[B-Greek] Speaking Greek CD
MMB
marmarbrandl2 at iprimus.com.au
Wed Oct 22 18:02:52 EDT 2008
I am aware this list is more about later Ancient Greek than earlier but
I have still found a lot of expertise here on the earlier forms and
literature.
I have just purchased "Speaking Greek" (2 CDS) from Amazon USA and I am
enjoying it.
Does anyone else on the list use it? Or have a comment?
I would be interested in comments on this publication from those who
teach how to speak
Ancient Greek or who have opinions on this somewhat equivocal topic.
I study not near anyone who studies Ancient Greek and I need guidance
as I consider it an important learning device to say a word aloud as
one reads it. Four times the learning value - saying, hearing and
reading as well as understanding.
Here are some details. The CD uses texts from the series "Reading Greek"
the course by the Corporate Author Joint Association of Classical
Teachers'.
Contributors: David Langslow, Ian McAuslan, James McKay, James Morwood,
Philomen Probert
Speaking Greek CD from Reading Greek
<http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521728966>
This site gives some details of the contents of CDs which use texts
from the series "Reading Greek", the course by the Corporate Author
Joint Association of Classical Teachers. (I have the 1978 edition of
the Reading Greek texts while the CD uses the second edition. So some
of the Section numbers do not correspond, but I found them all in my
earlier edition.)
The eight tracks on CD1 on pronunciation (that are NOT from "Reading
Greek" books) are very thorough. They are read with an Oxford English
accent (and referents) and not with American English referents. Since
you HEAR the sound the speaker is describing, you make your own
referent. Or just practise it, I guess.
"Last but not least, the briefest notes on the pronunciation of the
accents: Ancient Greek had a musical or pitch accent with, to put it
very simply, a high pitch on a vowel marked with an acute accent and,
at any rate, reduced high pitch on a vowel marked with a grave accent
and a high pitch falling on a vowel marked with a circumflex. Sometimes
the accent alone distinguished between certain words and forms.
Contrast for example... .
"In the course of time the musical accent yielded, certainly by the
fourth century AD, to a stress accent, with which we feel much more at
home as English speakers and its stress accents prevail still in modern
Greek. Given the practical difficulties for English speakers of
attempting a musical accent over long stretches of text, we have used
exclusively, and hope more or less consistently, a stress accent in the
recorded extracts."
They do not claim perfect consistency throughout.
But they begin with Sections 1 A lines 1-16 read with both a pitch and
then a stress accent. I found this very enlightening. The readings
continue on Track 2 with a stress accent.
Maria Brandl
Australia
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