllable, with some applying the rules for Latin (where the stress is on the penultimate if the penultimate syllable is long, otherwise on the antepenultimate). 4. The present author's recommendation is to reconstruct ancient pronunciation, with pitch, if you can, but as most Europeans have difficulty with this, and “scholars” very rarely, if ever, teach it (a pity), a second choice may be needed. The second recommendation is to follow the British or International conventions suggested in the table below. Give the accented word stress – this is an easy rule that will produce consistent pronunciation. Make an effort to lengthen long vowels, even if the stress makes this seem unnatural – e.g. o9 li Note: If you discuss your progress in Greek with native Greek speakers, it may be wise to use the Modern Greek pronunciation, as other pronunciations are likely to be looked down on by them. It is worth learning to use both the “scholarly” and the modern pronunciation, whichever your first choice may be. Occurrences of non-British sounds in European languages: The sounds of interest are the following:
Observe that neither IPA χ nor ç is correct for Greek x. The following table exhibits the various approaches to the pronunciation of all the sounds of Greek. This page is intentionally blank, so that the following two pages can be viewed alongside each other.
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