Talk:Ancient Greek phonology/Archive 3

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"

Summary of previous discussions
One editor, User:Thrax wants to include in this article the hypothesis that the pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very similar to that of Modern Greek, whereas all other editors have the opinion that this is a marginal view and should only be mentioned in one sentence. Andreas 03:49, 22 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Thrax' comment on this summary has been moved to Talk:Ancient Greek phonology/Thrax's responses to RFC comments, please see section "Block warning" below. Bishonen | talk 11:32, 26 December 2005 (UTC).

Responses to RFC
This area is for editors who have not participated in the discussion until now. Please put your responses here. Please, do not edit the individual responses, but put your comments at the end of the section. Limit your comments to a few sentences.

Try not to be confrontational. Be friendly and keep calm.

Mediate where possible - identify common ground, attempt to draw editors together rather than push them apart.

If necessary, educate users by referring to the appropriate Wikipedia policies.

Thank you. Andreas 03:49, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Being an expert of the Ancient Greek language, I can assure the readers that the reconstructed pronunciation is indeed 100% valid, and it is found in all respectable handbooks, also in the most recent ones. Even if the pronunciation of the "dasea" as fricatives may have been anticipated in certain dialects and in certain registers in the Classical period already, nothing suggests that it was adopted universally until the Roman period. --Enkyklios 16:40, 22 December 2005 (CET)


 * The following discussion between Enkyklios and Thrax has been moved to Talk:Ancient Greek phonology/Thrax's responses to RFC comments, please see section "Block warning" below. Bishonen | talk 11:32, 26 December 2005 (UTC).

Anti-bloat measures
It seems Thrax can't be stopped from bloating talk pages with rambling, repetitive confrontational stuff. Maybe it's just as well for the moment, for anybody who comes in on the RfC to see immediately what's going on. But in the future I propose we should find a way of keeping talk pages reasonably clean.

Thrax, please, put your argumentation somewhere, in one place together, once. I suggest you make it a sub-page of your own talk page. Then, whenever you feel you have to remind us of some argument of yours, just link to it with one short remark here.

Else, I might adopt a policy of deleting anything you write even on the talk page if it exceeds some reasonable limit (i.e. moving it to an archive of its own, or to your talk page, and replacing it with only a link.)

I know, you're going to shout censorship now, but there's no point repeating yourself over and over again here, and you may have noticed that people have by now stopped replying to you. Lukas 08:31, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Deleting a contributor on the talkpage is a rather extreme measure, but seeing what Thrax just did to the new sections "Summary of previous discussions" (which went from two-and-a-half lines on my screen, to 15, and is no longer a summary) and "Responses to RFC", a section specially provided for outside comment, I agree with Lucas. Thrax, nobody wants to stop you from responding to comments, even in those sections, but please do it in the way Lucas requests, or he will IMO be justified in removing your comments to a more convenient place and linking to them. Incidentally, writing in ALL CAPS is seen as shouting. Please don't greet people who are here to help (specifically at your own invitation, on the RFC page), with a shout of "WRONG!" It's just counterproductive. Please be friendly, calm, and welcoming. Bishonen | talk 10:43, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Words unchanged in pronunciation and meaning in 35 centuries.
Putting aside the preposterous claims of Thrax, it recently occurred to me that the word μέλι(=honey) is attested in Linear B myceanean. I find it amazing that this word has probably remained totally unchanged in both pronunciation and meaning in 35 centuries! So Agamemnon would have pronounced it the same way as any speaker of Greek alive today. It would be fun to find other words like that one but I cannot think of any.Yannos 23:21, 24 December 2005 (UTC) It wasn't pronounced the same way. You are ignoring an enormous variety of dialectal variations over time. Not to mention how likely different pronounciantions in-between the discontinuous time jumps you are, as a premisse, envisioning, are. 201.19.130.6 (talk) 18:54, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Block warning
Unfortunately, I see that Thrax has ignored Lukas' and my pleas above ("Anti-bloat measures") for keeping this page managable, civil, and useful, and has continued to try to shout down all opposition and add long posts to the wrong section. I'm sorry it had to come to this, but I've moved the long argument between Thrax and Enkyklios to Talk:Ancient Greek phonology/Thrax's responses to RFC comments. I don't mean to marginalize Thrax or make it difficult for him to take part in the discussion, but I don't see any other alternative to the (still less desirable) option of premature archiving of this whole page, outside responses and all. Thrax, please put any further responses you wish to make to Enkyklios or anybody else who responds to the RFC at Talk:Ancient Greek phonology/Thrax's responses to RFC comments. Feel free to post a brief note in "Responses to RFC" that you have done so, and a diff pointing to your post, but don't argue in that section any more. This is not optional, since you have been making this talkpage unusable. Stop shouting and personally attacking other contributors. You are currently violating WP:CIVIL and disrupting this page. Desist or I will block you.Bishonen | talk 11:37, 26 December 2005 (UTC).


 * This is deliberate censorship and the tactics of dishonest charlatans who know that their lies and falsifications cannot stand up to the evidence against them so they are now trying to prevent people form reading the evidence at all. The reconstructed pronunciation of ancient Greek is an unscientific theory based on the false notion of Germanic supremacy and everyone who has read the evidence against it and the racist slurs made by its advocates against the Greeks, and every expert in Semitic linguistics, knows it is an untenable 19th century academic fraud. --Thrax 18:45, 26 December 2005 (UTC)


 * The proof of this deliberate censorship and dishonest tactics is shown by Macrakis recent attempt to delete my above contribution from this page. Macrakis wants to conceal the fact that modern linguistics does not support the reconstructed pronunciation as a scientific theory but only acknowledges it as an Erasmian based convention used in teaching in English speaking countries. Modern linguists are all unanimous in the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever to support the reconstructed pronunciation and Semitic linguists support that ancient Greek was pronounced exactly like modern Greek. --Thrax 20:46, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Crossposted to User talk:Thrax:
 * You have been blocked for 24 hours for personal attacks and disruption. Please note that if you continue the same actions after the block expires, I will block you for longer. Many people have recommended WP:NPOV and WP:CITE to your attention. I hope you will click on those links and spend some of the next 24 hours studying them, as well as WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL. Bishonen | talk 23:02, 26 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Blocking people in order to gain advantage in a content war is against the rules. --Vregamoto 01:26, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is. I'm not taking part in any content war, I carry no brief for either side. Kindly refer to my input on this page, and lack of input on Ancient Greek phonology (I have never edited the article, except to move it back to the consensus title when Thrax had moved it to his preferred title), before you level such a serious accusation. Thank you. Bishonen | talk 02:40, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * has been determined, using CheckUser, to be a sockpuppet of . I have advised Bishonen that she may block Vregamoto indefinitely and Thrax for any time up to one month for the use of sockpuppets to continue disruptive editing practices after repeated warnings.  Anybody who has a problem with this may take it up with the Arbitration Committee.  Kelly Martin (talk) 15:43, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I have blocked Thrax for three weeks for inveterate disruption, especially for using a sock to evade a block (twice) and to create a false impression of support for his position. The Vregamoto account was already indefinitely blocked for inappropriate username. Bishonen | talk 16:09, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * And you think by blocking people in violation of the rules that you can impose your POV in a content war. You must be dumber than I thought. --Yarak 16:26, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * You're on the fast track to a permanent ban from Wikipedia, Thrax. Bishonen | talk 16:42, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * You are violating Wikipedia rules in order to gain advantage in a content war by blocking people with an opposing opinion and preventing them from answering opposing claims. Your despicable tactics are not doing Wikipedias reputation for fairness and objectivity much good. --AntiCensorship 17:40, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Are you "people" now, Thrax? Don't you ever read anything except your own posts? "Anybody who has a problem with this may take it up with the Arbitration Committee." Since you do seem to have a problem with it, you might try e-mailing User:Kelly Martin directly, via the Wiki "e-mail this user" feature. She's a member of the Arbitration Committee. Bishonen | talk 19:28, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * What credibility does she have as an honest broker. None at all because she is a person actively involved in this content dispute who has violated Wikipedia rules by blocking people who have done her no harm in order to gain advantage for one side. --WikipediaHasLostItsCredibility 20:55, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * First I'm involved in the content dispute and now Kelly Martin is? I'm beginning to understand. Nobody can block you if they're involved in the content dispute, and blocking you is in itself evidence of being involved in the content dispute? Good, all is clear. Try that one with the ArbCom. Bishonen | talk 21:11, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm involved in this content dispute? Hell, I don't even understand what this article is about!  Something to do with ancient Greek, but beyond that, I've no clue.  Kelly Martin (talk) 22:46, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Who are you arguing with. Someone who you've blocked so that they can't answer back. That's the only way you thought police can win arguments isn't it. What more poof is needed that your blocking violates Wikipedia rules. You're only doing it to give one side an advantage in a content war on a subject you admit you know nothing about. Say my name. --WikipediaIsAJoke 00:29, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

The evidence against the reconstructed pronunciation
These accounts need to be included in the main article.


 * Chrys C. Caragounis (1995): "The error of Erasmus and un-greek pronunciations of Greek". Filologia Neotestamentaria 8 (16)
 * Chrys C. Caragounis (2004): Development of Greek and the New Testament, Mohr Siebeck
 * Th. Papadimitrakopoulos (1889): Βάσανος τῶν περὶ τῆς ἑλληνικῆς προφορᾶς Ἐρασμικῶν ἀποδείξεων. Athens.
 * Dionysios Thrax description of the sounds of the mediae (100 BC) which implies that they cannot have been anything but fricatives.
 * Semitic Linguisitic theory which implies that all proto-Sinaitic based alphabets including Phoenicians, Hebrew and Greek contained letters which were allophones for proto-Semitic fricatives and plosives.
 * Semitic Linguisitic theory which states that the original Hebrew non-fricative mediae and dasea became fricatives before 280 BC and that the original Hebrew fricative mediae and dasea became breaths by 280 BC, thus proto-Semitic fricative "g" stopped being represented in the written language by 280 BC but was still recognisable as modern Greek gamma in the spoken language and represented as fricative gamma in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew bible made in 280 BC and later became a breath in the spoken langauge. --Thrax 21:06, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Semitic connection

 * Now that we have a few hours of Thrax vacations, we might try to make up our minds whether the Semitic connection is in any way worth following. I strongly suspect that Thrax has been making it up completely, but I know next to nothing about Semitic. Obviously, he has been unable to cite any scholar who actually endorses the view that the development of Semitic might provide evidence that would necessitate revisions to the received reconstruction of Greek. Is there anybody here who can verify if anything along those lines has ever been discussed in the literature? (Enkyklios, perhaps?) Of course, if it's just pure Thracian original research, there's no need bothering about it. Lukas 12:08, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * My knowledge of Semitic is also rather limited. Apparently, Thrax' Semitic arguments has two parts:


 * 1) The Semitic letters, from which β, δ, γ were derived, could indicate the voiced fricatives . It is true that Hebrew and Aramaic ב ד ג have fricative allophones between vowels. Yet, I am not sure that it is generally agreed that this allophony can be projected back to Phoenician or Proto-Semitic. And even if it can, it does not follow that the Greek sounds written by these letters were also fricatives because the Hebrew and Aramaic have also plosive allophones, and furthermore, a language that had voiced stops but no voiced fricatives could re-interpret foreign letters indicating voiced fricatives if that was the only solution for an adequate rendering of its own phonetic system.


 * 2) The Septuagint trabscribe Hebrew ע (‘ayin) is transcribed with Greek γ in words like Γομορρᾶ (עמורה) and Γάζα (עזה). It is assumed that the Hebrew sound derives partly from the Proto-Semitic uvular fricative *ġ (: Arabic غ) and partly from pharyngeal fricative *‘ (: Arabic ع). However, the Greek forms do not attest that Greek <γ> was a fricative [γ] (a language that had only [g] would probably use this phoneme for rendering a foreign [γ] as well); it would only prove that Hebrew ‘ayin was still something like in such words.


 * A language that had plosive g would never have used it to represent a sound that had virtually became a breath of near silence in the spoken language and was no longer represented in the written language. The only reason why the Hebrews would have written gomorra with a gamma is if gamma was a fricative sound which resembled a breath, otherwise they would have left it out altogether. In fact almost every consonant in the Hebrew bible is translated into Greek using the fricatives gamma, deta, beta, hi, th, and fi even though the Greek alphabet have plosive k, t and p which could have been used instead as can be seen from these examples.

Hebrew, Greek, English

Gen 10:1

Nh, nwe, Noah Sm, shm, Shem hm, xam, Ham YPT, iafe8, Japheth

Gen 10:2 TYRs, 8iras, Tiras MSk, mosox, Meshech TBL, 8obel, Tubal elisa YWN, iwuan, Javan MDY, madai, Madai MGWG, magog, Magog GMR, gamer, Gomer YPT, iafe8, Japheth

Gen 10:3 GMR, gamer, gomer ASKNZ, asxanaz, Ashkenaz RYFT, rifa8, Riphath TGRMH, 8orgama, Togarmah

Gen 10:4 DDNWS, rodioi, Dodanium KTYm, kitioi, kittim TRSYS, 8arsis, Tarshish ALYSH, elisa, Elishah YWn, iwuan, Javan

Gen 10:6 hm, xam, Ham KWS, xous, Cush M(TZ)RYm, mesraim, Mizraim PWD, foud, Phut KNan, xanaan, Canaan

Gen 10:7 KWS, xous, Cush sBA, saba, Seba hWYLH, euila, Havilah sBTH, saba8a, Sabtah RaMH, regma, Raamah sBTKA, sabaka8a, Sabtecha RaMH, regma, Raamah SBA, saba, Sheba DDn, dadan, Dedan

Gen 10:8 KWS, xous, Cush NMRD, nebrod, Nimrod

Gen 10:17 hWY, euaion, Hivite aRQY, aroukaion, Arkite sYNY, asennaion, Sinite

Gen 10:25 aBR, eber, Eber PLG, falek, Peleg YQtn, iektan, Joktan --AntiCensorship 17:50, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

K = kaf k = khaf (terminal) (TZ) = Tzade (tz) = Tzase (terminal) M = Mem m = mem (terminal) N = Nun n = Nun (terminal) S = Shin s = Samech H = He h = Chet A = Alef a = Ayin T = tav t = tet


 * Ostensibly, Thrax' "Semitic linguistic theory" has no implications for the interpretation of the pronunciation of Classical Greek and therefore there is no reason for including it into the main article. Enkyklios 16:31, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * The Septuagint is also too late to attest 5th century Attic, isn't it? --Macrakis 16:46, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * The Septuagint dates to 280 BC and the Hebrew experts who translated it learned to speak Greek as children in the time of Alexander 50 years earlier which dates their Greek to the end of the classical period. Since the Septuagint proves that the mediae and dasea were already fully formed as fricatives any changed that occurred must have began before the classical period. For example the changes that tool place in Germanic which changed p to f took at least 400 years. This evidence is enough to demolish the claims of the reconstructed pronunciation as un-provable. --AntiCensorship 17:55, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * AntiCensorship claims that "A language that had plosive g would never have used it to represent a sound that had virtually became a breath of near silence in the spoken language and was no longer represented in the written language". In Classical Hebrew and Aramaic, Proto-Semitic *ġ had indeed merged with Proto-Semitic *‘, which would perhaps be conceived as virtually silent by most non-Semitic speakers. If עמורה and עזה were pronounced as (like in Standard Hebrew), the Greek transcriptions Γομορρᾶ and Γάζα would be rather surprising whether one takes <γ> as the plosive [g] or the fricative [γ]. However, since ע is ignored in the Greek transcription in most cases (e.g. עמלק > Ἀμαλέκ, עלי > Ἡλί), the names in which it is transcribed with <γ> were most likely pronounced differently, namely, at least in some varieties of Hebrew. Then, it could without any problems be rendered with [g] in a language which had no fricative [γ] just like Modern Greek [γ] is rendered with [g] in most European languages.


 * Admittedly, I am not an expert on Semitic, but I think that my account conforms with the communis opinio of Semitologists; a similar interpretation is given on the wikipedia pages on Gomorra and Gaza. By the way, if the letter ע could be pronounced like a fricative in Phoenician as well, one would expect the Greeks to use it for /g/ if this phoneme was pronounced as [γ] already around 800 BC (as suggested by Thrax) since it would have been more precise than ג which was a plosive [g] initially. The fact that ע was converted into the vowel Ο would be an argument against the fricative pronounciation of Greek /g/.


 * Your opinion is not something that Semitic linguists agree with. Ayin is not what the 72 Hebrews translated as fricative gamma in the Septuagint. They translated the fricative Gamma in the spoken language as fricative gamma in Greek. Even in Arabic fricative gamma is still used in the Arabic name for Gomorrah which is spelled Ghamara using fricative gamma. Why would the Hebrews translate RaMH (where "a" represents ayin) as "regma" (Raamah in English) unless gamma was totallty fricative. It would be completely ridiculous if plosive g were inserted into a word where it does not exist when the Hebrews could have used "aa" instead as in Abraam. Why would the ancient Greeks have used ayin for fricative gamma when the Phoenician alphabet already had g as an allophone for it. The Phoenician letter Ayin in the Greek alphabet became Omicron which is an "o" sound. In proto-Sinaitic script it even resembles the letter "o". All of the evidence from Hebrew translations into Greek proves that the mediae and dasea were fricatives and that is the opinion of all Semitic linguists. Look at the examples above. Where the Hebrews had a choice in 90% of all cases they chose Greek fricatives. The only time they used the Greek letter kappa was when translating the Hebrew letter Quof whereas when they translated Kaf they always used the Greek letter Hi (X) to denote that fact that it was the fricative allophone for Kaf that was being sounded in Hebrew. --AskMelegi 18:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * The Jewish translators of the Septuagint chose to render Hebrew רעמה with Greek Ρεγμα because they thought that the ע could not be transliterated with nothing and the Greek γ was in their eyes the most adequate solution, being a voiced velar. If may have been a fricative in some varieties of Greek. My point is that even if it was always a stop, it was close enough to be used as the proper rendering of a velar fricative. And therefore it proves nothing about the actual pronunciation of Hellenistic Greek. Enkyklios 13:12, 31 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Fairy tales, fairy tales, fairy tales. The Hebrew translators DID NOT translate Ayin as gamma. They translated Semitic fricative g in the spoken language as Greek fricative Gamma. Ayin was translated as "o" since that is what ayin became in the Greek version of the Phoenician alphabet. The fact that Greek gamma was used to translate a "g" sound which in the spoken language was little more than a breath proves that gamma was a fricative in the Greek language. These Hebrews would have never translated a breath as hard g. A breath would have been translated as either η or a fricative and that fact that this fricative was gamma and that this gamma coincides with the proto-Semitic fricative gamma in other Semitic spellings of Gomorra is irrefutable as proof that ancient Greek gamma was fricative like it is today. --HansChristianAnderson 16:59, 2 January 2006 (UTC)


 * The Hebrew sound or sounds indicated by the letter ע were transliterated (not translated!) either with <γ> or nothing (not with <ο>!). In all likelihood the double treatment reflects two different pronunciations in Hebrew, namely and  respectively. To repete myself, the Greek sound may have been a fricative in some or all contexts and in some or all registers, but even if it was always a stop, it would have been the most adequate letter for transliterating a voiced velar (or uvular) fricative. In the standard alphabet there was no independent grapheme for the "breath" (<η> was /e:/), and the Greek phoneme /h/ would have been inappropriate anyway since it was voiceless and quite different in force compared to . Enkyklios 13:19, 3 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I have no idea what Thrax, sorry, AntiCensorship wants to prove with his long list of Greek transcriptions of Hebrew names. Perhaps that Hebrew, , was often transcribed with <φ>, <θ>, <χ>? We already know that the Hebrew stops had fricative allophons in the position between vowels, and that it was customary for Greek to render foreign voiceless fricatives with the δασέα. To the best of my knowledge, the Septuagint proves nothing about the nature of the Greek δασέα and μέσα. They could have been fricatives, but the transmitted forms are explained just as adequately if one maintains that they were in fact aspirated and voiced stops respectively. Enkyklios 13:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * It is universally accepted by all linguists that Hellenistic Greek was pronounced exactly like modern Greek. --AskMelegi 18:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * On the contrary: All linguists working with Ancient Greek agree that Hellenistic Greek was pronounced like Classical Greek in some aspects and like Modern Greek in other aspects. The vocalism was close to that of Modern Greek (even though the differences of quantity was not given up in all varieties of Greek until late in the the Roman age); the aspirated stops and the voiced stops may have become fricatives during the Hellenistic period, but we do not know when that pronunciation was adopted universally. But that is not the same as saying that Hellenistic Greek was pronounced exactly like Modern Greek. Enkyklios 13:12, 31 December 2005 (UTC)


 * More fairy tales. All modern linguists agree that Hellenistic Greek was pronounced almost identically to modern Greek with the dasea and mediae as fricatives, a stress accent and the diphthongs as single sounds and that if any changes took place in the pronunciation of ancient Greek they took place well before Hellenistic times. --HansChristianAnderson 17:03, 2 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Sven-Tage Tedorsson, who has done the most thorough investigations of the phonological development of Hellenistic Greek, concluded that the μέσα started to become fricatives during the Hellenistic age starting with /g/ in the 2nd century BC (documented by the occasional loss in writing); /b/ and /d/ followed only later (there is no confusion of <ευ, αυ> and <εβ, αβ>). The fricativization of the δασέα seems to be post-Hellenistic. According to Teodorsson, the diphthongs /ai/, /ei/, /oi/ were monophthongised to, , already in late Attic.  was raised to  later, and the loss of distinctive vowel length seems to be a phenomenon of the Roman Age. (Summarised after my memory.) In other words, it is the nationalist dream of an ever unchanged Greek language that is a pseudo-scientific fairytale. Enkyklios 13:19, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

An analogy: In Russian, Hamburg is transliterated as Gamburg, but this does not mean that russian <Г> is a fricative. However, <Г> is pronounced in Ukrainian.

Are there any sources for the role of the Septuagint in reconstructing Hellenistic Greek phonology? Andreas 22:23, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Request for sockpuppet reports
Since Thrax's editing has been shown to include disruptive sockpuppets (see "Block warning" section above), I'm through assuming any good faith from him. I ask all editors of this page to please report any new apparent Thrax sockpuppets, here or elsewhere, on my talkpage. Thrax, you're in a hole, you need to stop digging. Bishonen | talk 17:06, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Proven/assumed Thrax sockpuppets blocked so far: User:Vregamoto, User:Yarak, User:AntiCensorship, User:ZeroK, User:WikipediaHasLostItsCredibility, User:HereWeGoAgain, User:AskMelegi, User:JacobGrimm, User:HansChristianAnderson. Bishonen | talk 19:33, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * You are already violating Wikipedia rules by blocking using blocking in order to gain advantage for one side in a content war and that is unacceptable and randomly blocking other users that have no connection with Thrax is not going to do your credibility any favours. --WikipediaHasLostItsCredibility 20:51, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * My credibility is fine, thanks, how's yours? Did you e-mail Kelly like I suggested? Hers is good, too. Bishonen | talk 21:05, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Note: disruptive socks can be reverted without consideration of 3RR
It is only by evading his block through the use of abusive sockpuppets that Thrax is currently able to edit Ancient Greek phonology. Any edits to the article by the sockpuppets listed above can be reverted by any editor, without concern for the 3RR, since that rule does not apply to reverting obvious vandalism. Bishonen | talk 22:05, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * To you disruptive is anyone who does not agree with your point of view on a subject that you know nothing about. Say my name. --WikipediaIsAJoke 00:30, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Ok. Thrax. Bishonen | talk 00:45, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

alveolar or dental?
Can anyone point to a source discussing whether τ, δ, θ were alveolar (as claimed in the article page) rather than dental, as they are in modern Greek. Dental [t] and [d] (as in Italian, Greek, French) are very close to alveolar [t] and [d] (as in English) but still there is a detectable difference (Italian accent in English is often made fun of using the mafiozo phrase: Are you talking to me? (with a dental t)Yannos 01:47, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Answering my own question, I found that Allen believes τ, δ, θ to have been dental, as in Modern Greek, not alveolar, as in English. So I am going to change the article accordingly ok?Yannos 05:28, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Allen believes ? Who is Allen but a redactor of 19th century literature like Hans Christian Anderson and Jacob Grimm. He is not a linguistics researcher and has never published any papers of original research on ancient Greek pronunciation so why should we take his word for anything. Semitic linguists all agree that ancient Greek was pronounced exactly like modern Greek as do a sizeable proportion of Indo-European linguists. --HansChristianAnderson 17:09, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Can I guess who you are, let me think: Thrax?? Right! Please thrax, just show us some credible and verifiable sources of your original research and we can discuss all the matter again --Philx 01:52, 3 January 2006 (UTC)


 * So, W. Sidney Allen "is not a linguistics researcher and has never published any papers of original research on ancient Greek pronunciation". Yet, besides the meticulous, balanced and authoritative monograph on Greek pronunciation, he has published the book Accent and Rhythm (Cambridge 1973) and the articles "Some problems of palatalization in Greek", Lingua 7 (1958), pp. 113-133, "Some remarks on the structure of the Greek vowel system", Word 15 (1959), pp. 240-251, "Prosody and Prosodies in Greek", Transactions of the Philological Society (1966), pp. 107-148, "A problem of Greek accentuation", in: Bazell, Catford, Halliday & Robins (eds.), In memory of J. R. Firth (London 1966), pp. 8-14, "The oral accentuation of Greek", Didaskalos II2 (1967), pp. 90-99, and "The Development of the Attic vowel system. Conspiracy or catastrophe?", Minos 20-22 (1987), pp. 21-32. Furthermore he has published books and articles on Latin and Sanskrit phonology.


 * Once again Thrax makes unfounded allegations and projects his own insufficiency on others. The fact is that both the specialists of Ancient Greek and the Indo-Europeanists all agree that Ancient Greek was not "pronunced exactly like Modern Greek" (which would be an absurd allegation), but had its own phonological and phonetic system somewhere between Proto-Indo-European and Modern Greek. Thrax continues to assert that his excentric opinion has support from a majority of linguists even though he has not been able to cite one single modern author specialised in Ancient Greek. Quousque tandem patientia nostra abutere? (P.S. it is Andersen, not Anderson.) Enkyklios 12:50, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Caragounis' paper
I beg your pardon, but can someone point me at any linguistic resources that refute Caragounis' study? I know Caragounis is not a linguist, but his research has asked some interesting questions, which I haven't seen answered by anyone (but I haven't searched much). So could someone point me to some text that scrutinises Caragounis' paper? I know most of the linguists have not even commented on Caragounis or outright dismissed his views, but so were they initially doing for Erasmus. 195.173.80.1 16:25, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid I'm not aware of a published refutation in the linguistic literature either. But several fairly competent linguists among the contributors here have at least hinted at reasons why they find Caragounis' work unsatisfying, and to be honest, much of what is objectionable in it is really self-evident to the more-or-less-expert reader. Of course, that's not the stuff to write into the article, as it would be "original reasearch", but you can be assured it is a well-informed judgment. I'd be happy to provide a summary of my own thoughts, perhaps on my talk page, if you asked me to do that (and if I find the time). If you want to discuss this further, would you mind providing your username (or getting one)? Somehow it feels nicer to discuss if there is a name you can address. Lukas 16:44, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I should have added that there have apparently been a couple of reviews of Caragounis' 2004 monograph. A list is here: []. Another one, by Moises Silva, due to have appeared in Westminster Theological Journal in autumn 2005, was apparently going to be scathingly negative, according to pre-published excerpts here: []. A response by Caragounis himself can be found here: []. All the reviews so far seem to be in the theological, not the linguistic, domain, and I haven't seen any of them and don't know to what degree they address the linguistic issues. Lukas 18:37, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi and thanks. I haven't decided on a user name and one more password to remember yet (my usual username is taken), but I will as soon as I find something I can contribute to. I am mainly interested on the spelling errors Caragounis has identified, and especially the ones where EU is misspelled as EB. I would like know how others think regarding this and how could it be justified because I found it very interesting. I am sure that at some point Ancient Greek was pronounced the way that is prevelent today, but not sure what point in time they changed. Cheers! 195.173.80.1 11:14, 9 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay. Maybe I shouldn't have done this ;-) but I've actually written down my views on Caragounis now. It's got a bit longer and more vitriolic than I originally planned. For the moment, you can find it at . If anybody wants to comment, please feel free to use my user talk page. Lukas 22:23, 9 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I disagree with this article using such a bad scholarship as Caragounis. I gave up reading his paper when the "proves" ancient ευ had the sound of ef/ev, because Latin inscriptions show ev, only paragraphs after saying Latin phonology was an useless approach to greek phonology, he just forgot to mention that v only appeared in the Latin alphabet in the XVI century, and that it is above all doubts that what is v in modern languages was a "w" sound. I don't think any serious scholar would care to write a rebuttal to such a thing.Bruno Gripp 14:41, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

pronunciation of the diphthong oi
I found two authors (Sydney Allen and Michel Lejeune) who claim that the diphthong οι underwent the following evolution in pronunciation:. In classical times it would have been [øi] already. The monophtongization to would have occurred in roman times and the closing to  soon thereafter (starting to be confused with upsilon). Then, the story goes, the loss of vowel quantities accross the board (second-third century AD) reduced the sound to [y], with the modern sound [i] being set no earlier than the 9th century AD! Should we include all that in the article, or is it becoming a long article already? Yannos 07:03, 4 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I guess we shouldn't load the article with too much detail. Of the 4 intermediate stages you mention above, one is already explicitly mentioned, one (the loss of length) is implied in the sentence preceding it. Monophthongization is the explicit subject of the whole paragraph, and that something like  would be another stage on that way is pretty self-evident, isn't it? Perhaps we can find a way of adding a bit more precision to the wording, but I wouldn't recommend adding more than at most one more sentence for that purpose. Perhaps I'll give it a try later. Lukas 07:45, 4 January 2006 (UTC)


 * To complicate the case even more, and  were perhaps in fact  (like German eu) and . Anyway, the monophthongisation to  was probably beginning already in the Classical period (Teodorsson) and should perhaps be included in the article. Enkyklios 09:23, 4 January 2006 (UTC)


 * The detailed phonetic changes are interesting, but less important, I think, than the structural changes. The crucial stages are those which change the phonemic inventory of the language, or which change the position of a sound within the overall system, e.g. from long to short or diphthong to monophthong.  They are also the changes for which we have the best evidence. --Macrakis 15:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)


 * This probably is why many Germanic languages (and a few others) have Oekologi or something similar instead of Ecology. Did /ai/ go under a shift which involved /æ/?Cameron Nedland 22:28, 7 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm dubious about the theory, but in any case, I think it's safe to say that the Germanic languages are adequately explained as ultimate consequences of the equivalences Greek oi=Latin oe, Greek ai=Latin ae. Wareh 00:57, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Diphthongs au etc.
Should it not be etc as in Greek alphabet? Andreas 22:57, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
 * As it is well-known, the diphthong is normally pronounced  in English and German, i.e. the second vowel of the diphthong, Near-close near-back rounded vowel, is slightly less closed and less back-tongue than the "clear" archetypical Close back rounded vowel. The fact that Greek  ultimately becomes  speaks against a more open quality of the second vowel. On the other hand, misspellings like ΑΟΤΟΚΡΑΤΗΣ for Αὐτοκράτης (Attica, IG II(2).10706) indicate that  may have been a possibility in some varities of Greek. As a matter of fact, the non-standard spelling <αο> for <αυ> is rather frequent in inscriptions from the Ionic-speaking cities in both Asia Minor and the Black Sea area, which indicates that  was in fact a typical feature of Ionic. (An alternative explanation would be that the scribes considered <ο> more appropiate for  than <υ>, which normally stood for Close front rounded vowel.) I think it is better to avoid the more specific  and stick to the more general  given that our sources give no unequivocal indication of the proper pronunciation. But it should be the same in the two articles. Enkyklios 08:20, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Dasea
The french article has etc. for <θ> etc. No sources are given there. Comments? Andreas 23:01, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
 * That's slightly silly because in IPA is an aspirated voiced dental plosive, but the circle denotes that the voicing is removed so we get an aspirated unvoiced dental plosive, i.e. . So there is no disagreement with the French as to what the pronounciation was, but they have chosen an awkward way of representing it. Stefán Ingi 00:20, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I am not sure that = t. The circle denotes devoicing, which is not the same thing as inherent voicelessness. I would normally use  if I wanted to point out that it is an allophonic variant of plain . I agree that in the context of Greek this is inapropriate.Yannos 06:56, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * In my own langauge, Danish, the old opposition between voiceless and voiced stops has been given up in favour of an opposition between aspirates and non-unaspirates  (voice being irrelevant and absent in the normal pronunciation). The stops in question do not have the muscular tension characteristic of the fortis, but at the same time they lack the voice normally associated with the lenis. In Ancient Greek, however, where we have a system of three articulations, voiceless, aspirated and voiced stops, the notation  is probably misleading since it would be natural to articulate the three rows with the greatest possible distance. Enkyklios 07:47, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Does anybody know any sources that back ? Andreas 21:53, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I suspect that the reason for introducing the concept of voieceless aspirated lenis into Ancient Greek is that one gets a symmetric maximum contrast in the consonant system:


 * By that means, one also has the opportunity of putting the later parallel development of the δασέα and μἐσα into fricatives on a common formula, viz. [÷tension] > [+fricative]. However, the δασέα was in all likelihood fricativised hundreds of years later than the μἐσα. Furthermore, the very category of the voiceless lenis is disputed. Thus, in Paul Laver, Principles of Phonetics (Cambridge 1994), a rather comprehensive handbook of phonetics, we are told (pp. 343-4):
 * "Second, a question is prompted about whether devoiced and voiceless segments are phonetically identical in all respects. One possible ground for maintaining that they are not identical would be that when a segment is fully voiced, various phonetic features (over and above the phonatory difference) have different values than when the corresponding voiceless segment is produced. These differentiating factors may include, potentially, the degree of muscular effort being exerted throughout the vocal system, particularly in the muscle system of the supralaryngeal vocal tract. Such differences of overall muscular effort have been posited as the basis for a distinction that is sometimes drawn between fortis sounds with high overall muscle tension (normally voiceless) and lenis sounds with low overall muscle tension (normally voiced). The argument would then run on to say that if the only change from a lenis voiced segment in producing its devoiced counterpart were a change of phonatory state from vibrating vocal folds to an open glottis, then the lenis devoiced segment would still be differentiated from its fortis voiceless counterpart by factors of overall muscular tension.
 * "The fortis/lenis distinction remains to be confirmed empirically, however, and until it is, a more cautious position would be to accept the equivalence of fully devoiced and voiceless sounds, as a limit to the descriptive power of phonetic theory. Both categories should then be treated as instances of voiceless sounds."
 * At any rate, even if we accept and  in Danish and Icelandic (see Talk:Danish phonology), there is no reason for assuming that the Greek voiceless aspirated plosives must have been lenis as well (unless one denies that the aspirated tenuis exist). I am quite sure that no inscription has yielded the digraphs <βh, δh, γh> (like the frequent <πh, τh, κh>), which would be expected if the δασέα were somewhere between the μἐσα and the ψιλά. As far as I know, the only source to make this assumption is the French wikipedia page, and it hardly suffices in this context. It is, therefore, more in accordance with the principles of wikipedia and also "a more cautious position" to transcribe the δασέα with the IPA letters . Enkyklios 09:09, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
 * How about Hindi [bɦ] as opposed to [ph]? Andreas 14:47, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Indic bh, dh, gh are normally described as voiced stops with a breathy-voiced release. The proper IPA translation is . The Danish aspirated stops, on the other hand, are never voiced. Enkyklios 11:29, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I've never been able to find enough time to finish the French article and to quote my sources: Michel Lejeune, Phonétique historique du Mycénien et du grec ancien, Éditions Klincksieck, mainly §56 and §61 about the fact that, for him, so-called aspirated consonants were lenis consonants, that were distinguished from fortis (unvoiced stops, for instance) ; hence φθ, χθ (lenis [de]aspirated + lenis aspirated) are not equivalent to πφ or κχ (gemminated consonants). See also §42. Michel Lejeune quotes epichoric inscriptions that confirm his views. If Lejeune is the only one to consider aspirated as lenis consonants opposed to fortis ones, I suppose that should be corrected. Vincent Ramos 16:39, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Knacklaut
Germans think that spiritus lenis was a de:Knacklaut, i.e. a glottal stop, [], presumably because this sound exists in German phonology. Is this supported by credible sources? Andreas 15:06, 24 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Greek versification speaks against a knacklaut. The liaison of a final consonant and the elision of a final vowel suggest that Ancient Greek behaved like most languages (including Modern Greek):
 * μῆνι ν ἄ ειδε θεὰ Πηληιάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
 * οὐλομένη ν ἧ μυρ ί’ Ἀ χαιοῖς ἄλγ ε’ ἔ θηκε
 * Enkyklios 17:33, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Greek language article series
Could people interested in this article please have a look at a discussion I instigated at Talk:Greek language, regarding a proposed restructuring of the whole series of Greek-related language articles. Thanks! Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:32, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

illogical accent rule
The following is illogical and probably incorrect, as far as i remember what i learned in college:

''The accent can fall only on one of the last three syllables of a word, and if the last syllable contains a long vowel, it can fall only on one of the last two syllables. (Hence the circumflex can only fall on the last two syllables.)'' --Espoo 11:42, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


 * why is this illogical? isn't accentuation, or indeed in ancient greek PITCH always artrirary, and conforming to the given rules of a language? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.177.131.120 (talk • contribs).


 * Actually, Espoo is right - it's the "hence" that's illogical. The second statement doesn't strictly speaking follow from the first statement alone. But each of the two statements in itself is correct. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:52, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Nomenclature
I'd like to see someone more knowledgeable tackling with all the crazy divergence in phonetic nomenclature circling round the consonants, which will drive to tears any student dealing with the third declension in different grammars, particularly grammars in different languages. For instance, Georg Curtius puts daimon with the dentals; in a portuguese language grammar I have the third declension consonant groups divided in oclusives (or obstruents): labials (pi, beta, phi), dentals (t, theta, delta) and guturals (k, gamma, X); then liquids (rho and lambda), nasals (n and m) and sibilants (sigma). With Goodwin a whole other matter etc. Has any grammarian made something out of this mess; or is there any more authoritative classification in currency?

201.19.179.56 00:35, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Are Ksi & Psi affricates or just biphonemic clusters?
The article seems not to mention about a possible affricate nature of Ksi & Psi as I've often read in atricles. Is there any reason for that? --Koryakov Yuri 16:06, 29 October 2006 (UTC)


 * You're quite welcome to bring references to any treatments that analyse them as affricates. I don't think it's a very common claim, but I seem to remember hearing about it somewhere. Sure, if it can be substantiated it should be mentioned. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:56, 29 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure that those being affricates is even possible. Because /s/ is Coronal, /p/ is Labial, and /k/ is Dorsal.Cameron Nedland 16:35, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * My understanding is that an affricate is a stop with a homorganic fricative release. Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  16:37, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

η development
Also there is nothing about when and why η became /i/, at least before or after short/long vowels merge. And also considering that ω merged with omikron and not ου. --Koryakov Yuri 16:06, 29 October 2006 (UTC)


 * There's now a more extensive article on the post-classical developments at Koine Greek phonology. Maybe some material needs to be merged between the articles. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:54, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Dialects
. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.182.213.114 (talk • contribs). [pasted from previous version by Andreas  (T) 21:43, 16 December 2006 (UTC)]

Yes, Pontic Greek preserves the ancient eta as a [e] sound, that should be taken into consideration by those who think eta has been pronnounced as [i] since Ancient Greek times. Actually it seems that eta was changed to [i] in late times, well after ei merged to iota in [i]. Also, there are dialects that have [u] in place of the reconstructed [y] and [oi] of Ancient Greek (that merged into [y] until maybe X century, when other dialects changed it to [i]. Old Athenian, Maniot and other dialects have this feature --DaniloVilicic (talk) 02:39, 20 March 2008 (UTC)DaniloVilicic —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.177.134.30 (talk) 14:27, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Unreferenced departures from Allen in vowel charts?
These charts are introduced with, "the following scheme proposed by Allen (1968) is generally accepted." But Allen (p. 60) says the sounds represented by ε and ο are "rather like the vowels of English pet and German Gott." Thus Allen held that ε = the open-mid front unrounded vowel and ο = the open-mid back rounded vowel. Certainly his examples show that he was not suggesting the values indicated in this chart, and repeated in the articles Ancient Greek and epsilon (where it's not specified Ancient Greek or Modern Greek&mdash;but in neither, according to Allen, was ε = the close-mid front unrounded vowel). Phonology is not my forte, but I think I'm reading Allen correctly. If so, either the chart needs to be changed to follow Allen, or references should be given supporting the values given (and the claim that the chart follows Allen modified). Wareh 18:36, 10 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reminder, and sorry I forgot to answer earlier. As I haven't got Allen here at home, I can only answer (as so often) with Horrocks and Babiniotis. Both of these authors don't comment on the exact (mid-open or mid-close) phonetic nature of short <ε> and <ο>. Both use /e/ and /o/ as phonemic renderings, just as we seem to be doing here. The point is, since the short vowels didn't have a four-heights distinction, the mid ones could easily have had either quality, or could have varied between both, or simply been in between (as they are in Modern Greek). It's common practice in phonology that if a language has only a three-heights distinction, the middle members are phonemically rendered as e and o irrespective of their exact phonetic nature, these being simply the more familiar and easy to use symbols. And since lengthening and contraction of /e, o/ led to <ει, ου> (i.e. /e:, o:/, not ), I was under the impression that a distinctly mid-open phonetic quality would have been unlikely at that stage. – By the way, if Allen really uses only his impressionistic analogies with "Gott" and "pet", and doesn't give a distinct phonetic description, it's actually not quite easy to reconstruct what he meant. The English "pet" vowel at least has quite a large range of possible realisations, and in some forms of RP British English it's pretty much extactly "mid". Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:58, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Authenticity of reconstructions questioned
''Long off-topic posting removed as per WP:TALK; heading refactored. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:00, 6 April 2008 (UTC)''


 * "Ippolytos", if you have any interest in people actually reading what you say (instead of just you ranting on and on), please reduce your posting to about 100 words. Also, please note WP:TALK; this talk page is not for you to write your opinions about things, but for discussing concrete proposals on how to edit the article. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:44, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.182.30.177 (talk) 16:54, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, actually, I not only act "as if" I was enforcing Wikipedia policies, I acually am enforcing Wikipedia policies, being an admin here. And in that capacity, and in pursuance of the rules of WP:TALK, I will now remove your long-winded posting above. Please make yourself familiar with our policies, and then feel free to continue posting here if and only if you are prepared to abide by them. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:00, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.182.30.177 (talk) 17:03, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * You misunderstand. In fact, our site does allow all sorts of opinions. Only, this is not a debating club or a net forum. We are not interested in your opinions or in mine. This talk page isn't for anybody's opinions at all. We are only interested in documenting what opinions have been proposed by reputable scholars in the academic literature (see Verifiability, Reliable sources, and No original research.) If you know of some intresting contribution in the literature whose opinion isn't properly represented in the article, let us know. Don't talk about what you believe, talk about what the literature says. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:07, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

there's no way to reconstruct a non current phonology from ancient archaeological writing system alone& there isn't any remaining phonology of greek to study except for the current greek pronunciation and im sure that's always been the case, and the whole "original pronunciation" model changing as presented in the article supports an idea which is not reflective of the fact that there was no original pronunciation that it was much more complex than that. if you mr. future perfect would like to debate this, please do so. and break your own rule about this not being a forum or online debating club! please!

you furnish me the audio recording of a fluent ancient greek speaker. there isn't one so all the conclusions about the phonology of the language, that is, its spoken expression, belong in the realm of PSEUDOSCIENCE not real science, because they are conclusions which are NOT VERIFIABLE BY MEANS OF REAL DATA. real data about the spoken expression does not mean just the writing system. there are just as many supports for the modern greek pronunciation which also can be cited as internal evidence for it. it doesn't change the fact that as a whole the sound of an ancient greek speaker isn't verifiable. thus the content of your article is unverifiable, even if scholars study in that pronunciation. in other words, if you draw the line back to erasmus (i guess) as the beginning of the reconstructed system and you draw the line back with modern greek, the modern greek line is actually the one that goes all the way back...and it keeps going back. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.182.94.129 (talk) 18:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * 1) While there are problems in reconstructing purely on an ancient orthography, Historical linguistics bases reconstruction partly on orthography, partly on how linguists at that time (yes, there were phonoticians back then) described the pronunciation of their language, partly on the ways loanwords were adjusted when coming to and from Greek, partly on the comparative method, and partly on internal reconstruction.  With all this, however, Ancient Greek isn't really "reconstructed" like Proto-Indo-European or Proto-Germanic since knowledge of and fluency in its grammar has continued into the modern age.
 * 2) I understand your dispute with use of "original pronunciation."  Language change is constant and dynamic and pointing to the pronunciation at a certain time is somewhat arbitrary but in this case there are a number of reasons for doing so.  Perhaps we can use a different phrase such as "Classical pronunciation" or "pre-classical pronunciation."
 * 3) There are many fluent speakers of Ancient Greek. This isn't how we verify the information since such speakers learned their pronunciation from the information that we have lying around (using them would be a tautology).
 * 4) I'm sure there are caveats to the information here (not sure, since it's still unreferenced) but that's the case for many classical languages.
 * If you have issue with specific things in the article go ahead and bring them up here in the talk page. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  21:09, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

it's beyond anything you say. the reconstruction of the phonology of a language which was in use 2.4 millenia before the era of recorded sound must consist of unverifiable claims. the interpretation of ancient linguistic writers and how loanwords are spelt aren't any substitute for actual archaeological data. both are interpreted sources, and they are antique sources. if there were audio information of a real phonology which is complex and is more ocmplex than just pronunciation of letters but includes speed, includes everythign we would call accent colloquially...in short the natural sounds of fluent speakers of the language can't be understood from things like that. unless you understand that claims about it are unverifiable you won't understand that it's pseudoscience, and at the very least it's completely a para scientific practice. if the lessons of archaeology are important at all it's that you don't take an ancient source like the iliad and say the artifacts i found are priam's treasure necessarily just because we want that. we say, i want to understand what ive found from what ive found. so although the comparison with shliemann is only a parallel, the point is that you don't understand the reality which is archaeological from an interpretation of an ancient literary source OVER the actual artifactual evidence. if you didn't apologize for this method and you wanted to say what can we learn from the extant form of greek which is NATURALLY spoken, as opposed to the pronunciations for ancient greek which DO NOT come from the originally all ancient grek speaking culture, that's what i'm getting at. i'm not saying that i know what it was i'm saying that it's not scientific to specualte about the nature of what it was from ancient sources and how other alphabets recorded phonetic elements of the language. how can it be? one can only learn logically a pronunciation which is a natural pronunciation that is a naturally arising one the came from a process of evolution from someone who leanred it from someone who knew it before. you can't step out of that as an idea and say abstractly that this sounded like this and that sounded like that in the writing, it doesn't work as an idea. what i mean is, since we can't actually compare it to a real thing, we're in the realm of speculation i don't think that when claims that are untestable are upheld as information, if there's no real data to compare our information to, then one cpould easily categorize this as an unverifiable guess, one that shouldn't be presented as linguistic science. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.177.188.182 (talk) 23:30, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry, friend, but this is about phonology not phonetics. Sound recordings are used for phonetics, not phonology. While the precise phonetic information is certainly unavailable (and this is an implicit caveat) for any description of reconstructed or attested dead languages, the phonology of such languages (that is, the number and distribution of phonemes) is not at all unverifiable especially if you have a phonetic writing system like the Greek Alphabet to corroborate your claims.
 * I don't understand most of what else you're trying to say. If you're saying that modern greek pronunciations should be considered, well, they are but saying that modern Greek pronunciation helps you understand how ancient Greek was pronounced is like saying French pronunciation helps you understand how Latin was pronounced.  If you're saying that archeological data trumphs over other things, then I agree since writings from ancient sources is archeological data.  I don't know what you're proposing we do with this page.  If you're suggesting we delete it then I must say you'll meet with a lot of resistance since this the phonology of Ancient Greek has a rich corpus of literature about it.
 * Every once in a while someone with absolutely no training or familiarity in linguistics will come to a language page and assert that the cursory understanding they got from glossing over one or two Wikipedia pages is enough to make them feel secure in their criticism of certain fields of linguistics. Have they read X or Y or Z?  No! Logic, they say, trumps sourcing.  I don't know if you're such a person, but if you are you might as well stop right now because you cant climb an uphill battle without sources.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  00:22, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

the sorry's on you "friend" between you and me although this shouldn't be used as a debating forum, i know, however you and others have come to me thus. there's only the natural pronunciation of greek now for us to study, since the spoken intepretation of writing is based on conventions that are only around during a present natural speech. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.99.94.163 (talk) 17:59, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Please at least learn to sign your posts properly. Place four tilde characters ( ~ ) after each post. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:04, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't know why you keep removing your own posts, but I've reverted the most recent removal. It's bad practice to edit or remove comments that others have responded to.  I recommend you do some learning on historical linguistics and classical studies.  As it stands, the main problem I see with this article is the referencing.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  19:11, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

All
In "Because of the passage of time, the original pronunciation of Ancient Greek, like that of all ancient languages, can never be known with absolute certainty.", what does all include, and which Ancient Greek is referred to here?--mrg3105 (comms) ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ 05:11, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't know the answer to the second question, but the description applies to any language that we don't have recordings of. This includes many extinct languages as well as all ancient languages.  Granted, with some languages we have a greater assurance and finer understanding of pronunciation but "absolute certainty" is a pretty high bar.  The better question is, if we are going to change all to most, which ancient language do we have an absolute certainty on the pronunciation? — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  05:46, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Or even better, is there any ancient language for which we know more than for Greek? I doubt it; hardly any ancient language has this amount of data. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:53, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Hebrew--mrg3105 (comms) ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ 06:04, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I doubt it. I don't know Hebrew, but from what I can quickly gather, the remaining uncertainties in its exact reconstruction (for any given point in time and space) seem pretty much on a par with those encountered with Greek. Mind you, both are tiny. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:16, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * We probably know Sanskrit better than Greek, but for both Greek and Sanskrit, part of our knowledge comes from descriptions by ancient grammarians. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  06:27, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Sibilant
According to my own (non-scientific) observation, in Modern Greek the sibilant seems be not a pure [s] but something in-between [s] and [ʃ], with considerable variation. Question to the experts: is this correct, and if so, is it to be assumed that the same was the case already in Ancient times? -- 92.229.164.108 (talk) 18:02, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm fairly certain that it was just in ancient times, but the evidence would come from languages that have both  and  and that also borrowed words directly from Ancient Greek.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  19:24, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Ancient Greek phonotactics
Hello all,

I was wondering if there is someone working on a section for Ancient Greek phonotactics? There doesn't seem to be much discussion about it, so I hope I've reminded someone to add it if it is deemed important.

Thanks, Brilantastelo (talk) 07:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Cross-dialectal comparison: doric θ as σ
It is claimed in the article that there is evidence that in the Spartan dialect, θ became fricative earlier than in the rest of the greek dialects, and hence Aristophanes would put σ instead of θ aiming to mock this accent. However, one can see in the article about Tsakonian language that θ is replaced by σ in Tsakonian, which might mean that this is a characteristic of the Doric dialect, already in the 5th c. AD, rather than evidence of an early change to fricative. I am not an expert however. Gakrivas (talk) 12:00, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

no semivowels?
So is a world like iatros "doctor" trisyllabic? 166.205.136.13 (talk) 20:16, 3 July 2011 (UTC)