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Athenaze audio download | Ἀθήνᾱζε (5cBC Attic Pronunciation) (Patreon)

Published:
2019-09-18 03:30:37
Edited:
2020-04-20 02:13:40
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Downloads

Content

[EN] Here are the recordings for the chapters of the book Athenaze.

[LA] Ecce scapī audībilēs capitulōrum librī "Athēnāze."

[HE] Ἰδοὺ τὰ τοῦ «Ἀθήνᾱζε» βιβλίου κεφάλαια ἀκουόμενα.

Athenaze playlist at ScorpioMartianus on YouTube: 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU1WuLg45SixrxviQiHOlkdkT-XPvyrgv

Comments

Enrico Muzunna

Less Lucian Pronunciation, more contents with 5cBC Attic Pronunciation! Personally speaking, I would really appreciate Ancient Greek in Action like this. Thank you again for your work <3

Luke Amadeus Ranieri

That is on the way! I intend to make loads of content in Classical Attic Pronunciation in the coming years to dwarf the current library in Lucian Pronunciation variants. However, given the phonemic complexities of Classical Attic Pronunciation, it’s a phonology that is simply out of reach for most people — this is the reason why Erasmian type pronunciations still dominate in academia instead of Classical Attic. Lucian Pronunciation is meant first to replace Erasmian, and second to provide Koine-era reconstructed phonologies. But Classical Attic phonology is uniquely challenging. So I am creating a number of tools and training aids to permit almost anyone to gain the phonetics skills necessary to master the hardest parts of Attic phonology. To this day, I have only heard two people actually render Classical Attic pronunciation even remotely correctly, and I believe there is a third (who I haven’t yet heard), and none of them are public figures. Thus once these future training aids are available, I will be making much more content in Classical Attic Pronunciation, since listening alone is not enough to acquire the phonology for most people (since one’s native phonotactic limitations must be addressed: where English speakers go wrong, where Italians go wrong, where Germans go wrong, etc.). Feel free to keep asking and encouraging, however, and thanks so much for your support.

Kokupsi

You spoil us! I had been thinking all this time that since you had all these lucian variants and never provided attic recordings you did not feel like making any! I think one can learn just about any phonology with enough input but that word “enough” is doing a lot of work. Realistically a decent pronunciation of attic will require tools or training. I believe listening is the most powerful activity for gaining fluency in a language especially in the beginning. The major problem I see with a lot of the spoken ancient Greek on the internet is that it lacks fluency of speech. I think to be able to truly acquire such things as pitch accent tons and tons of audio exposure is necessary. This is especially true for people like me who want to output in attic because, to my understanding, attic did not yet have any significant stress accent and I find it is hard for many people to eliminate the stress from their speech if their mother tongue has it. None of what I said should be taken as a knock on the people doing their best to create ancient Greek content of any kind! I can't wait for you to release both the tools and the audio content. I want to really try and nail down the pronunciation and the skill of recitation so that I can create my own audio content for myself as a learning aid and perhaps when I feel comfortable and competent making such content public. As for getting rid of erasmian. It serves many who use it. It is a way to pronounce Greek, it is an easy way to pronounce Greek for the people who use it, and it doesn’t have the iotacism problems. I think the majority of people in academia (and many outside) are not particularly bothered by the precise historicity of their pronunciation and the practical concerns of ease and ambiguity are of more importance to them. That said, I think the more we can give people the choice (through the creation of content as well as just the awareness of the different options one has) the better. I personally was scared off by ancient Greek precisely because of the amount of different pronunciation schemes (attic, erasmian, lucian, modern) and the fierce loyalty they garner but once you accept it and realize that they do all have reasons behind their usage it can be kind of interesting to watch how people move to one or the other based on goals and tastes etc. if spoken ancient greek becomes more of a thing it will be interesting to see how these groups do or do not interact.

Luke Amadeus Ranieri

Very well said, ὦ φίλε. I don't expect Erasmian to vanish in this generation or the next, nor do I want there to be any hostility towards its users since, like you said, it is a tool and it gets the job done (although I partly disagree on the iotacism problem; while ει and ῑ are separated, Erasmian makes all kinds of mergers that are not historical, such as those done by English speakers who merge ε, ει, η, ῃ into /ei/ much of the time). I think what we will see in this century is an increased interest in historical phonologies (Classical Attic, Lucian, Buthian), something that happened in the late 1800s and 1900s for Latin. Before that, the traditional pronunciations of Latin dominated in their respective countries, much as the Erasmian Greek types do today; and even though knowledge of the Classical Latin Pronunciation was present, it took several generations for it to be so widely adopted (nearly universally today in academia, Italy being the last major hold-out). Yet there was much more fluency in Latin in the 1900s, especially from the end of the century as the "spoken Latin movement" has flourished, which has been pulling Ancient Greek along with it. Thus AG lags behind in all these areas, much as you noted: we need audio content. I think you're right too about the importance of input to achieve the desired output. Indeed, perhaps I'm making too big a deal out of wanting to have a good set of phonetics tools available for Classical Attic Pronunciation before making the tons of content in it that I plan to do. But then I think about my accent in Italian, and how, if I had merely had from the beginning of my studies the phonetics training I have since acquired, I would not have so noticeable a foreign accent, which I struggle to control and improve upon. When it comes to the Ancient Greek language, for all its extraoridary variety in dialect and time period, the morphology is fundamentally that of Classical Attic, thus a pronunciation that favors that dialect — one need only compare ἦ ἤ ἥ ᾗ ἦα ᾖα εἴην εἶεν — produces speech that is easier to understand, and thus provides us the spoken reflex for apprehending better the style of the Attic authors. This is comparable to the Classical Latin Pronunciation which, pedagogically and communicatively and for what it permits the user to gain from the literature, has insuperable advantages over Ecclesiastical Latin Pronunciation. Thus I do in my heart favor Classical Attic Pronunciation as the right starting point for general studies and usage. But I have some work to do before I encourage folks to go that direction. Speaking of which, back to work for me. Ἴθι χαίρων.

Kokupsi

Oh! My apologies about erasmian I should have done my research. I had heard that erasmian was useful because the letters and diphthongs were all phonetically unique but I myself never looked into it as I have always been more interested in attic and to a lesser extent modern pronunciations. As for the tools thing. Unlike modern languages one does not have native speakers to emulate (which is optimal in my opinion) so we need some way to bootstrap especially since most people want to output from the beginning or near beginning. I think holding off is not strictly necessary but reasonable and I see the hazard in releasing the content and giving people the means by which to build bad habits. Out of curiosity have you ever tried learning the phonology of a modern language with the ipa before you ever tried speaking in it?

Luke Amadeus Ranieri

No apology neaded, ὤριστε; you're right that Erasmian in principle *should* make those distinctions, but my investigations have shown me that the Erasmian types that can be heard in the various countries where they are used (with all their extreme deviations from theoretical Erasmian due to influence from native languages) have become quite inveterated, much as the traditional pronunciations of Latin in the 1800s (this page has many of the details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_Ancient_Greek_in_teaching ); thus there is not much point, I think, in trying to enforce a "good" or "clean" Erasmian so that it might return to that theoretical standard, and rather encourage its replacement wholesale by a much more precise system. To your last question, I have; when I made the video about Ukrainian vs Russian ( https://youtu.be/2I-8pXalgGI?si=ujaKksXeJGDi0MDZ ) I received dozens of comments there from native speakers of Ukrainian that my pronunciation of Ukrainian pronunciation was perfect for most words to the level of native speaker, while my Russian words sounded bizarre to native speakers of Russian haha; those who were bilingual native speakers of both languages said the same. Yet, before making that video, I had never studied Ukrainian, and approached some A1 intro material with a keen observation of the IPA from day one. I have been studying Russian off and on for years, starting long before I really knew about IPA and the phonetics to put unusual sounds into practice — and yet, in the video, I was really trying to do the Russian words justice, hewing as close as possible to the IPA transcriptions. This may serve as a good analogy for Ancient Greek: Classical Attic has a few phonological necessities and challenges that make it "harder" for most people, like aspirated stops, just as Russian as some really interesting and hard-to-master characteristics in its vowel mutations. So I tend to favor explicit phonetics training.

Kokupsi

Wow that's fantastic!

Blake Dixon

Amazing! Cannot wait for the Attic phonetics training. If it's like everything else you've released it will be revolutionary for learners of this great language. Do you have an ETA at this point?

Paul

Hello Luke! I am studying the Italian version and I like listening to your recordings while reading along. Given you have two versions of many chapters, and given the concerns you express here about Attic pronunciation, it seems to me you are suggesting I ought to listen to the Lucian recordings, rather than the Attic.

Luke Amadeus Ranieri

Hi Paul! I’ve changed my mind in this regard. I now prefer Classical Attic Pronunciation for pedagogical reasons above all, and also for purposes of clear communication. But the Lucian pronunciation variants do offer a number of useful insights and are certainly valid too. It would be up to you aesthetically which you might prefer.

Paul

Thank you, Luke. Are you still planning (fingers crossed) to record additional chapters of the Italian version in Attic? I can't tell you how many times I've listened to your LLPSI recordings and Orberg's to help improve my listening skills for stress and length (a LOT of times would be an understatement). If I'm not mistaken, you have recorded up until chapter 5 in Attic, correct?

Peter Blair

Fun listening. Do you have a time frame when you think all the Attic will be available?

Brian Gomez

I second Peter's question. Are you planning on releasing the rest of the book in Attic? I would be a great help! Also, would you consider making a video where you discuss why you now feel Attic is the best pedagogical approach overall? Maybe you've already done that and I've simply missed it.

Jan Kohút

Hi Luke! Thank you very much for your videos, recordings and other materials. As I'm going through the Athenaze and I'm trying to learn the Attic pronunciation, I would also appreciate more readings from the series in the Attic.

sa_geo

These are the most helpful greek recordings I have found. I think the amount of repetition throughout the stories is great and Luke Ranieri's pronunciation is very clear and has helped me tremendously. I signed up as a Patron immediately after I found these videos. I only hope more are on the way. Thanks Luke for the great readings.

Luke Amadeus Ranieri

You’re so very kind! Thanks for your generosity and your compliments. 😃 I would not be able to do any of these things without yours and the help of my patrons. I feel truly blessed! εὐχαριστῶ σοι!

Luke Amadeus Ranieri

Addendum: the Cap5 recording is now attached! More to come. 😃 Thanks again!

SB

After discovering this text through your posts, I set out to find it, and it arrived in the mail yesterday! Your recording efforts will doubtless be as valuable in this course of study as they continue to be with LLPSI, magister. Those Italian courses of many years ago are about to pay off to boot!

Wes Bernhardt

χαῖρε, Luke, thanks for the fantastic audio recordings! I can only speak for myself, but as a total nerd for all things classical Athens, there’s definitely an audience if you plan on doing more 5th century Attic recordings!

Luke Amadeus Ranieri

Hi Wes, and thanks. I’m still investigating that. My research has cast a lot of doubt on the conventional wisdom of that pronunciation system. Quite a few phonemes are in flux, and others are almost certainly wrong — such as the /zd/ pronunciation for ζ. Thus not only are my old recordings not a great representation of 5cBC Attic, but essentially all those out there which use a similar model are way off as well. Also none of them pay close attention to phonemic vowel length, which is the sine qua non for all AG pronunciation. Thus my recordings in Lucian Pronunciation, particularly the more conservative Romaic Pronunciation variant, are actually closer to true 5cBC Attic than anything I did before in “Attic” and also closer than a lot of the “Attic” pronunciation stuff you’ll find out there. But I’ll get around to doing an actual 5cBC Attic again eventually.

Matt

Luke, on this note, what is your option of Daitz's pronunciation? Particularly his Iliad and Odyssey?

Luke Amadeus Ranieri

Daitz was a tremendous scholar whose work inspired me from an early age. Ultimately, despite the precision and care he put I put into his craft, I don’t find the result to have quite hit the mark that he stood up. Mostly this is due to suprasegmental issues, like intonation and pitch accent problems, but also fundamental ones like syllable quantity. He was a great man and did important work that moved the field in the right direction.