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Ancient Greek accents in ten rules

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Re: Ancient Greek accents in ten rules

#31

Post by dwheeler »

eloisius wrote: post #26
idoubtit wrote: post #2

When I had to write Polytonic Greek, I had to write my own vim plugin that would transliterate on demand. For instance, while in insert mode h''als turns into ἃλς. It's okay to laugh at the ancient Greek and its words that look similar to us, but we should not forget that the words with different accents sounded differently, so it was probably not confusing to native speakers. Moreover, every language has its homopho…

Even accounting for tonally differentiated words, Mandarin Chinese is rife with exact homophones. Shì can be “is,” “try,” “thing,” “kind/style” and many more. It amazes me how we are able to pattern match so well provided a little context.

Indeed.

For an extreme example, "Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den" is a short poem in Classical Chinese in which every word is pronounced shi when read in present-day Standard Mandarin, with only the tones differing:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Ston...

Re: Ancient Greek accents in ten rules

#32

Post by Cybotron5000 »

gadders wrote: post #12

I work with a Greek lady, and tried to impress her with my Greek from Assassins Creed: Odyssey by saying "Chaire!" to her. Turns out it's archaic if not actually ancient Greek.

My greek relatives would say eg. ‘heh-re-tiz-moose/chairetizmoos apo teen yaya soo’ (…trying to spell it there as it sounds, sort of…), meaning roughly: ‘(sending my) respects/greetings to your grandmother’, I’m wondering if it’s the same root? …If it is, I guess it could be interpreted as an extremely respectful way to say ‘hello’, or an archaic one I guess! :) …unless they were worried that your sleeve-dagger thing was about to make an appearance heheh… (‘hark! …hail to your grace, prithee salutations and felicitations to thou!/‘mistress, what cheer?’ or even ‘wes hail?’ :) In my experience, Greek people are usually quite chuffed if you go to the trouble of learning a bit of the language, even if you muck it up a bit, as not many people do… (…also there is the custom of ‘philoxenia’, which dates from ancient times, but still echoes today…)

Re: Ancient Greek accents in ten rules

#33

Post by mannykannot »

bloak wrote: post #21
yorwba wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you look at the spelling mistakes made by 12-16-year-olds in England and Germany, don't you find a significant proportion of them are caused by the child having incorrectly heard how people pronounce the word? I don't know about England, but I think in Germany it's more common that children represent the pronunciation accurately, but are "corrected" by adults who want to enforce the standard orthography. E.g. ta…

> I don't know about England, but I think in Germany it's more common that children represent the pronunciation accurately, but are "corrected" by adults who want to enforce the standard orthography. Represent the pronunciation accurately, or the children's pronunciation accurately? It's a bit more interesting in English because a common mistake in English is to pronounce a word as it's spelt. For example, the T in o…

> Well-educated older speakers hear younger people pronounce the T in often and they disapprove.

If you are going to teach the hoi polloi to write, and make an issue over spelling, this sort of thing seems predictable, though two centuries seems a long time for it to become noticable.

Re: Ancient Greek accents in ten rules

#34

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

Grustaf wrote: post #24
idoubtit wrote: post #2

When I had to write Polytonic Greek, I had to write my own vim plugin that would transliterate on demand. For instance, while in insert mode h''als turns into ἃλς. It's okay to laugh at the ancient Greek and its words that look similar to us, but we should not forget that the words with different accents sounded differently, so it was probably not confusing to native speakers. Moreover, every language has its homopho…

> It's okay to laugh at the ancient Greek and its words that look similar to us I never laughed at this, it's not strange that there are words or word forms where the only difference is a single phonetic feature, or indeed where there is no difference at all. As you say that is the case in all languages. And regarding accents in Greek, I don't recall encountering any case where the position of the accent was the crux…

In Classical Greek, it isn't just the position of the accent that matters but the kind of accent there. You are right that the Greeks themselves did not need the accents notated, but students of Greek today often rely on the accent to tell e.g. the eta or eta+nu words apart.

Re: Ancient Greek accents in ten rules

#35

Post by Grustaf »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #34
Grustaf wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's okay to laugh at the ancient Greek and its words that look similar to us I never laughed at this, it's not strange that there are words or word forms where the only difference is a single phonetic feature, or indeed where there is no difference at all. As you say that is the case in all languages. And regarding accents in Greek, I don't recall encountering any case where the position of the accent was the crux…

In Classical Greek, it isn't just the position of the accent that matters but the kind of accent there. You are right that the Greeks themselves did not need the accents notated, but students of Greek today often rely on the accent to tell e.g. the eta or eta+nu words apart.

Sure, I took 6 full-time terms of Classical Greek so I'm familiar with the different accents.

But my Greek studies took place 20 years ago so I do wonder what you mean by eta and eta + nu words? Are these different subtypes of the third declension?

Re: Ancient Greek accents in ten rules

#36

Post by cgio »

Cybotron5000 wrote: post #32
gadders wrote: post #12

I work with a Greek lady, and tried to impress her with my Greek from Assassins Creed: Odyssey by saying "Chaire!" to her. Turns out it's archaic if not actually ancient Greek.

My greek relatives would say eg. ‘heh-re-tiz-moose/chairetizmoos apo teen yaya soo’ (…trying to spell it there as it sounds, sort of…), meaning roughly: ‘(sending my) respects/greetings to your grandmother’, I’m wondering if it’s the same root? …If it is, I guess it could be interpreted as an extremely respectful way to say ‘hello’, or an archaic one I guess! :) …unless they were worried that your sleeve-dagger thing…

Same root, indeed. And yes it would be extremely respectful. No one would have an issue understanding what you mean though. As you mention words with the same root are very common ( the root is for joy) and also it is used in expressions from ecclesiastical texts that are adopted as part of the vernacular.

Re: Ancient Greek accents in ten rules

#37

Post by dctoedt »

mannykannot wrote: post #33
bloak wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know about England, but I think in Germany it's more common that children represent the pronunciation accurately, but are "corrected" by adults who want to enforce the standard orthography. Represent the pronunciation accurately, or the children's pronunciation accurately? It's a bit more interesting in English because a common mistake in English is to pronounce a word as it's spelt. For example, the T in o…

> Well-educated older speakers hear younger people pronounce the T in often and they disapprove. If you are going to teach the hoi polloi to write, and make an issue over spelling, this sort of thing seems predictable, though two centuries seems a long time for it to become noticable.

I love the term "the hoi polloi." Yes, technically the English word the is redundant (because the Greek word hoi is also "the"). But the redundancy makes the term more-quickly understandable. From a UI/UX perspective — with the correct primary goal being not slavish brevity but service to the reader — here the redundancy is a good thing.

(Cf. "ATM machine.")

Re: Ancient Greek accents in ten rules

#38

Post by cgio »

gadders wrote: post #12

I work with a Greek lady, and tried to impress her with my Greek from Assassins Creed: Odyssey by saying "Chaire!" to her. Turns out it's archaic if not actually ancient Greek.

Most Greek in Assassins Creed Odyssey was archaic. I really enjoyed being able to appreciate the attention they showed on this aspect of the game.

Re: Ancient Greek accents in ten rules

#39

Post by pixodaros »

streamofdigits wrote: post #8

Is there a trend of written language simplifying over the ages? (Greek and Chinese examples come to mind). Is there an objective way to measure / rank script complexity? Assuming its true, is it correlated with more people becoming literate over time (hence simplifying the educational process)?

The accents (and word separations and upper case / lower case distinctions) were added after classical Greek had become a learned language like Shakespearean and KJV English is today. They helped people who spoke later forms of Greek pronounce old texts.

Re: Ancient Greek accents in ten rules

#40

Post by kylebgorman »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #30
AntigoneJournal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good on you: it is perfectly fine Ancient Greek!

What kinds of sources do we use to determine how classical people said hello? Surviving plays? Correspondence? Speeches recorded in historical works?

Get W. Sidney Allen's slim text _Vox Graeca_. It goes over not only how Ancient Greek was pronounced but also how we know. The evidence includes explicit notes from grammarians and other writers, graffiti, borrowings, puns, and later forms of Greek. Allen also has another book _Vox Latina_ which does the same thing for Latin.
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