06-23-2012, 05:42 PM
Yep, pretty much how I pronounce stuff when not having to put on my philologists hat. I recently had a very odd situation where a first year undergrad tried to correct my reading of Homer based on taking a too modern Greek pronunciation, so I sat them down explained why they're being an idiot and sent them off with a reading list. Grrr.
Incidentally though our grasp of the phonetics of ancient Greek etc is pretty damn good. I know this constantly surprised non philologists but..yeah...its a highly complex thing where the sound of ancient Greek is a very very small part. Basically disagreeing with it in most cases is also like saying you're against the way how German, Hindi, English (and their older versions too) are pronounced. The sheer amount of evidence is ridiculously overwhelming. In the case of Greek the modern speech itself provides many clues to the ancient.
Incidentally though our grasp of the phonetics of ancient Greek etc is pretty damn good. I know this constantly surprised non philologists but..yeah...its a highly complex thing where the sound of ancient Greek is a very very small part. Basically disagreeing with it in most cases is also like saying you're against the way how German, Hindi, English (and their older versions too) are pronounced. The sheer amount of evidence is ridiculously overwhelming. In the case of Greek the modern speech itself provides many clues to the ancient.
Jass
