Pronunciation: Restored Attic, Erasmian and Modern

Nobody has heard Plato speak. There are no recordings, and the Greek of Athens today sounds very different from the Greek of Athens in 400 BC. So anyone who reads ancient Greek aloud has to choose a pronunciation. Three are in common use. This lesson lays out all three side by side, then explains which one this course teaches and why.

The three systems

Restored Attic (also called reconstructed or historical pronunciation) is a scholarly model of how educated Athenians spoke in the late fifth and fourth centuries BC. Scholars built it from evidence, and the standard book in English is W. Sidney Allen's Vox Graeca (3rd edition, 1987). It is a reconstruction, and honest teachers say so. Some details are still argued over, such as exactly when ει and ου became simple vowels. But the main lines are well supported, and they are what this course uses.

Erasmian pronunciation goes back to the Dutch scholar Erasmus, whose dialogue on the right pronunciation of Latin and Greek appeared in 1528. He argued that ancient Greek had not sounded like the Greek spoken in his own day. Schools across Europe adopted pronunciations based on his ideas. Each country bent them toward its own language, so a German Erasmian and an American Erasmian sound different. Many older textbooks, many university teachers and nearly every seminary in the English-speaking world use some form of it. You will hear it often.

Modern Greek pronunciation is how Greek is spoken in Greece and Cyprus today. Greek schools read ancient texts with modern sounds, and so does the Greek Orthodox Church. It is the living descendant of the ancient sounds, but it has changed a great deal: several vowels merged, and β, γ, δ, θ, φ, χ became the softer sounds they have now.

How we know what Plato sounded like

Several kinds of evidence point the same way.

• Ancient descriptions. Greek writers on grammar and music described how sounds were made. Smyth's grammar summarizes much of this in sections 24 to 26.
• Spelling mistakes and changes. When ordinary people carved inscriptions, they spelled by ear. If they start writing ι where the standard spelling has ει, the two sounds have merged in their speech.
• Loanwords. When Latin borrowed Greek words, it wrote φ, θ, χ as ph, th, ch: a Latin letter plus h. That spelling fits a stop with a puff of breath, which is what Smyth (section 26) says these letters were.
• Animal noises. The comic poet Cratinus has a character walk along saying βῆ βῆ like a sheep (fragment 45 in the Kassel-Austin edition, quoted in the Byzantine encyclopedia called the Suda, under βῆ). Sheep say "beh." They do not say "vee." So in Athens of the 400s BC, β was b and η was an e sound.
• Meter. Greek poetry is built on patterns of long and short syllables. The patterns only work if vowels really differed in length.

The big chart: letters

The restored Attic column is what you should say. The Erasmian column shows a common North American classroom version, which varies by teacher. The modern column shows standard modern Greek. Where an English example is given, it is the closest match, not an exact one.

The aspirates are the hard part

English speakers already make aspirated stops without knowing it. Hold your hand in front of your mouth and say "top," then "stop." The t in "top" comes with a puff of air. The t in "stop" does not. Greek kept these two sounds apart as different letters: τ is the "stop" t, θ is the "top" t. The same goes for π and φ ("spin" versus "pin") and κ and χ ("skin" versus "kin").

So θεός [the-OS] begins with a t and a puff, not with the th of "theology." φίλος [PHI-los] begins with a p and a puff, not an f. This is the single biggest change for students who learned the Erasmian sounds first. Smyth (section 26) describes the aspirates exactly this way and says the f and thin-th sounds probably came in after about AD 300.

A few other details

• γ before velars. Before γ, κ, χ, ξ, the letter γ says ng. So ἄγγελος (messenger) is [ANG-ge-los], and ἄγκυρα (anchor) is [ANG-kü-ra].
• ζ as zd. Smyth (section 26) explains why: in many words ζ came from an older σδ. Ἀθήναζε, "to Athens," is Ἀθήνας plus -δε. Say ζῷον [ZDŌI-on].
• ρ at the start of a word. Every word-initial ρ has a rough breathing, ῥ (Smyth, section 13). Say it with breath, like a whispered r running into a full one: ῥήτωρ [HRĒ-tōr].
• Double consonants. Hold them. ἵππος is [HIP-pos], with a real double p, as in Italian "troppo." θάλαττα is [THA-lat-ta].

The big chart: diphthongs

A diphthong is two vowels sounded in one syllable. In Greek the second vowel is always ι or υ (Smyth, section 5). Two of the spellings, ει and ου, had become simple long vowels by the classical period, so they are diphthongs on paper only.

The bracket guide uses ē for ει (εἰμί [ē-MI]) because both are long e sounds. Keep them apart in your mouth: η is open, with the jaw lower, as in "bed" held long; ει is close, with the tongue higher, as in "they" without the y-glide at the end. Smyth (section 25) says genuine ει and ου had become simple sounds by about 400 BC.

The long diphthongs ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ are the ones with the iota written underneath. In classical Attic the iota was still pronounced, though it was weakening. Smyth (section 25) says the long vowel had swallowed the iota completely by about 100 BC. This course pronounces it lightly, because it often marks a grammatical ending (the dative case, lesson 6). Many teachers leave it silent. Either is defensible. Never leave it out in writing.

Iotacism: why modern Greek hears five spellings as one

Over the centuries after the classical period, η, ι, υ, ει, οι and υι all came to be pronounced [i], the vowel of "machine." This merger is called iotacism. Its effects show up clearly when you compare word pairs.

"We" and "you" sound identical in modern pronunciation. Even ancient copyists confused them, and a modern edition sometimes has a footnote on which one the author wrote. In restored Attic they are distinct to the ear. That is the main practical argument for the system this course uses.

Vowel length

In classical Greek, a long vowel took about twice as long to say as a short one (Smyth, section 4). The letters show length for two pairs: ε and ο are always short, η and ω always long. For α, ι and υ, the letter alone does not tell you. Dictionaries and many textbooks mark long α, ι, υ with a macron, a line over the letter: ᾱ, ῑ, ῡ. This course uses macrons in the bracket guide only, as ā and ī. The guide writes υ as ü whether it is long or short, so its length is not marked.

A few shortcuts tell you length without a macron. A vowel with the circumflex accent (ῶ, ᾶ, ῖ) is always long (Smyth, section 147). Diphthongs are always long. And a vowel with an iota subscript is long.

Length changes meaning. Compare λύομεν (we loosen) with λύωμεν (let us loosen). The only difference is a short ο against a long ω. Or λύετε (you loosen) against λύητε (you may loosen). An Athenian would have heard the difference at once. In modern pronunciation, which has no long vowels, the pairs sound the same.

The accent, briefly

Greek accent marks did not mark stress, as English accents do. They marked pitch. The accented syllable was said on a higher note. Lesson 3 covers this. For now, raise your voice slightly on the syllable in capitals in each bracket guide, and do not make it louder or longer than the others. That alone will make your Greek sound less like English.

Three details of the guide follow from this. A syllable with the grave accent (`) is written in small letters, because the voice does not rise on it: καλὸς λόγος [ka-los LO-gos]. Small words with no accent of their own, such as ὁ, ἐν and οὐ, are in small letters too: [ho], [en], [oo]. And a word that picks up a second acute from the small word after it shows both syllables in capitals: ὄνομά σοι [O-no-MA soi]. Lesson 3 explains both marks.

What this course uses, and why

This course teaches restored Attic, with the iota of ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ lightly pronounced and the aspirates said as aspirated stops. There are good reasons.

• It keeps apart sounds that the grammar keeps apart. Endings like -ει, -ῃ, -οι mean different things, and you can hear the difference.
• It makes poetry work. Homer's meter depends on long and short syllables.
• It explains spelling. Why does ἀπό become ἀφ᾽ before a rough breathing (Smyth, section 124)? Because π plus h makes the puffed p, φ. In restored Attic you can hear it happen.

If you go on to a class that uses Erasmian, you will adjust in a week, since the main changes are the aspirates, η, ω and υ. If you travel in Greece, modern pronunciation will help you read signs, and you will find that most of the words in this course still exist in some form. Learning one system well is better than mixing three. Pick restored Attic and stick to it for this course.