ELEMENTARY GREEK

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• GREK 1001-1
• M-F 840-930
• Prescott 120

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• The sounds of the Greek alphabet

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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.

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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 rikórd and rékerd

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• VOWELS Greek has roughly the same five vowels as
  English
• a ah
• e eh
• ? ih
• ? o
• ? u

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ELEMENTARY GREEK
Short
Long

• a ah
• e eh
• ? ih
• ? o
• ? u

• ? ay or ? aah
• ? ay
• ? ee
• ? oh
• ? ??h

Like English, Greek has short and long versions
of its vowels.
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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.

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• A vowel ? or ? forms a diphthong.
• a, e and ? contract with each other (in Attic
  Greek, and so also in koine).

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• A vowel ? forms a diphthong
• a ? a? eye
• ? ? ?? aah usually written ?
• e ? e? ay
• ? ? ?? ay usually written ?
• ? ? ?? oy
• ? ? ?? oh usually written ?
• ? ? ?? wee

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• A vowel ? forms a diphthong
• a ? a? ow!
• e ? e? eu
• ? ? ?? oo

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• a, e and ? a contract
• a a ?
• e a ?
• ? a ?

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• a, e and ? e contract
• a e ?
• e e e?
• ? e ??

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• a, e and ? ? contract
• a ? ?
• e ? ??
• ? ? ??

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• CONSONANTS Greek consonants are built around just
  three basic sounds
• Labial Dental Palatal
• p t ?
• p t k

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• CONSONANTS Add a vocal sound and you get a new
  set, called voiced
• Labial Dental Palatal
• p p t t ? k unvoiced
• ß b d d ? g voiced

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• CONSONANTS Add the h sound and you get a new
  set, called aspirated
• Labial Dental Palatal
• p p t t ? k unvoiced
• ß b d d ? g voiced
• f ph ? th ? kh aspirated

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• The Trouble with Sigma Greek is strange
• when it comes to pronouncing and writing
• words with the s sound
• You never write ps, ßs or fs. Instead you write
  ?.
• t, d and ? disappear before a s.
• You never write ?s, ?s or ?s. Instead you write
  ?.

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• CONSONANTS
• Labial Dental Palatal
• p p t t ? k unvoiced
• ß b d d ? g voiced
• f ph ? th ? kh aspirated
• ? ps s s ? ks s

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• CONSONANTS
• Labial Dental Palatal
• p p t t ? k unvoiced
• ß b d d ? g voiced
• f ph ? th ? kh aspirated
• ? ps s s ? ks s
• µ m ? n ??, ??, ??, ?? ng
• nasals

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• The leftover consonants are
• ? (instead of writing sd)
• the liquids
• ? l
• ? r

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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

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

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

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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.

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• BREATHINGS
• ? no aspiration ? o (smooth breathing)
• ? aspiration ? ho (rough breathing)

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• BREATHINGS Words beginning with ? or ? always
  have a rough breathing
• ?? rho
• ???µ?? rhythmos (rhythm)
• ?pe? hyper above (? English hyper)

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• BREATHINGS Sometimes only a breathing marks the
  difference between words. For example
• a?t?? him a?t?? her
• a?t?? himself a?t?? herself

Notice that if the word begins with a diphthong,
the breathing appears over the second letter.
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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• ACCENTS Greek displays three types of accent
  marks
• / acute
• \ grave
• ˆ circumflex

Ancient Greeks knew how to accent words. They
wrote accents to help non-Greeks learn the
language.
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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

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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 t?µ? but t?µ? d?.

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

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

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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
• ? aa, ? ee, ? ??, ? ??, and ? ??

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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.
• ?? ?, ?? ?, ?? ?, ?? ?, ?? ?

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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
• ?? a? ?? e? ?? ?? ?? ??
• ?? a? ?? e? ?? ?? ?? ??
• ?? a? ?? e? ?? ??
• ?? a? ?? e? ?? ??

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• ACCENTS
• Accenting long vowel sounds
• In Attic and Koine Greek, the vowels a, e and ?
  contract when they meet. The same rules for
  marking an acute (/) or circumflex () apply as
  for long vowels and diphthongs
• ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
• ? ? ? ? ? ?? ? ? ? ? ? ??
• ? ? ? ? ? ?? ? ? ? ? ? ??

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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 ?????µe?

short ultima
accent on antepenult
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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 ?????? ? ?????

accent on antepenult
accent
short ultima
short ultima
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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
• ?????µee? ? ?????µ??

long ultima
accent on penult
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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 ultima
accent
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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.
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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.
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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.

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ELEMENTARY GREEK

• An example of elision
• µet? ?µ?? with me
• remember, saying two vowels together is bad, so
  most of the time, this phrase is elided to
• µet ?µ?? wit me

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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)