ELEMENTARY GREEK GREK 1001-1 M-F 8:40-9:30 Prescott 120

ELEMENTARY GREEK The sounds of the Greek alphabet

ELEMENTARY GREEK Some basic principles about the ancient Greek alphabet: Greeks spelled words the way they pronounced them If they changed the pronunciation of a word, they changed the spelling to match.

ELEMENTARY GREEK Consider the verb record (reCORD) and the noun record (RECord), which are spelled alike but pronounced differently in English. In Greek, such words would be spelled according to their pronunciations: rikrd and rkerd

ELEMENTARY GREEK Imagine these examples in English: If anyone pronounced going as gonna, they would spell it gonna. Homophones like but and butt would both be spelled but, even though they have different meanings.

ELEMENTARY GREEK Therefore, the surest and most straightforward way to become comfortable reading and writing Greek is to sound out the words and match the sounds to the letters on the page.

ELEMENTARY GREEK This also means that speakers in different regions spelled their own dialects differently. Less common dialects thus require specialized knowledge, but most Greek literature is written in one of a few common and very similar dialects.

ELEMENTARY GREEK The most important dialect is Attic, spoken in ancient Athens. Classical Greek usually refers to Attic Greek. Most classical texts are written in Attic. Koine (Greek for common) was a generic form of Attic Greek used in many places, including the text of the New Testament. The Greek we learn in this class teaches you to read both Attic and Koine Greek.

ELEMENTARY GREEK Homeric or Epic is the older dialect used for the Iliad, Odyssey and related poems. Similar to Attic is the Ionic dialect, used by the historian Herodotus, the doctor Hippocrates, and some other authors.

ELEMENTARY GREEK There were many less common dialects in antiquity (and there are many dialects of Modern Greek). Modern Greek, also called Demotic (the peoples), differs from ancient Greek primarily in the shift in the sound of several letters and a number of new words in the language.

ELEMENTARY GREEK Modern Greek and Classical Greek are the same language, but with more than two thousand years of linguistic and historical change. It is similar to the difference between modern English and that of Shakespeare, Chaucer, or the King James Bible. Much is different but much is the same.

ELEMENTARY GREEK VOWELS Greek has roughly the same five vowels as English: ah eh ih o u

ELEMENTARY GREEK ah eh ih o u ay or aah ay ee oh h Short Long Like English, Greek has short and long versions of its vowels.

ELEMENTARY GREEK Speakers of ancient Greek, especially Attic, did not like to say two vowel sounds in a row. Consequently, if two vowels come together, they tended to merge them into one (called a diphthong, Greek for double sound) or contract them.

ELEMENTARY GREEK A vowel + or forms a diphthong. , and contract with each other (in Attic Greek, and so also in koine).

ELEMENTARY GREEK A vowel + forms a diphthong: + = eye + = aah usually written + = ay + = ay usually written + = oy + = oh usually written + = wee

ELEMENTARY GREEK A vowel + forms a diphthong: + = ow! + = eu + = oo

ELEMENTARY GREEK , and + contract: + = + = + =

ELEMENTARY GREEK CONSONANTS Greek consonants are built around just three basic sounds: LabialDentalPalatal ptk

ELEMENTARY GREEK CONSONANTS Add a vocal sound and you get a new set, called voiced: LabialDentalPalatal p t k= unvoiced b d g= voiced

ELEMENTARY GREEK CONSONANTS Add the h sound and you get a new set, called aspirated: LabialDentalPalatal p t k = unvoiced b d g = voiced ph th kh= aspirated

ELEMENTARY GREEK The Trouble with Sigma Greek is strange when it comes to pronouncing and writing words with the s sound: You never write , or . Instead you write . , and disappear before a . You never write , or . Instead you write .

ELEMENTARY GREEK CONSONANTS LabialDentalPalatal p t k = unvoiced b d g = voiced ph th kh = aspirated ps s ks= +

ELEMENTARY GREEK CONSONANTS LabialDentalPalatal p t k = unvoiced b d g = voiced ph th kh = aspirated ps s ks = + m n , , , ng = nasals

ELEMENTARY GREEK The leftover consonants are: (instead of writing ) the liquids: l r

ELEMENTARY GREEK When foreigners started learning Greek in antiquity, Greek scholars developed additional symbols to help non-Greeks understand the language. Modern printed editions, following medieval manuscripts, use the following: breathings accents punctuation

ELEMENTARY GREEK BREATHINGS Ancient Greek does not use a separate letter for the h sound. As we saw earlier, Greek has the aspirated consonants , , and to indicate this sound.

ELEMENTARY GREEK BREATHINGS If a word begins with aspiration but not with one of these consonants, however, the aspirated consonants are no help, so Greek uses two symbols to indicate aspiration or lack of it.

ELEMENTARY GREEK BREATHINGS no aspiration: = o (smooth breathing) aspiration: = ho (rough breathing)

ELEMENTARY GREEK BREATHINGS Words beginning with or always have a rough breathing: = rho = rhythmos (rhythm) hyper above ( English hyper)

ELEMENTARY GREEK BREATHINGS Sometimes only a breathing marks the difference between words. For example: = him = her = himself = herself Notice that if the word begins with a diphthong, the breathing appears over the second letter.

ELEMENTARY GREEK ACCENTS Greek displays three types of accent marks: / acute \ grave circumflex Ancient Greeks knew how to accent words. They wrote accents to help non-Greeks learn the language.

ELEMENTARY GREEK ACCENTS Accents appear only over vowels (second letter over diphthongs). Normally a word bears only one accent, and only on one of its last three syllables: ultima = last syllable of a word penult = next to last syllable of a word antepenult = third to last syllable of a word

ELEMENTARY GREEK ACCENTS Ancient Greek scholars say the accented vowel had a rising tone and so marked it with a line rising from left-to-right: / (acute accent). All other vowels had a falling tone, but this was mostly not marked. When it was marked, a line falling left-to-right was used: \ (grave accent). If an accent on a word was not pronounced for some reason, the syllable which was normally accented shows a grave accent (\) instead. For example, a final accented syllable before another word was typically not accented: but .

ELEMENTARY GREEK ACCENTS Accenting short vowel sounds The vowels , , , , and are short. When accented, the acute accent appears above these vowels: , , , , and . The diphthongs (combinations) and are considered short for purposes of accent, but only at the end of a word. The accent appears over the : ,

ELEMENTARY GREEK ACCENTS Accenting long vowel sounds The vowels , , , , and are long. Long vowels are, as their name suggests, long, in fact double-length, vowel sounds: = , = , = , = , and =

ELEMENTARY GREEK ACCENTS Accenting long vowel sounds If the first part of this sound bears the accent, then the whole vowel has a rising tone (/) then a falling tone (\), so it is marked ^ (circumflex) over the vowel. = , = , = , = , = If the second part of the sound bears the accent, then the whole vowel sound has a falling tone (\) then a rising tone (/). The falling tone, as usual, is not written. = , = , = , = , =

ELEMENTARY GREEK ACCENTS Accenting long vowel sounds When the second of two consecutive vowels is an or , the pair is a diphthong. The same rules for marking an acute (/) or circumflex (^) apply as for long vowels, and the accent is always written over the second vowel: = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

ELEMENTARY GREEK ACCENTS Accenting long vowel sounds In Attic and Koine Greek, the vowels , and contract when they meet. The same rules for marking an acute (/) or circumflex (^) apply as for long vowels and diphthongs: + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + =

ELEMENTARY GREEK Most words in Greek have recessive accent = the accent wants to recede back (left) to the antepenult. The length of the vowel in the ultima determines how far back the accent can recede. If the ultima is short, the accent recedes to the antepenult: short ultimaaccent on antepenult

ELEMENTARY GREEK Most words in Greek have recessive accent = the accent wants to recede back (left) to the antepenult. The accent can appear as part of the circumflex accent. If the ultima is short, the accent recedes to the antepenult: short ultima accent on antepenult short ultima accent

ELEMENTARY GREEK Most words in Greek have recessive accent = the accent wants to recede back (left) to the antepenult. The length of the vowel in the the ultima determines how far back the accent can recede. If the ultima is long (= two shorts), the accent recedes only to the penult: long ultimaaccent on penult

ELEMENTARY GREEK Most words in Greek have recessive accent = the accent wants to recede back (left) to the antepenult. If the ultima is long, the accent can recede only to the penult. In this scenario, the accent can appear only as an acute: long ultimaaccent

ELEMENTARY GREEK The chart of general restrictions on accents (Shelmerdine p.3): Some words do not have recessive accent. We will study these as we proceed through the class.

ELEMENTARY GREEK PUNCTUATION Greek uses four marks of punctuation: full stop. (period) half stop (colon; Greek for limb; ~ semi-colon) pause, (comma; Greek for stamp mark) question mark ; Quotation marks: strictly speaking, a capital letter marks the beginning of a direct quote, but often modern texts add quotation marks for clarity.

ELEMENTARY GREEK Finally, to return to our first observation, that Greek spells words the way they sound, a note about elision: If a Greek elided or contracted words when he spoke, he wrote them in contracted form. In formal English, we write only uncontracted forms (stop and go instead of stop n go etc), regardless of how we pronounce them. Formal Greek writing, however, shows the contractions.

ELEMENTARY GREEK An example of elision: = with me remember, saying two vowels together is bad, so most of the time, this phrase is elided to: = wit me

ELEMENTARY GREEK for tomorrow (Thursday, August 25, 2005): Quiz: write out the charts of (1) long and short vowels (2) consonants Prepare Exercises 1-3 in Shelmerdine Chapter 1 (pp. 4-5)

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ELEMENTARY GREEK GREK 1001-1 M-F 8:40-9:30 Prescott 120