[B-Greek] Off Subject Question: Homer
Jeremy Brightbill
jeremy.brightbill at gmail.com
Fri Sep 9 06:02:18 EDT 2005
Greetings everyone,
This is my first post, though I've been subscribed to B-Greek
for nearly a year. I thought I would give some thoughts on this topic of
pronunciation.
If anyone is serious about wanting to pronounce phi, theta, and
chi as aspirates, you might find it helpful to practice on a modern language
where aspiration is distinctive. Some good examples are Hindi and Urdu,
spoken in India and Pakistan. In these languages, the aspirated stops [ph],
[th], and [kh] contrast with the unaspirated stops [p], [t], and [k],
exactly as in Ancient Greek. I've been living in India for three years and
learned Hindi to a fairly high level, but it took a lot of practice to get
used to pronouncing and recognizing these sounds. One thing I have noticed
is that the aspirated stops are aspirated a lot more strongly than in
English. This increases the acoustic difference, and makes it easier to
recognize which sound is which. I think it's highly probably that Ancient
Greek consonants were pronounced the same way. It's not enough to pronounce
theta, for instance, like an English "t" at the beginning of a word. You
have to give it a stronger puff of air. When I listen to recordings of
people reading Ancient Greek texts, the aspiration never sounds quite right
to me. Although Kitzinger's recording of Elektra is very impressive (and
she reads with such expression!), she still doesn't put enough aspiration on
the aspirated consonants, and sometimes aspiration creeps in on those that
should not have it. A little bit of practice with an Indian language might
cure this.
You can listen to the news in Hindi at www.bbc.co.uk/hindi,
although it would be difficult to pick out individual sounds at that pace.
I haven't done a search recently, but there are probably other sites for
beginning students, with recordings that would emphasize the distinctive
sounds.
Of course, the Greek aspirates turned to fricatives soon after
the NT period, as Dr. Buth has described. My personal preference is to read
the NT with Modern Greek pronunciation, but that is another topic..
Jeremy Brightbill
New Delhi, India
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