The Boeotian Greek Dialect Unlocks Attic Pronunciation 🇬🇷
The Ancient Greek dialect Boeotian has a number of innovative features reminiscent of Modern Greek, but does this mean that many or most of the features of Modern Greek already existed in antiquity? In reality, Boeotian unlocks the precise timing of when and how Attic pronunciation changed and how it became Koine. I think this is an amazing story, and I bet you will too (if you are a historical phonology nerd, that is.) Καλώς ορίσατε!
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Sources: see below.
Cited videos:
Ancient Greek Dialects:
• Intro to the Ancient G...
Pronunciation of ει in Greek:
• Greek Pronunciation: ε...
Review of Ben Kantor's books "Pronunciation of New Testament Greek"
• The Pronunciation of N...
The Error of Caragounis:
• The Error of Caragouni...
Vulgar Attic & Review of Teodorsson's Works:
• "Vulgar" Attic vs. Cla...
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Intro and outro music: Overture of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Mozart
#greek #greece #ancientgreece
Vox Graeca, by W. Sidney Allen
amzn.to/3FsiCT6
Vox Graeca, Η προφορά της ελληνικής την κλασική εποχή, by W. Sidney Allen (Modern Greek translation)
ins.web.auth.gr/index.php?opti...
Greek: A History of the Language and its People, by Geoffrey Horrocks
amzn.to/3FXYedR
The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, Edgar Howard Sturtevant
amzn.to/3W4nt45
The Pronunciation of New Testament Greek here, by Benjamin Kantor
amzn.to/3QEkuz1
The Short Guide to the Pronunciation of New Testament Greek, by Benjamin Kantor
amzn.to/40hUMDs
The Greek Dialects, by Charles D. Buck
amzn.to/46TfagK
Medieval and Early Modern Greek, by David Holton et al.
amzn.to/3zkhgqO
Vox Latina, by W. Sidney Allen
amzn.to/3WdPxSY
Teodorsson, Sven-Tage, 1978, The phonology of Attic in the Hellenistic Period
I also spoke about this book:
Reading and Pronouncing Biblical Greek, by Philemon Zachariou
amzn.to/3QKOg52
While it purports to be a book about the historical phonology of Greek, it's best described as a pseudo-lingustic apologia that attempts to persuade the reader that Ancient Greek was pronounced the same as Modern Greek. If you're interested in learning how such pseudo-linguists present this issue, it is an interesting read.
00:00 Intro to Boeotian
01:11 Sources
01:50 Attic-Ionic Alphabet 403 BC
02:33 στους Έλληνες φίλους μας
03:16 Boetian vs Attic: front vowels
05:08 γιατί λέμε «κοϊνέϊ» στα Αγγλικά
05:33 Boeotian: ahead of its time?
09:48 Boetian vs Attic: back vowels
11:46 Why Modern Greek Pronunciation is not "Historical"
14:34 The lie about αε for αι
19:04 Tanagra! Where αε for αι and οε for οι are actually found
24:29 Allen's vs Sturtevant's vowel system
29:07 Boeotian inscription recited
32:00 Thanks to Patrons!
ERRATA: I make a mistake in transcribing Ἀριστίωνος ἄρχοντος as Ἀριστίωνος ἄρχοντας at 29:15. Pardon the error. See Horrocks (201) p. 32 for the original text. Many thanks to my sponsor Ancient Language Institute. To learn Latin, Ancient Greek, Hebrew, or Old English with some of the best instructors and pedagogy out there, sign up for online lessons at AncientLanguage.com. ⬅ Sources: see below. Cited videos: Ancient Greek Dialects: kzhead.info/sun/hruqm8iXbHmtlok/bejne.html Pronunciation of ει in Greek: kzhead.info/sun/dbOqlNaPo4Rqeq8/bejne.html Review of Ben Kantor's books "Pronunciation of New Testament Greek" kzhead.info/sun/ed6zirevrqmbaHk/bejne.html The Error of Caragounis: kzhead.info/sun/dd2bfMaAh4dthJs/bejne.html Vulgar Attic & Review of Teodorsson's Works: kzhead.info/sun/iM-RfKWdaV96f5E/bejne.html 🦂 Support my work on Patreon: www.patreon.com/LukeRanieri 📚 Luke Ranieri Audiobooks: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com 🤠 Take my course LATIN UNCOVERED on StoryLearning, including my original Latin adventure novella "Vir Petasātus" learn.storylearning.com/lu-promo?affiliate_id=3932873 🦂 Sign up for my Latin Pronunciation & Conversation series on Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/54058196 ☕ Support my work with PayPal: paypal.me/lukeranieri And if you like, do consider joining this channel: kzhead.info/tools/Lbiwlm3poGNh5XSVlXBkGA.htmljoin 🏛 Latin by the Ranieri-Dowling Method: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/latin-by-the-ranieri-dowling-method-latin-summary-of-forms-of-nouns-verbs-adjectives-pronouns-audio-grammar-tables 🏺Ancient Greek by the Ranieri-Dowling Method: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/ancient-greek-by-the-ranieri-dowling-method-latin-summary-of-forms-of-nouns-verbs-adjectives-pronouns-audio-grammar-tables 🏛 Ancient Greek in Action · Free Greek Lessons: kzhead.info/channel/PLU1WuLg45SixsonRdfNNv-CPNq8xUwgam.html 👨🏫 My Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata playlist · Free Latin Lessons: kzhead.info/sun/nZuhlJtxcHuwoY0/bejne.html 🦂 ScorpioMartianus (my channel for content in Latin, Ancient Greek, & Ancient Egyptian) kzhead.info 🎙 Hundreds of hours of Latin & Greek audio: lukeranieri.com/audio 🌍 polýMATHY website: lukeranieri.com/polymathy/ 🌅 polýMATHY on Instagram: instagram.com/lukeranieri/ 🦁 Legio XIII Latin Language Podcast: kzhead.info 👕 Merch: teespring.com/stores/scorpiomartianus 🦂 www.ScorpioMartianus.com 🦅 www.LukeRanieri.com 📖 My book Ranieri Reverse Recall on Amazon: amzn.to/2nVUfqd Intro and outro music: Overture of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Mozart #greek #greece #ancientgreece Vox Graeca, by W. Sidney Allen amzn.to/3FsiCT6 Vox Graeca, Η προφορά της ελληνικής την κλασική εποχή, by W. Sidney Allen (Modern Greek translation) ins.web.auth.gr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=690:vox-graeca-the-pronunciation-of-classical-greek&catid=93&Itemid=270&lang=en Greek: A History of the Language and its People, by Geoffrey Horrocks amzn.to/3FXYedR The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, Edgar Howard Sturtevant amzn.to/3W4nt45 The Pronunciation of New Testament Greek here, by Benjamin Kantor amzn.to/3QEkuz1 The Short Guide to the Pronunciation of New Testament Greek, by Benjamin Kantor amzn.to/40hUMDs The Greek Dialects, by Charles D. Buck amzn.to/46TfagK Medieval and Early Modern Greek, by David Holton et al. amzn.to/3zkhgqO Vox Latina, by W. Sidney Allen amzn.to/3WdPxSY
@@nicka.papanikolaou9475 When did Luke say anything that is contradicted by what you found asking ChatGPT, which is basically the same information you'd get on Wikipedia?
Αφού με έσπειρε μια μοίρα αυτοκρατορισσα Μήτρα με γέννησε αρχαία Μακεδόνισσα
Γιατί είτε κ ο ι ν ε ι η κοινή Μόνο η προφορά αλλάζει ΕΛΛΑΔΑ ΜΟΥ ΑΘΑΝΑΤΗ καμία δεν σου μοιάζει
@Philoglossos: the facts are presented and hyperfocused and analysed, but in what direction?: that of separation not unity. This is historical revisionism. We know who we are.
@@MEDUSA-mg3vh There's no historical revisionism here, no. The chauvinists always lie about this - it's not the issue of separation or unity that you care about, it's *special* unity. You refuse to accept that Greek is unified in the same way that all languages are unified with previous forms of the same language - it has to be extra super duper special because your entire identity is built around pride in the accomplishments of your long dead ancestors. So you deny the unity of, say, Italian and Latin, while exaggerating the unity of Modern Greek and Ancient Greek.
Your accent in greek is really fascinating, now this isn't a critique, as even as a native greek, since i have been living outside of Greece for a lot of years, i have lost my accent and fellow greeks don't believe that i come from Athens, because i have an English accent. Anyhow, your accent sounds "ancient" in a way. As if an ancient greek speaker was trying to speak modern greek. I showed it to my mom who knows more about modern greek accents and dialects than i do, and she said you sound Cypriot. Anyways, i really like your Greek accent and i find it interesting. Great video as always btw, keep going!
You're the only one on KZhead doing this! Keep it up! Awesome comparison of Attic and Boeotian!
Thanks, man!
Your modern Greek pronunciation is among the best I have heard from an American, interestingly with a hint of Italian in there, especially in the flow of you talk! Thank you for these thorough and enjoyable analyses on the facets ancient Greek dialects, Luca!
Ευχαριστώ, φίλε! I am doing my best to learn Modern Greek on my own. You are describing uggi about the Italian influence; I speak Italian every day, so that has an effect. I’ll try to improve.
Watching this from Boeotia right now. Epic video as always
Ωραία! Ευχαριστώ, φίλε
One addition: although mid ε doesn't close to ι in Modern Greek, just as it developed in Vulgar Attic, this shift well occurs in the northern dialectal proper of Modern Greek, it's actually one of its definitive characteristics (although it retains its value as ε when stressed, i.e. μέσα "inside" ~ σήμιρα "today", instead of σήμερα). In fact, this closing to ι seems to have had happened independently throughout the medieval period across the northern proper, including in some varieties of Greek spoken in Asia Minor. The Modern Greek language (Standard Modern Greek to be more precise) is considered to be based off of a southern dialect, specifically the Peloponnesian variety, in which these changes never took place.
Interesting. In sicilian opened "e" becomes "i" in unstressed positions, similar to many greek dialects
As a Greek I am AMAZED by the depth of knowledge of this channel ! Nothing to add really Keep it UP
Besides your amazing analysis of the Boetian dialect, I definitely want to comment on your modern Greek. I am really impressed by your fast progress. There is noticable improvement in every video.
You’re brilliant. Thank you.
This channel is amazing! I just discovered it, and as a Greek Australian, its both so amazing to learn this Information and kinda self embarrassing that I dont know greek that well. If I may humbly ask, would you ever do a video on the island of Lefkada (Leucas) and how some evidence places it as Odysseus' home instead of the actual island of Ithaca. :)
About 7 hours ago, I left a Boeotian village near Thebes (place of origin) to return to Athens (place of residence) and watch this video about the Ancient Greek dialect of Boeotia, its pronunciation and its relation to the pronunciation of the Attic Greek dialect spoken in Ancient Athens and its surrounding Attica region. That's too much Boeotia and Attica for me today!
Ωραία!
Congratulations. Greetings from Greece/Hellas.
Ευχαριστώ!
Fascinating stuff! Full of valuable tidbits!
Ευχαριστώ!
Ευχαριστούμε για τα όμορφα βίντεο για τη γλώσσα μας 🙏💐
Always a fun and interesting journey 😎
I didn't know there was a Modern Greek edition of Vox Graeca! Nice!
Yes, very helpful in improving my MG!
Great Video as always and many thanks from a fellow language enthusiast. Suggestion: Peloponnesian Doric dialects and especially Lakonian would be nice as a video. Even if they don't offer quite as much in relevance in ancient Greek, they are certainly interesting for those few who seek to understand the sound of the Greek spoken by Λεωνίδας.
Very interesting and informative as usual, your modern Greek pronunciation is excellent whatever others say
It keeps getting more profound. 👌
I love your work, αδελφε μου!
Ευχαριστώ, Χρής!
Great Modern Greek pronunciation! Ancient Greek teachers at Greek schools (we call them here philologists - 'φιλολόγους') really need to attend your lectures, they need to change they way they teach us Ancient Greek. Maybe get in touch with the Greek public sector (good luck with that) and make a proposition! By the way, you have me hooked on pronouncing Modern Greek the Ancient Greek way and everyone is looking at me as I belong to the psychiatric ward... so enjoying your videos!
Ευχαριστώ James! You're very kind to say so. Wow, so you're using an Ancient Greek pronunciation?? Μπράβο!!! That takes great courage. I would love to hear what your Ancient Greek sounds like. If you would like to make a recording of your Ancient Greek, please send a link to scorpiomartianus @ gmail. I would be proud to show others.
For as long as modern Greek pronunciation has existed, which amounts to 350 years at least, it is used for ancient texts of classical Greek and especially Koine, including the language of the Gospels. It is very difficult to establish the reconstructed pronunciation in Greece because there is a tradition already. No Greek will be moved by sounds long unfamiliar to their ear. A better approach might be to reconstruct other elements like the long vowels and the rhythm or the pitch accent, which do not require reconstructed phonetics. But either this approach or the other will eventually get political, like what had happened with the imposed Katharevousa "Archaizousa" into the Modern Greek state ideals. It had been a virtuous attempt of Greek elites to legitimize the existence of the Modern Greek nation by appealing to the influential classicists of the European powers, but it became an obsession and effectively severed the connection between classical antiquity and the modern nation, by ignoring the deep medieval past, because "the Byzantines" were despised by the Europeans (and the Greek elites in a sense). There is no substantial knowledge of the language evolution during the Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, to make the connection complete and scientifically more accurate. So a reconstruction of the classical pronunciation will likely resemble the past of a forced reconstruction (in effect, reset the identity) of the nation, and that may bring up tensions even to this day.
Just to clarify my own position, I am fond of the ancient pronunciation reconstruction and I really enjoy the hard work of youtubers like Luke. I had my lessons of ancient Greek in school and I like to refresh from time to time, and have money well spent on, but I cannot afford the time and dedication. Encouraging the public sector of the Greek state as a culture promotion is another issue, for which I prefer to see my native language past studied in all its extent, glory and decline (if these words make sense).
Forgive my ignorance but why do western academics believe they have the correct pronunciation over the traditional Greek speaking world. I’m seeing a lot of cultural appropriation of the Hellenic identity in general. The degradation of Greek academic work really irritates me. It’s bordering on smugness at times
Είσαι άψογος φίλε μου ❤ συγχαρητήρια για τη προφορά σου
Ευχαριστώ, φίλε, έχω ακόμα μια προφορά «ιταλική», αλλά ελπίζω να τη βελτιώνω στο μέλλον.
@@polyMATHY_Luke φαίνεται ξεκάθαρα, ότι έχεις μεγάλο κίνητρο να βελτιώνεσαι και να μαθαίνεις. Πολύ σύντομα θα σε νομίζουν όλοι Έλληνα 🇬🇷☺️👏🏼
Luke, My dear Luke ...you have so wonderful channel .... a true light in these modern weird times !!
Greek here. here are my 2 δραχμαί When pronouncing homeric epics, classical greeks, whatever their pronunciation may have been, and whatever the homeric may have been, always used their own contemporary pronunciations in their recitations. When hellenistic greeks cited the great authors of the classical period, they used their own hellenistic pronunciation. In turn, when medieval greeks cited homer, plato, Aristotle and the hellenistic Zenon, they used their own contemporary pronunciation. Now why should we modern greeks (and foreign students of greek!), after so many thousands of years, break from this tradition? It seems to me that whatever your opinion on what the reconstructed pronunciation should be (something comparative linguistics will likely never be able to fully illuminate), the most obvious answer is to continue this tradition of the ancients in using the contemporary pronunciation of the language (which we can agree is by most metrics highly conservative compared to the vast majority of indoeuropean languages), (and not strive for a probably flawed reconstruction, which is an entirely modern way of learning ancient language) all this being said, your Lucian pronunciation is not nearly as offensive to my ears as the vast majority of scholarly renditions of the ancient tongue, (dare i say it is even palatable :P) . keep up the good work! Your passion for the classics in admirable, and it truly warms my heart as a Greek :) P.S. just a small correction: some modern greek dialects like maniot and tsakonian continue to pronounce "υ" as "ου" (unrounded)! (ξούλο) rather than (ξύλο) and some others like pontic use "ε" for "η" !
Well not all historical authors were aware of pronunciation shifts over time, and we don’t know if they’d all agree to the same principles. In English literature for example, Chaucer asks his reader not to mismeter him due to fault of tongue, and later English critics lamented that his poetry didn’t work as well over time. Someone used to hearing Shakespeare in Received Pronunciation might find anything else strange, but a reconstructed pronunciation has echoes of modern Irish and Scottish pronunciation and makes a lot of the rhymes, meter and puns work better, so coming in with no expectations a good reconstruction can be amazing. I find the more you look at different related dialects and the history of languages itself, the more alive good reconstructions come to be. Now there are of course a lot of bad older reconstructions from people who haven’t studied modern dialects and their relation to historical pronunciation. But they’re getting better as people find how the features sound in living languages and come up with more natural reconstructions. Of course every text even in its own day is read by readers with all kinds of accents, so everyone should read however they feel comfortable. But there’s definitely reasons why some want to pursue historical reconstructions, at least as close as we can get.
I use the same pronunciation for anything from Classical Attic to Modern - unless I'm discussing how Greek was actually pronounced or pronouncing another dialect. Also, if I'm discussing the boundaries of a survey in Lake Lure, and someone who uses Classical pronunciation thinks I was in the nearby mountains, I pronounce the rough breathing in "ο ορος", which I normally don't.
I suppose the answer is that you *should* not but you *can* if the ancient pronunciation is of interest to you.
I feel that you're presenting a false dichotomy here. No one is saying to pick one over the other. Modern Brits use the modern British, often very southern, or even RP, pronunciation, when they recite Shakespeare. But that's not a prohibition against linguists from realizing that many lines do not rhyme when spoken in Modern English, and must be pronounced in Elizabethan English in order for them to get the actual flavour of what it sounded like at the time. Is it purely an academic exercise, perhaps even an aesthetic one? Absolutely. And there is nothing wrong with it.
It's not a correction, in the Old Athenian dialect υ was pronounced as French u, /y/ in IPA. Others like you said say υ as /u/ and η as /e/, this happened sporadically in many if not all dialects. Also no one said to stop pronouncing in our contemporary way, especially when using the words as loans in our contemporary variety. But when studying Ancient Greek is incredibly more easier and natural to do it while understanding the phonology, some examples are when εε becomes ει , or οο becomes ου, or when j/ι plays a role, it helps with grammar a lot. As years passed there is a lot of words that can't be distinguished in speech at all, it doesn't make sense when trying to recite something and expecting others to understand unless it's a famous play or people have the writing. Double consonants and υ/οι were distinguished until the Late Medieval period in the standard language, that shows that as the years pass it has become more and more difficult to understand the meaning of spoken Ancient Greek (Classical or Koine), this is evident in churches for example. So it could be helpful to study the close approximation of the Ancient pronunciation, it also helps with learning the modern dialects.
wow it's cool that there's somewhat of an overlap with the modern greek diphthongs and this variety, not that long ago I was learning a bit about how to read modern greek and the pronunciation, which made me understand the context a lot better.
Mate you are AWSOME !!!! A friend from Greece. P.S. your pronounciation is very 👍 good !!!
Ευχαριστώ, Αλέξη!
Great video mate. I am Greek and didn't know that. Τέλειο βίντεο, θα συνεχίσω να παρακολουθώ το κανάλι με ενδιαφέρον.
Ευχαριστώ, φιλε!
I find the part about ε being pronounced like modern ι in vulgar attic quite interesting. Because in some northern dialects of greek unstressed ε and o were pronounced ι and ου respectively. My grandma still talks like that, but it's nonstandard and has kind of disappeared recently because of education.
Interesting, do you remember any word examples of this pronunciation? I'd be interested to hear, bc I also live in Northern Greece.
@@msicvbes4977Ο κήπος - ου κήπους. Πάμε - παμι. Παμι στουν κήπου. / Το μέρος - του μέρους. Πάω στου μέρους (δηλαδή, στην τουαλέτα, όπως λεγόταν παλιά στα χωριά ). Έτσι μιλούσε η γιαγιά μου, ήταν από τη Χαλκιδική.
That's really fascinating! I suppose it demonstrates that these kinds of sound changes can happen any time.
@@sotiriapapadopoulou8945 Ναι, δίκιο έχεις, αυτή είναι η κλασική έντονη προφορά χωριού που μπορεί να διατηρούν μερικοί μεγαλύτεροι.
@@msicvbes4977 Ναι, στο χωριό η νέα γενιά δεν μιλάει πια έτσι. Δηλαδή, οι περισσότεροι.
I love your videos!!
Meanwhile Doric shows the modern *consonants:* the Dorians themselves wrote θ, φ, χ (《νά τώ Θεώ》), but Attic writers (e. g. Aristophánēs) transcribed their consonants like σ, φ, χ (《νά τώ Σιό》) , suggesting they already pronounced their aspirates as fricatives. It seems reasonable to presume δ, β, γ had at least allophonically changed as well, for symmetry, though I can't recall whether there's a corroboration such as δ>ζ in mimicked speech. Also I remember having read somewhere than Boeotian also shows οι>υ, though I'm not able to substantiate that now. (N. B.: The accents should be polytonic, but my device doesn't support them currently).
Another amazing video, although it was more academic in a sense which i literally understood little 😅 (felt like algebra). Greetings from Greece. *I remember learning in school that 3 of the major centres of directing/influencing the common Greek talk was Athens (classical Attic), Alexandria and Constantinople later.
Do we have any evidence for being still a diphthong in Koine, apart from its latin rendering as ? Because this last one cannot be seen as a prove, since latin also developed into a monophthong around the same time, as we see from e.g. 'scaena' and 'scaeptrum'.
The evidence generally relies on misspellings - for instance, scaena is actually a hyper correction, the result of urban speakers with the diphthong interacting with rural speakers with the monophthong. Monophthongal αι seems to generalize around the same time it does in Latin IIRC, though it's been a bit since I looked at horrocks or vox graeca.
Monophthongal ae/αι in the two languages generalizes after the 2cAD, which is a fascinating phenomenon in itself; both languages undergo similar or the same changes in about the same centuries.
@@polyMATHY_LukeAs a Latin enthusiast, what I will say is all speculation. Which, given the close relationship between Greek and Latin at this time, begs the question: which language did it first then influenced the other? I'm inclined to believe Greek did it first then influenced Latin; Christianity started with Koine Greek and the early Christians were native Greek speakers or L2 Greek speakers who then introduced the changes to their native Latin like they did with the introduction of definite articles and indirect speech calque (to imitate the Greek in the Septuagint). In regards to the indirect speech, Latin had the oratio obliqua, but also quod/quia/quoniam clauses in Imperial times - originally of the lower classes and from Greek speakers, then became popular thanks to Christianity and the various Latin translations of the Septuagint (not the Vulgate yet, which is mostly Classical in style).
Although too complicated for me ATM, it seems to shed some light on Greek pronunciation. I must say, I have to stand corrected on the "koine-κοινή" pronunciation issue.
Thanks for the comment, Constantine. Yes, I don’t enjoy challenging Greeks on what they feel are fundamental facts. I’m just hoping to bring us all to a mutual understanding of one another’s perspective. In that, I also hope to show my non-Greek audience that Modern Greek has a beautiful phonology and is not some “decadent” form of Ancient Greek; on the contrary, Modern Greek is exceedingly beautiful and has a lot to teach all of us.
Χαιρετισμοί απο Ορχομενό !
I remember some statistics about the phonological systems of contemporary languages which I'd have to look up and verify stating that almost none has an [y] but no [u] sound, which would suggest that the raising of would indeed most probably have closely followed the fronting of . Also, if you're looking for an analogy to the development of you might have a look at German , where the standard variety in Germany usually comes close to [a͡ɪ] while Standard Austrian German goes less high and rather has [a͡ɛ] and the Viennese accent typically has a monophthong close to [æː].
That’s very interesting and useful information! Thank you. What do Austrian’s other vowels do, once that monophthong occurs? I would expect long e to raise to i, “gehen” > “gihen”. Assuming it’s like what Boeotian did.
@@polyMATHY_Luke That's not happening since unlike in Boeotian the phonemes still stay distinct from all others in every variety I know - but if you're interested I could send you a rather detailed analysis of (Standard) Austrian German that uses the IPA
Dear Luke, thanks for your very deep analysis of the different Greek dialects and their evolution. Your knowledge of languages is amazing! I made an effort and read all the comments and different reactions. Your replies also answered some questions I had. Just to mention only one topic that was never discussed: the pronunciation of the y like it is pronounced in German or the u pronounced in French. I come originally from northern Italy, and in their dialects (at least the western ones like in Liguria or Piemonte the u is pronounced a' la francaise as ü. But in central and southern Italy, no one is pronouncing it like this, that is why ü or y does not exist in the Italian language. Now living in Greece for 30 years, I noticed that no Greek can pronounce this sound as well. So I think Greeks and central and southern Italians share more similarities in this matter. The fact that northern Italian dialects share the ü sound with German or Celtic (?) languages is probably related to later nordic invasions in the Middle Ages. (By the way, working in Central Africa, I noticed some people trying to speak French but not being able to sound the ü, instead being forced to pronounce it as i!). So I think that this is intrinsic of populations that share some sounds rather than other. For example the r of the Scots, is quite different from the English one! So if we admit a continuity of a certain Greek population from antiquity to modern times, we cannot suppose that at a certain times in the past, the same population could (or would) pronounce the y or u as ü of central Europe and not being able to pronounce it now! Unless there was a complete change of people! I think that pronouncing the y as ü in Greek is very subjective and biased, and we are not discussing the pronunciation of the monophthongs or diphthongs that you are explaining so convincingly! I would love to hear your opinion about that. Thanks a lot Luke!
The fact that you have to do a disclaimer for pressed modern Greeks is so funny
“Which is why I still use it” I knew it
Hehe. Yeah it’s artificially added (by me) to my speech. Once I realized it’s still alive and well in so many accents around the English speaking world from Ireland to Australia to Canada to the UK to the US, I figured it was fair I restore it.
To this day in Italian "beota" is another cultured war of saying "idiot". I assume Athenians hadn't a great opinion of them, like, country bumpkins...
Sorta unrelated, but I really find these definitions really fascinating. Latin casa (hut,cottage) descended to Spanish and Italian casa meaning just (house), displacing domus. Why? I presume it is because casas were becoming more commonplace as houses & domi were more rare and specialized in religious contexts, which explains why Italian still has "Duomo" but Spanish doesn't have a descendent of this word. Villas additionally were still around and were repurposed as monasteries or fortified farmsteads, which would become "villages".
Sorry in advance for the example that am going to give But the Turkish word " Kargiola" that means bed in Turkish in modern Greek means " Bitch " 😏 My point is that when a word makes it to an other language often gets a very different meaning altogether or vaguely related to cultural bias, stereotypes ect 😉
Great video!
Your vocabulary is quite good, but your pronunciation is vaguely reminiscent of Italian. Your stresses and inotations sound like an Italian trying to speak Greek; perhaps that comes from your having learned Latin first?
Do you mean the Modern Greek I spoke, or the Ancient Greek?
@@polyMATHY_Luke the modern Greek.
not a critique, just an observation. I enjoy watching your channel very much.
It’s definitely interference from Italian. I speak Italian every day, so that explains it. I’ll work on it. Thanks for the feedback!
@@polyMATHY_Lukedude you are so humble, mad respect!
Do you plan on learning Sanskrit at some point? It would be very interesting to hear this kind of analysis about Sanskrit grammar and pronunciation, though there seem to be less English-language references for it than for Ancient Greek.
As my grandparents from my father's side were from a small village 5km ready of Thiva this video is nice. I admire very much that you explain to us Greeks that do not have a linguistic background why our language sounded different back in the archaic period. I have written comments at how i do not like the erasmian and prefer the Lucian reconstruction. I also like the funny clips of tanagra. May i suggest one more? It is from "Της Ελλάδος τα παιδιά" A greek comedy from the 90s in which the soldiers try to write poems but fail miserably. And they recite... "Σαν βγεις στον πηγαιμο για την Τανάγρα" kzhead.info/sun/da6Dm7KKZ4Scqas/bejne.htmlm23s
Great video and I love the evidence to back it up. Unfortunately my education in linguistics is severely lacking so most of your points went over my head. That being said it made me question what I took for granted and tried to read Homer's Iliad. Indeed "και" is written with an accent there "καί" which is a strong indicator that this might be pronounced with 2 sounds, κα-ι. I am saying this due to my assumption that ancient Greeks were not using accents on 1 syllable words (might be wrong here though). And then I tried to find the original text without success, the only thing I found was an image from smithsonian magazine of a 15th century manuscript and I was surprised to see the accent was in between the 2 vowels for "και" which I think you also mentioned at 15:57 of this video for diphthongs. All in all I would say I am even more confused than before and maybe I will try to study and revisit your video so I can digest it properly. Again many thanks for the content.
Wow that's interesting!
Speaking about language, i don't understand anything of Latin or Greek, however, i'm very fascinated by this two languages! by the evolution of this languages through history, creating our new languages. Your videos expose something really ancient and strange, but i love it! thank you! Also i'm Italian so...FOR THE GLORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE!!!!! 😂
*these :)
Sono contento se ti piace il video!
hey Luke, what do you think about the Greco-Phrygian hypothesis? do you find it convincing?
By that did you mean that some Linguists group it under the "Hellenic" Languages?
To which hypothesis are you referring?
The loss of aspiration in "what" and "whether" is a tragedy. Glad you use it, even if you whisper it :)
Amazingly it’s much more common than I had previously thought, still extant in every major Anglophone population, just not as dominant as it was 50 years ago.
@@polyMATHY_Luke I'm glad to hear that. I wish it would come back strong rather than decline, but I'll kick against the pricks until I die :) προσδοκῶ καὶ τὴν vidionem περί τοῦ βιβίου τοῦ Ζαχαρίου. ἀκοὴ οὑ ἦλθε πρός με ἐὼς σἠμερον, ἀλλὰ νῦν ποίμην καλησάμενον Ῥευχλινιὴν ἐκφωνὴν "_the_ historical pronuniation" ἠκούσα κατ' ὥραν α'. εὐχαριστῶ σοι vidione σοῦ.
Here in Holland, small country, the diphthong “ei” / ηι, like in leip, is pronounced λῆπ in The Hague and laip in Amsterdam’s popular pronunciation and correctly ληιπ in standard Dutch…
That is a very good observation: indeed, some Dutch dialects have a vowel inventory quite similar to Classical Attic.
Modern Greeks can be very stubborn when it comes to the history of their language. A couple of days ago one called me a retard for pointing out that Greek used lunate sigma, C, in Hellenistic, Roman, and Medieval periods. Even when I shown him inscriptions he just doubled down.
Wow really? He didn’t believe that lunate sigma was used? Haha it’s everywhere in inscriptions! Yes, it’s quite a challenge, since Greeks have a combination of traits that are, I think, more pronounced than in other cultures I interact with: they have a very strong sense of nationalism, and profound distrust of outsiders. This doesn’t go for every Greek; these are just my observations: such Greeks will interpret a contradiction to their worldview, especially when that comes from a non-Greek, as an attempt to diminish their sense of self. In realty, this aspect of the ego is something every human has, it just happens to reveal itself - according to my anecdotal observations - frequently in these types of discussions with some Greeks, and it can feel like trying to convince a flat-earther the planet is round.
And it becomes even weirder, since Church inscriptions use the lunate sigma, which is definitely a tradition from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.
@@polyMATHY_Luke I once left a Greek fuming during a debate on whether Ancient Greek was read the same way as today, when I told him that Ancient Greeks were not stupid enough to develop an orthography in which i-sound is written in 78 different ways like it is today.
@@user-hh8vi2rc6lAnd Cyrillic still uses it.
@@polyMATHY_LukeHi Luke. Not all of us Greeks are like that. Many of us are actually educated people & educated on the topic of our actual History. While I consider you a Master of Linguistics, especially for these Ancient Languages & Dialects, I do always take some things you say with a grain of salt. The reason being is that we are all humans & are prone to mistakes, isn’t that right? For example, I have caught many mistakes you have made on your Greek Videos before from a purely Historical [Lol, your Favorite word] Point of View. Like when you accidentally showed the wrong Symbol representing the Larnax found by Manolis Andronikos that showed the 16 Rayed PanHellenic Vergina Sun Sunburst that has come to be known as the symbol of the Ancient Macedonians today. I believe you showed some sort of Apollo Carving that was also from Antiquity in that video. It was a pretty major mistake. It would be Equivalent of mixing up the Pantheon with the Parthenon. I say this because this is the Symbol of the Great Macedonians, a World Famous & Iconic Symbol, how could you miss that? It made me wonder, outside of the Linguistics field, how much actual History do you study about the Ancient Greeks themselves? Are you more of a Roman Bug-A-Boo fan when it comes to History? Genuinely Curious about that. Btw, I used to really come at you in an abrupt kind of way but I have promised someone from your channel to behave & to take a softer approach. Hopefully this will get some of my actual more meaningful questions answered by you. I would also like to ask you another question. Do you think other Greeks attack you or say absurdities (unacceptable btw) because they feel as though you are trying to disassociate them from what they feel is their Ancestors History? One of the most strongest Link after-all is the Language. Do you think that if in every video you make it a point to state that: THE MODERN GREEK LANGUAGE IS THE ORGANIC EVOLUTION OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE FROM ANTIQUITY UNTIL THIS VERY DAY WHICH HAS CONTINUOUSLY DOCUMENTED REALITY ^^^I mean, this is a TRUE STATEMENT & would "Cover You" from anyone feeling like you are somehow attacking them. You also hit two birds with one stone, because it seems like a lot of Greece’s Neighbors try to claim their SH!T & are hawking over your videos to try to delegitimize their Hellenic Neighbors with whom some of them feel a Vast Form of Inferiority Complex towards (they shouldn’t, but its a sad reality). What do you say Louka? Do I make some good points. I think I do & I think it would be the Honorable approach! 👍🏻 And I shall take this moment to apologize for any inappropriate behavior I may have had towards you & I would even like to apologize on behalf of my uneducated &/or Ignorant Greek Compatriots that speak utter Non-Sense when they are not studied or qualified on the particular subjects. Hope to hear back from you! 😃
Luke one more question . Could people in different greek cities communicate easily with no translation if they had this great difference in spoken language? Or could it be the the writing system was indeed different but the pronunciation not so different?
you confuse language with dialect the official envoys among the of the Greek cities of their gathering for the Olympic games, the Isthmias, the Delphic Amphictyonians, the gathering at the holy Delos the reading of the Homeric epics the works and study of various poets and philosophers the theatrical performances in all the Greek cities proves that there was no need for language interpretation
That's a very good and interesting question. In my video about dialect vs language ( kzhead.info/sun/rbmlfsyrb6SAkp8/bejne.htmlsi=hKMYkwLH6TIkpnKa ) I discussed the fact that there are not universal definitions of "language" or "dialect;" some speech types that are considered different languages, like Danish and Norwegian, are mutually intelligible to one another. The varioun Italian dialects are quite divergent from each other, and mutual intelligibility is a challenge, but few are considered languages in their own right. Yet even Spanish and Italian are more mutually intellible than some dialects in Italy are to standard Italian. Some of the Modern Greek dialects, which are found in Italy, Cyprus, Turkey, have diverged quite a bit from Modern Standard Greek, and are comparably different from MSG as the Romance languages are from each other, yet they don't have enough influence or literature to attain consideration as "languages." As to your main question, mutual intelligibility did not appear to be that great among the dialects, except possibly with Macedonian, but we don't have enough information either way on that one. Exposure to one another's dialects was frequent in ancient Greece, and familiarity permits this comprehensibility; add to that the prestige of certain dialects like Ionic, followed by Attic, and two Greeks of different dialect groups could probably have communicated without too much difficulty, certainly no more than a Spaniard and an Italian who don't know each other's language or a common language, yet do quite fine. But we don't have too much commentary on this; in general, the ancients didn't seem very interested in the linguistic metacommentary that we modern scholars so deeply desire, commentary that would be easy to find for modern languages.
@@polyMATHY_Luke there is no chance that one side did not understand the other we have many events, sessions and dialogues in ancient Greece that prove it which you mentioned from the ancient writings after all, geographically Greece is a very small country in terms of area which makes contact very frequent
this was a question about how people spoke the language in comparison with the modern reconstruction . if the reconstruction is 100% correct then there would be some problems in the spoken language while trading . so the question is : could it be that the ancient greek pronunciation had already changed and people pronounced it similarly regardless of how they would write it down?. like how we to it today that we write it differently compared to how it was pronounced in the past
@@panagiotis7946 well i have seen Athenian born people scratch their heads when hearing a Cretan speak so... even today we have that phenomenon
I haven't really looked into this in detail, but I find it interesting that B and Δ are switched in Delphi, could indicate a fricative pronunciation in Boeotian? I have noticed some evidence for this in Western Greek dialects
While fricatives of different sorts are possible, the B in Boeotian and Δ in Attic are from PIE /gʷ/ : en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Δελφοί Different realizations of PIE sounds occur, like Latin quis as Greek τίς, quantus πόσος etc.
@@polyMATHY_Luke thanks, I kind of wrote the reaction before you got to that point as it appeared so striking. de gw/kw sound changes in greek are quite interesting, especially since they are so variable among dialects
It’s true! The Ancient Greek dialects are real treasures in the study of language development; they’re endlessly fascinating. Thank goodness so much has been preserved.
Hi. An interesting thing to do would be to ask a Greek orthodox priest to give you a liturgical book he uses at church. I believe you will be amazed by the kind of Greek used for chants.
I have frequently listened to them and studied them. Farya Faraji’s renditions are especially impressive.
Age of Empires IV is getting the Byzantines soon. As the units use language which evolves forward together with the civilisation, did you think about covering it? It would be interesting to see how they portrayed the language evolution of "The Byzantines".
As far as I know, the VA's use the Modern Greek pronunciation and stress accents. They pronounce υ as [i] and not the front rounded vowel [y] like Byzantine Greek has.
Question: Im composing music for a short film, which is very loosely based on the myth of pandora. it was originally written down by Hesiodos, who was from Boeotia. I want to encorporate parts of his writings as a mystical chant, could I get away with just pronouncing the words in a modern greek way, consdering the similarity of Boeotian and modern greek? I really don't have the time or resources to actually learn proper pronunciation, as this is a student project, but of course I want to make it as realistic as possible
alternatively: would someone be willing to record a pronunciation of the text for me, so that I could learn from that and sing that for the chant?
Unlocks secret attic? Sounds like a cool adventure movie
Awesome, that's why I was going for. That's how it feels sometimes when learning about these things. But you know the kind of nerd I am.
@@polyMATHY_Luke I know, I'm your greatest fan from Kosovo
I grew up in Thebes. We still say the Aeolic "θα σε βριξω" instead of "θα σε βρίσω" that it is common in modern Greek.
Can you examine the correlation with ancient language knowledge and love of star trek enterprise?
Χαχα να κάνω τί; I don't recall too many ancient languages in Enterprise, though perhaps Hoshi mentioned one at some point. There is the ancient Iconian language in the TNG episode "Contagion."
i appreciate your modern greek takes, and your accent is coming close. Maybe your epsilons and omicrons need some touch tho 👊
Ευχαριστώ, Γιάννη! I’ll keep working on it. 👊 🇬🇷
One episode about the arcadian -cypriot dialect...i cant find in youtube something...
Does anyone know the specific font Luke uses when transcribing Ancient Greek? If so thanks in advance.
It’s called Gentium. Enjoy!
I admire your work but need to say this: as a Modern Greek speaker with a fair knowledge of ancient Greek, I understand next to nothing when any dialect of ancient Greek is pronounced with the erasmian pronunciation but I understand a lot when it is spoken with the Modern Greek pronunciation and much more when I see it written. So what is more important: the correct pronunciation or to understand and appreciate ancient Greek texts?
I detest the Erasmian pronunciation, so I hope you don’t think the correct reconstruction of the ancient phonology, as I have demonstrated here, is “Erasmian,” because it is not (this misconception is very common in Greece, due to lack of familiarity with either, so it’s not your fault). I explain more here: kzhead.info/sun/dbOqlNaPo4Rqeq8/bejne.htmlsi=G37pNPIq24K_Cxi8 In the above video, I do not say Greeks or anyone should use a reconstructed pronunciation or a Modern Greek pronunciation or any at all; the goal of my message for Greeks in the video was to tell them that the ancient pronunciation was in fact very different. Many Greeks don’t even accept this fact. In your own studies or teaching, please use whatever pronunciation suits you. There are indeed countless reasons why a good restored phonology of Ancient Greek is better than using the pronunciation of Modern Greek, of course - getting the jokes, appreciating the musicality and rhythm of the lines, understanding the morphology and grammar much more clearly - but I have no intention of taking away from Greeks something they like for aesthetic or even practical reasons.
Thank you for your reply. Much appreciated. @@polyMATHY_Luke
Minor correction. 'Sounds' in the sense 'sounds of pronunciation' are called φθόγγοι not ήχοι.
Good correction. I checked both, and preferred φθόγγοι at first, but then other dictionaries gave me ήχοι even in the context of phonology, so I chose that word (but was still unsure). In any case, thanks very much for the tip; I’ll make sure I use the proper term on the next occasion.
I have a question: is the malleability of vowel sounds the reason some languages don't write their vowels in their words? Are those two things connected somehow or completely unrelated?
That’s a very good question. In general, most languages have fewer vowels (usually around 5-7) than consonants (more than 10), so the consonants are more important to the meaning. One can usually get by reading a text in one’s native language even with all the vowels removed, but vice versa is impossible.
I read that Etruscsn was derived from B. Early Latin ( Fhefhaked/ fecit)
The alphabet? If so, you're close: the Etruscan alphabet was derived from the Euboean version of the Greek alphabet, but the Boeotian version was very close, and they're neighbouring regions. Etruscan itself was a language isolate.
Πω πω... Θα ήθελα πάρα πολύ να κάνουμε μια συνέντευξη μαζί σου εδώ στην Αθήνα! Πολλές φορές πηγαίνω σε έναν ναόν Θηβών.
Dear Mr. Rainiery, In Gittin.20.* the Greek name of Βιωθος is written as "בלייתוס" which is pronounced as: Bleitous. Based on Assyrian phonology we know that the letter Tao whas pronounced as þ. Lamedh whas pronounced "thick" from this I deduce the pronounciation of Błaiþous. So Βοιωτια or Boetia would sound more like Blaitia. What do you think? *Talm.Trac.Gittin.verse 20.
4:59 Great Vowel Shift, anyone?
Fun fact, modern day Athens has sprawled so much that includes boetia and it's almost a matter of time before Swallowing Corinth as well 😏 To the main topic, you have to understand that a big reason for the confusion about pronunciation is the Greek educational system You see out of convince they teach ancient Greek using modern Greek pronunciation and spelling Actually most teachers agree that it would be better to only teach ancient Greek and Latin to people that are actually interested for a academic career or something since they add more layers of confusion for the students I mean at middle school you have 2 classes of modern Greek grammar and literature 2 classes of ancient Greek English And French or German Buuuuuttttt as you can imagine is a huge taboo here in Greece A thing that I find interesting - maybe because am Greek is that linguistically the Greek language started to become - at least to my perspective " Simpler" it's like in some point in time the simplest parts of dialects prevailed over the more complicated ones Even loan vocabulary in modern Greek is often very simple like two Syllables or something I also wonder if it's a cultural thing since we see a similar pattern in architecture and industrial design even things like military salutes that simpler often means better 🤔
It might be a silly question, but it puzzles me each time why you pronounce ι as "a iota" (with an indefinite article "A"? (for example at 4:11) Why "a iota" instead of a simple "iota"? :)
Hi there, great question. In English the name of the letter is /aiota/. Just like the word “I”, we pronounce the first letter in “iota” as /ai/.
ah ok, now I got it. Thanks for reply 😊
At the inscription in the end, shouldn't it be Αριστίωνος άρχοντος? Or is άρχοντας some weird Boeotian genitive
It's a mistake, check pinned comment
Thanks
If languages never changed then I should be able to understand anyone who speaks a PIE language fluently. Anyone who thinks Modern Greek sounds like Attic Greek etc. is wrong.
Hey Luke. Could you explain the text below? Its from Thucydides . It states clear confusion within the Athenian people about the sound of "ι and οι" in the words "Λοιμος and Λιμος " because in the spoken language it was not clear which word the poem used. So how could this happening if the pronunciation was so clear . Could this be happening in earlier centuries and already in classical attic the pronunciation had already changed ? ἐν δὲ τῷ κακῷ οἷα εἰκὸς ἀνεμνήσθησαν καὶ τοῦδε τοῦ ἔπους, φάσκοντες οἱ πρεσβύτεροι πάλαι ᾄδεσθαι «ἥξει Δωριακὸς πόλεμος καὶ λοιμὸς ἅμ’ αὐτῷ.» [2.54.3] ἐγένετο μὲν οὖν ἔρις τοῖς ἀνθρώποις μὴ λοιμὸν ὠνομάσθαι ἐν τῷ ἔπει ὑπὸ τῶν παλαιῶν, ἀλλὰ λιμόν, ἐνίκησε δὲ ἐπὶ τοῦ παρόντος εἰκότως λοιμὸν εἰρῆσθαι·
@@TPoliti-rv2ey he never made that statement. in fact se has said the opposite . you have no idea what he is talking about and you have nothing to do with linguistic science .
There's several factors at play. First, the evidence shows that υ and ι are confused specifically in front of the consonant μ from an early date - over a thousand years before they are generally confused. This is because υ was a rounded front vowel /y/, and the consonant /m/ is labial, easily causing preemptive labialization of /i/, meaning it would have easily sounded like /lymos/. Secondly, /oi/ was also probably fully fronted and maybe even fully rounded at this point, /ø͡y/, meaning that in these particular words, they'd have sounded very similar. Third, the idea that two words have to be pronounced identically in order to be confused is obviously wrong - just think of people mishearing song lyrics! However, we have extremely strong evidence from as late as the 11th century that for an educated urban Greek, υ and ι were not pronounced the same: Ἐμοὶ πατρίς, βέλτιστε, τραχὺ χωρίον, ὅπου περ ἀνδρῶν καὶ βοῶν ἶσαι φρένες, οἳ το κρύον λέγουσιν ἀφρόνως κρίον, καὶ τὸ ξύλον λέγουσιν ἀγροίκως ξίλον. My fatherland, oh dearest one, is a coarse village, where the minds of men and cows are just the same. They foolishly say ‘κρίον’ instead of ‘κρύον’ and they boorishly say ‘ξίλον’ instead of ‘ξύλον.
@@Philoglossos excellent answer ! Thank you! I didnt knew the existence of the last text you send which i understood very well by the way 🥳 ( what is the source of the text? ) because of the text of Thucydides i was under the hypothesis and thought that the clear distinction between οι and ι could have happened in earlier years than the classical era . But this explanation is quite good it seems that literacy in the general population has great impact on any language
@@georgekiriak7027 You can read all about that text and what it indicates in a paper freely available online on researchgate called "Michael the Grammarian’s irony about hypsilon". The story gets very interesting as well when you start to consider dialect evidence. Several modern Greek varieties turned υ/οι in stressed syllables into /ju/ ιου rather than merging it with ι, and you can hear this today in Tsakonika and also in dialects of the Old Athenian type - in fact, prior to the 19th century, the dialect of Athens was of this type as well, but it was heavily changed by immigration from other parts of Greece. There was also a paper published recently by a greek scholar on a dialect which preserved the medieval pronunciation of υ/οι (which are confused with each other much earlier than with ι) as a front rounded vowel until the mid 20th century, and apparently there are actually recordings provind this, though the dialect has since died out.
@@Philoglossos you have any word example of this in any greek dialect ? It would help me understand it more an example of this type "Several modern Greek varieties turned υ/οι in stressed syllables into /ju/ ιου rather than merging it with ι"
boetian sounds very ecclesiastic
That’s an interesting comparison
It would be interesting if you made a video about the relationship of ου and ω, many times these are switched depending on dialect and in modern Greek ω has been changed to ου, like κωνωψ has become κουνούπι, κωφός has become κουφός.
That’s true! The reason is that the long ō vowel has closed to /u/. This happens regularly in many languages; one that occurs to me is avicella (little bird in Latin) doing through the stage *ōcella and finally uccello in Italian.
2:33 Α: Πολύ καλή προφορά της Νέας Ελληνικής. Β: A very good reminder about ancient pronounciations is "Hellas", written in English like this and not "Ellas"
Ευχαριστώ!
I've just noticed that ye pronounce ðanks. I haven't known that that was a feature of American English!
It’s not a feature of American English; it’s a feature that can be found in English speakers around the world, about 5% of speakers have it. You can hear it in Chris Hemsworth, Bill Murray, Gwyneth Paltrow, and others from the UK to Canada to New Zealand. Either it has a origin in a different dialect of Old English, and has manages to go unnoticed by the speakers who have it and pass it down mother to to child (as my grandmother did to her mother, which we only realized once I started studying phonetics), or it’s a random occurrence that develops spontaneously. Chris Hemsworth at 42 seconds: kzhead.info/sun/Zs58o756fKesqa8/bejne.htmlsi=ufZr-thYtElC1Rzy
Οίνος = vinum in latin. Get it?
(Especially at a time when more and more universities globally have been shutting down their classics departments, your work is sacred.)
Huge comment warning! First of all, the video is great and very informative, let me be clear. There is not such a thing as one historical pronunciation, in any long or wide spoken language, anywhere in the world. All the information we have on the pronunciation of ancient Greek dialects will also never be enough to reconstruct it as accurately as we wish or expect from ourselves, because for all the scripts ever discovered providing such information, there were 100x as many illiterate Ancient Greek farmers and sailors and women and whatnot, speaking a potentially very different form of Greek than the one that has been used? designated? by philosophers, poets, leaders and historians. And random varieties or mistakes on tombs or art are still not enough to reach perfection. Whoever tries to find the "one truth" is destined to fail. Those usually rightwing and linguistically inept Greeks who insist on this fight a lost war. But how many are they still? Most of them are internet rightwings hiding behind a keyboard. Does this justify a constant mildly sarcastic reminder by Luke targeted towards all Greeks in every video? On the other hand, I also find the obsession of foreign scholars and linguists on the (as I said, utopic) perfect reconstruction of Classical Greek to border on unhealthy at this point, because it usually comes with an inexplicable and unscientific disdain against Medieval and Modern Greek, as if the evolution of the language was a Greek scheme to destroy the lingual and cultural nobility of the classical times. Apart from the fact that the Classical superiority itself can be questioned on several aspects (i.e social and ethical), the language evolved the way it did as a natural consequence of all the circumstances in the Greek lands. Were the newer pronunciations easier, prettier? One way or another, they had qualities that made them attractive and adoptable to the Greek ears in the long term. Whether or not western classicists still whip themselves in despair for the iotacism, that was the process that in the long run made sense or came naturally based on all lived circumstances in the lands of the native speakers. So, I am not sure a western linguist is objective for obsessing over a period of 150 years and giving it universal dimensions, while emphatically ignoring periods before or during it (less known dialects etc) and, above all, after it, especially when it happens with this kind of insufferable attitude that is very prominent among western scholars. Luke is the least guilty of such a classical obsession and he still can't escape the regular condescension towards Modern Greek speakers, so you get how bad western scholars can get. So I find this panic among classicists as to how they should pronounce Ancient Greek or what theory they should follow pretty silly. They can do the best job they can and it is still a very mediocre job because the absolute truth can't and won't be known. (Let alone that many Greeks don't exactly deny the pronunciation has changed but that western scholars usually fail to remove elements of their own native languages from their attempt at a Greek pronunciation. Often, classicists are so removed from and indifferent to the rest of the Greek experience, the whole history, that ethnic and cultural identity the real mentality and not its western idolization, that no matter how many pitches and spirits they apply, they end up sounding very sterile, very unnatural and still very close to their own native lingual experience, and thus still quite far from Greek. These are nuances Greeks can pick up on in ways foreigners can not, even if they are not at all proficient in the ancient dialects) So let's stop putting always the blame on the modern Greeks exclusively. In fact, I genuinely believe if such classicists used some of the scorn energy to train themselves in Medieval and Modern Greek, just a little exra energy, and then used it to read Erotokritos of the 17th century or the early 20th Skiathian dialect of Papadiamantis (that needs a lexicon even by a Modern Greek now) or the poetry of Cavafy and Elytis, it would open up a very different world to them, one they did not expect and certainly one they spent a lot of time ridiculing without arguments. Again, this is not about Luke. But it is about how the topic of ancient Greek pronunciation is handled in the west and how the west presents Modern Greeks as nationalist barbarians as a whole and how this attitude is a vicious circle, both marginalizing Greeks interested in Greek linguistics from contributing to the research without getting influenced by sentiment, anger or inferiority complex and also provoking and instensifying such behaviours from actual nationalist uneducated guys. And of course, like I said, western scholars never examine their own shortcomings. You think a Greek gets angry because you said 400 BC Dorian is not identical to Modern? (No sane Greek will get angry btw, we are taught ancient Greek in school mandatorily, we know better than anyone that there are differences) But try telling a western student of the classics that they don't sound like they use the correct metre in their recitation. Heads will roll. They will skin you alive. And of course they will land on the conclusion that you are a barbarian having nothing to do with Ancient Greek heritage so you can't have an opinion or critical judgement of your own. Only people who have words like "Worcestershire" in their native vocabulary can have an eligible opinion on Greek.
That always annoyed me about western AG scholars. They tell you how to pronounce every inch of a sentence, how to aspirate, how to drag vowels and so on, but when they speak it they sound like they're speaking their own native language, but with having a few drings along the way. If Luke has such a wrong pronunciation in MG as in this video, why should I listen to all the details he proposes on AG pronunciation? Noone disagrees changes have happened, but clearly there is no right way of reconstructng ancient dialects, especially when from Greek village to Greek village we have differences in pronunciation even today. More so if at the time Greek was a lingua franca in the east mediterranean sea and beyond, therefore many non-natives spoke it, like slaves in Athens and Sparta, like Egyptians, Romans, some Jews and so on. There is no correct ancient Greek pronounciation, I don't like the purism and elitism of such scholars. That's why Katharevousa failed in Greece afterall
Given that I am anti-Erasmian, and loudly proclaim such: kzhead.info/sun/dbOqlNaPo4Rqeq8/bejne.htmlsi=q5QVyQqRq-Q5Ij3B it's easy for me to sympathize with your position. Nevertheless "No sane Greek will get angry" is simply not true in my experience; I have had dealings directly with Greek professors of Ancient Greek, who teach all kinds of nonsense, including that Proto-Indo-European studies are not valid, that PIE is just a "theory" etc., and that Ancient Greek pronunciation was identical to Modern Greek - and these are teachers who bring up young children to think like this! And teach the same to adults. While you say these notions may be fringe, I wish that were true, but my observations tell me otherwise. However, when it comes to the reconstruction of ancient phonology, we understand this as well as we understand the sequence of events in the Peloponnesian War, or how much territory Alexander the Great conquered: that is to say, pretty darn well. If you cast doubt on ancient phology, you might as well cast doubt on similar facts of history. And like I said about the ignorance of Western scholars, I have criticized them very loudly, and will continue to do so. As for their distrust of Western scholars for Modern Greek interpretations, if they have had dealings with Greek professors like I have (not just everyday Greeks who haven't done much of the way of deep studies), teachers from Greece dogmatically attached to easily disproven notions, their skepticism of a "Greek" point of view (which in this case could only be synonymous with "shockingly ignorant"), is understandable, don't you think? That doesn't mean they are right, but it does mean that Greek academia needs to put its house in order. Imagine if a majority of Greek academia embraced and used the ancient phonology like Ioannis Stratakis: kzhead.info/sun/ZLGKeLqIjmKYfYU/bejne.htmlsi=GDXkx7TM7MKRiX6H Then all Western scholars would idolize the Greeks for their immaculate interpretation of Classical Attic Pronunciation, and would imitate them and adore them. If you can, help us spread the word in Greece.
How do you pronounce "Boeotia" itself in ancient dialects Greek and in modern Greek?
In Attic Greek, Βοιωτίᾱ is pronounced [boi.ɔː.tí.à:] In Koiné Greek, it's [βøi.o:.tí.à:] with a bilabial fricative and a fronted [øi] diphthong for οι. In Modern Greek, it's [vi.o.'ti.a]
Great question. The gentleman below gave a great transcription of them. As for other dialects, that’s hard to determine, since it depends on century. At least we have a good idea of how it may have sounded in 4cBC-2cBC Boeotian, which I showed in the video.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you for answering!
@@Brandon55638 Thank you for your detailed response!
Not gonna lie, I subscribed to your channel because of the Latin and the Magic Flute theme and I know nothing about modern oder ancient Greek. However, I now also enjoy your videos on Greek just to watch you get "pre-emptively worked up" about people who are going to tell you that ancient Greek was pronounced the same way modern Greek is which is, of course, ridiculous. I, for one, can attest to the fact that you are right about Latin and Italian and also your pronunciation of the variety of German considered standard in Germany is almost annoyingly perfect. Therefore, I am absolutely certain that you are right about Greek as well.
That’s very generous, thanks for the compliment. There could be many things that I am wrong about, numerous details that I am trying to understand better. I shall do my best to meet the high standard you have kindly stated. Thanks for watching!
[32:19] Jackson Crawford? Is it that Old Norse specialist?
Yes, Jackson and I support each other on Patreon. He is a great fellow and the pinnacle of scholarship.
Boetian Rhapsody 😂
😂😂😂😂
Good morning dear Luke. I would just like you to explain to us how you came to all these conclusions about the pronunciation of ancient languages that you strongly support, since you did not live in antiquity and have no living evidence of what you say. Also you don't explain to us what role the punctuation (fine and dense) and stress (acute and fragmented) played in the pronunciation of the words. Thank you very much
You also did not live in antiquity. Do you doubt that the 300 Spartans defended Thermopylae? Do you not believe Alexander conquered the Persians, even though there is no video footage of this event? Read the sources in the description. Phonology is a key part of your history, as important as the deeds of great men.
I have to be honest. I've been watching your content for years. All my life i've found interest in learning more about my origin and history. What always bothered me (and this is an ego problem) is having to sit and listen to a foreigner tell me things about my lineage. But on the other hand, the native alternative (no pun intended) is a bunch of old men and ladies giving presentations in municipal cultural centers and evening schools talking bout conjugations and shit. and their presentations are BORING and unintuitive. Also you have to suffer through their ethnocentric commentary during the class. I have never seen such a presentation about ancient regional dialects, comparing them to the attic/koine, with real examples of scripture and projections on how it evolved into the modern accent of today. This is so interesting and educational. even tho i cringe with your pronounciation, i thank your for the videos.
That is an interesting problem you have, and it's not just you; many Greeks feel this way. I have observed that Greeks tend to be more nationalistic, xenophobic, and paranoid of outsiders' commentary than can be found in other countries (where these tendencies also exist, of course). But I think it's fantastic you're open to hearing from foreigners on these interesting subjects. It doesn't mean we foreigners are necessarily right; but I do think it's good to keep an open mind. As for pronunciation, the Classical Attic pronunciation is indeed quite different from Modern Greek. Many Greeks are embracing the ancient pronunciation for recitations in Ancient Greek, as Ioannis Stratakis does so well: kzhead.info/sun/ZLGKeLqIjmKYfYU/bejne.htmlsi=QF8B9qt_McdFv1d2 Why not you as well? I'm not saying you have to - you are free to make whatever subjective choice you like with respect to conventions - but perhaps your reaction to "cringe" comes partly from what was instilled in you by those ethnocentric teachers you mentioned, who persuaded you long ago, perhaps unconsciously, that Ancient Greek pronunciation was just like Modern Greek, that Greek letters have a single set of sounds, sounds that are only those of Modern Greek. For those of us who use the Roman alphabet, we are not so easily deceived: Spanish and Italian use the same alphabet, but it would be silly to insist that "cena" must sound like the Spanish word in Italian, or vice versa. Indeed, an important fact to realize is that Spanish and Italian are much, much more similar to each other in vocabulary, grammar, and phonology than Modern Greek is to Ancient Greek. This fact doesn't take away from Greeks their proud history, a three-thousand-year chain of language evolution from the Bronze Age leading to today's Dimotiki. That Greeks feel this strong affinity is wonderful; that Italians and Spaniards don't feel so close to each other is a matter of their choice and desire to differentiate their cultures. Understanding this allows us to consider that, while I suppose it's perfectly acceptable for a Spaniard to pronounce Italian exactly like Spanish letter for letter, there is great value in comprehending the original Italian values of the phonemes. This is the argument for why Greeks should be able at least to recite Ancient Greek in the ancient pronunciation, whether they use it frequently or not. Ioannis Stratakis does ( kzhead.info/sun/ZLGKeLqIjmKYfYU/bejne.htmlsi=QF8B9qt_McdFv1d2 ) - why not you?
The way you gave a disclaimer in modern Greek so Greeks dont come for you..😂😂Respect from a Greek. Youre the fucking man..
Ευχαριστώ φίλε μου. Κυρίως θέλω απλώς να ενημερώσω: τα βιβλία (όπως φαίνεται στο βίντεο) είναι διαθέσιμα σε οποιονδήποτε, αλλά είναι κρίμα που οι Έλληνες που αντιτίθενται με πάθος στις ανακατασκευασμένες προφορές των Αρχαίων Ελληνικών δεν διαβάζουν Vox Graeca, μεταξύ άλλων.
Your /e/ sounds like /i/ and your /i/ almost like /y/ to my (southern french) ears
Also, in romance languages with the o>u>y shift (like occitan), ò tends to stay open-mid, about as open as è i'd say. (One thing that looks like evidence that omega stayed open-mid for a while in greek, at least in some varieties, is the greek transcription of egyptian words too) It's also a strong argument for a back upsilon existing for a long time in the varieties in contact with egyptian
My realization of the vowels could be a bit off; plus there is some wiggle room. As for Egyptian, we have evidence to the contrary of what you're saying (though I'm not saying you're wrong; I'd like to see your evidence): Coptic uses ⲱ = /o/ and ⲟ = /ɔ/. Something interesting is that ῳ may have retained its open quality, but not ω, according to Teodorsson (1978).
@@polyMATHY_Luke yeah but that's the thing greek transcriptions of egyptian names have ω in words where coptic has ⲟ, but have υ/ου (υ more often) where coptic has ⲱ~ⲟⲩ (see vergote 1973 on that)
It's ridiculous to claim that our modern pronunciation has been around for millennia. At best, aspects of it can be found emerging in various dialects (and they can be). It's also ridiculous to claim my ancestors would not do a dog-like head tilt if they heard anyone using a non-Lucian modern pronunciation among non-Greeks. And yes, your pronunciation of Ancient Greek is FAR better than most foreigners, even if parts of it sound understandably odd to my modern Greek ears (that's on me, not you). Also, for an Italian, your modern Greek is pretty great too!
Luke is American, not Italian ;-)
@@Glossologia I am aware ;)
@@StergiosMekras You said 'for an Italian', I guess you meant American haha
@@Glossologia Nah, I was just making a point that his Italian pronunciation is bleeding into his Greek :D (he's still better than 99% of non-Greeks)
I presume that the modern pronunciation came about from indeed particular dialect(s) from ancient times, which supplanted the other dialects through prestige, population shifts (from war, plague, or other catastophes), immigration, and/or just sheer ease of pronouncing itself from that dialect compared to others. These reasons explain many sound changes, especially English.
Συγχαρητήρια φίλε μου! Don't spend your time with nonsense.
Boetian can be of great... Help. If you know what I am saying.
This sounds similar to the great vowel shift in English.
Absolutely! And it’s worth noting that different dialects, like Scots, experienced different vowel shifts not quite like standard English
Βοιωτία. Η παράφραση με την επίκληση της αγγλικής γλώσσας μόνο ως αστείο μπορώ να το λάβω Παρακαλώ προσέξτε καλά τα ονόματα Βοιωτός ο κάτοικος της Βοιωτίας. Είναι σαν να λέτε ότι ο κάτοικος Λονδίνου Που λέγεται Λονδρέζος Να τον ονομάζεται πλέον λονδινεζο Καμία παράφραση στα ονόματα πόλεων επαρχιών νομών.
Istae litterae vōcālēs Graecae mihī sunt nimis difficilēs. Crēdō tibī, sed rem cognitam nōn habeō.
Plūra dīcitō nōbīs, amīce: anne assvētus es sonīs Graecae linguae hodiernae? Quae est tibi difficultās?
Sonōs Graecōs ignōrō. Altōs humilēsque, frontālēs dorsālēsque memoriā tenēre nōn possum. Tū potes. Es magister.
The attempt to link and explain certain features or developments of modern language is not confined to Greek; it is a sadly common belief that certain changes in Chinese are the result of invasion or moral decadence. To this I always say that phonetic changes in language are arbitrary and only respond to phonetic environment: there is no "reason" why a sound change happens, least of all a non-linguistic one like an invasion.
Wow! I had no idea it was so bad in China. This can happen in countries with strong nationalism. While nationalism has good aspects, it can also resist things like ancient phonology.
Which changes in Chinese are you referring to?
30:17 Attic sounds more musical and flowing than Boeotian
13:30 The establishment of Polytonic orthografy during 2nd century AD says hi.
Hi there. Do you mean 2cBC by chance?
You calculate Boeotian dialect from inscriptions in that language. That's logical Captain. BUT, you omit the other data. Athenian plays with Theban characters. Obviously, playwrights will exagerate the dialect. Letter X in Attic is pronounced Y in Boeotian. Then cite an Athenian drama where the Theban character pronounces a word like that
Listen carefully to what he said : - Boetian seems to present "modern features" we find later in Koine/Modern Greek back in the 4th century BC (i..e. centuries prior to formation of Koine) - ... but Boetian's "modern features" were independent developments that have nothing to do with Koine because Koine does not include all other Boetian featurs - LOL! This is the most ludicrus argument one could had ever done. It is dumb beyond embarrassment levels. I am ashamed for him in his position (Germans have a word for it : fremdschämen = vicarious embarassment). I have spotted since years now that Luke often takes dodgy positions and has a very complexed position as per the Greeks, ancient and modern, (just watch his video on Macedonia and you will realise what I talk about...) so that whenever he has such videos I disassemble then down to their nitty gritty details and constantly find such "gems" such as here..... Luke could not even imagine that Koine could had evolved out of the merge of various Greek dialects each giving a number of specific features : for him it is either all or none! This is just moronic - what an embarasssment for someone claiming to be an expert!
I though the accent marks were invented in the middle ages along with minuscule writing …
The accent marks were developed in the 2cBC. Letters that looked something like lowercase began in antiquity - look up uncials - especially in handwriting. A purposeful difference between majuscule and minuscule did not develop until Charlemagne, it’s true, but the basic forms had existed for centuries prior.
καταρχην ο ιδιος ο Ερασμος ειπε οτι δεν ειναι σιγουρος για την προφορα που προτεινε , δευτερον η ελληνικη ειναι η μονη γλωσσα που εχει συνεχεια απο την αρχαια ετσι υπαρχει συνεχεια και στις προφορες.Τριτον η διαφορα στην αρμονια των συχνοτητων της ερασμιας σε σχεση με την νεα ελληνικη ειναι η μερα με την νυχτα, δηλαδη οταν τραγουδας με την νεα υπαρχει αρμονια στον μεγιστο βαθμο , δηλαδη η αρχαιοι προγονοι δεν θα κανανε τετοιο λαθος.Κανενας απο τους συγχρονους Ελληνες φιλοσοφους-λογιους δεν χρησιμοποιει την ερασμια προφορα φιατι ειναι λαθος, τελος υπαρχουν λογοι ετυμολογιας.Αρα δεν λεμε κα-ι αλλα και , μια συλλαβη , δεν λεμε κο-ι-νη αλλα κοι-νη , δυο συλλαβες
You didn't even bother to watch the video clearly. This has nothing to do with Erasmus or Erasmian pronunciation.
a modern greek time traveller guy went back to ancient greece and influenced the viotían dialect.
Ίσως. Χαχα.