Ancient Greek phonology
Encyclopedia
Ancient Greek phonology is the study of the phonology
, or pronunciation
, of Ancient Greek
. Because of the passage of time, the original pronunciation of Ancient Greek, like that of all ancient languages, can never be known with absolute certainty. Linguistic reconstructions have been widely debated in the past; however, a good approximation can be established and there is now a consensus in scholarship.
. Summaries of the reconstructed sound systems of Greek at several stages of its history can be found in Ancient Greek (or classical Attic Greek), Koine Greek, and Greek language. Only the pronunciation of the classical Attic dialect of the 5th century BC, including its later development towards Koine Greek, is explored here. The practical pronunciations of Ancient Greek used in teaching and literary study today is discussed in Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching
.
All of the mediae changed to voiced fricatives later ([v], [ð], [ɣ] ~ [ʝ]), and all of the aspiratae changed to voiceless fricatives ([f], [θ], [x] ~ [ç]). These are also their values in Modern Greek
. The changes are assumed to have happened in antiquity, during the time of Koine Greek
, but probably after the time of classical Attic Greek
. The changes probably started with the voiced velar [ɡ] > [ɣ] ~ [ʝ] (in the 3rd century BC) and were completed some time during the 1st century AD with the aspiratae.
In the case of the labials, the change must have proceeded through the intermediate stage of bilabial
fricatives [β] and [ɸ], as the modern values are not bilabial but labio-dental
.
As the terminology of aphona and hemiphona applied to letters of the alphabet rather than phonemes, the letters ψ
, ξ
and ζ
each standing for a consonantal cluster and collectively referred to as ("double letters"), were also grouped with the hemiphona, presumably because they all contained a sibilant as an element. The pronunciation of ζ is not entirely clear. For metrical purposes it was treated as a double consonant, thus forming a heavy syllable (see below). It is normally assumed to have been pronounced in Classical Attic and immediately preceding dialects as [zd], although there is some disagreement about this; some scholars assert that it was pronounced [dz]. The arguments for each pronunciation are put forward in Zeta (letter)
. It is quite possible that its pronunciation varied among different dialects. During the classical period, its pronunciation changed to [z]. The two other dipla were probably pronounced [pʰs] and [kʰs] in Classical Attic (they were written <ΦΣ> and <ΧΣ> in the old alphabet), but the aspiration of the first element was phonologically irrelevant.
/m/, written μ
and the alveolar nasal /n/, written ν
.
Depending on the phonetic environment, the phoneme /n/ was realized in speech in four distinct manners:
On occasion, the /n/ phoneme participates in true gemination without any assimilation in place of articulation, as for example in the word . Artificial gemination for metrical purposes is also found occasionally, as in the form , occurring in the first verse of Homer’s Odyssey.
and ρ
respectively.
The letter λ (lambda) probably represented a lateral ("clear") l as in Modern Greek and most European languages, rather than a velarized ("dark") ɫ as in English in coda position
. When /n/ precedes /l/, the first consonant assimilates to the second, gemination
takes place, and the combination is pronounced [lː], as in from underlying
.
The letter ρ (rho) probably stood for an alveolar trill
sound, [r] more like Italian ("rusticana") or Modern Greek than the English or French r sounds. Word initially, ρ is invariably written with the spiritus asper as , probably representing a voiceless or aspirated allophone of /r/ ([ r̥] or [rʰ]), hence the traditional transliteration rh. The same orthography is sometimes encountered when /r/ is geminated, as in , sometimes written , giving rise to the transliteration rrh. This example also illustrates that /n/ assimilates to following /r/, creating gemination.
/s/ written with a sigma (Σ,σ,ς), and the glottal
/h/. The former is likely to have had a voiced allophone
[z] before other voiced consonants, which was not distinguished from sigma in writing.
/h/ could stand only in word-initial position. In Attic, it was originally written with the letter Η
. Partly before and partly during classical times, /h/ was lost in pronunciation in Ionian and Aeolian (a process also known as psilosis
), but Attic preserved the sound longer than these dialects. In Ionic, where it had been lost early, the letter Η was then co-opted to serve as a vowel letter. On adoption of the Ionic alphabet in the other dialect areas (in Athens in 403 BCE), the sound /h/ ceased to be represented in writing. In some inscriptions it was instead indicated by a symbol formed from the left-hand half of the original letter. Later grammarians, during the time of the Hellenistic Koine, developed that symbol further into the spiritus asper
, which they no longer treated as a letter in its own right but as a diacritic written on the top of the initial vowel. Correspondingly, they introduced the reverse diacritic called spiritus lenis
, which indicated the absence of aspiration. These signs were not adopted universally until the Byzantine
age.
The letter digamma
, written , was used in some dialects to represent the sound /w/ in syllable-initial position. This sound had been lost in Attic and Ionic before the classical period, and the letter was no longer used except as a numeral (= 6, later replaced by ϛ
). The /w/ of other Greek dialects and of foreign languages was normally rendered with <β> and later also with <ου>.
was distinctive in Ancient Greek, so doubled consonants would have been prolonged in pronunciation, as confirmed by metrical considerations and the modern Greek dialect of Cyprus. Doubled consonants do not occur at the start or end of words. φ, θ, χ are not doubled in the orthography, the combinations πφ, τθ, and κχ being used instead (compare doubled rho above).
A doubled sigma (σσ) in most Ancient Greek dialects and in Koine is generally replaced in Attic by a doubled tau (ττ). This often comes from palatalization of κ, χ, and sometimes γ before the pre-Greek semivowel
y. In Greek grammar, y is often written as iota with a non-syllabic diacritic (ι̯).
It is apparent that short mid vowels were high-mid, while the long ones were low-mid before the lengthenings of the short vowels due to contraction or loss of a following consonant
(see below). Note that early vowel lengthening in Proto-Indo-European
or early Proto-Greek
times (e.g. in the subjunctive or in the lengthened root vowels of futures and aorists) did not produce the same results. This might indicate that long and short vowels had the same quality at that time; or it might simply indicate that the phonemic distinction between high-mid and low-mid long vowels had not yet developed, and as such the newly lengthened vowel would have had its quality automatically adjusted as appropriate. In Doric Greek
, even late lengthening of short mid vowels produced long low-mid vowels, suggesting that the short vowels were also low-mid in this dialect.
The close front rounded
vowels /y/ and /yː/ are both represented in writing by the letter υ (upsilon)
irrespective of length. At an earlier date, they had been [u] and [uː]. It is difficult to determine with precision when the fronting occurred. It was likely a gradual process with a close central rounded vowel as an intermediate stage. The fronting did not occur in all ancient Greek dialects, but it was inherited by Koine Greek. The unrounding that produced the modern Greek
[i] sound of the letter occurred in Byzantine
times, long after the loss of length contrast between long and short upsilon.
The long close-mid vowels /eː/ and /oː/ had a complex history. In some instances, they had earlier been falling diphthongs [ei] and [ou] respectively, and the spellings ει and ου reflect this origin. In other instances, they arose through lengthening of earlier short /e/ and /o/ respectively, compensating for a following consonant or consonant cluster that was lost in pre-alphabetic times. Thus, e.g.: for earlier *lutʰents, *luontsi. In yet different instances, /eː/ arises through contraction of <εε> and /oː/ through contraction of <εο>, <οε>, or, with the uncontracted versions found in the dialects. When the original diphthongs lost their diphthongal pronunciation having become /eː/ and /oː/ probably in pre-classical times, the spellings ει and ου provided a convenient way of representing the new sounds, irrespective of origin. Wherever the digraph spellings ει and ου correspond to original diphthongs they are called "genuine diphthongs", in all other cases, they are called "spurious diphthongs".
During or soon after the classical period, both /eː/ and /oː/ were raised towards [iː] and [uː] respectively. /eː/ (ει) thus merged with original /iː/, while /oː/ (ου) took up the empty space of the earlier /uː/ phoneme, which had by that time been fronted to /yː/ (see above). The fact that <υ> was never confused with <ου> indicates that <υ> was fronted before <ου> was raised or that the two sound changes occurred simultaneously.
. In the earlier, traditional Attic orthography there was only a smaller repertoire of vowel symbols: α, ε, ι, ο, and υ. The letters η and ω were still missing. All five vowel symbols could at that stage denote either a long or a short vowel. Moreover, the mid-vowel symbols ε and ο could denote both the open-mid /ɛː, ɔː/ and the close-mid long phonemes /eː, oː/ respectively. The Ionic alphabet brought the new letters η and ω for the one set of long vowels, and the convention of using the digraph spellings ει and ου for the other, leaving simple ε and ο to be used only for the short vowels. However, the remaining vowel letters α, ι and υ continued to be ambiguous between long and short phonemes.
, ending in either /i/ or /u/ as a semi-vocalic offglide.
The first element of the diphthong could either be short or long. This gives the following inventory:
In the back diphthongs (αυ, ευ, ηυ), the offglide became consonantal during the Hellenistic age, ultimately leading to Modern Greek /av/, /ev/, /iv/. /ɔːu/ was rare and did not occur in classical Attic (but did in Ionic).
In pre-classical Greek, the following additional diphthongs existed that later changed to long vowels:
is important as the key element in classical versification. A heavy syllable (sometimes called a long syllable, but this risks confusion with long vowels) is a syllable that either contains a long vowel or a diphthong, or ends in a consonant. If a single consonant occurs between two syllables within a word, it is considered to belong to the following syllable, so the syllable before the consonant is light if it contains a short vowel. If two or more consonants, a double consonant (ζ, ξ or ψ) or a geminated consonant, occur between syllables within a word, the first of the consonants goes with the first syllable, making it heavy. Certain combinations of consonants, namely aphona plus liquids or nasals (e.g. τρ or κν) are exceptions, as in some circumstances both consonants go with the second syllable — a phenomenon known as "correptio attica". The ancient grammarians called a heavy syllable with a short vowel ― "long by convention" (this was translated into Latin
as positione longa ― "long by position"), and a syllable with a long vowel ― long by nature ― natura longa.
, meaning that the accented syllable was pronounced at a higher pitch than the other syllables; Dionysius of Halicarnassus
states that the interval was approximately that of a fifth
in music. In standard polytonic orthography (invented in the Hellenistic age, but not adopted universally until Byzantine
times), the acute accent
is used to indicate a simple accented syllable. In long vowels and diphthongs the accent could fall on either half (or mora
) of the syllable: if it fell on the first mora, so that the syllable had a high tone followed by a low tone, it is indicated in polytonic orthography by the circumflex
: e.g. /ée/ = ~ /eé/ = .
The accent can fall only on one of the last three syllables of a word, and if the last syllable contains a long vowel or diphthong, it can fall only on one of the last two syllables. The circumflex can only fall on the last two syllables, and only if that syllable contains a long vowel or diphthong. An acute accent on a final syllable (except before a pause or an enclitic word) is regularly replaced in the orthography by a grave accent
: this may indicate a lowering of tone, but the evidence from ancient authors is unclear on this point.
If the penultimate syllable is accented, it normally has the circumflex if it contains a long vowel or diphthong and the last syllable contains a short vowel, otherwise it has the acute. An accented final syllable can have either the acute (or grave) or the circumflex.
In some inflected forms, final αι and οι are treated as if they were short vowels (or, rather, combinations of a short vowel and a semivowel glide).
Spelling mistakes are an important type of evidence, but they have their limitations. They only prove that the phonetic development in question existed in the language of the particular scribe, not that it was adopted universally by all speakers of the language at the time. Ancient Greek was not homogeneous or static, but a language divided in many regional variants and social registers. Many of the linguistic features characteristic of Late and Modern Greek were probably anticipated in some dialects and some registers of Attic already in the Classical Age, but the older varieties seem to have persisted for centuries.
Important ancient authors include:
) in Attic theatrical works, can provide hints as to the phonetic value of certain spellings.
Towards the end of the 5th century BC, Attic authors sometimes transcribe by σ the sound of Spartan θ : in Aristophanes (Lysistrata) and we also find in Thucydides
with the latter spelling found even in Spartan inscriptions of the 4th century BC. It can be inferred that in Spartan Doric, <θ> was already a fricative (at least in pre-vocalic position) and could be made fun of, since Attic maintained the plosive pronunciation.
s in other languages and conversely, the spelling of foreign loanwords in Greek, can provide important hints about pronunciation. However, the evidence is often difficult to interpret or indecisive. The sounds of loanwords are often not taken over identically into the receiving language. Where the receiving language lacks a sound that corresponds exactly to that of the source language, sounds are usually mapped to some other, similar sound.
In this regard, Latin is of great value to the reconstruction of ancient Greek phonology because of its close proximity to the Greek world which caused numerous Greek words to be borrowed by the Romans. At first, Greek loanwords denoting technical terms or proper names which contained the letter Φ
were imported in Latin with the spelling P or PH, indicating an effort to imitate, albeit imperfectly, a sound that Latin lacked. Later on, in the 1st centuries AD, spellings with F start to appear in such loanwords, signaling the onset of the fricative pronunciation of Φ. Thus, in the 2nd century AD, Filippus replaces P(h)ilippus. At about the same time, the letter F also begins to be used as a substitute for the letter Θ, for lack of a better choice, indicating that the sound of Greek theta had become a fricative as well.
For the purpose of borrowing certain other Greek words, the Romans added the letters Y and Z to the Latin alphabet, taken directly from the Greek one. These additions are important as they show that the Romans had no symbols to represent the sounds of the letters Υ and Ζ
in Greek, which means that in these cases no known sound of Latin can be used to reconstruct the Greek sounds.
. It may be assumed that the Greeks tended to assign to each Phoenician letter that Greek sound which most closely resembled the Phoenician sound. But, as with loanwords, the interpretation is not straightforward.
and later the Armenian
, Gothic
, and Cyrillic
. Similar arguments can be derived in these cases as in the Phoenician-Greek case.
For example, in Cyrillic, the letter В (ve) stands for [v], confirming that beta was pronounced as a fricative by the 9th century AD, while the new letter Б (be) was invented to note the sound [b]. Conversely, in Gothic, the letter derived from beta stands for [b], so in the 4th century AD, beta was still a plosive in Greek.
) judged that this pronunciation appeared to be inconsistent with the descriptions handed down by ancient grammarians, and suggested alternative pronunciations.
Johann Reuchlin
, the leading Greek scholar in the West around 1500, had taken his Greek learning from Byzantine émigré scholars, and continued to use the modern pronunciation. This pronunciation system was called into question by Erasmus (1466–1536) who in 1528 published De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione dialogus, a philological treatise clothed in the form of a philosophical dialogue, in which he developed the idea of a historical reconstruction of ancient Latin and Greek pronunciation. The two models of pronunciation became soon known, after their principal proponents, as the "Reuchlinian" and the "Erasmian" system, or, after the characteristic vowel pronunciations, as the "itacist" (or "iotacist") and the "etacist" system, respectively.
Erasmus' reconstruction was based on a wide range of arguments, derived from the philological knowledge available at his time. In the main, he strove for a more regular correspondence of letters to sounds, assuming that different letters must have stood for different sounds, and same letters for same sounds. That led him, for instance, to posit that the various letters which in the itacist system all denoted [i] must have had different values, and that ει, αι, οι, ευ, αυ, ου were all diphthongs with a closing offglide. He also insisted on taking the accounts of ancient grammarians literally, for instance where they described vowels as being distinctively long and short, or the acute and circumflex accents as being clearly distinguished by pitch contours. In addition, he drew on evidence from word correspondences between Greek and Latin as well as some other European languages. Some of his arguments in this direction are, in hindsight, mistaken, because he naturally lacked much of the knowledge developed through later linguistic work. Thus, he could not distinguish between Latin-Greek word relations based on loans (e.g. — Phoebus) on the one hand, and those based on common descent from Indo-European
(e.g. — fūr) on the other. He also fell victim to a few spurious relations due to mere accidental similarity (e.g. Greek "sacrifice" — French tuer, "kill"). In other areas, his arguments are of quite the same kind as those used by modern linguistics, e.g. where he argues on the basis of cross-dialectal correspondences within Greek that η must have been a rather open e-sound, close to [a].
Erasmus also took great pains to assign to the members in his reconstructed system plausible phonetic values. This was no easy task, as contemporary grammatical theory lacked the rich and precise terminology to describe such values. In order to overcome that problem, Erasmus drew upon his knowledge of the sound repertoires of contemporary living languages, for instance likening his reconstructed η to Scots a ([æ]), his reconstructed ου to Dutch ou ([oʊ]), and his reconstructed οι to French oi ([oɪ]).
Erasmus assigned to the Greek consonant letters β, γ, δ the sounds of voiced plosives /b/, /ɡ/, /d/, while for the consonant letters φ, θ, and χ he advocated the use of fricatives /f/, /θ/, /x/ as in Modern Greek (arguing, however, that this type of /f/ must have been different from that denoted by Latin).
The reception of Erasmus' idea among his contemporaries was mixed. Most prominent among those scholars who resisted his move was Philipp Melanchthon
, a student of Reuchlin's. Debate in humanist circles continued up into the 17th century, but the situation remained undecided for several centuries. (See Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching
.)
, based on the method of comparative reconstruction, took a vivid interest in Greek. It soon established beyond any doubt that Greek was descended in parallel with many other languages from the common source of the Indo-European
proto-language. This had important consequences for how its phonological system must be reconstructed. At the same time, continued work in philology and archeology was bringing to light an ever-growing corpus of non-standard, non-literary and non-classical Greek writings, e.g. inscriptions and later also papyri. These added considerably to what could be known about the development of the language. On the other hand, there was a revival of academic life in Greece after the establishment of the Greek state
in 1830, and scholars in Greece were at first reluctant to accept the seemingly foreign idea that Greek should have been pronounced so differently from what they knew.
Comparative linguistics led to a picture of ancient Greek that more or less corroborated Erasmus' view, though with some modifications. It soon became clear, for instance, that the pattern of long and short vowels observed in Greek was mirrored in similar oppositions in other languages and thus had to be a common inheritance (see Ablaut
); that Greek <υ> had to have been [u] at some stage because it regularly corresponded to [u] in all other Indo-European languages (cf. Gr. : Lat. mūs); that many instances of <η> had earlier been [a:] (cf. Gr. μήτηρ : Lat. māter); that Greek <ου> sometimes stood in words that had been lengthened from <ο> and therefore must have been pronounced [o:] at some stage (the same holds analogically for <ε> and <ει>, which must have been [e:]), and so on. For the consonants, historical linguistics established the originally plosive nature of both the aspirates <φ,θ,χ> [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ] and the mediae <β,δ,γ> [b, d, ɡ], which were recognised to be a direct continuation of similar sounds in Indo-European (reconstructed and ). It was also recognised that the word-initial spiritus asper was most often a reflex of earlier *s (cf. Gr. : Lat. septem), which was believed to have been weakened to [h] in pronunciation. Work was also done reconstructing the linguistic background to the rules of ancient Greek versification, especially in Homer, which shed important light on the phonology regarding syllable structure and accent. Scholars also described and explained the regularities in the development of consonants and vowels under processes of assimilation, reduplication, compensatory lengthening etc.
While comparative linguistics could in this way firmly establish that a certain source state, roughly along the Erasmian model, had once obtained, and that significant changes had to have occurred later, during the development towards Modern Greek, the comparative method had less to say about the question when these changes took place. Erasmus had been eager to find a pronunciation system that corresponded most closely to the written letters, and it was now natural to assume that the reconstructed sound system was that which obtained at the time when Greek orthography was in its formative period. For a time, it was taken for granted that this would also have been the pronunciation valid for all the period of classical literature. However, it was perfectly possible that the pronunciation of the living language had begun to move on from that reconstructed system towards that of Modern Greek, possibly already quite early during antiquity.
In this context, the freshly emerging evidence from the non-standard inscriptions became of decisive importance. Critics of the Erasmian reconstruction drew attention to the systematic patterns of spelling mistakes made by scribes. These mistakes showed that scribes had trouble distinguishing between the orthographically correct spellings for certain words, for instance involving <ι>, <η>, and <ει>. This provided evidence that these vowels had already begun to merge in the living speech of the period. While scholars in Greece were quick to emphasise these findings in order to cast doubt on the Erasmian system as a whole, some western European scholars tended to downplay them, explaining early instances of such orthographical aberrations as either isolated exceptions or influences from non-Attic, non-standard dialects. In doing so, some scholars seem to have been influenced by an ideologically motivated tendency to regard post-classical, especially Byzantine and Modern Greek as an inferior, vulgarised form of the language, and by a wish to see the picture of ancient Greek preserved in what they regarded as its 'pure' state. The resulting debate, as it was conducted during the 19th century, finds its expression in, for instance, the works of A. N. Jannaris (1897) and T. Papadimitrakopoulos (1889) on the anti-Erasmian side, and of Friedrich Blass
(1870) on the pro-Erasmian side.
It was not until the early 20th century and the work of G. Chatzidakis, a linguist often credited to have first introduced the methods of modern historical linguistics into the Greek academic establishment, that the validity of the comparative method and its reconstructions for Greek began to be widely accepted among Greek scholars too. The international consensus view that had been reached by the early and mid 20th century is represented in the works of Sturtevant (1940) and Allen (1968).
is likely to have been spoken with a pronunciation that already approached the Modern Greek one in many crucial respects.
Recently, there has been one attempt at a more radically revisionist, anti-Erasmian reconstruction, proposed by the theologian and philologist C. Caragounis (1995, 2004). On the basis of the inscriptional record, Caragounis dates virtually all relevant vowel changes into or before the early classical period. He relies heavily upon Threatte and Gignac for data from the papyri, but he provides little if any actual interaction with their own markedly different analyses of the very same historical data. He also argues for a very early fricative status of the aspirate and medial consonants, and casts doubt on the validity of the vowel-length and accent distinctions in the spoken language in general. These views are currently isolated within the field.
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
, or pronunciation
Pronunciation
Pronunciation refers to the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular dialect....
, of Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
. Because of the passage of time, the original pronunciation of Ancient Greek, like that of all ancient languages, can never be known with absolute certainty. Linguistic reconstructions have been widely debated in the past; however, a good approximation can be established and there is now a consensus in scholarship.
Other stages of Greek
The reconstructed sound systems of Greek at several stages of its history can be found in Koine Greek phonologyKoine Greek phonology
Koine Greek is phonologically a transition period: at the start of the period, the language was generally virtually identical to Classical Ancient Greek, whereas in the end the language had phonologically a lot more in common with Modern Greek than Ancient Greek....
. Summaries of the reconstructed sound systems of Greek at several stages of its history can be found in Ancient Greek (or classical Attic Greek), Koine Greek, and Greek language. Only the pronunciation of the classical Attic dialect of the 5th century BC, including its later development towards Koine Greek, is explored here. The practical pronunciations of Ancient Greek used in teaching and literary study today is discussed in Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching
Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching
Ancient Greek has been pronounced in various ways by those studying Ancient Greek literature in various times and places. This article covers those pronunciations; the modern scholarly reconstruction of its ancient pronunciation is covered in Ancient Greek phonology.-Greek world:Among speakers of...
.
Consonants
In comparison with the vowels, the structure of the consonant inventory of Greek has remained relatively stable over time as far as the number of distinctive sounds is concerned. However, the phonetic nature of many sounds is thought to have changed radically, as a whole set of plosive sounds has turned into fricatives.Plosives
All the following sounds are thought to have been plosives in Attic Greek. Ancient grammarians (beginning with Aristotle, Poetics) collectively refer to them as .| Traditional name | Phonetic description | Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Dental | Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ψιλά (Tenues) | voiceless | /p/ π Pi (letter) Pi is the sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, representing . In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 80. Letters that arose from pi include Cyrillic Pe , Coptic pi , and Gothic pairthra .The upper-case letter Π is used as a symbol for:... |
/t/ τ | /k/ κ |
| Μέσα (Mediae) | voiced | /b/ β Beta (letter) Beta is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiodental fricative .... |
/d/ δ Delta (letter) Delta is the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 4. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Dalet... |
/ɡ/ γ |
| Δασέα (Aspiratae) | aspirated voiceless | /pʰ/ φ Phi Phi may refer to:In language:*Phi, the Greek letter Φ,φ, the symbol for voiceless bilabial fricativeIn mathematics:*The Golden ratio*Euler's totient function*A statistical measure of association reported with the chi-squared test... |
/tʰ/ θ Theta Theta is the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet, derived from the Phoenician letter Teth... |
/kʰ/ χ Chi (letter) Chi is the 22nd letter of the Greek alphabet, pronounced as in English.-Greek:-Ancient Greek:Its value in Ancient Greek was an aspirated velar stop .-Koine Greek:... |
All of the mediae changed to voiced fricatives later ([v], [ð], [ɣ] ~ [ʝ]), and all of the aspiratae changed to voiceless fricatives ([f], [θ], [x] ~ [ç]). These are also their values in Modern Greek
Modern Greek
Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
. The changes are assumed to have happened in antiquity, during the time of Koine Greek
Koine Greek
Koine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....
, but probably after the time of classical Attic Greek
Attic Greek
Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek". It is sometimes included in Ionic.- Origin and range...
. The changes probably started with the voiced velar [ɡ] > [ɣ] ~ [ʝ] (in the 3rd century BC) and were completed some time during the 1st century AD with the aspiratae.
In the case of the labials, the change must have proceeded through the intermediate stage of bilabial
Bilabial consonant
In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
fricatives [β] and [ɸ], as the modern values are not bilabial but labio-dental
Labiodental consonant
In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
.
Other consonants
Apart from the plosives, the consonant inventory of Classical Greek contains two nasals (/m/, /n/), two liquids (/l/ and /r/) and two fricatives (/h/ and /s/) which are further discussed in separate subsections below. Ancient grammarians classified the nasals, liquids and /s/ together as hemiphona , by which they probably meant that unlike the aphona , these sounds could be sustained in pronunciation without vocalic support.As the terminology of aphona and hemiphona applied to letters of the alphabet rather than phonemes, the letters ψ
Psi (letter)
Psi is the 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet and has a numeric value of 700. In both Classical and Modern Greek, the letter indicates the combination /ps/ . The letter was adopted into the Old Italic alphabet, and its shape is continued into the Algiz rune of the Elder Futhark...
, ξ
Xi
Xi is the 14th letter of the Greek alphabet. It is pronounced in Modern Greek, and generally or in English...
and ζ
Zeta (letter)
Zeta is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 7. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Zayin...
each standing for a consonantal cluster and collectively referred to as ("double letters"), were also grouped with the hemiphona, presumably because they all contained a sibilant as an element. The pronunciation of ζ is not entirely clear. For metrical purposes it was treated as a double consonant, thus forming a heavy syllable (see below). It is normally assumed to have been pronounced in Classical Attic and immediately preceding dialects as [zd], although there is some disagreement about this; some scholars assert that it was pronounced [dz]. The arguments for each pronunciation are put forward in Zeta (letter)
Zeta (letter)
Zeta is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 7. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Zayin...
. It is quite possible that its pronunciation varied among different dialects. During the classical period, its pronunciation changed to [z]. The two other dipla were probably pronounced [pʰs] and [kʰs] in Classical Attic (they were written <ΦΣ> and <ΧΣ> in the old alphabet), but the aspiration of the first element was phonologically irrelevant.
Nasals
These are the bilabial nasalNasal consonant
A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
/m/, written μ
Mu (letter)
Carlos Alberto Vives Restrepo is a Grammy Award and three-time Latin Grammy Award winning-Colombian singer, composer and actor.-Biography:...
and the alveolar nasal /n/, written ν
Nu (letter)
Nu , is the 13th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 50...
.
Depending on the phonetic environment, the phoneme /n/ was realized in speech in four distinct manners:
- before the labials /b/, /p/, and /pʰ/, it changes to [m] and it is there represented in writing by μ. So for example: . The same is true when the labial is followed by /s/, as in ;
- before the nasal /m/, there is still assimilation in place of articulation but gemination occurs and the two nasals are pronounced together as a prolonged bilabial nasal [mː] and represented in writing by μμ. E.g.: ;
- before the velars /ɡ/, /k/, /kʰ/, the phoneme /n/ was realized as [ŋ] and is there represented in writing by γ. So for example: . The same is true when the velar is followed by /s/, as in , but this occurs less often. Hence, the spelling γγ does not represent the geminated plosive [ɡː] (compounds with the preposition and a stem beginning with /ɡ/ probably had [ɡː], but traditional orthography has in such words);
- In all other environments the phoneme /n/ is realized regularly as [n].
On occasion, the /n/ phoneme participates in true gemination without any assimilation in place of articulation, as for example in the word . Artificial gemination for metrical purposes is also found occasionally, as in the form , occurring in the first verse of Homer’s Odyssey.
Liquids
Ancient Greek has the liquids /l/ and /r/, written λLambda
Lambda is the 11th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals lambda has a value of 30. Lambda is related to the Phoenician letter Lamed . Letters in other alphabets that stemmed from lambda include the Roman L and the Cyrillic letter El...
and ρ
Rho
Rho is the 17th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 100. It is derived from Semitic resh "head"...
respectively.
The letter λ (lambda) probably represented a lateral ("clear") l as in Modern Greek and most European languages, rather than a velarized ("dark") ɫ as in English in coda position
Syllable coda
In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a rime. Some syllables consist only of a nucleus with no coda...
. When /n/ precedes /l/, the first consonant assimilates to the second, gemination
Gemination
In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....
takes place, and the combination is pronounced [lː], as in from underlying
Underlying representation
In some models of phonology as well as morphophonology, the underlying representation or underlying form of a word or morpheme is the abstract form the word or morpheme is postulated to have before any phonological rules have applied to it. If more rules apply to the same form, they can apply...
.
The letter ρ (rho) probably stood for an alveolar trill
Alveolar trill
The alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar trills is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r. It is commonly called the rolled R, rolling R, or trilled R...
sound, [r] more like Italian ("rusticana") or Modern Greek than the English or French r sounds. Word initially, ρ is invariably written with the spiritus asper as , probably representing a voiceless or aspirated allophone of /r/ ([ r̥] or [rʰ]), hence the traditional transliteration rh. The same orthography is sometimes encountered when /r/ is geminated, as in , sometimes written , giving rise to the transliteration rrh. This example also illustrates that /n/ assimilates to following /r/, creating gemination.
Fricatives
Before the mediae and aspiratae became fricatives, Greek probably only had two fricative phonemes: the sibilantSibilant consonant
A sibilant is a manner of articulation of fricative and affricate consonants, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the sharp edge of the teeth, which are held close together. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words sip, zip, ship, chip,...
/s/ written with a sigma (Σ,σ,ς), and the glottal
Voiceless glottal fricative
The voiceless glottal transition, commonly called a "fricative", is a type of sound used in some spoken languages which patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant phonologically, but often lacks the usual phonetic characteristics of a consonant...
/h/. The former is likely to have had a voiced allophone
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
[z] before other voiced consonants, which was not distinguished from sigma in writing.
/h/ could stand only in word-initial position. In Attic, it was originally written with the letter Η
ETA
ETA , an acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna is an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization. The group was founded in 1959 and has since evolved from a group promoting traditional Basque culture to a paramilitary group with the goal of gaining independence for the Greater Basque Country...
. Partly before and partly during classical times, /h/ was lost in pronunciation in Ionian and Aeolian (a process also known as psilosis
Psilosis
Psilosis is the sound change in which Greek lost the consonant sound /h/ during antiquity. The term comes from the Greek psílōsis and is related to the name of the smooth breathing , the sign for the absence of initial in a word...
), but Attic preserved the sound longer than these dialects. In Ionic, where it had been lost early, the letter Η was then co-opted to serve as a vowel letter. On adoption of the Ionic alphabet in the other dialect areas (in Athens in 403 BCE), the sound /h/ ceased to be represented in writing. In some inscriptions it was instead indicated by a symbol formed from the left-hand half of the original letter. Later grammarians, during the time of the Hellenistic Koine, developed that symbol further into the spiritus asper
Spiritus asper
In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing , is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, diphthong, or rho. It remained in the polytonic orthography even after the Hellenistic period, when the sound disappeared from the Greek language...
, which they no longer treated as a letter in its own right but as a diacritic written on the top of the initial vowel. Correspondingly, they introduced the reverse diacritic called spiritus lenis
Spiritus lenis
The smooth breathing is a diacritical mark used in polytonic orthography. In ancient Greek, it marks the absence of the voiceless glottal fricative from the beginning of a word....
, which indicated the absence of aspiration. These signs were not adopted universally until the Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
age.
The letter digamma
Digamma
Digamma is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet which originally stood for the sound /w/ and later remained in use only as a numeral symbol for the number "6"...
, written , was used in some dialects to represent the sound /w/ in syllable-initial position. This sound had been lost in Attic and Ionic before the classical period, and the letter was no longer used except as a numeral (= 6, later replaced by ϛ
Stigma (letter)
Stigma is a ligature of the Greek letters sigma and tau , which was used in writing Greek between the middle ages and the 19th century. It is also used as a numeral symbol for the number 6...
). The /w/ of other Greek dialects and of foreign languages was normally rendered with <β> and later also with <ου>.
Doubled consonants
GeminationGemination
In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....
was distinctive in Ancient Greek, so doubled consonants would have been prolonged in pronunciation, as confirmed by metrical considerations and the modern Greek dialect of Cyprus. Doubled consonants do not occur at the start or end of words. φ, θ, χ are not doubled in the orthography, the combinations πφ, τθ, and κχ being used instead (compare doubled rho above).
A doubled sigma (σσ) in most Ancient Greek dialects and in Koine is generally replaced in Attic by a doubled tau (ττ). This often comes from palatalization of κ, χ, and sometimes γ before the pre-Greek semivowel
Semivowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...
y. In Greek grammar, y is often written as iota with a non-syllabic diacritic (ι̯).
- ἥκ-ι̯ων → ἥσσων/ἥττων "weaker" (compare ἦκα "softly")
- τάγ-ι̯ω → τάσσω/τάττω "I arrange" (compare ταγή "commander")
- γλῶχ-ι̯α → γλῶσσα/γλῶττα "tongue" (compare γλωχίν "point")
Vowels
Attic Greek phonemically contrasted long and short vowels. The vowel inventory of Attic Greek, as reconstructed, contained five short and seven long vowels as distinct phonemes. Their exact pronunciation at any particular period is difficult to establish with precision, but the following scheme, proposed by Allen (1968), is generally accepted. The following tables show the vowels in IPA notation, together with the corresponding letters of the Greek alphabet, as used in classical Attic orthography.Short vowels
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | round | ||
| Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
/i/ ι | /y/ υ | |
| Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel... |
/e/ ε | /o/ ο | |
| Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
/a/ α | ||
It is apparent that short mid vowels were high-mid, while the long ones were low-mid before the lengthenings of the short vowels due to contraction or loss of a following consonant
Compensatory lengthening
Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda...
(see below). Note that early vowel lengthening in Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
or early Proto-Greek
Proto-Greek language
The Proto-Greek language is the assumed last common ancestor of all known varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean, the classical Greek dialects , and ultimately Koine, Byzantine and modern Greek...
times (e.g. in the subjunctive or in the lengthened root vowels of futures and aorists) did not produce the same results. This might indicate that long and short vowels had the same quality at that time; or it might simply indicate that the phonemic distinction between high-mid and low-mid long vowels had not yet developed, and as such the newly lengthened vowel would have had its quality automatically adjusted as appropriate. In Doric Greek
Doric Greek
Doric or Dorian was a dialect of ancient Greek. Its variants were spoken in the southern and eastern Peloponnese, Crete, Rhodes, some islands in the southern Aegean Sea, some cities on the coasts of Asia Minor, Southern Italy, Sicily, Epirus and Macedon. Together with Northwest Greek, it forms the...
, even late lengthening of short mid vowels produced long low-mid vowels, suggesting that the short vowels were also low-mid in this dialect.
Long vowels
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | ||
| Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
/iː/ ι | /yː/ υ | |
| Close-mid Close-mid vowel A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel... |
/eː/ ει | /oː/ ου | |
| Open-mid Open-mid vowel An open-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel... |
/ɛː/ η | /ɔː/ ω | |
| Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
/aː/ α | ||
The close front rounded
Close front rounded vowel
The close front rounded vowel, or high front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is y...
vowels /y/ and /yː/ are both represented in writing by the letter υ (upsilon)
Upsilon
Upsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw. The name of the letter is pronounced in Modern Greek, and in English , , or...
irrespective of length. At an earlier date, they had been [u] and [uː]. It is difficult to determine with precision when the fronting occurred. It was likely a gradual process with a close central rounded vowel as an intermediate stage. The fronting did not occur in all ancient Greek dialects, but it was inherited by Koine Greek. The unrounding that produced the modern Greek
Modern Greek
Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
[i] sound of the letter occurred in Byzantine
Byzantine
Byzantine usually refers to the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages.Byzantine may also refer to:* A citizen of the Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...
times, long after the loss of length contrast between long and short upsilon.
The long close-mid vowels /eː/ and /oː/ had a complex history. In some instances, they had earlier been falling diphthongs [ei] and [ou] respectively, and the spellings ει and ου reflect this origin. In other instances, they arose through lengthening of earlier short /e/ and /o/ respectively, compensating for a following consonant or consonant cluster that was lost in pre-alphabetic times. Thus, e.g.: for earlier *lutʰents, *luontsi. In yet different instances, /eː/ arises through contraction of <εε> and /oː/ through contraction of <εο>, <οε>, or
During or soon after the classical period, both /eː/ and /oː/ were raised towards [iː] and [uː] respectively. /eː/ (ει) thus merged with original /iː/, while /oː/ (ου) took up the empty space of the earlier /uː/ phoneme, which had by that time been fronted to /yː/ (see above). The fact that <υ> was never confused with <ου> indicates that <υ> was fronted before <ου> was raised or that the two sound changes occurred simultaneously.
Alphabetic representation of the vowels of Attic
The above information about the usage of the vowel letters applies to the classical orthography of Attic, after Athens took over the orthographic conventions of the Ionic alphabet in 403 BC403 BC
Year 403 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Tribunate of Mamercinus, Varus, Potitus, Iullus, Crassus and Fusus...
. In the earlier, traditional Attic orthography there was only a smaller repertoire of vowel symbols: α, ε, ι, ο, and υ. The letters η and ω were still missing. All five vowel symbols could at that stage denote either a long or a short vowel. Moreover, the mid-vowel symbols ε and ο could denote both the open-mid /ɛː, ɔː/ and the close-mid long phonemes /eː, oː/ respectively. The Ionic alphabet brought the new letters η and ω for the one set of long vowels, and the convention of using the digraph spellings ει and ου for the other, leaving simple ε and ο to be used only for the short vowels. However, the remaining vowel letters α, ι and υ continued to be ambiguous between long and short phonemes.
Diphthongs
Ancient Greek had a large number of diphthongs. All of them were closing diphthongsDiphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
, ending in either /i/ or /u/ as a semi-vocalic offglide.
The first element of the diphthong could either be short or long. This gives the following inventory:
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
|
|---|---|---|
| Mid Short Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel... |
/eu/ ευ | /ɔi/ οι |
| Open-Mid Long Open-mid vowel An open-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel... |
/ɛːu/ ηυ /ɛːi/ ῃ | /ɔːi/ ῳ |
| Open Short Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
/au/ αυ /ai/ αι | |
| Open Long Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
/aːi/ ᾳ |
In the back diphthongs (αυ, ευ, ηυ), the offglide became consonantal during the Hellenistic age, ultimately leading to Modern Greek /av/, /ev/, /iv/. /ɔːu/ was rare and did not occur in classical Attic (but did in Ionic).
In pre-classical Greek, the following additional diphthongs existed that later changed to long vowels:
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
|
|---|---|---|
| Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
/ei/ ει | /ou/ ου |
Syllables
In Ancient Greek the distinction between heavy and light syllablesSyllable weight
In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. In classical poetry, both Greek and Latin, distinctions of syllable weight were fundamental to the meter of the line....
is important as the key element in classical versification. A heavy syllable (sometimes called a long syllable, but this risks confusion with long vowels) is a syllable that either contains a long vowel or a diphthong, or ends in a consonant. If a single consonant occurs between two syllables within a word, it is considered to belong to the following syllable, so the syllable before the consonant is light if it contains a short vowel. If two or more consonants, a double consonant (ζ, ξ or ψ) or a geminated consonant, occur between syllables within a word, the first of the consonants goes with the first syllable, making it heavy. Certain combinations of consonants, namely aphona plus liquids or nasals (e.g. τρ or κν) are exceptions, as in some circumstances both consonants go with the second syllable — a phenomenon known as "correptio attica". The ancient grammarians called a heavy syllable with a short vowel ― "long by convention" (this was translated into Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
as positione longa ― "long by position"), and a syllable with a long vowel ― long by nature ― natura longa.
Accent
In Ancient Greek one syllable of a word was normally accented. Unlike Modern Greek, this was a pitch accentPitch accent
Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
, meaning that the accented syllable was pronounced at a higher pitch than the other syllables; Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...
states that the interval was approximately that of a fifth
Perfect fifth
In classical music from Western culture, a fifth is a musical interval encompassing five staff positions , and the perfect fifth is a fifth spanning seven semitones, or in meantone, four diatonic semitones and three chromatic semitones...
in music. In standard polytonic orthography (invented in the Hellenistic age, but not adopted universally until Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
times), the acute accent
Acute accent
The acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
is used to indicate a simple accented syllable. In long vowels and diphthongs the accent could fall on either half (or mora
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
) of the syllable: if it fell on the first mora, so that the syllable had a high tone followed by a low tone, it is indicated in polytonic orthography by the circumflex
Circumflex
The circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
: e.g. /ée/ = ~ /eé/ = .
The accent can fall only on one of the last three syllables of a word, and if the last syllable contains a long vowel or diphthong, it can fall only on one of the last two syllables. The circumflex can only fall on the last two syllables, and only if that syllable contains a long vowel or diphthong. An acute accent on a final syllable (except before a pause or an enclitic word) is regularly replaced in the orthography by a grave accent
Grave accent
The grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...
: this may indicate a lowering of tone, but the evidence from ancient authors is unclear on this point.
If the penultimate syllable is accented, it normally has the circumflex if it contains a long vowel or diphthong and the last syllable contains a short vowel, otherwise it has the acute. An accented final syllable can have either the acute (or grave) or the circumflex.
In some inflected forms, final αι and οι are treated as if they were short vowels (or, rather, combinations of a short vowel and a semivowel glide).
Phonotactics
In Ancient Greek, any vowel may end a word, but the only consonants that may normally end a word are ν, ρ, ς. If a stop ended a word in Proto-Indo-European, this was dropped in Ancient Greek, as in ποίημα (from ποίηματ; compare the genitive singular ποιήματος). Other consonants may end a word, however, when a final vowel is elided before a word beginning in a vowel, as in ἐφ᾿ ἵππῳ (from ἐπὶ ἵππῳ).Reconstruction
The above information is based on a large body of evidence which was discussed extensively by linguists and philologists of the 19th and 20th centuries. The following section provides a short summary of the kinds of evidence and arguments that have been used in this debate, and gives some hints as to the sources of uncertainty that still prevails with respect to some details.Initial systematicity between letters and sounds
As is the case whenever an alphabetic script is devised or adopted for a language, a significant degree of systematicity, if not a one to one correspondence, is at play between the letters of the alphabet and the sounds of the language it represents. This renders spelling mistakes unlikely "by design" for as long as the pronunciation of the language remains unchanged, following the adoption of the alphabet. As the pronunciation undergoes change over successive generations of speakers, either the spelling conventions end up changing in an attempt to reflect the corresponding changes in pronunciation, or else the spelling remains conservative, and a traditional spelling becomes established. In the former case, which may be termed a spelling reform, the date of introduction of the reform provides a date a quo for the corresponding changes in pronunciation. In the latter case, when a historical orthography is established, spelling mistakes by writers with imperfect knowledge of the writing conventions become the principal tools that allow linguists to reconstruct pronunciation and date its evolution over time.Spelling mistakes
- If it is found that scribes very often confuse two letters, then it can be inferred that the sounds denoted by the two letters had merged into one in speech. This happened early, for instance, between <ι> and <ει>, a little later between <υ> and <οι>, between <ο> and <ω>, and between <ε> and <αι>, later still between <η> and the already merged <ι> and <ει>.
- If it is found that scribes very often omit a letter where it would be needed in standard orthography, or that they falsely insert it where it did not belong (hypercorrectionHypercorrectionIn linguistics or usage, hypercorrection is a non-standard usage that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of grammar or a usage prescription...
), then it can be inferred that the sound denoted by that letter had been lost in speech. This happened early with word-initial spiritus asper ([h]) in most forms of Greek. Another example is the occasional omission of the subscripted iota of long diphthongs (see above).
Spelling mistakes are an important type of evidence, but they have their limitations. They only prove that the phonetic development in question existed in the language of the particular scribe, not that it was adopted universally by all speakers of the language at the time. Ancient Greek was not homogeneous or static, but a language divided in many regional variants and social registers. Many of the linguistic features characteristic of Late and Modern Greek were probably anticipated in some dialects and some registers of Attic already in the Classical Age, but the older varieties seem to have persisted for centuries.
Onomatopoeic words
Greek literature sometimes contains representations of animal cries in Greek letters. The most often quoted example is "", used to render the cry of sheep, and is used as evidence that beta had a voiced bilabial plosive pronunciation and eta was a long open-mid front vowel. Onomatopoeic verbs such as μυκάομαι for the lowing of cattle (cf. Latin mugire), βρυχάομαι for the roaring of lions (cf. Latin rugire) and κόκκυξ as the name of the cuckoo (cf. Latin cuculus) suggest an archaic [u:] pronunciation of long upsilon, before this vowel was fronted to [y:].Morpho-phonological facts
Sounds undergo regular changes, such as assimilations or dissimilations, in certain environments within words, which are sometimes indicated in writing. These can be used to reconstruct the nature of the sounds involved.- <π,τ,κ> at the end of some words are regularly changed to <φ,θ,χ> when preceding a spiritus asper in the next word. Thus, e.g.: for or for .
- <π,τ,κ> at the end of the first member of composite words are regularly changed to <φ,θ,χ> when preceding a spiritus asper in the next member of the composite word. Thus e.g.:
- The Attic dialect in particular is marked by contractions: two vowels without an intervening consonant were merged together in a single syllable; for instance uncontracted (disyllabic) <εα> ([e.a]) occurs regularly in dialects but contracts to <η> in Attic, supporting the view that η was pronounced [ɛː] (intermediate between [e] and [a]) rather than [iː] as in Modern Greek. Similarly, uncontracted <εε>, <οο> ([e.e], [o.o]) occur regularly in Ionic but contract to <ει> and <ου> in Attic, suggesting [eː], [oː] values for the spurious <ει> and <ου> diphthongs in Attic as opposed to the [i] and [u] sounds they later acquired.
Non-standard spellings
Morphophonological alternations like the above are often treated differently in non-standard spellings than in standardised literary spelling. This may lead to doubts about the representativity of the literary dialect and may in some cases force slightly different reconstructions than if one were only to take the literary texts of the high standard language into account. Thus, e.g.:- non-standard epigraphical spelling sometimes indicates assimilation of final <κ> to <γ> before voiced consonants in a following word, or of final <κ> to <χ> before aspirated sounds, in words like .
Metrical evidence
The metres used in Classical Greek poetry are based on the patterns of light and heavy syllables, and can thus sometimes provide evidence as to the length of vowels where this is not evident from the orthography. By the 4th century AD poetry was normally written using stress-based metres, suggesting that the distinctions between long and short vowels had been lost by then, and the pitch accent had been replaced by a stress accent.Orthoepic descriptions
Some ancient grammarians attempt to give systematic descriptions of the sounds of the language. In other authors one can sometimes find occasional remarks about correct pronunciation of certain sounds. However, both types of evidence are often difficult to interpret, because the phonetic terminology of the time was often vague, and it is often not clear in what relation the described forms of the language stand to those which were actually spoken by different groups of the population.Important ancient authors include:
- Dionysius ThraxDionysius ThraxDionysius Thrax was a Hellenistic grammarian and a pupil of Aristarchus of Samothrace. His place of origin was not Thrace as the epithet Thrax denotes, but probably Alexandria...
- Dionysius of HalicarnassusDionysius of HalicarnassusDionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...
- Aelius HerodianusAelius HerodianusAelius Herodianus or Herodian was one of the most celebrated grammarians of Greco-Roman antiquity. He is usually known as Herodian except when there is a danger of confusion with the historian also named Herodian....
Cross-dialectal comparison
Sometimes the comparison of standard Attic Greek with the written forms of other Greek dialects, or with the humorous renderings of 'alien' dialectal speech (e.g. Spartan DoricDoric Greek
Doric or Dorian was a dialect of ancient Greek. Its variants were spoken in the southern and eastern Peloponnese, Crete, Rhodes, some islands in the southern Aegean Sea, some cities on the coasts of Asia Minor, Southern Italy, Sicily, Epirus and Macedon. Together with Northwest Greek, it forms the...
) in Attic theatrical works, can provide hints as to the phonetic value of certain spellings.
Towards the end of the 5th century BC, Attic authors sometimes transcribe by σ the sound of Spartan θ : in Aristophanes (Lysistrata) and we also find in Thucydides
Thucydides
Thucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...
with the latter spelling found even in Spartan inscriptions of the 4th century BC. It can be inferred that in Spartan Doric, <θ> was already a fricative (at least in pre-vocalic position) and could be made fun of, since Attic maintained the plosive pronunciation.
Loanwords
The spelling of Greek loanwordLoanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s in other languages and conversely, the spelling of foreign loanwords in Greek, can provide important hints about pronunciation. However, the evidence is often difficult to interpret or indecisive. The sounds of loanwords are often not taken over identically into the receiving language. Where the receiving language lacks a sound that corresponds exactly to that of the source language, sounds are usually mapped to some other, similar sound.
In this regard, Latin is of great value to the reconstruction of ancient Greek phonology because of its close proximity to the Greek world which caused numerous Greek words to be borrowed by the Romans. At first, Greek loanwords denoting technical terms or proper names which contained the letter Φ
Phi (letter)
Phi , pronounced or sometimes in English, and in modern Greek, is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. In modern Greek, it represents , a voiceless labiodental fricative. In Ancient Greek it represented , an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive...
were imported in Latin with the spelling P or PH, indicating an effort to imitate, albeit imperfectly, a sound that Latin lacked. Later on, in the 1st centuries AD, spellings with F start to appear in such loanwords, signaling the onset of the fricative pronunciation of Φ. Thus, in the 2nd century AD, Filippus replaces P(h)ilippus. At about the same time, the letter F also begins to be used as a substitute for the letter Θ, for lack of a better choice, indicating that the sound of Greek theta had become a fricative as well.
For the purpose of borrowing certain other Greek words, the Romans added the letters Y and Z to the Latin alphabet, taken directly from the Greek one. These additions are important as they show that the Romans had no symbols to represent the sounds of the letters Υ and Ζ
Zeta (letter)
Zeta is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 7. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Zayin...
in Greek, which means that in these cases no known sound of Latin can be used to reconstruct the Greek sounds.
Comparison with older alphabets
The Greek alphabet developed from the older Phoenician alphabetPhoenician alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, was a non-pictographic consonantal alphabet, or abjad. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia...
. It may be assumed that the Greeks tended to assign to each Phoenician letter that Greek sound which most closely resembled the Phoenician sound. But, as with loanwords, the interpretation is not straightforward.
Comparison with younger/derived alphabets
The Greek alphabet was in turn the basis of other alphabets, notably the Etruscan and CopticCoptic alphabet
The Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the Greek alphabet augmented by letters borrowed from the Demotic and is the first alphabetic script used for the Egyptian language...
and later the Armenian
Armenian alphabet
The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. It was devised by Saint Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader, and contained originally 36 letters. Two more letters, օ and ֆ, were added in the Middle Ages...
, Gothic
Gothic alphabet
The Gothic alphabet is an alphabet for writing the Gothic language, created in the 4th century by Ulfilas for the purpose of translating the Christian Bible....
, and Cyrillic
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
. Similar arguments can be derived in these cases as in the Phoenician-Greek case.
For example, in Cyrillic, the letter В (ve) stands for [v], confirming that beta was pronounced as a fricative by the 9th century AD, while the new letter Б (be) was invented to note the sound [b]. Conversely, in Gothic, the letter derived from beta stands for [b], so in the 4th century AD, beta was still a plosive in Greek.
Comparison with Modern Greek
Any reconstruction of Ancient Greek needs to take into account how the sounds later developed towards Modern Greek, and how these changes could have occurred. In general, the changes between the reconstructed Ancient Greek and Modern Greek are assumed to be unproblematic in this respect by historical linguists, because all the relevant changes (spirantization, chain-shifts of long vowels towards [i], loss of initial [h], restructuring of vowel-length and accentuation systems, etc.) are of types that are cross-linguistically frequently attested and relatively easy to explain.Comparative reconstruction of Indo-European
Systematic relationships between sounds in Greek and sounds in other Indo-European languages are taken as strong evidence for reconstruction by historical linguists, because such relationships prove that these sounds must go back to an inherited sound in the proto-language.The Renaissance
Until the 15th century (during the time of the Byzantine Greek Empire) ancient Greek texts were pronounced exactly like contemporary Greek when they were read aloud. From about 1486, various scholars (notably Antonio of Lebrixa, Girolamo Aleandro, and Aldus ManutiusAldus Manutius
Aldus Pius Manutius , the Latinised name of Aldo Manuzio —sometimes called Aldus Manutius, the Elder to distinguish him from his grandson, Aldus Manutius, the Younger—was an Italian humanist who became a printer and publisher when he founded the Aldine Press at Venice.His publishing legacy includes...
) judged that this pronunciation appeared to be inconsistent with the descriptions handed down by ancient grammarians, and suggested alternative pronunciations.
Johann Reuchlin
Johann Reuchlin
Johann Reuchlin was a German humanist and a scholar of Greek and Hebrew. For much of his life, he was the real centre of all Greek and Hebrew teaching in Germany.-Early life:...
, the leading Greek scholar in the West around 1500, had taken his Greek learning from Byzantine émigré scholars, and continued to use the modern pronunciation. This pronunciation system was called into question by Erasmus (1466–1536) who in 1528 published De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione dialogus, a philological treatise clothed in the form of a philosophical dialogue, in which he developed the idea of a historical reconstruction of ancient Latin and Greek pronunciation. The two models of pronunciation became soon known, after their principal proponents, as the "Reuchlinian" and the "Erasmian" system, or, after the characteristic vowel pronunciations, as the "itacist" (or "iotacist") and the "etacist" system, respectively.
Erasmus' reconstruction was based on a wide range of arguments, derived from the philological knowledge available at his time. In the main, he strove for a more regular correspondence of letters to sounds, assuming that different letters must have stood for different sounds, and same letters for same sounds. That led him, for instance, to posit that the various letters which in the itacist system all denoted [i] must have had different values, and that ει, αι, οι, ευ, αυ, ου were all diphthongs with a closing offglide. He also insisted on taking the accounts of ancient grammarians literally, for instance where they described vowels as being distinctively long and short, or the acute and circumflex accents as being clearly distinguished by pitch contours. In addition, he drew on evidence from word correspondences between Greek and Latin as well as some other European languages. Some of his arguments in this direction are, in hindsight, mistaken, because he naturally lacked much of the knowledge developed through later linguistic work. Thus, he could not distinguish between Latin-Greek word relations based on loans (e.g. — Phoebus) on the one hand, and those based on common descent from Indo-European
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
(e.g. — fūr) on the other. He also fell victim to a few spurious relations due to mere accidental similarity (e.g. Greek "sacrifice" — French tuer, "kill"). In other areas, his arguments are of quite the same kind as those used by modern linguistics, e.g. where he argues on the basis of cross-dialectal correspondences within Greek that η must have been a rather open e-sound, close to [a].
Erasmus also took great pains to assign to the members in his reconstructed system plausible phonetic values. This was no easy task, as contemporary grammatical theory lacked the rich and precise terminology to describe such values. In order to overcome that problem, Erasmus drew upon his knowledge of the sound repertoires of contemporary living languages, for instance likening his reconstructed η to Scots a ([æ]), his reconstructed ου to Dutch ou ([oʊ]), and his reconstructed οι to French oi ([oɪ]).
Erasmus assigned to the Greek consonant letters β, γ, δ the sounds of voiced plosives /b/, /ɡ/, /d/, while for the consonant letters φ, θ, and χ he advocated the use of fricatives /f/, /θ/, /x/ as in Modern Greek (arguing, however, that this type of /f/ must have been different from that denoted by Latin
The reception of Erasmus' idea among his contemporaries was mixed. Most prominent among those scholars who resisted his move was Philipp Melanchthon
Philipp Melanchthon
Philipp Melanchthon , born Philipp Schwartzerdt, was a German reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and an influential designer of educational systems...
, a student of Reuchlin's. Debate in humanist circles continued up into the 17th century, but the situation remained undecided for several centuries. (See Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching
Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching
Ancient Greek has been pronounced in various ways by those studying Ancient Greek literature in various times and places. This article covers those pronunciations; the modern scholarly reconstruction of its ancient pronunciation is covered in Ancient Greek phonology.-Greek world:Among speakers of...
.)
The 19th century
A renewed interest in the issues of reconstructed pronunciation arose during the 19th century. On the one hand, the new science of historical linguisticsHistorical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
, based on the method of comparative reconstruction, took a vivid interest in Greek. It soon established beyond any doubt that Greek was descended in parallel with many other languages from the common source of the Indo-European
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
proto-language. This had important consequences for how its phonological system must be reconstructed. At the same time, continued work in philology and archeology was bringing to light an ever-growing corpus of non-standard, non-literary and non-classical Greek writings, e.g. inscriptions and later also papyri. These added considerably to what could be known about the development of the language. On the other hand, there was a revival of academic life in Greece after the establishment of the Greek state
Greek War of Independence
The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution was a successful war of independence waged by the Greek revolutionaries between...
in 1830, and scholars in Greece were at first reluctant to accept the seemingly foreign idea that Greek should have been pronounced so differently from what they knew.
Comparative linguistics led to a picture of ancient Greek that more or less corroborated Erasmus' view, though with some modifications. It soon became clear, for instance, that the pattern of long and short vowels observed in Greek was mirrored in similar oppositions in other languages and thus had to be a common inheritance (see Ablaut
Apophony
In linguistics, apophony is the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammatical information .-Description:Apophony is...
); that Greek <υ> had to have been [u] at some stage because it regularly corresponded to [u] in all other Indo-European languages (cf. Gr. : Lat. mūs); that many instances of <η> had earlier been [a:] (cf. Gr. μήτηρ : Lat. māter); that Greek <ου> sometimes stood in words that had been lengthened from <ο> and therefore must have been pronounced [o:] at some stage (the same holds analogically for <ε> and <ει>, which must have been [e:]), and so on. For the consonants, historical linguistics established the originally plosive nature of both the aspirates <φ,θ,χ> [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ] and the mediae <β,δ,γ> [b, d, ɡ], which were recognised to be a direct continuation of similar sounds in Indo-European (reconstructed and ). It was also recognised that the word-initial spiritus asper was most often a reflex of earlier *s (cf. Gr. : Lat. septem), which was believed to have been weakened to [h] in pronunciation. Work was also done reconstructing the linguistic background to the rules of ancient Greek versification, especially in Homer, which shed important light on the phonology regarding syllable structure and accent. Scholars also described and explained the regularities in the development of consonants and vowels under processes of assimilation, reduplication, compensatory lengthening etc.
While comparative linguistics could in this way firmly establish that a certain source state, roughly along the Erasmian model, had once obtained, and that significant changes had to have occurred later, during the development towards Modern Greek, the comparative method had less to say about the question when these changes took place. Erasmus had been eager to find a pronunciation system that corresponded most closely to the written letters, and it was now natural to assume that the reconstructed sound system was that which obtained at the time when Greek orthography was in its formative period. For a time, it was taken for granted that this would also have been the pronunciation valid for all the period of classical literature. However, it was perfectly possible that the pronunciation of the living language had begun to move on from that reconstructed system towards that of Modern Greek, possibly already quite early during antiquity.
In this context, the freshly emerging evidence from the non-standard inscriptions became of decisive importance. Critics of the Erasmian reconstruction drew attention to the systematic patterns of spelling mistakes made by scribes. These mistakes showed that scribes had trouble distinguishing between the orthographically correct spellings for certain words, for instance involving <ι>, <η>, and <ει>. This provided evidence that these vowels had already begun to merge in the living speech of the period. While scholars in Greece were quick to emphasise these findings in order to cast doubt on the Erasmian system as a whole, some western European scholars tended to downplay them, explaining early instances of such orthographical aberrations as either isolated exceptions or influences from non-Attic, non-standard dialects. In doing so, some scholars seem to have been influenced by an ideologically motivated tendency to regard post-classical, especially Byzantine and Modern Greek as an inferior, vulgarised form of the language, and by a wish to see the picture of ancient Greek preserved in what they regarded as its 'pure' state. The resulting debate, as it was conducted during the 19th century, finds its expression in, for instance, the works of A. N. Jannaris (1897) and T. Papadimitrakopoulos (1889) on the anti-Erasmian side, and of Friedrich Blass
Friedrich Blass
Friedrich Blass was a German classical scholar.After studying at Göttingen and Bonn from 1860 to 1863, he lectured at several gymnasia and at the University of Königsberg. In 1876 he was appointed extraordinary professor of classical philology at Kiel, and ordinary professor in 1881...
(1870) on the pro-Erasmian side.
It was not until the early 20th century and the work of G. Chatzidakis, a linguist often credited to have first introduced the methods of modern historical linguistics into the Greek academic establishment, that the validity of the comparative method and its reconstructions for Greek began to be widely accepted among Greek scholars too. The international consensus view that had been reached by the early and mid 20th century is represented in the works of Sturtevant (1940) and Allen (1968).
More recent developments
Since the 1970s and 1980s, several scholars have attempted a systematic re-evaluation of the inscriptional and papyrological evidence (Smith 1972, Teodorsson 1974, 1977, 1978; Gignac 1976; Threatte 1980, summary in Horrocks 1999.) According to their results, many of the relevant phonological changes can be dated fairly early, reaching well into the classical period, and the period of the Koiné can be characterised as one of very rapid phonological change. Many of the changes in vowel quality are now dated to some time between the 5th and the 1st centuries BC, while those in the consonants are assumed to have been completed by the 4th century AD. However, there is still considerable debate over precise datings, and it is still not clear to what degree, and for how long, different pronunciation systems would have persisted side by side within the Greek speech community. The resulting majority view today is that a phonological system roughly along Erasmian lines can still be assumed to have been valid for the period of classical Attic literature, but biblical and other post-classical Koine GreekKoine Greek
Koine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....
is likely to have been spoken with a pronunciation that already approached the Modern Greek one in many crucial respects.
Recently, there has been one attempt at a more radically revisionist, anti-Erasmian reconstruction, proposed by the theologian and philologist C. Caragounis (1995, 2004). On the basis of the inscriptional record, Caragounis dates virtually all relevant vowel changes into or before the early classical period. He relies heavily upon Threatte and Gignac for data from the papyri, but he provides little if any actual interaction with their own markedly different analyses of the very same historical data. He also argues for a very early fricative status of the aspirate and medial consonants, and casts doubt on the validity of the vowel-length and accent distinctions in the spoken language in general. These views are currently isolated within the field.
See also
- Ancient GreekAncient GreekAncient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
- English pronunciation of Greek lettersEnglish pronunciation of Greek lettersThis table gives the common English pronunciation of Greek letters using the International Phonetic Alphabet It is the pronunciation of the ancient Greek names of the Greek letters using the English teaching pronunciation...
- Greek languageGreek languageGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
- Greek orthographyGreek orthographyThe orthography of the Greek language ultimately has its roots in the adoption of the Greek alphabet in the 9th century BC. Some time prior to that, one early form of Greek, Mycenaean, was written in Linear B, although there was a lapse of several centuries between the time Mycenaean stopped being...
- Koine GreekKoine GreekKoine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....
- Koine Greek phonologyKoine Greek phonologyKoine Greek is phonologically a transition period: at the start of the period, the language was generally virtually identical to Classical Ancient Greek, whereas in the end the language had phonologically a lot more in common with Modern Greek than Ancient Greek....
- Medieval GreekMedieval GreekMedieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, is the stage of the Greek language between the beginning of the Middle Ages around 600 and the Ottoman conquest of the city of Constantinople in 1453. The latter date marked the end of the Middle Ages in Southeast Europe...
- Modern GreekModern GreekModern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
- Modern Greek phonologyModern Greek phonologyThis page presents a sketch of the phonology of Standard Modern Greek.-Consonants:The consonantal system of Greek is difficult to describe, as there is considerable debate about which sounds to describe as separate phonemes and which to analyse as conditional allophones...
- Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teachingPronunciation of Ancient Greek in teachingAncient Greek has been pronounced in various ways by those studying Ancient Greek literature in various times and places. This article covers those pronunciations; the modern scholarly reconstruction of its ancient pronunciation is covered in Ancient Greek phonology.-Greek world:Among speakers of...
Recent literature
- W. Sidney Allen (1987): Vox Graeca: the pronunciation of Classical Greek, Cambridge: University Press, (3rd edition, ISBN 0-521-33555-8) (A preview is available at Google Books)
- C. C. Caragounis (1995): "The error of Erasmus and un-Greek pronunciations of Greek". Filologia Neotestamentaria 8 (16) .
- C. C. Caragounis (2004): Development of Greek and the New Testament, Mohr Siebeck (ISBN 3-16-148290-5).
- A.-F. Christidis ed. (2007), A History of Ancient Greek, Cambridge University Press (ISBN 0-521-83307-8): A. Malikouti-Drachmann, "The phonology of Classical Greek", 524-544; E. B. Petrounias, "The pronunciation of Ancient Greek: Evidence and hypotheses", 556-570; idem, "The pronunciation of Classical Greek", 556-570.
- G. Horrocks (1997): Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers. London: Addison Wesley (ISBN 0-582-30709-0).
- C. Karvounis (2008): Aussprache und Phonologie im Altgriechischen. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (ISBN 978-3-534-20834-0).
- M. Lejeune (1972): Phonétique historique du mycénien et du grec ancien, Paris: Librairie Klincksieck (reprint 2005, ISBN 2-252-03496-3).
- H. Rix (1992): Historische Grammatik des Griechischen. Laut- und Formenlehre, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (2nd edition, ISBN 3-534-03840-1).
- A. L. Sihler (1995): New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press (ISBN 0-19-508345-8).
- R. B. Smith (1972): Empirical evidences and theoretical interpretations of Greek phonology: Prolegomena to a theory of sound patterns in the Hellenistic Koine, Ph.D. diss. Indiana University.
- S.-T. Teodorsson (1974): The phonemic system of the Attic dialect 400-340 BC. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis (ASIN B0006CL51U).
- S.-T. Teodorsson (1977): The phonology of Ptolemaic Koine (Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia), Göteborg (ISBN 91-7346-035-4).
- S.-T. Teodorsson (1978): The phonology of Attic in the Hellenistic period (Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia), Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis (ISBN 91-7346-059-1).
- L. Threatte (1980): The Grammar of Attic Inscriptions, vol. 1: Phonology, Berlin: de Gruyter (ISBN 3-11-007344-7).
Older literature
- G. Babiniotis: Ιστορική Γραμματεία της Αρχαίας Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, 1. Φωνολογία ("Phonology")
- F. Blass (1870): Über die Aussprache des Griechischen, Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung.
- I. Bywater, The Erasmian Pronunciation of Greek and its Precursors, Oxford: 1908. Defends Erasmus from the claim that he hastily wrote his Dialogus based on a hoax. Mentions Erasmus's predecessors Jerome Aleander, Aldus ManutiusAldus ManutiusAldus Pius Manutius , the Latinised name of Aldo Manuzio —sometimes called Aldus Manutius, the Elder to distinguish him from his grandson, Aldus Manutius, the Younger—was an Italian humanist who became a printer and publisher when he founded the Aldine Press at Venice.His publishing legacy includes...
, and Antonio of Lebrixa. Short review in The Journal of Hellenic Studies 29 (1909), p. 133. . - E. A. S. Dawes (1894): The Pronunciation of Greek aspirates, D. Nutt.
- E.M. Geldart (1870): The Modern Greek Language In Its Relation To Ancient Greek (reprint 2004, Lightning Source Inc. ISBN 1-4179-4849-3).
- G. N. Hatzidakis (1902): ("Academic Studies: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek").
- A. Jannaris (1897): An Historical Greek Grammar Chiefly of the Attic Dialect As Written and Spoken From Classical Antiquity Down to the Present Time. London: MacMillan.
- A. Meillet (1975) Aperçu d'une histoire de la langue grecque, Paris: Librairie Klincksieck (8th edition).
- A. Meillet & J. Vendryes (1968): Traité de grammaire comparée des langues classiques, Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion (4th edition).
- Th. Papadimitrakopoulos (1889): Athens.
- E. SchwyzerEduard SchwyzerEduard Schwyzer was a Swiss Classical philologist and Indo-European linguist, specializing in Ancient Greek and Greek dialects...
(1939): Griechische Grammatik, vol. 1, Allgemeiner Teil. Lautlehre. Wortbildung. Flexion, München: C.H. Beck (repr. 1990 ISBN 3-406-01339-2). - W. B. Stanford (1967): The Sound of Greek.
- E. H. Sturtevant (1940): The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, Philadelphia (2nd edition).
External links
- University of California/Berkeley Practice of ancient greek pronunciation
- Society for the oral reading of Greek and Latin Literature Recitation of classics books
- Dionysios Thrax, Art of Grammar
- Erasmus, De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione dialogus (in Latin)
- Brian Joseph, Ancient Greek, Modern Greek
- Harry Foundalis, Greek Alphabet and pronunciation
- Carl W. Conrad, A Compendium of Ancient Greek Phonology: about phonologyPhonologyPhonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
strictly speaking, and not phoneticsPhoneticsPhonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory... - Randall Buth:, : Notes on the Pronunciation System of Phonemic Koine Greek
- Chrys C. Caragounis:, The error of Erasmus and un-Greek pronunciations of Greek
- Sidney Allen Vox Graeca (only a preview available, but still useful).