Ancient Greek Phonetics
What you'll learn
- Read a text of ancient Greek in the Attic Dialect
Requirements
- The ancient greek alphabet
- Basic knowledge of ancient greek grammar and vocabulairy
Description
In this course you will learn how to make an Ancient Greek text in the Attic dialect come alive. You probably know the various lengths of the vowels in theory for example, but how do they really differ? Maybe you also know in theory the rhythm of a poem (you can make out the prosody etc), but how do the syllables add up in practice?
Reading it aloud and with the right sound and length of the symbols makes all the difference.
If you want to understand deeply the Ancient Greek texts, or to perform them, this is the right course for you, as it is the only available method.
I will lead you through:
- the length and the sound of the vowels
- the sound of the diphthongs
- the influence of the accents
- the aspirate
- the sound of all the consonants
There are a lot of examples and all the material is in downloadable pdf forms.
You must already be familiar with the Greek alphabet, not so much with the language though: if you don't know the words of the examples you can always find them in a dictionary. This is not a course for learning the Ancient Greek language, but only about the sound of it.
The course includes:
- an introduction where you learn a few things about the history of the Attic dialect and about the sources of our information
- the sound and the length of the vowels
- the 3 forms of accents
- the aspirate
- the sound of the diphthongs
- all the consonants
- an epilogue
Who this course is for:
- This course is for anybody who is interested to know how ancient Greek sounded,
- For people that have basic knowledge of the language.
Instructor
Ancient Greece has always been part of my life. I was taught Ancient Greek at high-school and kept learning. I chose as profession the art of classical music, but I never lost my interest in the culture and the language of my ancestors. I am very lucky for having as a long-time friend and teacher someone who has been doing the most thorough research for many years about the ancient greek phonetics: Ioannis Stratakis. Together we have been performing in the "reconstructed" ancient Greek pronunciation.