[gobdovan]

Yeah, they should mark the Greek alphabet as a mandatory prerequisite for college math. It had an unreasonable effect on how quickly I was processing notation-heavy math after learning some Greek for going on a trip over there.

[nephihaha]

As I say above, the issue is that modern Greek pronounces some letters very differently. We use the classical pronunciation in maths etc.

[gschizas]

What you call "classical pronunciation" is really at best an approximation of the ancient Greek pronunciation, but mixed heavily with English (after some frolicking around in Latin). As far as I know, this is limited to English speakers only.

For example, π is pronounced "πι", or probably closed to "pee" in modern and in ancient Greek. It's never pronounced like "pie". Same with all letters that end with "i", for example "φ,χ,ψ" (pronounced as phee, chee, psee, never rhyming with pie). T (τ) was never pronounced as "ta-oo", either, not in ancient nor modern Greek.

There are differences between modern and ancient Greek of course. For example "β" (beta), originally pronounced more like it's now in English, only with a longer "e", while in modern Greek it's more like "vita")

[FarmerPotato]

I had a native Italian professor who said "β" more like "vita". One day he tried to write "ξ" on the whiteboard and said "whatever the hell this is?". I was the only person who spoke up.

[epestr]

The modern academic consensus is that "η" was likely pronounced like the "e" in "met" but longer. In IPA, it'd be /e:/. And thus "β" as /be:ta/. What you are saying is how it is done in modern Greek though.

[gschizas]

Yes, that's what I said. Beta sounded more like the English pronunciation than what modern Greek pronunciation is.

[epestr]

Oops, I thought your claim was about the consonant sound /b/ vs /v/. I had the British /bi:tə/ in my mind, and forgot that Americans used /beɪtə/, which I agree is closer to the American pronunciation if your 'ay's are not diphthongised.

Funny enough, I went to double-check the IPA and realized the textbook classical Attic should be reconstructed as /ɛ/, so /bɛːta/ anyway. Which is still closer to the American version as both are open front vowels.

BUT, I just went down a rabbit hole and found this video on the history of the letter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS5POB2rLsw

It turns out that while /bɛːta/ is the old academic reconstruction, statistical analyses of spelling mistakes from then shows that Athenians had already closed that vowel to /e:/ or even all the way to the modern /i:/ sound as early as 500 BC. So the how they spoke daily was even messier.

[gschizas]

You're right, I guess American English is too common and I didn't consider that British English pronounce it differently (and one step closer to modern Greek)

Attic/Athenian Greek were considered a bit weird by other Greeks at the time, especially with replacing "ss" with "tt". But if there was nothing else to connect us modern Greeks to ancient Greeks, the constant infighting and bickering would be enough :)

Doric Greek had replaced η with α in the same time period (eg ή ταν ή επί τας which would be ή την ή επί της in other ancient Greek dialects of the time.

[nephihaha]

I'm well aware it is an approximation, but there is a traditional classical pronunciation in use as there is with Latin (or Sanskrit, Pali and classical Hebrew), which is still in use whether or not it is authentic.

[thaumasiotes]

You're confusing different terminology. There is a traditional pronunciation. And there's a classical pronunciation. But the traditional pronunciation is not classical.

For Latin, there's a handy wikipedia page telling you all about the difference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_English_pronunciat... .

[nephihaha]

No I'm not. I do know the difference.

[thaumasiotes]

> For example, π is pronounced "πι", or probably close[?] to "pee" in modern and in ancient Greek.

No. In ancient Greek, π contrasts with φ. Φ is the one that indicates the sound an English speaker would hear as "p"; it's the one you would pronounce "pee". You'd hear the name of π as "bee".

> T (τ) was never pronounced as "ta-oo", either, not in ancient nor modern Greek.

That's exactly how it was pronounced in ancient Greek (modulo the same issue as π), unless you meant to indicate a disyllabic pronunciation.

[gschizas]

I'm talking about the vowel sound, not the consonant sound. Of course φ was more like an aspirated π, that's why the letter φ is transliterated as ph (p with an aspiration mark which is the h). χ was also originally transliterated as kh, as it sounded more than an aspirated "k". I'm not sure about the consonant sound of "ψ" though. Certainly not "s" of course (the "p" in "ps" is not silent in modern Greek, and it most certainly wasn't silent in ancient Greek either).

π, φ, χ, ψ never rhymed with pie though. That was my focus there.

Regarding the "αυ" sound: Same as all the original diphthongs such as "ου", "αι", "οι" etc. sounds, the "ι", "υ" etc were mostly supplemental/modifiers to the first vowel (also υ sounded more like e.g. modern German ü or indeed modern German y Ι guess). They were indeed never disyllabic.

EDIT: I think the transformation of some diphthongs had already started by the time the Roman empire conquered Greece, so ta-oo might have been closer to the pronunciation at that time. But Roman times are not classical times, they are after the Hellenistic times which changed so much already (I think iotacisation happened during that time?).

Koine Greek started off as more like Ancient Greek pronunciation and ended up as Modern Greek pronunciation.

[thaumasiotes]

> Regarding the "αυ" sound: Same as all the original diphthongs such as "ου", "αι", "οι" etc. sounds, the "ι", "υ" etc were mostly supplemental/modifiers to the first vowel (also υ sounded more like e.g. modern German ü or indeed modern German y Ι guess).

> EDIT: I think the transformation of some diphthongs had already started by the time the Roman empire conquered Greece, so ta-oo might have been closer to the pronunciation at that time.

Vox Graeca says the opposite in regard to upsilon:

>> In both αυ and ευ the υ preserved its original quality as a back [u], i.e. it was not fronted to [ü] as elsewhere

https://archive.org/details/allen-vox-graeca-the-pronunciati... [page 76]

(The reason this statement isn't also applied to ου is not that the upsilon is fronted - it's that in ου, the upsilon is lost.)

Upsilon by itself began as [u] and developed into [y], but diphthongs ending in it didn't follow that development. Tau starts with the pronunciation /tau/ and stays that way.

[gschizas]

Technically, the υ in both αυ and ευ diphthongs were approximations of the w (waw) sound. Which is a sound between oo and w. The sound still exists in isolated dialects, e.g. Tsakonic dialect which is a descendant of Doric dialect.

Obviously saying it's stayed that way is wrong on its own, since it had converted to taf as early as 500 CE, in the branch that led to modern Greek. The branch that followed Latinization and Anglicization (much later) converted the unpronounceable waw sound to plain "oo"

[trvz]

Modern Greek is, frankly, irrelevant.

Ancient Greek is needed to get a full Western education, for reading some of our foundational literature properly.

[ben_w]

Everything written in ancient Greek that is foundational to western literature, has already been translated, likely to a higher standard than most of the people trying to learn it.

Unless you wish to be part of an effort to further improve the quality of these translations, including to adjust them for the fact modern languages themselves are a moving target, just read those translations.

Modern Greek, on the other hand, is a living language with new art and culture coming from it. I may not be able to write "a cup of tea please" without misspelling tea, nor pronouncing it so badly they reply in English (as per my user profile), but this is infinitely more valuable than knowing if the ancient Greek character inviting people over for a meal is saying the people will eat the meal or be the meal.

[nephihaha]

To be fair, there are nuances in the ancient Greek which are best brought out by some study of the language. The most frequently translated ancient Greek text(s) would be the New Testament, and even there you can see a lot of modern churches base their ideas on dubious translations.

I find ancient Greek not so helpful when it comes to etymologies. Some are helpful, but many are obscure or misleading. Climax comes from the word for a ladder apparently, and electron comes from the word for amber. There are stories behind both but they won't get you far. Any word beginning with psych- tends to relate to the mind, but the Greek means "soul".

[ben_w]

Sure, but to the extent that the nuances matter to modern literature, they're documented. For Church stuff in particular, the erroneous translation is more relevant to a full Western education than the truth of the source material it was based on, simply because the culture came from the error; that αἰώνιος in ancient Greek means "age-long" matters less to understanding Christianity than that the theological use is "eternal", the latter of which you can get without ever learning a single word of Ancient Greek: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/αἰώνιος

I don't mean to deny someone's fun side hobby, if anyone wishes to get into the archeology of linguistics that's obviously fine and good for them, but it's not really a useful or necessary thing for a "full" education as claimed by the quotation:

> Ancient Greek is needed to get a full Western education, for reading some of our foundational literature properly.

I wonder if the ancients complained about μονογενής the same way modern people complain about "very unique"? But again, what I question here is if this matters, I don't think knowing the answer is necessary for a "full" education.

[FarmerPotato]

Wow, what a way to write off something "foundational to western literature".

I studied koine Greek with my dad. Today, I study Aristotle alongside half-a-dozen English translations (the latest, Adam Beresford's Ethics, is hilarious, "like Han Solo and Chewbacca, Achilles and Patrocles" in the notes; his Aristotle uses "Perhaps...but that's a bit off-topic").

None of the English translations is as convincing as knowing the original vocabulary. Many phrases and idioms are still obscure or debated. Why should the student not want to look behind the curtain?

Finally, there is something bracing about knowing the ancient grammar. Greek has features long-vanished from English.

You would separate students into those who never need to bother looking a bit into "foundational to western literature" and those handful who are on a PhD track. Eventually, nobody would grow up to be recruited into the latter.

[nephihaha]

Greek is famously a lot more specific about what love is (especially in a New Testament context). English smooshes a lot of barely related concepts together to form its idea of "love" which encompasses care, lust, parental love, romance, charity and a number of other things.

[nephihaha]

Why would modern Greek be "irrelevant"? Millions of Greeks and Cypriots speak the language, along with minorities in other countries and a very large and well dispersed diaspora. Greece and Cyprus are major holiday destinations for northern Europeans. There are major writers such as Nikos Kazantzakis who have used modern Greek so there are cultural reasons to. Heck, I even like some modern Greek music, and am grateful for it, since it was one of the few things which kept me happy during lockdown.

You're right in saying Classical (inc. Koine) Greek is far more influential, but modern Greek is not "frankly irrelevant".