Talk:Ancient Greek phonology/Archive 2

articles that we need to check
Please use this section only for things that we need to look up, that might be relevant to this article +MATIA &#9742; 20:34, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * George Babiniotis, The question of mediae in Ancient Macedonian Greek reconsidered (this study is also at ISBN 1556191448).
 * A History of Ancient Greek - From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity. Edited and translated by A.-F. Christidis, University of Thessaloniki, Greece http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521833078 Biography: http://www.greeklanguage.gr/christidis/pubs.htm
 * N. Andriotis, Greek Language History: Four essays, reprint, 1995, pp. 168 (€ 6). ISBN 960-231-058-8.
 * Ανδριώτης Ν., Ιστορική γραμματική της αρχαίας ελληνικής. Μέρος Α': Φωνητική (πανεπιστημιακές παραδόσεις), Θεσσαλονίκη 1969
 * Συμεωνίδης Χ., Ιστορική γραμματική της αρχαίας Ελληνικής. Μέρος Α': Φωνητική (πανεπιστημιακές παραδόσεις), Εκδοτικός Οίκος Αφών Κυριακίδη, Θεσσαλονίκη 1989.
 * E. H. Sturtevant, The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, Philadelphia 1940.
 * F. T. Gignac, A grammar of the Greek papyri of the Roman and Byzantine periods. Vol. 1: phonology. Milan 1976.
 * L. Threatte, The grammar of Attic inscriptions, Vol. 1. Berlin 1980.
 * Sven Tage Teodorsson:
 * "The phonemic system of the Attic dialect 400-340 BC" (Göteborg, 1974);
 * "The phonology of Ptolemaic Koine" (Göteborg, 1977); and
 * "The phonology of Attic in the Hellenistic period" (Göteborg 1978).


 * Geoffrey Horrocks: "Greek: a history of the language and its speakers" (London, 1997); or
 * Randall Buth: Η κοινή προφορά: "Notes on the Pronunciation System of Phonemic Koine Greek"


 * nice question by Philx
 * "Think these simple sentences: Η καλη κορη, meaning "the nice girl" and ει καλη κορη with ei meaning if "If the nice girl" would sound as I Kali kori, how can a normal person perceive the difference or another example HMEIS And UMEIS, would sound as imis. so i think " who are you and who're we" ?"
 * note: iotacism and etacism


 * list by rossb
 * The accepted view is documented in not only Allen quoted above, but also (for example, quoting only those books which I happen to have to hand):
 * Leonard R Palmer, The Greek Language, Faber and Faber, "The Great Languages" series, 1980.
 * Robert Browning, Medieval and Modern Greek, Hutchinson University Library, 1969.
 * George Thomson, The Greek language, W Heffer and Sons, 1972.
 * Leslie Threatte, "The Greek Alphabet", in Daniels and Bright, The World's Writing Systems, Oxford University Press, 1996.
 * Carl Darling Buck, Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, University of Chicago Press, 1933.
 * E H Sturtevant, The pronunciation of Greek and Latin, Aries Publishers Inc, 1940.
 * All of the above works support (with minor variations) the "Erasmian and English pronunciation". Sturtevant in particular considers an alternative pronunciation like that proposed by Caragounis, only to reject it as not cogent. His reasons interestingly include the testimony of the ancient grammarian Dionysius Thrax (part of rossb's comment 19:52, 19 November 2005 (UTC))
 * H.A. Stoll, Erasmisches u. Reuchlinisches Griechisch?. In: J. Irmscher (Hrsg.), Renaissance u. Humanismus in Mittel- u. Osteuropa I. Berlin 1962, 89-97.

Anyway I hope the following will help us. http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d92/eyes60/erasmus/erasmus-1.jpg http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d92/eyes60/erasmus/erasmus-2.jpg http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d92/eyes60/erasmus/erasmus-3.jpg From Eleftheroudakis (1962) encyclopedia. +MATIA &#9742; 23:25, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

A vast improvement
Congratulations to Lukas and anyone else involved in the current draft, which is a vast improvement. Now that we've got the history so clearly stated I withdraw my previous suggestion that the references to Erasmus should be removed. --rossb 11:26, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Ditto! Thanks for the excellent work. --Macrakis 14:59, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
 * about WP:NPOV: This article name used to be Ancient Greek pronunciation. While I don't exactly understand the difference between phonology and phonetics, I don't think it's a good idea to move this article around renaming it (one can check the history for the various title changes). WP:NPOV is the policy we should comply with, at all events. The (modern) reconstructed system, Allen's Vox Graeca, the (original) erasmian system, Dionysious Thrax's grammar (see external link), the (reuchlinian) traditional system, Caragounis position and User:Thrax's contributions are 7 different things, yet most of them are related to the article. My suggestions are to improve the article instead of renaming it, engaging edit wars and splitting it. Let's get this article into a higher quality level with the help of all interested parties. Thanks for reading this and good luck to everyone. (I'll probably take a wikibreak one of these days) +MATIA &#9742; 12:44, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not in the mood of editing the article right now. Perhaps this should be checked by people who are involved in the last edits, so when (or if) user Thrax comes back, he'll find a much better article than the previous (let's say 2 days ago) one. (note I don't want to satisfy Thrax and I disagree with Caragounis POV, I'm interested in NPOV and I think all of us are). +MATIA &#9742; 13:21, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I've taken the freedom of continuing along the lines I started this morning, which has led to another rather big additon to the history section. I now see the section has involuntarily become rather large. If the whole topic-drift is not to the liking of other editors or if you feel it's too long, please feel free to shorten or restructure or move somewhere else. It might need intermediate headings too. I hope it's not too bad from the NPOV perspective. I might not again have that much time to go on contributing over the next few days. Lukas 14:01, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Expand with sources, and we'll see what we can do next :) I've archived the talk page and kept the last section here. Anyone who hadn't read the last parts is highly encouraged to do so (see Talk:Ancient Greek phonology/Archive 1). +MATIA &#9742; 14:52, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

The article as it is now is very good. Andreas 16:57, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Nope. It is good but it has problems. Different problems than those it had one day before, but problems. Check the Eleftheroudakis article and my line about the 7 different things. +MATIA &#9742; 17:29, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Your line about the 7 vowels comes from Dionysios Thrax paragraph 6. --Thrax 17:31, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I was not talking about 7 vowels, but about those 7 things: "The (modern) reconstructed system, Allen's Vox Graeca, the (original) erasmian system, Dionysious Thrax's grammar (see external link), the (reuchlinian) traditional system, Caragounis position and User:Thrax's contributions are 7 different things, yet most of them are related to the article" +MATIA &#9742; 18:29, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, the article still has problems, it needs improvement. Andreas 01:17, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Hebrew scholarship is against the reconstructed pronunciation
According to Hebrew scholarship the Proto-Semitic letters b, p, d, t, g, k all became fricatives (like in modern Greek) after vowels in Hebrew and Aramaic based on evidence from Ancient Greek translations (ie. The Septuagint's translation of the Hebrew bible and the Josephus Greek translation of his original writings from Aramaic into Greek). Futhermore Proto-Semitic also had a fricative g (like Gamma) as well a fricative h which both survive in Arabic and which are known to have existed in spoken Biblical Hebrew. The Proto-Semitic fricative g did not survive in the written Hebrew language but was still used in the spoken language in Hellenistic times and this resulted in the Septuagint transcribing the Hebrew name 'Amorah (aMRH) as the correct Proto-Semitic name Gomorra. ,,. Now since the Septuagint was translated by 72 Hebrew scholars not Greeks it is clear that if Gamma was pronounced as a hard G in 280 BC when the translation was made these 72 Hebrew scholars would have never identified it with Proto-Semitic fricative g which was no longer written as anything more than an aspiration mark (if such things existed in Hellenistic Hebrew). If Gamma was not a pure fricative in 280 BC these 72 Hebrew scholars would not have learned it as such and they would have not written Gomorra but would have used an aspiration mark or nothing at all. From Herodotus it is clear that these 72 Hebrew scholars would have learned Greek as children rather than as adults thus assuming that their average age was 60 (they are described as elders after all) the Greek that they learned would have dated from the time that Alexander conquered Palestine in 330 BC which means that modern Greek gamma must have been fully developed in this time in order for all of these 72 Hebrew scholars to have recognised it as such in their transcription. Furthermore as has already been stated Hebrew b, p, d, t, g, k were all fricatives in Hellenistic times corresponding to the modern pronunciation of β, φ, δ, θ, γ, χ in Biblical Greek. If gamma was a fully developed ficative in this time then β, φ, δ, θ, γ, χ must be as well. Since German scholars claim that it took at least 400 years for the first phase of the changes of proto-Germanic p, t, k into f, th, h to have been completed it is natural to assume that if any changes in the sound of these Greek consonants took place it must have taken an equal amount of time or longer since we are not only talking about p, t, k but b, d, g as well. This places the beginning of any change in 730 BC or earlier and it is obvious that by 530 BC at the time of Piseistratus reforms more than half the Greek population would have been using modern pronouncation, and this and more is shown by Caragounis. Since this is the case it is clear that the reconstructed pronunciation has ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE from inscriptions on which to found its claims on, since all the inscriptions which are significant to this issue MUST be interpreted as referring to modern Greek pronunciation which was by 530 or earlier the majority pronunciation, or as inconclusive. Latin the only other guide clearly shows that the dasea were fricatives. On top of this since we know know that 100% of the Greek population and the Hebrews must have pronounced delta as a fricative since 330 BC it is clear that the account of Dionysius Thorax referring to the pronouncation of Zeta referrs to an s superposed with fricative modern Greek delta which is Z and nothing else. Since this is the ONLY evidence on which the claim of the reconstructed pronunciation of zeta as zd or dz comes from the reconstructed pronunciation of zeta is clearly a lie. It is an academic fraud created for ethno-political ends in the face of overwhelming evidence which shows that proto-Semitic and Hebrew zayin was always z and that this must also have been so when the Greeks adopted the same script the Hebrews used and was clearly the case in Hellenistic times. In fact since there is no evidence whatsoever to show that β, φ, δ, θ, γ, χ were anything but fricatives, and that ζ was anything but z during the whole period of recorded Greek why should the teaching of the reconstructed pronunciation be perused any further. It is a fraud and everybody that has any sense outside of the bigoted linguistics community knows it. --Thrax 17:01, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Thrax, puh-lease, is it really necessary for you to bloat the talk pages with this "original research"? I don't think this is the right place for you to develop your private theories. Put it on the web somewhere. I know you have a website for that type of stuff. Or put it on Usenet if you must, as you used to do. Lukas 18:04, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

How to go on
I'm glad my recent stab at the history-of-reconstruction section has met with some approval. It definitely needs some consolidation and streamlining later. Now, before we go on dealing with the rest of the article, I suggest we consider again the position of this article within the whole complex of the Greek-related articles. At the moment, we have:

Of the latter, both Ancient Greek and Koine Greek contain very decent phonological sketches of the respective systems. The one on Ancient Greek refers to Allen as its main source, and contains a well-placed note in the text saying (roughly) that this is a reconstruction which has been debated but is now consensus among linguists. The one on Koine Greek contains a subsection summing up the sound changes linking the classical to the post-classical system. Neither of the two articles currently contains a link to ours, as far as I see. Both phonological sketches are well written and linguistically sound. The only addition that one might want to make is to be more explicit about which letters correspond to which of the sounds (that might not be obvious to the non-expert reader.)
 * Greek Language, which contains a sketch of the phonology of Modern Greek, and cross-references to this article and to:
 * History of Greek. This, in turn, points towards the period-specific pages:
 * Ancient Greek,
 * Attic Greek,
 * Koine Greek,
 * Medieval Greek,
 * Modern Greek.

Now, what exactly do we want to achieve with our article here? I tend to think the whole first half is going to be pretty much superfluous once the various articles are properly linked up among each other. What I think we could do here is twofold: (a) for the reader who has seen the note about reconstruction consensus at Ancient Greek and is skeptical about that, or wants to know more, we can provide a list of the types of arguments and evidence (not every single argument itself) that have been used in the reconstruction debate, on both sides. We could synthesise much of that from the "arguments" lists already present and from the present history section (helping to streamline that down a bit too). (b) we can provide the history of how the reconstruction consensus emerged, as it's now attempted.

What do you guys think?Lukas 18:00, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Why (a) or (b)? +MATIA &#9742; 18:26, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * By "twofold" I rather meant to imply "(a) and (b)" :-) Lukas 18:32, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Oh :) Perhaps (b) and then (a). I've found Age of Erasmus by P. S. Allen, which has some info about Erasmus and Reuchlin. +MATIA &#9742; 18:49, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Roman Pronunciation of Latin, Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin (few info about greek pronunciation). +MATIA &#9742; 19:26, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
 * itacism, iotacism, etacism (are these from Webster?), iotacism, etacism, Betacism? +MATIA &#9742; 19:44, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Pronunciation of Greek (also Reuchlin, Erasmus etc this may have something to do with the history of an english university). +MATIA &#9742; 19:54, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Okay, I've been "bold in editing" and made a stub for a "types-of-evidence" section. I've tried to give it a systematic structure, not by "pro" and "contra", but by domains of data. It needs filling in, and the other section then can take a bit of thinning out. And both, as +MATIA suggests, may need to be fleshed out with references. Lukas 19:47, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I would suggest that we could do worse than change the title of the present article back to "Ancient Greek pronunciation" given that it mainly covers the pronunciation, ie the sounds that correspond to the various letters (which is clearly an important matter, particularly for ancient languages) rather than the phonology (the repertoire of sounds in the language) which is indeed covered in the Ancient Greek article. --rossb 18:56, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * How about "Reconstruction of Ancient Greek Pronunciation"? Lukas 19:47, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * While the pronunciation was in the original title, we could work on the article (the (a) and (b) Lukas previously mentioned etc) and then check it again. Perhaps the word Reconstruction in the title (and the same for phonology, phonetics, pronunciation) makes it less general than the content. +MATIA &#9742; 19:54, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

about the tags
Does anyone support the totallydisputed tag? If so state, briefly the reasons. My personal opinion is that the article is evolving pretty good after each edit. +MATIA &#9742; 20:02, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The article is a POV rant in favour of the reconstructed pronunciation using invalid evidence and dubious interpretations and excluding all the evidence that does not agree with it. Until all the evidence opposing the reconstructed pronunciation is included the tags should stay. --Thrax 20:10, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I'd readily agree if we also went back to the old "arguments for the traditional pronunciation" list that got thrown out yesterday, and see how much of that we can again integrate into the new "types of evidence" list, along with the material from the "arguments" list that's now at the end of the article. Some of that stuff is currently in the article anyway, but probably not completely. --Lukas 20:48, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Just the question I wanted to raise myself. Is it okay if I have changed to "ActiveDiscuss", or maybe it was premature to do that without asking first? Please revert if that was against Wikiquette. (But I do think Thrax' isolated position shouldn't justify the "totallydisputed" tag to remain there forever.) Lukas 20:22, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * No it is not. The article is still a one sided POV rant --Thrax 20:27, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I believe we can remove the totallydisputed tag. Thrax, I know you disagree, but this seems to be exactly the same issue as the consensus discussion we already had. If no editor other than Thrax objects, I believe we should remove these tags. --Macrakis 20:40, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * There was no consensus. Consensus means the agreement of EVERYONE not the agreement of the majority. That's why judges say in court, if there is no consensus then I can accept a majority verdict from the jury. Consensus means 100% total agreement. --Thrax 20:58, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree that the "ActiveDiscuss" is the proper label (it's nicer, it points here and it "guarantees" the evolution of the article - somehow like the POV tag). My suggestion to you Thrax would be to work with other editors for the improvment of the article (notice the changes Lukas implemented, I think you'll agree that they are pretty good). Consensus and WP:NPOV are two good articles, that I think everyone will find interesting. +MATIA &#9742; 21:09, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Systematicity of sound-symbol relationships
The systematicity of sound-symbol relationships seems like a logical assumption to make but I do not believe that it actually occurred to the largest degree possible in the case of Greek. Indeed, the older the alphabet, the greater the systematicity and the better the chances to find a one to one correspondence between letter and sound, one would think. But, the attic alphabet is older than the ionic alphabet by which it was replaced. Yet in the Attic alphabet, the letter E represented the sounds later represented by E, H and spurious EI (epsilon, eta and EI resulting from contraction or compensatory lengthening). These were three distinct sounds at all relevant times and not even allophones of each other in attic Greek, differing in both length and height. Their only similarity is the fact that they are all front vowels. Similarly, in the attic alphabet, O stood for Omicron, Omega and spurious OY. So the relation was one to many. Finally, the fact that there are letters like ksi and psi (and zeta?) representing two consonants in succession shows that the relation was also many to one. Therefore, I do not see any huge systematicity here.Yannos 06:36, 1 December 2005 (UTC)


 * You're right, as it stands it's oversimplifying. Needs some re-formulation to avoid misunderstandings. The point to make is that almost everybody since Erasmus seems to have agreed that things like the multiplicity of [i]-letters on the one hand, and the multiplicity of phonetically widely dissimilar functions of <υ> on the other, would have been dysfunctional and could not easily have emerged in spelling on the basis of the Modern Greek phonological system alone. I think it's clear that the rule "1 sound : 1 symbol" is the idealised principle behind the creation of the alphabet, but we need a better formulation for what kinds of deviations from that principle are historically plausible and which aren't. The point is about the "systematicity", not about being exceptionless. --Lukas 07:57, 1 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Could it be that Attic was defective because Phoenician was not the ideal alphabet for Greek, with the vowel letters developing from consonants that would have been dropped in Greek pronunciation (much as Arabic h, hamza, and 'ayn are in RP), but that it was made more systematic through a guiding principal of a one-to-one correspondance? Any evidence that something like this occurred? kwami 11:01, 1 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, definitely, they started out with a minimal vowel-symbol inventory. The later introduction of <Ω> and vocalic <Η> can certainly be seen as a move in that direction. It's a bit more tricky for the innovation of the bi-phonemic signs <Ξ> and <Ψ>, because they wouldn't have been needed on purely phonological grounds. I think one hypothesis is that they were introduced for phonotactic reasons. /ks/ and /ps/ were the only consonant clusters that could occur at the ends of words (as in the name of our friend, Θραξ), so perhaps that's why Greeks felt they were somehow a unit. But that's just my speculation. As for the "double" value of , that really seems to be one of the unsolved problems. --Lukas 11:14, 1 December 2005 (UTC)


 * When the Athenians switched from the Attic to the Ionian script several new letters such as eta, omega were added. Eta and Omega were not originally vowels but were compensatory marks associated with the letters epsilon and omicron. Finally when aspiration became redundant in Ionia they became associated with long vowels. Thus, in Attic inscriptions from the early 5th century B.C. on (long) Ε occurs as ΕΙ and later as Η, while (long) Ο occurs as OU and later as Ω. The Greek letter ksi derives directly from the Phoenician symbol for Samesh, the letter psi is the same shape as the Proto-Sinaitic symbol for tsade (whereas san derives from the shape of the Phoenician symbol for tsade and this s sound is what tsade is transcribed into Greek as from Biblical Hebrew), and the letter zeta was always a single sound since its symbol derives from the Phoenician and Proto-Sinaitic symbol for Zayin and this is the only Hebrew symbol that is transcribed as z in Greek (and never as sd, zd, ds or dz or anything similar). --Thrax 17:02, 1 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but Thrax has got it wrong yet again. The stuff about E and O is just muddled, while metrical considerations make it clear that there was something special about Zeta (it's treated as a double consonant). --rossb 18:23, 1 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Absolute nonsense. The stuff about E and O is what the inscriptional record proves actually happened (see Caragounis), and there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to show that zeta was anything but a pure fricative z. It was represented by a single symbol for Z (and only z) in Linear-B and not two symbols or an allophone. It was z in proto-Semitic which is the symbol zayin in all Semitic scripts which transliterates into zeta in Greek. Stop dissembling ancient Greek texts and grammarians accounts to perpetuate an academic fraud. The entire notion of zeta being anything but z is based on the deliberate fraudulent misinterpretation of Dionysios Thrax who says that the sound of zeta could be approximated by sigma superposed with delta which from what has says about the mediae and comparisons with Hebrew, Aramaic and proto-Semitic was pronounced "the" like in modern Greek when he wrote his acocunt and zeta was therefore pronounced z. The z sound in Hebrew comes from two sources, the first z sound derives from pure proto-Semitic z which underwent no change at all in all Semitic languages and the second derives from proto-semtic delta which is the same fricative sound as modern Greek delta and became corrupted into z in Hebrew, Akkadian and Ethiopic and has remained as fricative delta in Arabic (as the letter "da" ie. δα). Stop trying to pull the wool over your own and other peoples eyes. --Thrax 18:52, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

On zeta
The case of zeta is very complicated (in my humble opinion at least). i don't believe that the linguists have it figured out yet. This is one case where everyone has his own pet theory: Some say dz, some say zd and some say plain z and there is a lot of unwarranted dogmatism. Personally, I think that zeta might have represented any of these sounds, with one pronunciation in one word and another in another: (to be continued)--204.244.64.254 01:32, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

For example in a word like παίζω it stands to reason that ζ could have a voiced africate pronunciation like dz, since the etymology of the word is from a probable proto-greek *paid-jo. Same thing for a word like πεζός from the putative indoeuropean word for foot (*ped). But in a case like Αθήναζε the zd pronunciation is more likely. Finally, the plain [z] sound probably did exist in attic as an allophone of [s] in words like κόσμος, Λέσβος. Now, the fact that the non-standard spelling κόζμος can be found suggests that ζ can stand for plain z (in this word at least). Something else comes to mind: On the basis of Greek Ζευς πάτερ, Latin Jupiter and Sanskrit Dyaus Pitar what kind of sound is more likely for that ζ? Something funny is happening there. I don't think there are any easy answers for this sound.--Yannos 05:47, 2 December 2005 (UTC)


 * And Caragounis makes it perfectly clear that all of these examples constitute evidence for a fricative Delta since Greek language first began therefore zeta has always been z. This is proven by the fact that one of the Hebrew z's evolved from the fricative delta sound in proto-Semitic. When the Phoenician script which was pronounced the same way as Hebrew was adopted by the Greeks it already had a modern Greek delta sound and a z sound as did Linear B so why would the ancient Greeks have pronounced these letters any differently from the Hebrews. If z was zd or dz then there would have been no symbol for z in Linear B and zayin would not have been used in the Greek alphabet. All of the evidence for inscriptions and form Hebrew shows that the dasea, mediae and zeta were always fricatives with one sound. --Thrax 15:46, 2 December 2005 (UTC)


 * What about Arabic? Arabic was also written in a script descended from the Phoenicians, just like Greek and the Hebrew alphabets. In Arabic, waw (or uau in Greek) is pronounced similar to English while in Hebrew it has become vav. Biblical hebrew pronunciation differs from the modern pronunciation, moreover, there are many different dialects of Hebrew with different pronunciations, just like in most languages. Aleph or alif wasn't used as a vowel originally except to mark long "a" sometimes. The Greek alphabet split off the Phoenicians for much longer than Hebrew or Arabic, it must have undergone some changes through that time.

--Darthanakin 07:57, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

The fact that biblical Hebrew was pronounced just like modern Greek with mainly fricative consonants and that these fricatives also existed in proto-Semitic according to Hebrew scholars proves that ancient Greek pronunciation and the ancient Greek alphabet did not change, since at the time that the proto-Sinaitic alphabet was adopted by the Greeks it already had fricatives in its Phoenician and Hebrew forms where all the Greek fricatives are today. The consonants in question have to be allophones in Hebrew and Aramaic and all languages that use this script since in 2000 BC when the proto-Sinaitic script was devised the fricatives were present in all Semitic languages so had to be represent by allophones. This means that inscriptional evidence cannot be called on to offer any form of valid support for the reconstructed pronunciation since the Phoenician alphabet was already pronounced like modern Greek by the Phoenicians themselves and the Hebrews when the Greeks adopted. It is clearly obvious that the main reason why the Greeks adopted this script is because it was already being used to represent fricative gamma, delta, beta, hi, theta and fi in Semitic languages as well. --Thrax 05:30, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

--Darthanakin 07:57, 7 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I have started the page Zeta (pronunciation). -- Enkyklios 13:03, 8 December 2005 (CET)
 * I think it should be a section of this article and not a seperate article. +MATIA &#9742; 13:04, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Given that the material about Zeta is more voluminous than for the other letters, I think it's possibly right to keep it out of this article, but in that case it should be merged with Zeta (letter), which has a stub section on pronunciation which could be expanded. --rossb 16:28, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Please stop confusing orthography and phonology. How zeta was pronounced is not what's disputed, but rather which sound it was supposed to represent. The difference may seem purely semantic, but it's crucial to make absolutely clear that written language is always an approximation of spoken language. Anyone can speak a language without either reading or writing it, but never the other way around.
 * And there is already a very empty article called Zeta (letter) to fill up, so please merge them instead of creating confusing split-offs.
 * Peter Isotalo 21:38, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I've merged Zeta (pronunciation) with Zeta (letter) as discussed above. --rossb 12:16, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Elara
Change of subject.

One of Jupiter's moons is named Elara, after the mother by Zeus of the giant Tityus. English refs are divided on the pronunciation, as to whether the stress is on the first or second syllable. Problem is, Elara isn't listed in the 9th edition of Liddell & Scott. Does anyone know whether that a is long or short? kwami 08:41, 2 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Apollonios Rhodios, Ἀργοναυτικά 759ff:
 * Ἐν καὶ Ἀπόλλων Φοῖβος ὀιστεύων ἐτέτυκτο,
 * βούπαις, οὔ πω πολλός, ἑὴν ἐρύοντα καλύπτρης
 * μητέρα θαρσαλέως Τιτυὸν μέγαν, ὅν ῥ' ἔτεκέν γε
 * δῖ' Ἐλάρη, θρέψεν δὲ καὶ ἂψ ἐλοχεύσατο Γαῖα.
 * ([])


 * is the only reference on the web. As this is a hexameter, as far as I can make out, the a would seem to be short, while accented. Or do the first δῖ Ἐ- get contracted to one metrical syllable? Then the a should be long. Maybe that's the reason for confusion? BTW, it is the nominative we see here, or am I mistaken? Lukas 12:51, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

(I've added the polytonic template to the Greek above, for the benefit of those using Internet Explorer.) Yes I think it's a short α here. I wouldn't expect the δῖ Ἐ- to get contracted here, given that the iota is long, but others might know better. It certainly looks to me like the nominative, being the subject of the verb ἔτεκεν ("gave birth to").


 * Sorry I keep forgetting to do that. Lukas

A couple of points for those who might still be confused:


 * The Greek form Ἐλάρη is literally Elarē. As would be expected in an epic poem, this is the Ionic (or Epic) form, corresponding to the Attic Ἐλάρα (Elara).


 * (pedant-mode: on) Wouldn't Attic have had -η too, like Ionic, after ρ?
 * I seem to think that after ρ Attic normally has α, with some exceptions such as κόρη, which is generally explained on the grounds that it was originally κόρϜα. --rossb 16:32, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're right. I got the rule the wrong way round. Lukas
 * (pedant-mode: off) She obviously got her name because "έλα, ρεεε!" were her first words on encountering Zeus. Both Thrax (maior and minor) will confirm that the final sound is an [e], and that it's long, especially in the pronunciation of Greek popular music (both ancient and modern) of the genre known as κυνῳδία, of which our Thrax minor is an expert. ;-þ Lukas 14:39, 2 December 2005 (UTC)


 * The traditional pronunciation in English of the names of Greek deities etc does not follow either the Modern Greek pronunciation or the reconstructed Ancient Greek pronunciation, but ignores the written accent, and uses the Latin method of accentuation, in other words put stress on the penultimate syllable if this syllable is heavy (roughly speaking if it contains a long vowel or is followed by two consonants) otherwise on the antepenult. Thus if the α in the second syllable in Ἐλάρη is short, as would appear from the above, the stress in English is on the first syllable, otherwise it would have been on the second syllable. --rossb


 * Here we go again. More nonsense coming out from people who don't actually speak Greek. Elara is actually three syllables E-la-ra just like it would have been written in Linear B. It would have been pronounced E as in egg, la and in lamb, and ra as in rat. --Thrax 15:55, 2 December 2005 (UTC)


 * From the polytonic inscription the fact that its three syllables Έλάρη is blatantly obvious from the fact that the stress is on the e and the a so is pronounced E-la-ri in this case. --Thrax 16:00, 2 December 2005 (UTC)


 * More nonsense from Thrax, who has not even taken the trouble to read what we've written (no-one was disputing the number of syllables) --rossb 16:32, 2 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Why should I read nonsense ? You said the stress was on the first syllable and that this was the penultimate syllable, therefore you were implying that Elara only had two syllables. If the English stress in on the penultimate syllable then is should be on the "la" not on the E, since the last syllable is ra. Now stop this nonsense. --Thrax 18:53, 2 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Thrax, please read what has been written before responding. No-one has said that the word has only two syllables. The question was about the pronunciation of Elara as an English word, and very clearly the stress hass to be on the first syllable, following the accepted principles for pronuncing classical names in English, even though the accented syllable is clearly the second syllable in both Ancient and Modern Greek. You may not like this, and it may be illogical, but it's the way the English language works. --rossb 12:51, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone. Looks like I brought this question to the right page!

So the expectation is that the stress should be on the e in English. Is anyone aware of a Latin citation, which might verify the length of that a? I know this is a lot of bother, but I've verified scores of Greek astronomical names, and this is the last problematic one - at least among the moons. (There may be others among the asteroids.)

BTW, if any of you are interested in making sure that people get their Greek right in astronomy, the articles Jupiter's natural satellites, Saturn's natural satellites, and Neptune's natural satellites link to the individual moon articles, where the Greek names are given. Most of these have been confirmed; a few are missing the tonos; and a couple like Megaclite are only attested through Latin. I think that Elara was the last one where the unattested Greek vowel length would affect the English pronunciation. Then there's Pronunciation of asteroid names, which puts the first 1000 asteroids and the original Greek on one page, where they're easy to review, and links to similar pages for the Trojans, Centaurs, and trans-Neptunians. I'm sure that someone who actually knows what they're doing would do a better job than I, if you have the interest.

Thanks again, kwami 21:22, 2 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Get their Greek right. You must be joking. More like get their Greek wrong. In Greek the stress is on e and a. Where on earth did you get this "ee'-lur-a" nonsense from ? Epsilon in Greek is NEVER pronounced long ee and Alpha is NEVER pronounced u. Elara is pronounced E-la-ra, e as in egg and a as in cat. Where did you get the idea that the second syllable is lur ? Greek syllables never end in consonants unless the next syllable starts with a consonant. --Thrax 21:42, 2 December 2005 (UTC)


 * In fact everything is wrong on the pages you linked to. The names are utter nonsense. --Thrax 21:46, 2 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Thrax, these are English articles, not Greek articles. I suppose that English is utter nonsense if you only know Greek, but that's not the issue here. Look up the names in the OED if you don't know how English stress works with words of Greek origin. kwami 22:23, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
 * This is analogous to Helena,, with stress on the first syllabe in English, from Greek Ἑλένη. Andreas 15:11, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Notwithstanding the above, i would have thought that since the first vowel is epsilon rather than eta, the normal English pronunciation might have been with a "short e", in other words IPA rather than. --rossb 12:59, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I would have thought that at the time Latin and Greek names were introduced into English, the distinction between long and short vowels was not made any more. In any case, I am in favor of in analogy to Helena.Andreas 15:11, 3 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, you're right, that's what would be expected. (As in Oedipus, stressed antipenults are short vowels in English.) But the dictionaries are unanimous in making it long. I don't know why. kwami 19:04, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

This issue is off-topic here. I would suggest to move this section to Talk:Elara (moon). Andreas 15:11, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

On Thrax
Ὅτι μὲν ὑμεῖς πεπόνθατε ὑπὸ τουτουὶ τοῦ Οὐικιπαιδιστοῦ, ὃς και Θρᾷξ ὀνομάζεται, οὐκ οἶδα. ἐμοὶ δὲ δοκεῖ τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ γεγραμμένων οὐδὲν ἀληθὲς εἶναι, διὸ κἀγὼ ἐξίσταμαι τούτων.

Τὰ γὰρ περὶ ἀρχαίας φωνῆς σαφῶς εὑρεῖν διὰ χρόνου πλῆθος ἀδύνατον ὄντων, οὗτος ὁ Θρᾷξ εἶπε σαφῶς γ’ εἰδέναι τοὺς ἀρχαίους τὴν αὐτὴν φωνὴν ἔχοντας ἣν καὶ οἱ νῦν γὲ συνδιαλέγονται ἀλλήλοις! Τῶν τὲ ἄλλων τῶν πολλῶν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ εἰρηκότων οὐχ ὅπως οὐδὲν ἀληθὲς νομίζω εἶναι, ἀλλ οὐδὲ βούλομαι γ’ ἔτι ἀναγιγνώσκειν.

Δεῖ δὴ ὑμᾶς εὐλαβεῖσθαι μὴ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ χρόνον τὲ καὶ ἐνέργειαν ἀπολέσωμεν. ἄνευ γὰρ αὐτοῦ, ταχύτερον τὴν ἱστοσελίδα παρασκευάσομεν. Yannos 01:35, 3 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Oux opos ouden alithes nomizo einai. Double negative. So you think I am telling the truth. Now why don't you try writing in Klingon if you don't want me reading what you are saying. --Thrax 04:57, 3 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Maxime tibi assentio mi Ioanne. Istum enim Vicipediasten, qui nomen illustrissimi illius grammaticorum sibi assumere ausus est, alio in interretis loco cognovi, ubi nomine non minus illustri, clarissimi anactos andron, uti solebat; ex quo certe scio eum neque disputare humane, neque intelligenter legere, neque linguam illam, quam defendere contra dectractores nimio impetu vult, certe comprehendere posse. Quod si libellus illius graeculi, qui theologus in Thule insula est, nostri amici imaginationem mire incendisse videtur, est quod mihi ipso exprobro: nam ego fui qui eius animum ad libellum illum converti, cum in foro quodam Vsenet vulgo appellato de lingua graeca disputabamus. Paucis diebus postquam nomen theologi in foro illo enuntiaveram, anax andron in thracen se convertit Vicipediaeque in orbe subito ortus est, nullud alium in animo habens quam ut cogitationes ridiculissimas illius quam celerrime in sermonem vostrum immisceat. Quousque tandem, o amici, abutetur patientia nostra? --Lukas 15:23, 3 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Thrax, in ancient greek yoannes says, : It seems to me (edokei moi) that in things that he wrote(gegrammenwn up'autou ) there isn't truth (ouden alethes einai ). So he doesn't think that you are right. F.S.S:D P.S qousque tu, catilina abutere patentia nostra ? It seems that lukasis kikero's fan! Me too! Philx 12:13, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


 * You missed out oux which makes it a double negative. --Thrax 02:08, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * There is no double negative here. I guess you can say whatever when you know little. oux opws = ou monon ou. In other words, in a language that you perhaps understand, oux opws means oxi mono den. End of discussion 66.183.163.115 04:19, 15 December 2005 (UTC)


 * You are talking complete and utter nonsense. Oux opos ouden is a double negative end of discussion. If Yannos meant something else he did not say it. --Thrax 05:16, 15 December 2005 (UTC)


 * This is getting funnier and funnier. If I meant something else I didn't say it! The whole point was for Thrax to do some decyphering. Oh well, I shouldn't be too mean I guess. This is a short translation for Thrax so I can practice my modern Greek: Κι από τα άλλα τα πολλά που είπε ο Θρακιώτης όχι μόνο δεν πιστεύω ότι τίποτα δεν είναι αλήθεια αλλά ούτε καν να τα διαβάζω πια δεν θέλω. Is this clearer? Anyway, I am not interested in debating this any further (this aim of this page is different)Yannos 02:01, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * More double negatives. You don't don't believe that nothing is not true so you think I am telling the truth. --Thrax 13:35, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Thrax, my opinion is that even if some of your positions might be correct, the way you act makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for the rest editors to even consider it. Instead of reverting, discuss your changes and bring more sources please. Thank you. +MATIA &#9742; 18:30, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Work already done by User:Chronographos
This user has already started an article about Ancient Greek Phonology at User:Chronographos/Greek pronounciation. However, he has not done any edits after August 2005. We should take care not to do duplicate work. Andreas 15:20, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I like Chronographos' way of presenting the inventory in tables, much better than what we have so far. I'm going to take over some of his material in order to re-work our presentation. --Lukas 22:05, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Diphthongs
I was going to put in some reference to the distinction between the true diphtongs <ει,ου> [ei,oυ] and the - what's the term? - pseudo-diphthongs <ει,ου> [e:,o:] (those that arose from lengthening of [e,o]). But I currently have no reference work with me here except Babiniotis (whom I don't trust too much) and am otherwise working from memory. Three questions to anybody who happens to have Allen, Horrocks or some other reference handy:
 * Is it commonly accepted that these two classes of sounds were still distinguished up into the classical period?
 * Most likely classic <ει> was [e:] no matter its origin, although I like to believe that you would be able to hear a j glide when a genuine (but not a spurious) diphthong stood before a vowel in the same phonological unit (see below where I explain the terms and give further examples). Notice that I am not a published scholar but my guess is an educated one. Yannos 00:29, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Is it commonly accepted that the diphthongs merged with the corresponding pure long vowels before they were raised to [i:] and [u:] respectively, or did they raise first and merge then?
 * Merged first, then raised. This is the commonly accepted view (Allen and others) Yannos 00:29, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Attic orthography before the introduction of <η,ω> around 400 BCE commonly used <ε> both for later standard <ει> and <η>, and <ο> for later standard <ου> and <ω>. Was this done only for the pseudo-diphthongs [e:,o:], as one might perhaps expect, or did they also spell the true diphthongs as simple <ε>,<ο> in this way?
 * spurious diphthongs only (see rossb's comment) and the definition of the term in my comment below Yannos 00:29, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your comments. But two points: If the two sounds had already merged, as you write above, how could spelling have distinguished them, as you write here? Power of historical spelling conventions, at such an early date? -- But anyway, I now found some data: Words with genuine diphthongs, like your example βουλή, were also spelled with simple <ο>, as in the formula <ΕΔΟΧΣΕΝ ΤΕΙ ΒΟΛΕΙ ΚΑΙ ΤΟΙ ΔΕΜΟΙ> (ἔδοξεν τῇ βουλῇ καὶ τῷ δήμῳ) in Attic decrees (examples here: []). So maybe the distinction would be rather between pre-vocalic positions, where a bridge consonant [j] might have been preserved, and pre-consonantal positions where all instances were merged to [e:]? By the way, I seem to remember that Teodorsson states that the raising to [i:] also failed to affect pre-vocalic <ει>, which might support this. To round off the question we need only to determine whether spurious dipthongs in pre-vocalic position might have introduced that [j]-glide too analogically - but could spurious diphthongs actually ever stand in pre-vocalic positions, word-internally? If not, the matter might be settled. --Lukas 10:04, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
 * You ask the most difficult questions Lukas. First on the issue of the power of historical spelling conventions in the ancient world, then on the subject of the environments where spurious and genuine diphthongs can occur and finally on the exact timing of the merging of the two sounds and what kind of evidence must be considered compelling, knowing that while these phenomena were taking place there was an alphabet change, even though the older alphabet remained in use for epigraphy for quite a while afterwards. The literacy extent of the athenian society at all relevant times becomes important in assessing the weight of the evidence. I would like to give adequate answers but I cannot do it here, so I'll take it to my talk page. Notice that I will be writing my own views, reaching my own conclusions that sometimes do and sometimes do not coincide with the widely held views (original research). Yannos 22:31, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

-- Lukas 20:50, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
 * What's the usual English terminology for this distinction, anyway?


 * Allen uses the term 'long' diphthongs (his quotation marks - he accepts that there is a difficulty with this term, since all diphthongs were long for accentual purposes). He suggests that ῃ was tending to become ει in certain words from the 4th century BC, but a similar change in inflectional endings was reversed from about 200 BC, by which time a new change was starting whereby the iota was lost, so that ᾳ ῃ ῳ became α η ω. This is reflected in the earlier Latin loanwords tragoedus, comoedus, compared with the later loans, rhapsōdus, melōdus, hence English tragedy and comedy compared to rhapsody and melody. Apparently Dionysius Thrax (Θρᾷξ!) and Quintilian both say that the iota subscript was not pronounced in their times. It seems that these changes happened before η merged with ει and ι.
 * I've just realised that in this paragraph I was answering a different question from the one that Lukas has asked! Apologies for that. --rossb 12:31, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


 * On the pseudo-diphthongs, Allen says that the earlier orthography distinguished between Ε for the long close e and ΕΙ for what was originally a true diphthong, for instance εἰπεῖν was written ΕΙΠΕΝ. The ΕΙ spelling gradually came to be used for both cases, implying that the pronunciation had merged. Similarly with Ο and ΟΥ. --rossb 21:49, 3 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks, just what I needed to know. So, is "pseudo-diphthong" the term Allen actually uses? --Lukas 22:06, 3 December 2005 (UTC)


 * The terminology commonly used is genuine versus spurious diphthongue. The genuine were the ones which represented true diphtongues before they monophothongized (as in λείπω). The spurious ones are the result of two phenomena: contraction ποιέετε>ποιεῑτε and compensatory lengthening as in *λυθένς>λυθείς. Same thing for the spurious ou: πλόος>πλοῦς, ἐδήλοε>ἐδήλου and ποιέομεν>ποιοῦμεν (contractions) and *pods>ποῦς, *donts>*dons>δοῦς (compensatory lengthenings). The genuine one is the one you can find in words like βουλή. One needs to know a lot about Greek in order to be sure a genuine one is identified. For example even the ou in -mousa- is spurious from an earlier *monsa. Even though the spurious and corresponding genuine diphtongues merged in the same sounds, they do leave a trace of different origin in attic since η+ει(gen)contracts to eta with iota subscript but η+ει (sp.) contracts to eta without iota subscript! Compare ζήει>ζῇ but τιμήεις>τιμῆςYannos 23:04, 3 December 2005 (UTC)


 * What another load of nonsense. Dionysios Thax clearly states that there were only 6 diphthongs in ancient Greek any they were made up of combustions of what he calls prefix vowels (a, e, h, o, w) and suffix vowels (i, u) such that the diphthongs must contain only u, and i as sufixes and only a, e and o as prefixes. U only becomes a prefix in front of i but that is not regarded by Dionysius Thrax as a diphthong nor is ae, io, ia, or anything that does not use i or u as suffixes and a, e or o as prefixes. As usual you are dissembling the facts to suit you own point of view and deliberately ignoring or twisting the accounts of ancient Greek grammarians that contradict you. Dionysios Thrax definition of a diphthong clearly means one thing and one thing alone and that is a combination of two vowels that is pronounced as one sound and that is why only ai, au, ei, eu, oi, ou are called diphthongs in Greek and nothing else. --Thrax 02:26, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

On mesa and dasea
I support the new edit on this one. I think it must be added that the "mesa" fricativized earlier than the "dasea" and that the first occurences of fricativization were in intervocalic positions. Furthermore, I would add that delta preserves a trace of its classical pronunciation in modern Greek renderings of the words: ἄνδρας, δένδρον, ἔνδεκα, χονδρός and maybe others. Yannos 00:43, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Wrong, Wrong and Wrong again. The Dasea were clearly always fricatives since Greek became a written language since they were also fricatives in Latin and Dionysios Thrax description of the mediae and the very name mediae is only workable if the Dasea and Mediae are fricatives. The modern pronunciations of Andras, dendron etc. are all corruptions of the original fricative delta since they are easier to say using hard d and are thus proof that the mediae began as fricatives. The fact that the first d in dendron stays fricative proves that delta was always a fricative since if the middle delta was originally a hard d then the front delta would have stayed hard d as well. The evidence that you claim substantiates the reconstructed pronunciation subtantiates the historical Greek pronouncation even better. Anyone with an open mind reading this discussion knows perfectly well that you are dissembling the facts to fit your own point of view and are refusing to consider the alternative interpretations because you are bent on perpetuating an academic fraud. --Thrax 02:11, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Ok Thrax you win. You got me. I am a fraud. I don't really believe in what I write. It is obvious that Homer was speaking greek the same way as Plato, the same as Lucian, the same as Seferis. I have a hidden agenda which you have correctly uncovered and I am bent on perpetuating this fraud to serve foreign interests. As a matter of fact you know what? I am a CIA operative with a mission to destroy the last vestiges of true Hellenism. No wait. I am also part of the dark forces lurking ever ready to reinterpret history to serve the interests of the powers that be (666 the number of the beast etc.) By now I think you have understood how much I care about your opinion. I hope this helped. Yannos 05:14, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


 * You obviously haven't been to church lately. Homer spoke Greek like the Greek Orthodox priests do. That's how his poems are supposed to be sung and not like some Cornish country yokel like wot the reconstructed pronunciation sounds like. --Thrax 17:46, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Get a grip Thrax. You say: "Homer spoke Greek like the Greek Orthodox priests". How on earth can you substantiate such a statement? Perhaps you have a recording of Homer himself that you can play back and compare with the pronounciation used by the Greek Orthodox priests? If so, you have a really rare archaeological find in your hands! Really, such statements do not look very good on you, my friend, and you make a bad reputation for the rest of us Greeks participating in this effort. And, apart from that, such statements have absolutely no place in a scholarly discussion. Give it a rest... Αντε μπραβο… TheDouros 17:25, 5 December 2005 (UTC)


 * And your substantiating evidence for Homer speaking with a Cornish accent from southern England is what precisely ? Non existent. Homer spoke like a Greek not an Englishman and since the oldest continuous tradition of ancient Greek being spoken is the Orthodox Church which still uses ancient Greek as its standard language for services today he would have spoken and sung his poems the way a Greek priest speaks or pretty close to that since Homer lived only 800 years before Christ. So get real. --Thrax 19:06, 6 December 2005 (UTC)


 * To claim that Homer did no speak like a Greek Orthodox priest is not equivalent to saying that he spoke with a Cornish accent. With this attempt at a reductio ad absurdum, Pseudo-Thrax only proves that he knows nothing about Ancient Greek linguistics or linguistic theory in general. His confidence that there is an essential Greek phonology which all member of the Greek ethnos must have shared has a sad nationalist and racist taste. --Enkyklios 15:00, 7 December (CET)
 * Please read the header of the talk page and focus your comments on the article's improvement, not the editors. +MATIA &#9742; 14:49, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
 * true, but by now the line between calling a spade a spade and a personal attack is worn rather thin, in this case. dab (&#5839;) 18:48, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Proposal to merge
There's a proposal to merge this article with User:Chronographos/Greek pronounciation which in essence means combining the ancient and modern phonologies in one article. This would partly take us back to a situation that prevailed quite a time ago, when both sets of tables of vowels and consonants were in Greek language, but the ancient tables were removed by those who maintaned (with perhaps some justification) that they are more speculative than the modern ones, and should therefore not be exhibited side by side with the modern ones as if htey had the ame status. Given that the present article is pretty big and has attracted a certain amount of debate, I think it would be a mistake to merge the ancient and modern in one article, and I would therefore vote against the merger. --rossb 12:52, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

However the table of vowels could well be imported from the Chronographos article to replace the existing stuff on vowels, which is organised by letters not by sounds. It would then I think be helpful to add a separate table by letter, referring back to the sounds. --rossb 12:59, 10 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Please avoid merging the Ancient Greek and Modern Greek phonologies. I'm not at all fond of this obsession with identifying just "Greek" with the ancient, long-dead language instead of the modern living language (and the two are bound to be split up again soon). Modern Greek deserves just as much attention and is a lot easier to write about since you don't get these frighteningly complicated and bitter debates about which scholars have made the best guesstimates of ancient pronunciation.
 * Ancient Greek should not have more precedence over Greek in general on Wikuipedia than Old English should have over English in general.
 * Peter Isotalo 13:29, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

While this article seems big, I believe it needs to be expanded (as I've analysed before) to cover all the aspects of Ancient Greek (phonology, phonetics, pronunciation, prosody, whatever) with dates, examples and info that will make it more "accessible" to readers who have not studied linguistics. This doesn't mean that I do not recognise all the hard work that has been done here by many editors. +MATIA &#9742; 16:04, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Clarifications: I agree with Rossb and Peter that this article and Modern Greek phonology should not be merged. And I hope that Chronographos will return to wikipedia (he could give us a hand here, too). +MATIA &#9742; 16:15, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Sorry guys, when I put up the merge proposal, I didn't realize that the Chronographos article talked about modern greek as well. I agree that Ancient Greek Phonology is a subject in and of itself of course. However, what I meant is to use some of the stuff in Chronographos for our purposes. So maybe the merge proposal is inappropriate but how do you propose what I mean???Yannos 04:27, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Andreas has already merged and redirected the article. GFDL and the absense of Chronographos complicate the things a little bit. (Since Chronographos work is used here, but he hasn't edited this article, a redirect from the other article to this one, is needed by GFDL) Perhaps we can leave a note (or copy paste this entire section) at Talk:Greek phonology and leave the things as they are, for the time being. +MATIA &#9742; 13:11, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I only added one paragraph that was left in Greek phonology. I didn't touch Choronographos's draft at User:Chronographos/Greek pronounciation. Andreas 14:11, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I've incorporated vowel tables (from the Ancient Greek article rather than the Chronographos work) and attempted to follow the rule that phonology should start with sounds rather than letters (this needs a bit more work) and I've removed the merge notice which I think is now probably redundant. --rossb 06:57, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Substantiate the following claims else I will delete them
1. The claim that the dasea in ancient Greek were aspirated labial plosives. Either prove that the dasea in Latin were originally aspirated labial plosives as well or else withdraw the claim, label it as impossible to prove or include the counter argument that the dasea evolved directly into fricatives like they did in Latin.

2. The claim that the mediae in ancient Greek were plosives. Dionysios Thrax makes it clear in his account dating to 100 BC that they could not have been anything but fricatives. Either prove Dionysios Thrax is wrong or else withdraw the claim or include the opposing evidence.

3. The claims relating to major fifths attributed Dionysios of Halicarnaus. Cite the full text of this quote in ancient Greek (a translation is not acceptable) in full context or else remove the claim.


 * διαλέκτου μὲν οὖν μέλος ἑνὶ μετρεῖται διαςτήματι τῷ λεγομένῳ διὰ πέντε ὡς ἔγγιστα, καὶ οὔτε ἐπιτείνεται πέρα τῶν τριῶν τόνων καὶ ἡμιτονίου ἑπὶ τὸ ὀξὺ οὔτ' ανίεται τοῦ χωρίου τούτου πλέον ἐπὶ τὸ βαρύ. &mdash; "the melody of speech is measured by a single interval, approximately that termed a fifth, and does not rise to the high pitch by more than three tones and a semitone, nor fall to the low by more than this amount."

4. The claim that the alleged changes in ancient Greek took place in Hellenistic times and not before. This claim is unsustainable based on the inscriptional record and given that the Phoenician alphabet renders the mediae and dasea as allophones of both fricatives and plosives and that the Greek translation of the Hebrew bible made in 280 BC indicates that in almost all instances the mediae and dasea of the original Hebrew were already pronounced as fricatives at the time in question according to Hebrew scholars. Substantiate this claim or else remove it or state clearly that inscriptional evidence and comparisons with Semitic languages and scripts and Proto-Semitic phonology indicate that the dasea and mediae could have always been fricatives since the time the proto-Sinaitic script (Phoenician/Hebrew) was adopted by the Greeks.

5. Show that reconstructed pronunciation is still viable when taking into account modern evidence that argues against it such as that cited above or else make it perfectly clear that it is a 19th century theory that is over 200 years old and is therefore out of date and in the same category of dogma as the Earth cantered universe and accept that other theories which work better also exist. --Thrax 18:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Thrax, you are repeating yourself. All this has been discussed, and many sources given, including both Greek (Hatzidakis et al.) and non-Greek (Allen et al.). You are disrupting the Wikipedia, not contributing to it. Please stop. --Macrakis 19:21, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * You have NOT provided any EVIDENCE to substantiate any of these claims period. Repetition of the claims does NOT constitute evidence nor does it constitute proof. Now answer my questions and provide incontrovertible evidence or I will delete the unsubstantiated passages. Hatzidakis has never said that he agrees with the reconstructed pronunciation nor has he provided any evidence or done any research in favour of it. The reconstructed pronunciation is a point of view based on OUT OF DATE 19th Century Germanic linguistics that ignores modern Greek pronunciation, the origins of the Semtic alphabet that the Greeks adopted, the inscriptional record and ancient grammarians accounts that contradict it and is therefore NOT a valid scientific theory. The reconstructed pronunciation is the linguistic equivalent of the flat Earth theory. Modern research shows that it is invalid and unworkable. I have provided the evidence and the quotes that prove that. Now you do the same or I will delete your unsubstantiated claims with more justification than you had when you deleted my substantiated counter arguments.--Thrax 20:38, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Thrax my suggestion is: don't delete anything. If you want to add something or to prove that something written is wrong, cite reliable sources. Thanks. +MATIA &#9742; 19:31, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I have already provided sources and you deleted them with no justification. --Thrax 20:38, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Hatzidakis position is summarised at http://photobucket.com/albums/d92/eyes60/erasmus/ - have you read these? When I upload Hatzidakis' study I'll let you all know. Since you like linguistics, perhaps you should check Hatzidakis at a library (the book is named Academic Studies Ακαδημαϊκαί Μελέται, if I remember correctly) and it has a couple of hundred pages on Ancient Greek pronunciation. When you are saying "19th century German linguistics" you are talking about who? (not Allen, not Erasmus) +MATIA &#9742; 20:45, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Apart for the fact that it's virtually illegible what you have attributed to Hatzidakis is NOT a scientific thesis nor a scientific paper. Repetition of the claims reconstructed pronunciation without substantiating evidence and a through evaluation of the counter evidence and arguments of its opponents is NOT proof of the reconstructed pronunciation. The fact is that there is NO evidence whatsoever for the reconstructed pronunciation and that is precisely why you cannot cite any. The reconstructed pronunciation is an academic fraud that was shown to be a fraud by Thanos Papadimitrakopoulos in 1889 and is contradicted by all Semitic scholars who have shown that Hebrew and Aramaic pronounced the dasea and mediae as fricatives in 280 BC using comparison with Greek transcriptions of the time. Since the Hebrew dasea and mediae were fricatives then so are the Greek of the same period and that is what Semitic linguists are saying and this means that they must have already been fricatives in Greek long before the Hellenistic period, ie. in pre-Classical Archaic times for the Hebrews to transcribed Hebrew into Greek as such. The reconstructed pronunciation is therefore scientifically UNTENABLE and UNPROVABLE ! It is a Germanic point of view which is WRONG. --Thrax 21:49, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Preserving the quality of the article
Thanks to Lukas and many other editors, the article is becoming very good. But Thrax is back to pushing his POV. I really don't like reverting without discussing, but at this point, Thrax has repeated the same arguments many times, and doesn't seem to have any new ones. So there doesn't seem to be much point to discussing on Talk or even in the edit comments. I consulted admin Kwamikagami on this, and here is his advice (also on his Talk page):
 * If [Thrax] starts playing the 3RR game (violating the spirit of the rule by reverting 3x a day), I may block him for that. But if it's merely an annoyance factor of him making contributions no one else agrees with, then it's easy enough for the rest of you as a group to revert him. There's no need to defend the article - you've discussed it ad nauseum, and Thrax has shown himself immune to evidence. In other articles where I've seen this happen (one editor repeatedly but sincerely reverting to an unsubstantiated POV, and either unable or unwilling to understand standards of research), after a while the other editors didn't defend what they're doing, didn't answer his attacks, didn't interact with him at all, they just automatically reverted anything he did. Yes, it's annoying, but it doesn't take more than a minute or two. After a while he gave up. (Okay, it was after a long while. *sigh*)
 * The alternative, as I see it, is to ask for dispute resolution. That requires that you formally prepare your case. It's up to you to decide whether it's worth your time to do that, rather than each of you spending a minute a day restoring the article.

So let's just restore the article to the consensus position when Thrax damages it, and ignore his comments. --Macrakis 21:42, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Renaming
I renamed this article to remove the worst of POV pushing by Thrax. I still think that the correct name for this article is Ancient Greek phonology. Andreas 23:04, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * The article must be moved to Ancient Greek phonology. (by an administrator) +MATIA &#9742; 23:14, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Was there consensus for this change? Jkelly 02:44, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Nope, it was Thrax's (too) bold move. +MATIA &#9742; 17:32, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Thrax renamed the article The 19th century reconstructed pronunciation of ancient Greek. I later removed "the 19th century" from the title. Andreas 17:38, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

However any admin can verify that the correct article title would be Ancient Greek phonology, and that can be verified from the two talk pages and/or from the article itself. +MATIA &#9742; 18:00, 17 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree, Ancient Greek phonology is the correct title. Thrax has been a disruptive editor for some time.  This was just his latest disruptive tactic. --Macrakis 03:55, 18 December 2005 (UTC)


 * This article would probably develop a lot smoother if you all just stopped caring it to death for a few weeks. Especially if you just keep on squabbling over minutiae and reverting each other all the time. And please move it back to Ancient Greek phonology pronto. Whoever fiddled with the redirect so that only admins can move it back should know better.
 * Peter Isotalo 11:52, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

For the record, Thrax's edit was misleadingly entitled "reordered sections chronologically". While reordering the sections, he slipped in one of his POV sections which has been rejected by the editors before. Presumably the reordering was to make it harder to see this POV insertion in the version comparison. The offending section was removed on 12/16 by Matia. --Macrakis 05:26, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

some sources
I've uploaded some photos at http://photobucket.com/albums/d92/eyes60/xatzidakis-1902/ - these are from the 1902 version of the study Hadjidakis wrote. I also have 120 photos of the 1924 version of the same study, but I cannot upload it right now. Three other books are Phonology by Bambiniotis (Ιστορική Γραμματεία της Αρχαίας Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, 1. Φωνολογία), The Sound of Greek by W.B. Stanford, 1967 and Greek Aspirates by Elizabeth Dawes, 1894. The works by Hatzidakis and by Stanford seem to me as the most interesting for this article, however I must repeat that linguistics is not my field of expertise. +MATIA &#9742; 23:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * And http://photobucket.com/albums/d92/eyes60/xatzidakis-1924/ +MATIA &#9742; 00:11, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Maybe put history of the reconstructed pronunciation first in the article
Unless someone (other than Thrax) objects, I think that the history of the reconstructed pronunciation should come first in the article, providing context and motivation for the system reconstructed in the rest of the article. Yannos 06:06, 17 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Why would Thrax object ? It was Thrax who tried to do that in the first place. --Thrax 01:51, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

The primary subject matter of this article is the pronunciation, not the history of the study of the pronunciation. After all, in the article on gravity, we don't start with a discussion of the history of theories of gravity -- though it is an interesting and rich history. There are in fact three different subjects here:

1. How Attic Greek was pronounced.


 * Like modern Greek unless you can prove otherwise which is something you have not done and cannot do since there is no evidence to support anything to the contrary. --Thrax 01:51, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

2. The historical and dialectal changes in the pronunciation (which are mostly covered in other articles);


 * Greek has always been pronounced the same way. The whole idea of dialect is totally meaningless unless it is accepted that the Greek alphabet was pronounced in exactly the same by Homer, Plato, Cleopatra, Constantine and Saferis. If this were not so how can you say that dialects existed based on spelling. They could have been spelled differently but still pronounced the same if the pronunciation of the alphabet was not the same for everybody. You can't have it both ways. Either the alphabet never changed its sound or different Greek dialects did not exist. --Thrax 01:51, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

3. The history of the study of pronunciation, essentially the historiography. In academic research papers in some fields, it is traditional to start with the historiography: Jones said this in 1755; Le Duc revised it in 1805; Papadopoulos reformulated it in 1923; and now I am revisiting the issue. But I don't think this is a good idea in an encyclopedia like Wikipedia. First, we should present the current state of the field, and only afterwards discuss the historiography. There does not seem to be any consistent style, and indeed many articles don't discuss the history of their fields at all -- which is a pity. But I still think the historiography should come at the end, not the beginning. --Macrakis 21:10, 17 December 2005 (UTC)


 * You are right. I changed my mind.Yannos 21:39, 17 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your reply. (I am intentionally ignoring Thrax's comments, which are both off-topic and substantively, um, bizarre.) --Macrakis 03:55, 18 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm going to revert Thrax' re-ordering of the structure. After the discussion above, my impression was that the consensus was in fact to leave the structure as is. Thrax, please don't do this without discussing things and taking other people's opinions seriously. Lukas 20:08, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Introductory paragraphs
Back from a two-weeks Wiki break, I'm pleased to see that a lot of nice work has gone into the article while I was away.

I'm now looking for a way to better integrate the material taken over from the old Chronographos article in the introduction. It certainly contains useful ideas, but I'm not quite happy with its wording in some details:


 * "The concept of orthography was absent in Ancient Greek."
 * I can see what we are trying to say here, but do we really agree on so strong a statement? After all, there were such things as officially "reforming" orthography, like the 403BC decision in Athens mentioned somewhere later in the article. That does imply an awareness that orthographic norms are to some degree arbitrary social conventions, doesn't it?


 * "In contrast to modern practice, the Ancient Greeks did not read what they wrote"
 * That's slightly misleading in a rather funny way, now, isn't it?


 * "To the degree that the relation between phoneme and grapheme was bijective..."
 * But we did establish during earlier discussions that it really wasn't, didn't we?

Lukas 20:34, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes. These introductory remarks were taken from Chronographos, but I agree with Lukas that they sound a bit dogmatic (or unverifiable) given what we know. 204.244.64.254 01:58, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

ηυ
The diphthong ηυ, obtained by augmenting ευ or αυ (ηὗρον), seems to be the only one with long first part and υ second part. (There is no ωυ). It is not yet in the article. Andreas 23:04, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
 * ωυ doe exist, see http://www.ccel.org/s/smyth/grammar/html/smyth_1a_notes.htm also mentioned by Erasmus Andreas 23:19, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I am pretty sure that ωυ is found in Homer.Yannos 02:46, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

ηυ does not belong to any of the two 'sets' of diphthongs mentioned in the article. So the section on diphthongs has to be rewritten. Does it belong to the second set? If so, is there also a diphthong αυ with a long α? My knowledge is not good enough to edit the article on this one. Andreas 03:16, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks to you both for pointing out my oversight. I'll give it another try later. What it seems to boil down to is a 2-by-2 way classification of diphthongs then, right? long vs. short first element on the one hand, and back vs. front second element on the other. Lukas 09:47, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Article title
The current name is overly verbose and has absolutely no merit. Please reinstate the perfectly NPOV title Ancient Greek phonology. If you want to vote about it, kindly do it after the consensus title has been restored. Thank you for being reasonable.

Peter Isotalo 21:39, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree but though I've contacted some admins it seems that it must be taken at WP:RM. I'm gonna take a wikibreak, merry Christmas to everyone ps if there gonna be a straw poll, I'm pro Ancient Greek phonology. talk to +MATIA 21:44, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I think we all agree on this -- except of course Thrax. It just has to be done. User:Macrakis 01:27 21 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * It must, must it? I disagree that everybody has to accept a unilateral move to a non-consensus version pending action from Requested moves with its notorious backlog (see prominent box at the top of the RM page). I have moved the page back to Ancient Greek phonology. The editor who performed the unilateral move is kindly requested not to pull stunts like that. If you want the title changed, please start a straw poll about it. Bishonen | talk 11:00, 21 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I have changed the title back to the neutral version which describes exactly what the article is about. Until the article gives opposing theories equal merit and labels all references to the postulates of the reconstructed pronunciation as such then the reconstructed pronunciation title should remain. --Thrax 18:38, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

The only interpretation I can think of for Thrax's latest outrageous action is that it is some sort of dare to see what we will do. Everyone else on this page, including two admins, considers that the previous move was inappropriate. I think it's time to consider banning Thrax. --Macrakis 18:50, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

The only interpretation I can see for your actions is to falsify history and deceive people into thinking that the reconstructed pronunciation is the actual pronunciation of ancient Greek and not just a theory that was created in the 19th century which does not even stand up to modern scientific scrutiny even according to its own advocates such as Allen and is contradicted by the entire filed of Semitic linguistics which does not support its claims. That is why you removed all of my references to opposing theories and the evidence for them including the Erasmian theory and that is also why you relegated all of the history of the reconstructed pronunciation and methodology to the bottom of the article. To prove your bad faith you even edited out 90% of the original discussion and as I predicted you then removed the link to it so that people can't read the opposing evidence and see the proof that you are turning the article into a POV rant. Even thought the is no consensus you removed the NOPV label from the article to deceive people that you one sided editing was unopposed.

I suggest that the administrators lock the article to the following version so as to prevent any further deceptions occurring http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_reconstructed_pronunciation_of_ancient_Greek&oldid=32263641 --Thrax 19:06, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Move reverted and user warned
User:Ανδρέας has undone the move, and I have given Thrax a block warning, since a polite request regretfully went nowhere. Bishonen | talk 19:24, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Tag
I agree with Macrakis. The article is now very good and no longer needs a discussion tag, and certainly not a 'disputed' tag. Thrax, stop editing against consensus. Andreas 20:25, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

POV fork
Thrax started a POV fork named The historical pronunciation of ancient Greek Andreas 20:35, 21 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Its not a POV fork. Its the evidence of the opposing views that you would not permit to be included in this article which you have hijacked and turned into a POV rant on the reconstructed pronunciation. --Thrax 20:44, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Your description of it as "evidence of the opposing views" classifies it immediately as a POV fork. --Macrakis 20:51, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Alternative ways of dealing with forks
''I copypaste below a note that I've posted to Talk:The historical pronunciation of ancient Greek. I suggest that all discussion of the fork be conducted on one page, rather than being itself forked—at a venture, on this page, Talk:Ancient Greek phonology.'' I agree that this article is by definition, and by Thrax' description of its contents and purpose, a POV fork of Ancient Greek phonology. Thrax, please read the page POV fork which Andreas linked to above, where the problems inherent in article forks are explained very clearly. That said, The historical pronunciation of ancient Greek now exists in the article namespace, and is as such part of the wiki, in other words other people than the original author are allowed, even encouraged, to edit it. Those editors of Ancient Greek phonology who disapprove of its existence have the option (besides, obviously, listing it on WP:AFD) of turning it into a redirect to Ancient Greek phonology, either by being bold, or by first attempting to form a consensus. Thrax, btw, you seem to use the word "consensus" in the sense of "agreement by 100 % of the editors". This is not unreasonable, but it's not how the word is used on Wikipedia. An agreement between everybody else, with only one person holding out, is a good (unusually good!) wiki consensus. Therefore, if the new article you created should be redirected by consensus, please don't edit war about it. Also, please stop adding the Totally Disputed tag to Ancient Greek phonology, as it clearly does have a consensus version. Bishonen | talk 22:53, 21 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Sounds good. But I notice that the Guide to deletion explicitly warns against doing both WP:AFD and turning the offending article into a redirect at the same time. So perhaps we might need to discuss this first so we don't end up stepping on each other's toes? I agree that Thrax' POV fork shouldn't be allowed to stand. Lukas 23:07, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Good heavens, yes, thanks for pointing it out. Do not do both in the same timeframe, they're mutually exclusive. Bishonen | talk 23:27, 21 December 2005 (UTC)


 * "The historical pronunciation of ancient Greek" is not a POV fork. Its a seperate theory with its own advocates in academia which you want to suppress. I propose merging the contents of "The historical pronunciation of ancient Greek" with that of "Ancient Greek phonology" as a compromise. A redirect would be totally misleading since "Ancient Greek phonology" as its stands is a one sided POV rant on the reconstructed pronouncation. Otherwise rename "Ancient Greek phonology" to "The reconstructed pronunciation of Ancient Greek" and leave "The historical pronunciation of ancient Greek" where it is as a separate article and create an article on Erasmian pronunciation as well so that all theories are represented. And people ganging up again someone else with an opposing view and who has provided evidenced from academics who support it is not a consenssus but an attempt at academic fraud. --Thrax 23:20, 21 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I like redirects, Thrax's title is something people could guess at, so I made the redirect. Stefán Ingi 23:31, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

The opposing theories
The majority of native born Greeks and an increasing number of academics including linguists and classicists contend that throughout its recorded history the pronunciation of the Greek language and the Greek alphabet has remained relatively constant and that ancient Greek since archaic times obeys to a high degree the same rules as the Greek language of today. This is not to say that changes did not take place but those that did take place were minor and insignificant in relation to the living historical continuity of the Greek language.

Spelling

 * Evidence from different spellings of the same words in ancient Greek inscriptions shows that modern pronunciation was already beginning to take hold in the late Archaic period and that by the time of Christ all of the Greek vowels and diphthongs except for eta (η) were pronounced the same way as in modern Greek. Eta only adopted its modern pronunciation in Byzantine times.
 * The digraphs ΤΗ, ΠΗ, ΚΗ represented the sounds θ, φ, χ in Greek and in Latin were depicted as TH, PH, KH. Later the symbols for θ, φ, χ were added to the Greek alphabet to denote these fricative sounds but not to the Latin alphabet which took a different course. The letter Η in these ancient Greek digraphs acted in the same way as the h does in the English sound /th/. The letter Η was not pronounced separately but denoted that the consonant it followed should be pronounced as a fricative.
 * The symbol F (digamma) was substituted for PH by the Romans later on.
 * Latin F is usually transcribed with Φ
 * The letter Φ is confused with the f sound of diphthongs αυ and ευ but not with Π showing it to be fricative and the υ sound in these diphthongs to be v or f.
 * The spelling εκ stays the same in front of κ, τ, π, but often becomes εχ in front of θ, φ, χ which indicates that θ, φ, χ must be fricatives.
 * The κ of εκ before Β, Γ, Δ as well as Λ, Μ and Ν regularly changed to Γ indicating that Gamma could not have been pronounced as G but as /GH/.
 * The letter β is confused with υ of diphthongs αυ, ευ, ηυ indicating that beta is a /v/ sound and that the υ in these diphthongs was pronounced with the same /v/ sound.
 * The letter β also replaces F (digamma) thus must have sounded as /v/.
 * Latin U or V are often transliterated with β in Greek thus beta must be /v/.
 * The letter δ interchanges with θ for a time and then goes back to δ.
 * That the letter δ does not become τ shows it was closer to θ but never sounded as d.
 * The fact that the letter δ interchanges with β in inscriptions precludes d.
 * The δ also interchanges with γ precluding d again.
 * The ζ frequently replaces σ before Β, Γ, Δ shows it had a voiced σ sound.
 * Misspelling using σ for ζ and σ before ζ shows that zeta is /z/.
 * The letter δ is often substituted by ζ in Elis and Athens and shows that delta must be /dh/ and not d and also shows that zeta must be /z/.
 * The doubling of ζ impossible to pronounce as zdzd.

Comparative linguistics

 * Advocates of Erasmian pronunciation of pronunciation have chosen to pay almost no attention to modern Greek pronunciation in their various attempts to reconstruct the pronunciation of ancient Greek and other indo-European languages. That comparative linguistics is reliable or even scientific when conducted in this manner is open to question..

Spelling reform and introduction of a new script

 * When the Athenians switched from the Attic to the Ionian script several new letters such as eta, omega were added. Eta and Omega were not originally vowels but were compensatory marks associated with the letters epsilon and omicron. Finally when aspiration became redundant in Ionia they became associated with long vowels. Thus, in Attic inscriptions from early 5th c. B.C. on (long) Ε occurs as ΕΙ and later as Η, while (long) Ο occurs as OU and later as Ω.

Accents and breathings

 * Advocates of the Erasmian pronunciation attribute a musical pitch-accent to ancient Greek whereas advocates of the Greek pronunciation of ancient Greek attribute a stress accent..

Grammarians accounts

 * Advocates of either of the Erasmian or Greek historical pronunciation both claim that ancient grammarians support their view. Of these grammarians the one who is most frequently cited is Dionysius Thrax (c.100 BC). Dionysios Thrax states that the sound of the "mediae" which is what he calls the letters β, δ, γ was the sound in-between the "psila" π, τ, κ and the "dasea" φ, θ, χ respectively, thus "β is in-between π and φ", "δ is is in-between τ and θ" and "γ is is in-between of κ and χ". According to Dionysios Thrax the sound of ζ is made by the combination of σ and δ or σδ.

Historical background to the reconstruction of Greek pronouncation
Up until the 15th century (during the time of the Byzantine Greek Empire) ancient Greek texts were pronounced exactly like modern Greek when they were read aloud both by Greeks and non-Greeks using received pronunciation, until the Dutch classicist Desiderious Erasmus Roterdamus (1494-1553) questioned weather ancient Greek might have been pronounced differently as a result of a trick that was played on him by the Swiss scholar Henricus Glareanus who lied to Erasmus that he heard certain Greek scholars pronouncing Greek in a different manner to everyone else. This brought Erasmus attention to the fact that the Greeks gave several letters to the sound i, whereas for example Latin transliterated eta with the letter e and not i. Thus in 1528 Erasmus wrote a dialogue between a bear and a lion in which he concocted a new system of pronouncing ancient Greek, but on finding out that he had been tricked he quickly disowned the pronunciation he had concocted and continued to use the received pronunciation instead. 

The system Erasmus concocted gave the Greek consonants β, γ, δ, θ and χ the un-Greek sounds of /b/, /g/, /d/, dz (or zd), /t/ and /k/, and the vowels η, υ, ω the sounds of /e/ (as in Germ), u or y, and o (as in for) and pronounced the diphthongs as separate letters. 

Advocates of the Greek system of pronunciation agree that there was a simplification in the vowel system but they do not agree that the consonants have ever been pronounced differently in ancient Greek. Koine had seven vowels, two of which η and ω were long, two ε and ο were short and three α, ι, υ were either long or short. Alongside the individual vowels there were diphthongs αι, αυ, ει, ευ, οι and ου, and several rarer ones. Most noticeably, the vowels i, ē, y, and diphthongs ei, oi (ι, η, υ, ει, οι) have all become i in modern Greek.

Several hundred years after Erasmus the English resurrected the system that he had abandoned, and sought to put it on a scientific footing using Germanic linguistic theory and comparisons with reconstructed Latin pronunciation and other indo-European languages, but took no notice of modern Greek pronunciation and the evidence found in inscriptions when they created their theroy. Therefore the reconstructed pronunciation was challenged by linguists in the 19th century after Greece became independent and the arguments of both sides resulted in stalemate with neither side being able to prove their view conclusively. By sheer force of numbers the reconstructed pronunciation has become the system most commonly used for ancient Greek pronunciation among linguists the English speaking world but not among classicists who prefer to pronounce ancient Greek in the same way their pronounce their own native language. --Thrax 02:52, 22 December 2005 (UTC)


 * You are repeating yourself. This has all been discussed at length before.  Stop wasting our time. --Macrakis 03:09, 22 December 2005 (UTC)