Documentaries,greek accent,how hard can it be?

[Efstathios]

I saw a documentary about the spartans from pbs.Ok, aside the fact that it had some innacuracies (big innacuracies),the thing that i noticed and that i have been noticing in every english documentary i have seen is how they pronounce greek words and names.It tends to be very amusing,and aukward.Words are pronounced utterly wrong,and they are altered. How hard can it be to pronounce greek words,or anyway to ask a greek what is the proper pronounciation when someone is making a documentary.And i have seen that not only in tv but in the net too.I have came across some pages with ancient greek lessons with audio files and someone (an english professor of ancient greek language)read some ancient texts.And the result of course was amusing. Now,i dont want to pass judgement to the work that these people do,or degrade it,but not even a professor specialized in ancient greek can pronounce them correctly? When the woman in the documentary was reading the stone in Thermopylae it sounded like chinese.I couldnt understand it myself... An example would be "perioikoi" (those who live near by).That is the greek spelling.The correct pronounciation is "pe-re-e-ke" ("pe" as in pe-ncil,and "re" "e" "ke" as in read,need,keep).She pronounced it like "pe" as in pay,"rioi" as in read,and "koi" as in decoy.Something like payreecoy.And hat sounded chinese. She even pronounced "melas zomos" (the soup that the spartans ate) wrong.Like melas zomas.Where did she found the A in zomos?Anyway thats why i find it difficult to understand how hard would it be to ask for the correct pronounciation and learn it.But a professor not being able to pronounce greek correctly that i cannot understand at all.I mean we have immigrants here in greece that learn greek in a short time and they speak it like greeks. Ok little out of the subject here,but i just watched the documentary and i had to make these comments. Η ΙΣΧΥΣ ΕΝ ΤΗ ΕΝΩΣΗ

[Paralus]

G'day EfsthasiosBlame the bloody Romans mate! That's where it began. The buggers "Latinised" everything (something we're still paying for GÇô thank God it's no longer the "language of power")Hence we have Alcibiades (Al-si-biades) rather than Alkibiades. Another favourite is Cor-sy-ra rather than Korkyra. Not to pick on the English, but as an Imperial power they showed precious little interest in learning to pronounce anything as remotely similar to the native tongue. The Chinese could never quite understand what the Gwai-lohs (red-faced devils) were saying: Peking (Beijing). They were (are) very ecumenical though: how about Cologne for Kholn and Munich for Munchen?Don't feel singled out mate. Really the only way to go (as you point out) is to learn the language GÇô at least its alphabet and written forms.I'd a lecturer once (he was seventy at the time) who was at uni learning Attic Koine, ancient Aramaic and Hebrew so as to read the texts and manuscripts with his own eyes GÇô as opposed to some scholar's reading of same GÇô before the end came. Amazing bloke Borgia Duffy.Paralus

[Efstathios]

Well, the latin languange is still present since english are based on the latin.Did you know that today we have the engilsh as the world wide language instead of greek ,just by the difference of a single vote?Once in school our history teacher told us that.For one vote out of hundreds,english prevailed against greek.Though i dont know exactly when this happened,i will search for further info.If that one vote went to the greek language ,today we would be speaking greek worldwide instead of english Anyway,It's not the names of the cities or countries,or of people that are so important.After all that happens in all languages.Even greeks pronounce Peking differently,or Munich.But with some other words,you just cant change them... They are supposed to be pronounced as they are...

[Paralus]

Efsthasios, when you find the info on that vote post it won't you?I'd be most interested to read it.But for the Ottomans, I suspect we may all be conversing in greek today!Paralus.

[abm]

In principle I agree of course that we should use the right pronounciation. However, pronouncing foreign languages is always difficult and you cannot expect most foreigners to reach perfection. The melas zomos example seems to me rather normal english pronounciation, than not knowing that there's no a in zomos. Furthermore it has to be said that we are all aware of the fact that we do not pronounce ancient greek in the correct way. At my university (and most others as well) there has been much debate on adopting the correct pronounciation and the conclusion was that for the sake of convenience we'd just continue pronouncing it in the traditional wrong way because everybody is used to it and the language isn't pronounced the same way as in antiquity nowadays, so that it matters less anyway.It seems to me (excuse if I'm wrong) from your remarks on perioikoi that you are not aware of this last fact. The pronounciation of Greek has changed significantly since antiquity, partly already in antiquity. Iotacism started already in the hellenistic age, but certainly in the age of Thermopylae perioikoi was pronounced not pe-re-e-ke, but pe-re-oi-koi (as you said, "pe" as in pen and "re" as in read, but oi and koi were actually pronounced as in decoy). Do you know the -in this context famous- fragment of Cratinus? (quoting from memory:) 'The madman ran around in the streets, shouting like a sheep: "BH BH"'. Now, in modern greek, this should be pronounced "vi vi", but have you ever heard a sheep saying "vi vi"? The correct pronounciation should be "b+¬ b+¬" (long open e) and this is just one of the many changes.regards,abm

[abm]

It's very unlikely that there ever was such a vote. English simply is the world language because of the economic and political power of the English-speaking countries. Greek lost its chances of becoming the world language already in the seventh century AD (if not earlier).regards,abm