[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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