Reading classical Greek: language and literature (A275) - a brief introduction

[GREdimitraki12]

i speak both english and greek fluently and im starting to learn spanish but there is such a difference when you live ur daily life in the greek language...it is like the greek language opens up so many more doors of explanation that the romance and germanic languages cannot comprehend.

[geragna]

@GREdimitraki12 Question: How much different is Hellenistic/Ancient Greek as compared to Modern Greek? If you can speak and read modern Greek, are you able to understand Hellenistic as well? Or is it so different that it should be studied separately from Modern Greek? Please comment back! :)

[GREdimitraki12]

@geragna personally i find it very difficult to read and understand ancient/hellenistic greek but nonetheless i do catch a few phrases of similarity if im lucky. For me, knowing modern Greek complements the understanding of ancient Greek so i would say they should be studied separately. I would say knowing the grammatical format of modern Greek, an easier language compared to ancient Greek, would create a great basis for learning ancient Greek.

[geragna]

@GREdimitraki12 That was very informative. Thank you for your opinion :D

[AkaMouTinn]

@xgnothixseautonx your comment is like a broken pencil ..... pointless

[Thorakites]

@AkaMouTinn

Your comment is like a Republican redneck: Nationalistic, piggish, delusional, and retarded.

[AkaMouTinn]

@Thorakites dont worry everything will be allright. The doctor will come soon.

[Thorakites]

@AkaMouTinn

The Doctor is already here. He's asking why you don't like Fezzes.

[AkaMouTinn]

@Thorakites if the doctor is there you shouldnt be talking to me.

[mindlesssss666girl]

the latin came from the Chalcidian alphabet!!!!

[AkaMouTinn]

The difference between latin and greek is the difference between a child that can understand and an adult that can understand and MAKE himself understood. The unbelievable vocabulary of greek words and the perfect sounds that you discover in poetry and all literature is what makes you realise how incomplete and impotent "languages" are english, french etc. Modern greek is hugely relevant with ancient greek. And you have to be born greek to realise it or at least live in greece for long time.

[1PostPoMoMaN1]

thoukydides

Lovely language.

[th(o)ukyd'ide:s] - ancient.

[thukid'idis] - modern.

[rinouccia55]

Hello! This is greek "Æλɛs"?

And can somebody tell me what does it mean? Thanks ^^

[1PostPoMoMaN1]

Highly irregular spelling. No idea from me.

[AkaMouTinn]

All western germanic civilization today is copying 5% of the greatest thinkers of all times that consistently developed and strive to protect a unity of the greek thought. When the turks came and politics failed in the 15th century all was lost. Greek thinkers HAD to leave and speak latin. If you know greek you know where you come from. Then your only wish would be to "liberate" your home which is Constantinople. The only real centre of greek thought united after the polis phenomenon.

[1PostPoMoMaN1]

I prefer only Parmenides, Plato, from what I can tell. It has to do with the fact that I can control my state of consciousness and be mindful of what the two mentioned philosophers perceived with their mind's eye. Mastery, utter mastery of the entire nervous system. The world of ideas is deeper than in the mind. The mind can only know what has happened. The higher mind/self can see both, aand parallel realities.

[AkaMouTinn]

its not enough to learn how to pronounce greek. The difference will come when you are able to "think" in greek. You will then realise that germanic and romanic languages are litteraly impotent languages. If you can feel and think in greek you will connect yourself with the primordal archetype of western civilization which is ofcourse greek. But to do that you must change your logic to the logic that collapsed in 1453 and found again incomplete in the italian renaisance.

[1PostPoMoMaN1]

Agreeing with: it's not enough to learn how to pronounce Greek. The difference will come when you are able to think in Greek. I agree with the dynamics of your arguments and assertions, but not with the forcefulness. But thanks.

In my view, Greek pronunciation can be learned in a few months of intense oral training with someone who has the knowledge. There is a reason why the Romans always differentiated their AE from long E, and Greek phi from Latin F. This is the first thing to know.

[1PostPoMoMaN1]

The language whence Greek in all of its forms came, as well as Latin and other European and Indian and Persian languages came, had the word root sound phi as bh, which in Sanskrit remained the same, but in Greek became p + h = and aspirated p, like in English, but somewhat similar to blowing out a candle. Really difficult to put into words. BTW I don't know the Greek language in any of its varieties. The way I see it, it has changed a lot.

[tawnylion1]

hi, i'm a long time student of the OU and i am doing this course at the moment and loving every minute. 10 out of 10

[TheOpenUniversity]

Thanks for the comment, best of luck with the course!

[MikhalisBramouell]

I pray to God that this course does not make the absurd claims that somehow, despite the fact that the same Greek liturgy in the same pronunciation has been repeated every Sunday for almost 2000 years, that the pronunciation of letters made some sort of warped magical change suddenly to what it was in Byzantine Greek and is today in Modern Greek... Does someone have cassette tapes from 400 BC showing they spoke completely differently?! XD

[gold333]

No language today remains unchanged over 2500 years. Greek is no different.

Think about it, every language has changed considerably (grammar & pronounciation) in the past 2500 years, just look at the Romanic languages. Why should Greek today be identical to Greek during Homer (700BC). It's not logical.

[MikhalisBramouell]

It is probably not identical to modern Greek pronunciation and grammar, but how are we to know that it sounds anything like how Roger Bacon, Roger Ascham, Antonio de Lebrixa, or Aldus Manutius claim for it?

[gold333]

I don't know. But I'd take the opinion of a linguist who had studied the history of European language, i.e. PIE, Minioan, Mycenean, Doric, Classical, Koine, Medieval, greek, etc than somebody who wishes for something to be so. Don't get me wrong, I mean that with respect, but if your aorta is dodgy you go to a heart surgeon not someone else seeing as they've given their life to study that field. Same with linguistics I'd say. The guys spend years doing comparisions man, gotta count for smthing.

[MikhalisBramouell]

Much like studies on evolution, no student of that field has witnessed changes or the original pronounciation of the language itself. For all we know, an English "B" of the 1200s sounded like a "V"...

[gold333]

Yes, I agree on that point.

But if we consider this example to be a case of ambiguity due to insufficient data, it is a small percentage of academically attestable differences between modern and archaic Greek. I.e. we may never know the exact pronounciation of a certain letter, but there are provable changes in grammar, meme usage, etc. whereby ancient inscriptions we find are not modern Greek.

[MikhalisBramouell]

Agreed. The future tense has been nearly eliminated from modern Greek as well as other tenses. The Dative and Genitive have been combined, et cetera. There are obvious grammatical changes. This I can fully agree with.

[YiannisThiakos]

@MikhalisBramouell You are sure Future Tense is eliminated? I think we do use it still we use 3 future tenses = english. (Tha Kano - will do, Tha ekho kanei - I will have done, Tha Ekhana - would do). Tha "Θα" means "will". Modern greek like italian or french use the "helping verb" (have - ekho) to form the tenses. Yes Dative is lost, but Genitive is still here but in modern all Klinations are made with pronouns are not anymore put in the end as a part of the noun

[JonathanGiraldo99]

@YiannisThiakos

This is has nothing to do with the subject at hand, but I would like to note that Japanese has no future tense either...

[JonathanGiraldo99]

@YiannisThiakos

This has nothing to do with the subject at hand, but I would like to note that Japanese has no future tense either...

[specialparadise]

That's right gold333 Greek pronounciation have changed through the years. You can find your answers by visiting the Greek Islands which the pronounciation has not change on the degree of the rest Greek area changed because of the isolation. I have origin from the Greek island Crete and I can assure you that we still use Ancient Greek words with the Greek ancient accent which make it sometimes extremely hard for the rest of Greeks to understand us.

[theweddingcrashers]

While I also can and will not ever know how the ancient language was pronounced, I don't enjoy the idea of accents. When reading Ancient Greek, τούτων and τουτῶν are pronounced almost identically. Also the ancient language itself was never accented. I think the Byzantines butchered the language to a certain degree with all the different rules concerning accents for words that were unaccented in their natural form.

[MikhalisBramouell]

True that the written language was not accented; it read like this· ΜΕΝΟΥΝΓΕΩΑΝΘΡΩΠΕΣΥΤΙΣΕΙΟΑΝΤΑΠΟ­ΚΡΙΝΟΜΕΝΟΣΤΩΘΕΩ; However, pronunciation without accentuation is monotone and unpalatable, and even German, which has no written accentuation, has a degree of implied stress on specific syllables, much like English. Some have suggested that the diacritics where more musical in nature than the traditional western understanding.

[1PostPoMoMaN1]

A lot of people could benefit when there would be a large pronounce-right-athon of antique languaged without referees, but with an undieingly friendly attitude. May there be a day really soon when on YouTube, that happens. I will win with my Latin (check my Latin video), and a close second may be the user ScorpioMartianus. But there is no guarantee that I will win, but I do think that Classical Latin wasn't pronounced with and anglophonic variant of restaured pronunciation.

[1PostPoMoMaN1]

Therefore I use an educated guess kind of a slightly Italianesque way of pronouncing Latin, but with full use of the restored phonetics as is apparent for the time period almost arbitrarily named LATINITAS AVREA. [lati:nita:s] [aurea]. I do not aspirate k p and t, unlike the Anglophones. I think it is possible to do amazing things with ancient languages. Anyone who hasn't has been lazy. :)

AD DOMVMQVE REVERTOR was mostly auricly pronounced as: [ad do'mungkwe rewerrtorr. INIIICIAAMVS ERGO!

[1PostPoMoMaN1]

In Latin, which is off topic, but alas, new topic, the Latin pronunciation of consonantal V as almost English [w] ended probably almost everywhere by the 3rd century AD. Quintilian asserted that this phoneme was/used to be done with ROUNDED LIPS. :) That phoneme became promptly as it is now in Spanish most likely, as indicated by Latin name VALERIVS being spelled as BALERIVS, thereon, analogically to Greek and Italian (in terms of only the b to v part), from such a bilabial one to a labiodental.

[MikhalisBramouell]

By comparatively looking at Greek and Latin transliterations, we can see that the ῾ denoted a minor aspiration in contrast to the ᾿, ὁπλίτης becomes hoplites and ἔφεσος becomes ephesus. Latin did not come to be widely used until the late 300's in the West, and it spent much time developing under strong Greek influence, and so far it provides the most authentic extra-Greek criticism of the language, assuming anyone pronounces Latin correctly...

[1PostPoMoMaN1]

If you assert that th and ph and kh were different back in the day, compared to how they do it now in good ole Greece, I have no intellectual or methodological quarrel with you. Though this is the first time I read your posts. probably.

I think you may agree that Koine Greek became to be of great lack of vowel length differentiation by the year 0 or later.

Check the Latin vids of me and ScorpioMartianus to find the most informed pronunciation of Latin perhaps in the entire world.

[AkaMouTinn]

I know that its difficult to accurately speak ancient greek with the correct accent. But remember the HUGE difference between latin and Greek. First latin was immensly influenced by greek words and greek thought. Secondly latin is no more spoken after the fall of west roman empire. On the other hand GREEK is still alive through 5000 years of written records. As a greek modern speaker i can just tell you that I can read the ancient letters on the monument and that makes every greek shake from awe

[1PostPoMoMaN1]

I agree with you fully. But I assert that with great effort, even the pronunciation of 8th century BC Greek can be mastered in a few months. Back then the ou used to be pronounced approximately as omikron + ou, hence the spelling. And ypsilon used to be pronounced as, for lack of better methods to represent: oupsilon. Digamma used to have the same of ou + [insert following vowel]. Only thorough oral practice and passion @ awesomeness can make such efforts count. FOINOS

[1PostPoMoMaN1]

uoinos. the u being kind of like English w. Diphthongs used to be diphthongs even as late as the year 200 AD. But soon the upsilon became a bilabial and the v and f.

[YiannisThiakos]

@AkaMouTinn I can disagree here. I am greek and I think Latin are still spoken in Vatican city till this day and is not concidered "dead". Also modern greek have many differences in pronounciation from ancient greek and vocabulary as well. Greek language is a non-top-living-one and this forced it to change so much inlcuding its many modern variations, Vlachika (that I think are the closest to Latin), Tsakonika, Kerkyraika, (which is mostly dead by now) Kretika, Roditika, Kypriaka,Thermiotika etc

[MikhalisBramouell]

Worth pointing out, Plato himself recognized this change of vowel length differentiation withing his own lifetime and did criticize it.

[1PostPoMoMaN1]

I did suspect that it was as early as Plato. In Latin the same thing happened around 300-400 AD - and very completely.

[YiannisThiakos]

@MikhalisBramouell NO but i once read a story translated in modern greek of the Arios Pagos (supreme court) in Ancient athens. A guy was defending himm self but the athenias were making fun of his "funny accent", the guy was from Ephesus I think ot other Micrasiatic city and i can only remember that Athenians were specifically made fun of his strange "Π" becasue it sounded like what we call today "F= Φ", years have passed i cant remember the source, but i can ask somene to help me find it. :D

[lmw242]

Can't wait to sign on this one