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Romaic Variant of Lucian Pronunciation (Patreon)

Published:
2021-11-21 09:22:56
Edited:
2022-12-28 23:41:23
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Χαίρετε, ὤριστοι! I have written an essay establishing a more conservative variant of Lucian Pronunciation you might find useful: https://lukeranieri.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/The-Romaic-Variant-of-Lucian-Pronunciation-2021-11-21.pdf

Feedback welcome. Thanks as always for your continued support!

Comments

Nathan Binns

I think if I ever get to teaching Greek at some point in the future I don't think I would bother with pitch accent personally. In fiercly-monolingual Australia I think I would struggle to explain to students what it even is, let alone how to hear it, let alone how to produce it consistently when speaking. Honestly I think phonemic aspiration would be easier for English monolinguals to grasp than pitch accent. And since it doesn't make a huge amount of difference to understanding written Greek texts I think it would be more difficulty than it's worth for students who are struggling with all the noun and verb paradigms already. For a Greek teacher in somewhere like Scandinavia where the students already speak a pitch accent language it would be different.

Kyle Anthony

Problem: 1) Ancient Greek phonology is pedagogically challenging. Erasmian pronunciation overcomes this but is 2) historically inconsistent, which would be fine, practically speaking, but 3a) has a tendency to absorb local phonology so that 3b) People speaking "Erasmian" Greek can't understand each other internationally. Solution: speak using a classical Roman accent which is: 1) Phonologically simpler and therefore pedagogically simpler. 2) A historically accurate pronunciation. 3) Creates a neutral standard of pronunciation internationally for communicative ease among Ancient Greek speakers. Honestly, a brilliant and elegant solution Luke.

tim1724

This seems a very sensible approach.

Carla Hurt

I'm a Latin teacher in fiercely-monolingual Australia and I totally get that vibe about pitch accent being perceived as "too hard". Even mandarin Chinese classes struggle to get students to produce tonal sounds, for big portion of the students in the class (the ones who don't have background exposure to Chinese from family). However, there's nothing stopping a teacher from learning how to produce a pitch accent themselves, using it consistently themselves, but not making it an expectation that students attain native-like proficiency of pronunciation. I think the reason why pitch accent is so "given up on" is because not even the instructors try to learn it, and so the students don't have a snowball's chance of doing it (or they try to, despite their teacher's instruction, and it comes out sounding weirdly overemphasised - I had that from a fellow student in my uni class) I think it's totally fine to just ask for stress accent from students, but also really cool, if the instructor has the time (that's also the kicker, no one has time), that the instructor learns how to say things with a pitch accent if they can manage it. In my experience, Greek words become easier to pronounce with pitch than with stress accent, if you're also trying to preserve syllable quantity, because stress accent tends to be really hard to execute on light syllables surrounded by heavy syllables.

Nathan Binns

I agree, as a (possibly one day) teacher and current language enthusiast I will probably try to master pitch accent myself, I just don't know that I would ever inflict it on poor students who are struggling enough as is. I am a linguist, I have studied phonetics & phonology before and really enjoyed it, but the one thing I just couldn't hear (and still can't) was lexical pitch. I'm sure if I ended up working somewhere with tone languages I would learn to hear it eventually, but I figure if even I as a professional language nerd struggle to hear it, I feel for poor students who are just there to learn to read literature.

Luke Amadeus Ranieri

Thanks so much for your help! I had been meaning to get around to this for a while

Luke Amadeus Ranieri

That’s very kind of you to say! Maybe it’s a good decision; I don’t know. I intend to make recordings in several historically plausible variants to help people make up their own minds.

canicus

Welcome. It was an enjoyable read. I am always struck by "conservative," since you use it in exactly the opposite way I do.

Luke Amadeus Ranieri

Is that so? I use it in the linguistic sense to mean a conservative pronunciation trait, i.e. older, such as the aspirate pronunciation of χ [kʰ]; that’s the conservative sound, while pronouncing it as a fricative χ [x] is innovative. But if you are coming from Modern Greek as your basis, you might feel that to be your personal anchor, so anything unlike MG such as the aspirate might seem more radical, and thus, as you say, the opposite of “conservative.” Both usages of “conservative” are perfectly legitimate given the conditions of the discussion. Mine is from the point of view or chronological development.

canicus

That's close to what I intend, but being on here I'm not averse to things other than demotic. I use "conservative" in the sense of "preserve," which implies continuity. The more speculative a given proposition or practice or the more it breaks with that, the less I regard it as conservative. Conversely I've tended to use "primitive" for older features. I'm always taken by surprise when I see it used the way you use it in academic literature. One day that will stop :) I do find that placing an emphasis on "conservative" has helped me substantially when someone very keen that Greek has always been used as the demotic has taken umbrage with the ones I teach my children.