[B-Greek] pronunciation

Vasile STANCU stancu at mail.dnttm.ro
Sun Jan 3 08:23:28 EST 2010


Nikolaos,

Thank you indeed very much for your comments; I shall revise my material according to your comments. However, I still consider open some of the points you made.

N. Adamou (NA): ἄτομος άτομο ATOMOS ATOMO there are not of the same or similar meaning...
NA: βάζω βάζο BAZW BAZO the first a verb, - put- while the second a noun – vase...

V. Stancu (VS): I did not intend to suggest that these words were similar in meaning. Thanks for the additional explanations.

NA: λάμβδα; λάμδα LAMBDA; LAMDA - the β B sound is very very small while you pronounce it very heavy

VS: I would like to correct this right now, but I prefer to wait until I get the real feeling of it.

NA: ἐμπαθεία EMPAQEIA I think the accent is not correct...
NA: ὀρθόγραφος ORQOGRAFOS, the correct is accent is ὀρθογράφος ORQOGRAFOS ...
NA: παρρησία PARRHSIA there is no an (h) sound...
NA: ἀρραγής ARRAGHS should be ἀῤῥαγὴς ARRAGHS for the same as above reason.

VS: I shall correct accordingly.


NA: ἤρεμος, ἔρημος HREMOS, ERHMOS, two very different words that your pronunciation makes them very difficult to differentiate acoustically

VS: This is something I am not yet convinced; indeed, if I pronounce them as IREMOS versus ERIMOS, the acoustic difference were much more obvious. But how about εἴη EIH vs. εἶ EI, ἤ H, ᾖ H, εἰ EI· ζητεῖ ZHTEI vs. ζητῇ ZHTH· ἐκεῖνοι EKEINOI vs. ἐκείνη EKEINH· εἰς EIS vs. ἥς HS, εἷς EIS·  ἡμεῖς HMEIS vs. ὑμεῖς UMEIS· δεῖ DEI vs. δή DH, δῇ DH, etc., etc.? Having applied the pronounciation as I did, there is reasonable acoustic difference between the two words while giving chance to the other cases as mentioned to be differentiated acoustically.

NA: ζώγραφος ZWGRAFOS The accent is wrong, it should be ζωγράφος ZWGRAFOS.

VS: I still believe the accent is correct.

NA: ἰδιολογία IDIOLOGIA...

VS: I was indeed surprised myself to see the correct spelling. Previously, as the word is spelled in Romanian as <ideologie>, I connected it intuitively with the notion of <idea>, instead of the Greek ἰδία IDIA.


NA: κενός καθολικός ἡδονή KENOS KAQOLIKOS HDONH - the last accented syllabi is always with grave...

VS: I myself pondered quite some time on this when listening to the pronounciation Filoglossia gives for καθολικός KAQOLIKOS; to my ear, the accent applied is not really a grave one but rather a circumflex – as I understand to apply and recognize a circumflex: as explained in the .pdf file I indicated in a previous message, my understanding is that the grave, like the acute, covers two syllables whereas the circumflex starts and completes its effect within the same syllable.
The basic principle that stands behind the accentuation system as we have it in old texts is one that I would describe as "The Conservation of Uttering Energy". I imagine accentuation as the process of geathering energy in order to utter the word appropriately and... 'euphonically' – whatever that may mean to anyone. The extreme cases would be if we accented always the last syllable, or the first, systematically. I do not know of any language where the last is systematically accented; I guess the impression one would have of that would be something that in music is called 'gallop'. But there is a case, I believe, with Hungarian, where the accent is placed systematically on the first syllable. It used to be a paradox for me that this language gives an impression of quite strong and excessive rythm, even though it contains more vowels than probably any other language in the world (it has two or even three cases for each of the five basic vowels) and should be, therefore, more soft and mellodic; in spite of that, this language sounds to my ear like a 'march' does in music.
Greek applies the accent on one of the last three syllables. But a circumflex cannot stand on an antepenult, and this is because – according to my intuitive theory -, having consumed the accent on that syllable entirely, there is not enough 'energy' left for adequately uttering the remaining two. And so on: if, in the process of declination/conjugation, one of the syllables changes from short to long, the accent moves accordingly, etc.

NA: ῥῶ Rho BUT by no means hro

VS: I would be much obliged to hear a sample of this. I understand how ρ is pronounced today, when no rough spirit is employed, but how to apply the rough spirit? I thought it should be applied the same way as with the vowels, i.e., an 'h' before it. Where can I find such a sample?

Vasile Stancu





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