Greek Pronunciation: φ θ χ (phi theta chi), the full history | Ancient Greek & Latin 🏺

[@rohinkartik-narayan7535]

Do I know anything about Ancient (or Modern) Greek? No. Am I actively learning Greek or Latin? No. Am I going to spend another 45 minutes learning about the history of the pronunciation of certain letters in Greek on top of the 45 minutes about Zeta? Yes

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Heh thanks! I’m really glad you like the video. I spent a good amount of time on it, so I’m very happy to hear that.

[@arelendil7]

Me too! But I would like to learn, I am just to scared to do it ! 😅

[@arelendil7]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Great video, Luke ! It is intense, but the visuals are really gorgeous and relaxing, so they help a lot to concentrate on what you are saying. It is also great that you do not follow the trend of adding loud music to explicative videos, it’s distracting and sometimes even annoying. So much better like you do ! I do not know that much German, but for me the sound of the CH is more like the /ç/, a soft sound. To explain it in some way, I listen it like a soft sound made with the middle of the tongue barely touching the middle of the palate, then when CH is at the end of the word, it’s similar but lowering the tongue until it is at mid high of the mouth, so it doesn’t touch the palate and the sound is made a bit backwards, but it is still soft. While in Spanish J is that strong sound you do. But maybe the strength of the CH depends on the region, I don’t know, any German in the room? It is very interesting the flip of the theta and the F, you comment, I know some Italians that speaking in English, they actually “I fink”, while the French would say “I zink” or “I sink”. Nice mustache by the way, keep it ! 😄

[@ShiftySqvirrel]

I wouldn't mind learning modern or Ancient Greek or Latin, I am not currently doing this, but I do find these videos very interesting as someone interested in linguistics, albeit without any formal training.

[@RobertRanieri]

Ben chiaro.

[@yenotich]

As an Armenian, I look forward seeing a video about relationships between Greek and Armenian

[@ΔώραΠαπα-τ2ω]

❤❤❤❤

[@siyacer]

very distant

[@bruhthe3rd436]

Im a native greek speaker (born and raised in the suburbs of Athens) and i really like your videos where you go over ancient greek and how that language used to work. In school i didn't really care much for the ancient greek classes but i now i find it very fascinating. Also they didn't really teach us about how they were pronounced in ancient times (other than a very brief mention i believe) but i love trying to speak modern greek with an ancient greek pronunciation

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Ευχαριστώ πολύ. Χαίρομαι πολύ που σου αρέσουν τα βίντεο.

[@servantofaeie1569]

It's so cool to know that there are modern Greeks learning ancient Greek!

[@indrast5203]

@@servantofaeie1569 We learn it at school

[@servantofaeie1569]

@@indrast5203 Here in America there aren't many people learning Old English :(

[@proot.]

@@servantofaeie1569 We had to read parts of Beowulf, but we pretty much exclusively stuck to the modern english translation

[@felixdarkwood5848]

What about to make a video about the forgotten and archaic Greek letters, such as Ϝϝ, Ϙϙ, Ϸϸ, Ϲϲ, Ϻϻ et cētera? Also about their sounds, its evolution and other old Greek sounds (like [j] and others).

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

A great suggestion. For now I'm mostly concentrated on putting out detailed videos on the core Ancient Greek sounds, but you're right that's a very worthwhile topic.

[@SpartanLeonidas1821]

Et cetera = Kai ta etaira 🇬🇷

[@numapompilius4550]

@@SpartanLeonidas1821 κτλ. (καί τά λοιπά)

[@SpartanLeonidas1821]

@@numapompilius4550 There was Two Versions! Kai ta Etaira = THE ORIGINAL Then came: Kai ta Loipa 👍

[@matthewheald8964]

That actually sounds good

[@Janika-xj2bv]

I've lived in Greece for a while. Not only did I have to read and write Greek, I had to learn to think different. And man, there's three different ways to write the letter Sigma. But all in all I loved it. So many words that I knew all my life in my native language began making sense, in a new light. Excellent video. I'll definitely follow you. Eucharisto.

[@veuzou]

on Rosetta stone, the Greek names with a "Ph" such as Philippos are also written PH in hieroglyphs with the stool+shelter characters instead of the F horned adder.

[@hpsmash77]

I am a native hindi speaker, so I can easily distinguish between all four combinations of (voiced/unvoiced) and (unaspirated/aspirated) for a given plosive out of p t and k so when you stated how difficult it is for most people out of india and china, and then continued to say that for like 5-10 minutes, I felt very special lol

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Heh indeed! Indians who speak an Aryan language like Hindi are some of the best suited to deal with Classical Greek phonology.

[@servantofaeie1569]

The Greek aspirates are actually cognate to some of the Indian aspirates. Where there is φ θ χ in Greek there will be भ ध घ in the Hindi cognates!

[@Debg91]

For a long time I was also convinced that Erasmus was plain wrong about the pronunciation of Classical Greek. True, he lacked a lot of research back then, but now I understand the phonetic reconstruction of an ancient language is far from trivial. As an amateur self-taught linguist, I didn't realise how important it is to acknowledge that ancient languages also had different dialects. Thank you for your enlightening discussions.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

That’s really nice of you; thanks for watching the video. You know, I didn’t appreciate it either, and it took me many years of both researching and trying to put things into practice just to get to this point. And I still have so much to learn.

[@micayahritchie7158]

It's hard to realise the dead had as much flavour and diversity as the living

[@StergiosMekras]

I was under the impression that Erasmus merely did a thought experiment with that pronunciation. He was supposedly quite fluent in both Ancient and contemporary Greek, so he should have known better.

[@JesusFriedChrist]

Very interesting learning about Greek letters. I’ve casually taught myself the Russian Cyrillic alphabeta over the last couple years, and I knew it originally came from Greek, so I definitely recognized a fair portion, and from Coptic as well. Knowledge is power.

[@jeremias-serus]

Not to be mean, but it really should only take a few days if that to learn the Cyrillic script lol

[@JesusFriedChrist]

@@jeremias-serus Not to be rude, but I haven’t been formally or regularly studying. By “learning” and “teaching myself” I mean I started by watching videos of people playing Escape From Tarkov, and paying attention to the words on road signs and store names, google translating them, listening to how it was pronounced, and then remembering which letters made which sounds. I did this several times, maybe a dozen, across a few month period back in 2020, and since then I’ve just remembered….apart from a few times having to look up a couple letters that I had slight trouble remembering. I did this _EXTREMELY_ casually, for fun, while being preoccupied by other things, and just storing the knowledge in the database of my brain that has all the other decades of mostly useless facts and information. This is all in addition to the other languages I’ve been casually learning. And not to be mean, but if I had seriously sat down and formally studied all day long, maybe it would’ve taken _you_ a few days, but it would’ve taken me a couple days, if that.

[@jeremias-serus]

@@JesusFriedChrist That's all fair. I didn't study Cyrillic formally either, I just googled "cyrillic quiz" and did that for roughly 6 hour over the course of three to four days in 2016. Though I also did make sure to physically write constantly during those hours, and I also searched on KZbin for an analog to English's alphabet song, and what I found has stuck in my brain permanently ever since. I found the Hellenic alphabet to also be similarly easy. Japanese's Hiragana and Katakana scripts were quite a fair bit harder though, it took a month or so back in 2020. Currently I'm working on getting the Hebrew script down pat, and then I'm moving to the Arabic script (which has confounded me for years). I was just genuinely surprised at your comment 'cuz everyone I've heard from, it takes them basically no time to learn Cyrillic and my experience only confirmed that for me, even though I'm by no means an exceptional memorizer or studier. But if you are including a lot of passive learning then yeah that makes sense 👍

[@Pajdas610]

@@jeremias-serus It took me one day to properly learn the Cyrillic script (specifically Serbian Cyrillic). I had the advantage of already speaking the Croatian language (as my mother language), which in its literary form is almost identical to the Serbian language. Not to mention that the Cyrillic script is literally designed for Slavic languages.

[@ΔώραΠαπα-τ2ω]

❤❤❤❤❤

[@MarioBishara]

Georgian differentiates between ejective consonants and aspirated ones, which was very difficult for me at the beginning to distinguish between them, great video, thanks for the effort

[@Fetrovsky]

Making vs. may king. This is actually enlightening to me as a speaker of English as a second language. Thank you.

[@superbrainil]

I, as a Hebrew speaker, always compare what you say in these videos to what I know about Hebrew. So the Hebrew letters ב,ג,ד,כ,פ,ת initially had the values of /b/,/g/,/d/,/k/,/p/,/t/ in Biblical Hebrew. During the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC they developed the secondary values of /v/,/ɣ/,/ð/,/x/,/f/,/θ/ respectively. It appears as though the changes didn't spread evenly to all dialects - so Yemenite Hebrew has all 6, Ashkenazi Hebrew has 4, and Sephardi and Modern Hebrew have 3. Mishnaic Hebrew probably had all 6, and it borrowed words from Greek, so it's interesting to see how they transliterated it in the Mishna and the Talmud, especially regarding t and k, because they can also be written with ט and ק which only stand for the /t/ and /k/ sounds, and have lost their pharyngeal values by around the 1st century. : θ vs. t: The Greek word κώθων got transliterated as קיתון with a ת, in the Mishna (2nd century), and the word διφθερα got borrowed as דפתר, also with a ת. The Greek word κοιτων got transliterated as קיטון with a ט, also in the Mishna. The word χάρτης turned into כרטיס with a כ (has two values) as χ and a ט (has one value) for the τ. x vs. k: κατηγορος > קטגור (with ק)(2nd century Mishna) φριξος > פרכס (with כ)(6th century Bereshit Raba) μαστιχάω > מוסתכין (with ק)(early 5th century Yerushalmi) (Modern Hebrew equivalent מסטיק written with ק) εικων > איקונין (with ק)(6th century Shemot Raba) καλαμαριον > קלמר (with ק)(2nd century Mishna) κοπίς > קופיס (with ק)(1st century Josephus) χι‏‏‏‏ > (Traditionally pronounced as a /x/) כי (with כ)(2nd century Mishna) Also note that some words written with a ξ in Greek got transliterated with a כ in Hebrew: ξενία > אכסניה (pronounced achsania, ch as in German)(2nd century Mishna) εξεδρα > אכסדרה (pronounced achsadra)(2nd century Mishna) It is only possible to see this distinction with /x/,/k/ and /θ/,/t/ because only those sounds have two separate letters, other pairs only have one letter so if something is written with a פ it could be both /f/ and /p/ (although they are pronounced in only one way, it is influenced by the internal rules of Aramaic and Hebrew. Despite that, some cases exist in which Greek borrowed words from Aramaic in which the Aramaic pronunciation is known and should have affected the Greek spelling: נפטא (nafta) > ναφθα עברי (Aramaic: 'ivray, Hebrew: 'ivri) > Ἑβραῖος Borrowings into Greek that have /b/,/v/ or /p/,/f/ or /k/,/x/ are more reliable, because only those distinctions have spread to all Hebrew dialects and most Aramaic dialects (those are also the only distinctions that exist in Modern Hebrew). Other such cases like Μαγδαλα coming from Aramaic מגדלא are unreliable because it is unknown how ג and ד were pronounced in the specific dialects from which the Greek word was borrowed. It should be noted that there are numerous exemptions to all of my examples. What I've written are just tendencies, not rules.

[@Xargxes]

But if the Greek aspiration indeed was an [h] sound, why didn't the Greeks just derive their letter for it from the He (ה) o.O? Why use the Ḥet (ח) for an [h]-sound, when Semitic already has exactly that sound in its alphabet o.O?

[@superbrainil]

@@Xargxes I am not sure about this. Chronologically, I am not sure which letter (ה or ח) was borrowed into Greek first - ה might have already been used for an E vowel before ח was adopted. Also, ה might have not been as prominent in the Canaanite languages as it is in Greek, which is why the Hebrew bible has both יואש and יהואש for example. Lastly, if Greek had ç as an allophone of h in some dialects, it might have helped ח to get chosen, because ח might have also stood for a /x/ sometimes - which is why יריחו got transliterated as Jericho, and not as Jeriho.

[@lufknuht5960]

Great treatment, which I will preserve for myself. But why did you say nothing about begad kephat letters, that is with dagesh changing the pronunciation (as taught today)? Do you believe that there was no change & that those letters had one pronunciation regardless of their phonetic context? (not that the ancients used dagesh). Do think that the idea is wrong hat ב was pronounced significantly different in different phonetic contexts? B vs V, or B aspirated vs not?

[@lufknuht5960]

YOu mention the Mishnah & present it with vowel points. Did the original Mishnah have vowel points? If not, can it be considered a witness of vowel pronunciation?

[@superbrainil]

@@lufknuht5960 I'm not sure what exactly you are asking regarding beged kefet. In the early biblical Hebrew they all had a single value, but might have been either aspirated or geminated in certain situations which would later lead to double phonetical values in late biblical Hebrew. Regarding the Mishnah, it was not originally written with the vowel points. Modern vowel points, called Tiberian Niqqud, were invented around the 9th century in Tiberias, while the Mishnah was already written at around 200 AD. The oldest Mishnah manuscript with Niqqud we have is the Kaufmann manuscript which was written around the 11th or 12th centuries. So a thousand years after the Mishnah. However, we are able to reconstruct the hypothetical pronunciation of Hebrew in the 2nd century in Judea (where the Mishna was written) based on traditions of different Jewish diasporas, rendering of foreign names, common "spelling mistakes" in the Mishnah, and even the Mishnah itself (albeit rarely) describing pronunciation. In any case my comment did not rely on the vowels but on the choice of letters, which are recorded in more ancient manuscripts.

[@francescoghigo8394]

I think there are three things to keep in mind: 1) as you mentioned, the vast dialectal distinction present at the time. If we think that languages nowadays present a lot of dialects, even if there is a standardised form which is taught and learnt in school, let's take this 2000 years ago where very few could barely read and write, the dialectal heterogeneity must have been huge. 2) people from different regions travelled to different places, so maybe Latin got influenced by Greeks coming from specific parts of Greece than the ones going to Egypt. It's not too farfetched because if we look at Italian's influence on Modern Greek we'll see that most comes from Venetian, and it makes sense because Venice Republic had ties with Greece, both commercially and geographically. But a linguistic KZbinr from the year 4000 would be wrong thinking that Italian sounded like Venetian by looking at the influence of Italian words in Greek. 3) different languages perceive(d) the same sounds differently, and had a different phonemic inventory. For example, it's possible that Latin didn't perceive the difference between /t/ and /tʰ/, thus they wrote them "t(h)" (hence nowadays "tesi" for "θέση"), whereas maybe Coptic or Armenian could very easily tell the difference and used different letters. At the same time, when Latin-speakers heard /θ/ and /ð/, they went for /f/ and /d/ much like Italians today, whereas Coptic maybe could distinguish /d/ from /ð/ and kept that difference.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Those are very astute observations. I have often pondered these same ideas.

[@jimspanos]

@Francesco Ghigo your remarks make perfect sense, although I'm not a linguist. I would like to add to your remarks some evidences that I think are related. While visiting the Asklepieion at Kos Island, I had some time to observe some old stones with inscriptions from various periods. What puzzled me was that the greek letters/characters used, were not uniform, but varied from inscription to inscription. In particular I noticed "Θ" being written in some cases with an extra vertical line or like an X with a circle around it. In a different time while visiting the archaeological museum of Athens, there was a section with some artifacts which were actually ancient toys. Among those, there were a couple of clay toys used to help the kids learn the alphabet. Again I noticed that the alphabets were different from toy to toy. The form of the letters was similar but not the same, and even the number of the letters did not match. At another instance, visiting the Museum of the Ancient Agora which is housed in the reconstructed Stoa of Attalos, again noticing the inscriptions (some hand written like the ones used for ostracism of notable citizens) I noticed the differences not only in the characters but also in the use of the letters, e.g. Ε - Η , e.t.c. Considering that writing is a form of logos/language which can be standardized more easily than verbal communication, all the above observations lead to confirm the conclusion that different dialects, in different areas and different chronologies must/could had significantly difference in pronunciation of various letters. So what is correct or wrong is very relative and Luke is doing a great job in bringing-up this issue not as an issue of dispute but of research.

[@luismiguelcasal9162]

Judging from my experience I'd say you're absolutely correct. My native tongue is Spanish, and just to mention one example of the huge dialectal variety that can be found in a language at any given moment I could mention the endless number of possible pronunciations of the letter 's' in Spanish. Apart from different sibilant sounds, it's very frequent to pronounce the 's' at the end of a word as an aspirate 'h', or go beyond that and entirely drop the pronunciation of the letter, as if it weren't there. That's vey frequent in Andalucía, South of Spain, where it's frequent as well to hear the 's' pronounced as ⟨θ⟩, something called "ceceo". My name is Luis Miguel and my friends call me Luismi, except for one or two from Andalucía that transform the 'sm' into a geminated 'mm' and call me "Luimmi". My daughter's name is Sophie, but some people in Andalucía change the initial 's' sound of her name to the fricative ⟨ꭓ⟩. That change from the sibilant ⟨s⟩ to the fricative ⟨ꭓ⟩ is also common in Madrid, especially in certain combinations of words such as "es que", frequently pronounced as "ej que". An the examples could go on and on...

[@Eva_L1313]

I love your videos!! As a native greek, I took ancient Greek classes in highschool and I really loved it. I really wish I had continued studying ancient Greek, I kind of regret it now... Anyway, thank you so much for this video 😊

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Χαίρε πολύ, Εύα! Χαίρομαι που σ’ αρέσει το βίντεο.

[@kori228]

8:29 people can usually tell the difference between the voiceless tenuis and the voiceless aspirated stops because the tenuis stops are just heard as voiced stops. Similar enough Voiced onset timing, and English has a tendency to devoice onset voiced stops, giving you a distinction between voiceless aspirated and voiceless tenuis, instead of voiceless vs voiced. Conversely, hearing the difference between the voiceless tenuis and the voiced stops is the really confusing one. The training you mention is really just to realize when you're aspirating it unconsciously and to not do that. Hearing it is pretty simple. The hearing training would pertain to hearing actual voicing distinction of voicless tenuis and voiced as mentioned above.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

I absolutely the agree. I somewhat simplified the whole argument, but yeah most people aren’t going to make the three-way contrast with stops with any facility. Which is a shame since the Ancient Greek language is fundamentally that way…until it wasn’t anymore. Heh.

[@ShiftySqvirrel]

As a sort of continuation of this. I noticed as a native speaker of Norwegian that when I heard Icelandic I would hear their voiceless unaspirated stops word initially as the same as our voiced stops, but that after vowels I can clearly hear the difference between Icelandic's voiceless unaspirated stops and our voiced ones. It has made me wonder if in Norwegian the voiced stops are actually voiceless word initially but get voiced after vowels. I suppose the distinction is better described as lenis and fortis really rather than voice though, but interesting nonetheless.

[@mpgvolpe]

Great job, a little bit technical and difficult form me, an italian old man living in Brazil, but super interesting. Fantastic your videos of Greece and surrounding places

[@isancicramon0926]

17:35-17:40 Maybe a missed opportunity to merely mention the most famous Russian author of all times: Dostoyevski… and his first name Фёдор = _Fyodor,_ also a case of Θ adapted into Φ : *Θεόδωρος*

[@Carnifindion]

Not only an extremely informative video but also equally as aesthetic. 👍

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

That’s nice of you to say. I’m glad you enjoyed it.

[@Pan472]

As a Greek, it's more than heartwarming to see a foreigner get into such meticulous detail not just about an entire language, but for three letters of it! Σε συγχαίρω πραγματικά Πολυμαθή, και εύγε! Παρεμπιπτόντως, εάν είσαι αρκετά εξοικειωμένος, θα μπορούσες να ασχοληθείς και με την επιβίωση πολλών φράσεων εκ της αρχαίας ελληνικής εις την νέαν ελληνικήν. Θα ήταν αρκετά ενδιαφέρον να δούμε την άποψη σου για την χρήση αυτών, ή μάλλον, περί της ορθότητος της χρήσεως αυτών. Anyways, keep going strong with the letter pronunciation videos! OH I FORGOT: you *have* to go to Athens to ask Greeks if they can understand or even speak ancient Greek!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Ευχαριστώ πολύ! That’s a good suggestion. I’ll have to do that some time.

[@Pan472]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Yep, you have to do it. It's literally our native tongue, after all. Also, you can do it with a twist: say ancient Greek phrases in both the modern and ancient pronunciations, so that you can see how much it is intelligible in each case!

[@Pan472]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Also, something that I forgot to ask: what do you think of the modern Greek pronunciation of Φ, Θ, Χ; I have to note that in some examples you mentioned, such as that in 33:25, the pronunciation of X in that example is the same as in modern Greek, as far as I heard it.

[@eefaaf]

When a cousin of mine was living in Italy, she had a Greek roommate who would (jokingly, and very exaggeratedly) pronounce their landlord Carlo's name as Xãrlo (thus with a fricative chi, and for some reason a nasalised a. At least that's how my cousin imitated it, and she is usually spot on with her imitations :)

[@AutoReport1]

OE and Old Frisian had the same development of palatal /g/, to the extent that palatal fricative and approximant completely merged, and original /j/ came to be written "g".

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Isn't that crazy? In Old English too. Languages are great.

[@ΔημήτρηςΚατσάνης-β4τ]

Interesting. I am coming from a small village in Greece . It used to be in antiquity Άφυτις , as found in ancient engravings . At some point it became Άθυτος and today it is called Άφυτος again. Noone ever gave me a scientific explanation why this happened during all those centuries. And your video made it clear to me now.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

That’s amazing! Very cool. Another possibility is that old Greek alphabet theta looks like it has a ‘ + ‘ in the middle, which can get confused for φ

[@ΔημήτρηςΚατσάνης-β4τ]

@@polyMATHY_Luke it's was a city founded in 8th century BC . On engravings till 4th century atleast it is clearly Φ . I thing there is a Fragment of the tribute list for the year 440-439 BC, Athenian league that the word ΑΦΥΤΑΙΟΙ is clearly written with Φ . The Θ must be a much later change . I was born in 1982 and always called it Άθυτος . I can't remember when the "restoration" to Άφυτος happened officially on maps and signs.

[@katepalmer747]

Thank you for taking me on a wonderfully pedagogical journey! You had me aspirating and affricating all the way to work 😂 This is the content I never knew I needed 💕

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

I’m glad you enjoyed it

[@alexnaskos]

Amazingly made video as always, thanks for sharing your research with the rest of us in such an enjoyable way :)

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks for watching! I appreciate the comment

[@msicvbes4977]

Wish they tought this at greek schools as well. A lot of the times ancient pronunciation is almost completely ignored here. Εξαιρετικά ενδιαφέρον.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Ευχαριστώ πολύ!

[@iberius9937]

Μία τραγωδία και ένα κρίμα! Πρέπει ότι οι Έλληνες ξέρουν την ιστορική προφορά της αρχαίας ελληνικής γλώσσας.

[@msicvbes4977]

@@iberius9937 Σε εμάς μόνο μια σύντομη αναφορά στην πρώτη Λυκείου έγινε για την αρχαία προφορά απ' όσο θυμάμαι.

[@funnywarnerbox300]

Η διδασκαλία των αρχαίων στο σχολείο έχει πολύ σημαντικότερα προβλήματα από αυτό

[@msicvbes4977]

@@funnywarnerbox300 Δεν διαφωνώ. Αυτό όμως δεν αναιρεί το αρχικό μου point.

[@Rithymna]

Συγχαρητήρια φίλε μου! Very interesting as always

[@georgios_5342]

Ahaaa for a long time I was under the impression that ancient Greek φ was something like pf in German, and that the others also formed in a similar way. This was very helpful

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

I'm glad!

[@MarkRosa]

I still remember visiting a Pompeii exhibition in Tokyo a decade or so ago and seeing that linguistically-priceless "PHOENIX FELIX ET TU" advertisement and being absolutely ecstatic to have found evidence that the letter phi must surely have begun to sound like an f (at least in Pompeii, for some speakers), and "oe" starting to have its later value, as early as AD 79. Most people were at the exhibition to appreciate the art, the architecture, the glimpse at a tragedy... but I'll never forget the _startling evidence of a sound change three centuries earlier than anyone thought!_ There wasn't anything on the internet about its linguistic value back then. Luke, thank you for introducing it to learners!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very cool! I'm delighted that someone else shares in my delight at these sorts of discoveries. What a crazy thing, huh? Just wait till I get to the really weird stuff in Attic inscriptions in a future video...

[@MarkRosa]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Looking forward to those! This "phoenix" advertisement is actually my go-to photo to show people when they ask things like, "How can you linguists possibly know how language sounded in the past, or when sounds changed?" It's instantly comprehensible and makes the point right away, with words that even people who have never studied Latin are familiar with. It's *perfect* as a teaching tool. I'm still looking for its equivalent for Japanese, my main language, where a similar [p] -> [φ] sound shift happened at some point between ~AD 800 and 1000 or so. Some day it'll be found!

[@janhavlis]

Díky!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Děkujeme mnohokrát za vaši štědrost! Jsem velmi vděčný.

[@janhavlis]

@@polyMATHY_Luke i am eagerly awaiting your new vids, and this is just a small thank you for your work, enthusiasm and erudition. it is worth all the penny :)

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very kind, sir.

[@unarealtaragionevole]

With the American romanticism for all things "Spartan" have you considered doing a video about what those ancient Spartans or Doric speakers might have really sounded like compared to their Athenian counterparts? Or what any of the other ancient Greek dialects might have sounding like next to each other. I can totally see you doing the original "Red vs Blue" (Spartan vs Athenian) comedy skit. ;o)

[@iberius9937]

THAT would be awesome!!!!!

[@aroma13]

The youtuber NativLang has a great video on this subject,about how because of the Tsakonian language/dialect,we know how doric would have sounded like

[@unarealtaragionevole]

@@aroma13 Yeah I saw that one many years ago, it's OK. He focused on the 'i" to "a" difference more than anything which is a biggie. Just as the "a" to "u" difference is a biggie between Italian and Sicilianu. But I just find it amazing that with the world's obsession with Sparta and Spartans from film to video games, they don't ever really talk about their language differences as much as their other cultural differences. Most of the time they either speak modern Greek which is just plain wrong...or...they speak classical Greek of the Attic variety. Which is nice for their attempts to speak classical Greek while insulting when you about it....

[@mareksagrak9527]

@@unarealtaragionevole Actually the "α" instead of "η" is not even a Doricism it is a feature common for all non-Ionic Greek dialects - Eolian, Arcadocypriot, Doric.. Tsakonian has much more features that are exclusively Laconian/Spartan and truly indicate its origin. That's a pity that nativelang skipped them all (except for the pronunciation of υ)

[@unarealtaragionevole]

@@mareksagrak9527 Oh I agree 100% with that, but I also say that Nativlang's deserves serious credit for the video. I just wish it went into more depth, and there were more videos like it.

[@lefcant]

Luke, your long videos on these topics are utterly delightful and among the few long videos on KZbin I never for a moment struggle to get through, even having at times to pause to soak in the mind-bogglingness of e.g. geminated affricates making a syllable θέσει μακρά 😲or delighting at your comment about the distinction between the consonant in German "ja" and Greek «γεια» (I've seen whole German pronunciation dictionaries get this one wrong). Btw, I'm a bilingual German-Greek linguist with extensive training in the history of Greek, phonetics more generally and a mad love for all things English. If you're interested in modern Greek or German subtitles for any of your videos or any other input, please let me know. Thanks for all you're doing! -Leo

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Γεια! Χαίρουμαι που σ’ αρέρει τὸ βίδεο. Χάριτάς σοι οἶδα πολλά̄ς. That's a generous offer; please write to me at scorpiomartianus @ gmail

[@ethem8284]

in the Cypriot dialect χ becomes a /ʃ/ in certain situations and there's more changes like that

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Which is amazing. Long live the Cypriot dialect.

[@patmorris9692]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Cypriot has aspirated consonants too. And geminates. And other consonants too!!! It’s an amazing dialect. Tsakonian developed aspirates too. For example στόμα became like τχούμα.

[@ilianavoutou7367]

Loved this video and learned so much as a Greek myself. Thank you!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Ευχαριστώ!

[@ΔώραΠαπα-τ2ω]

❤

[@qualityvigilante599]

Hey, right from the start your pronunciation is amazing! You sound just like a greek dude! Νιώθω πολύ όμορφα όταν βλέπω ανθρώπους από όλο τον κόσμο, να δείχνουν τέτοιο ενδιαφέρον για τη γλώσσα και τον πολιτισμό των αρχαίων Ελλήνων! Συγχαρητήρια, είσαι υπέροχος! Χαιρετίσματα απ' την Αθήνα!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Ευχαριστώ πολύ!

[@johnsarkissian5519]

As a native speaker of Eastern Armenian, I find this whole discussion both fascinating and amusing. Apparently, Eastern Armenian has kept the three sound categories of Ancient Greek. It seems that I would have had no problems speaking an accent-free Ancient Greek but modern Greek with its affricates is certainly a problem for many speakers of Armenian.

[@Kolious_Thrace]

8:23 I was there 5 days ago!!! That’s the Hellenic monastery of St. John Hozevàs inside a gorge, 750 metres under the sea level. It’s near the city of Jericho in Israel. Amazing place!!! 6:35 Ουχ > ουχί From that derives the Hellenic “no” which is όχι/òchi. Everyone gets confused when we explain that Yes is ναι / né No is όχι / òchi 😂

[@twincast2005]

9:40 Native German speaker here. I distinctly remember pronouncing th as an aspirated t when I learned to read in kindergarten because that was how it was spelled. Or more precisely, I remember stopping doing so when I was exposed to the then-recent spelling reform (which for the most part I've always considered a massive improvement, particularly the ß rules, which I much later found out were actually undoing a change made by a standardization reform a century before, but I digress), as I was quietly embarrassed that I had apparently been wrong.

[@Runamoinen]

One note on the Cyrillic interpretations of the Greek theta > although Russian and Ukrainian opt for the fricative "F", modern Serbian and Bulgarian have the plosive "T" (I have quickly gone through some medieval Serbian sources, but found the actual letter theta). The beta/vita and phi questions are really interesting when comparing Serbian with its medieval renditions of Greek borrowings and Croatian with classical ones via Latin. (Vizantija vs. Bizant; Josif/Stefan vs Josip/Stjepan)

[@comradewindowsill4253]

oh, on the subject of greek theta becoming cyrillic ef, we can actually use this to track whether certain words came into slavic languages directly from greek, or through other sources. for example, greek mathematika, were it to be transmitted directly from greek, would become *mafimatika in russian- but in fact the correct translation is matimatika, with a theta having converted to a T, because the russian word passed through german hands first, where greek theta was written 'th', and pronounced 't'.

[@yurem588]

🤢🤮🤮🤮

[@marodrey]

Happy world Greek language Day!!!

[@TheJeffSnickers]

"Phoenix felix et tu; wouldn't you like to be a pepper too" that caught me off guard.🤣Great and informative video! I myself, as many others here, unfortunatly don't speak latin or ancient greek (even though I work as a student assistant for the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum in Berlin). But I do have a keen interest in the subject and thoroughly enjoy your content. Also I love modern greek and I started to learn it a while ago since I worked in Greece many times.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks for watching! I appreciate it, and the comment.

[@thekonkoe]

I’m a Native American English speaker who grew up speaking Greek with family. My mother can pass for a native in Greece apart from some odd word choices while her younger sister (my aunt) has a clear American accent, as do I. I live in China now, and of all the aspirates ph is the one I struggle to distinguish from p (both producing and perceiving), although I have a tendency to interconvert t and d when I shouldn’t. Something this video really has me questioning now is how I realize sounds like “f”. I’ve noticed when speaking English I typically realize “f” with my teeth on the tip of my lip, while when speaking Greek my teeth are inside my lip. What I realized reading aloud through the video though is that I must also have a different oral posture or something as I also perceive a small motion of my jaw rather than lip when making the sound in Greek words. Through the video I’ve also started to notice is I think the tightness of my lip changes depending on nearby sounds and that might make the sound slightly different, thought maybe that’s just my imagination. Anyone know what I’m talking about or what any of the terms for this would be so I can look into it?

[@golden_smaug]

Thanks for the time-stamps :)

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very glad they help!

[@dionysiapanagou6035]

I had to watch the video twice: once to follow all the information and once to enjoy the beautiful landscapes 😍

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Ευχαριστώ!

[@Zora3y]

thank you for all education and work.

[@driksarkar6675]

41:41 by this, do you mean that [θe:ka] and [xaɾta] were also used in Latin? Also, I'd like to add that for me, the [kʰ] allophone of /k/ is sometimes affricated [k͡xʰ], so this may contribute to the problem at 32:21.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Great question. The short answer is that I don't know. Something I forgot to mention is that, while Italian has "spada" (sword) from σπάθη, it's "espasa" in Catalan. The only way that could have happened is interaction with fricative Greek users somewhere in the Mediterranean, I would guess near the end of antiquity. However, the Appendix Probi, from the 3rd or 4th century AD - we're not sure - has "amfora, nōn ampora" in the very last line: la.wikisource.org/wiki/Appendix_Probi This tells me that, once the fricative pronunciation became so general that all Greek teachers were using it, Latin speaking grammarians compelled Latin speakers to adopt the "correct" (current) pronunciation of the erudite. As for the affricates in English, you're absolutely right; I hear this a lot these days, especially in American voices from the Midwest, but from elsewhere too. I suspect that this pronunciation will become normal in a century or too for most Anglophones in the US.

[@GuyNamedSean]

That point about which situations in English create aspiration just helped me produce the distinction way more clearly.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Awesome! Great job

[@watchmakerful]

By the way, in Cyrillic Ф and Х are always fricative, В is fricative as well (the corresponding stop uses a derived letter Б), Д (from Δ) is always a stop (!), Г can be either stop or fricative in different languages (Ukrainian and early Belarussian even use two varieties of this letter, Г and Ґ, for fricative and stop sounds). Early Cyrillic also had a Θ-like letter, also a fricative, later it merged with Ф and remained in several words until 1917.

[@RVered]

Both Ukrainian and Belarusian had the letter Ґ until the Soviet orthography reforms of 1933 when it was eliminated to bring both closer to Russian (which doesn't have it). Post-Soviet Ukraine undid most of the reforms and reintroduced it, but Belarus hasn't. However, much like the Ukrainian diaspora during the Soviet era, the Belarusian-speaking diaspora continues to use the pre-reform standard (Taraškievica) and, therefore, the letter Ґ. When you say "Early Cyrillic Θ-like letter," do you mean the Old Russian Ѳ (Fita)? It was only used in Greek loanwords and always sounded like Ф or T (F or T), as the TH sound doesn't occur in Slavic languages.

[@watchmakerful]

@@RVered >> When you say "Early Cyrillic Θ-like letter," do you mean the Old Russian Ѳ (Fita)? Yes, this exact letter. And it usually sounded as an ordinary Ф.

[@MikeOnTheHomestead]

This is my new favorite channel and has inspired me to learn Latin! ....I am 3 weeks in :P

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks for the comment! And thanks for watching the videos. I’m glad you find them useful. Hopefully the content on ScorpioMartianus is of help to you.

[@iberius9937]

EXTREMELY interesting talk about this subject that I will have to watch in parts, and sorry for spamming you with comments!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Comments most welcome, I appreciate them

[@qswaefrdthzg]

For Cyrillic the transition θ > ф is only true for the Russian recension of Old Church Slavonic, the Greek sound was originally written using a special letter ѳ (a medial font of Greek θ). In Bulgarian, the direct descendent of Old Church Slavonic, ѳ has always become т (cf. Теодор vs Федор).

[@choboltovski]

What's interesting for me that in old borrowings into Ukrainian Φ was transformed to /p/ like in Φίλλιπος → Филлипъ → Пилип, but in most later borrowings it became a /xʷ/ sound: Εύφημος → Ѥѵфимꙏ → Юхим, φόρμα → форма → хворма. For the most times Φ and Θ were mixed and pronounced the same way, so we have: Θεόδωρος → Ѳєодорꙏ → Федорꙏ → Хведір, but after so-called Second South-Slavic affection a lot of books were taken from Bulgaria and Serbiа, where Ѳ was pronounced like T, authors of Ukrainian grammars mixed two ways of pronunciation Θ and created a new one - /xt/: Μεθόδιος → Мєѳодїи → Мефодий + Методїй → Мехтодій. And even the name of the Greek letter Θθ and it's Slavic analogue Ѳѳ - θήτα had two ways of pronunciation: фита→хвита and тита+хвита→хтита.

[@drszlezi3694]

I'm really enjoying these Ancient Greek pronunciation syntheses! Here in Poland, people who are taught Erasmian pronounce φ θ χ and rough breathing as /f tx x x/, while the ones who use "reconstructed pronunciation" say /px tx kx x/. 😐 Also, while discussing the phonetic difference between voiceless and aspirate consonants, you don't mention that there are different degrees of aspiration (for instance, aspiration in English is quite strong), which may change whether someone can hear the difference or not.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

That's a very good point.

[@Mercie22]

@ 1:08, Okay, so they only way I can really remember the Greek Alphabet is if I say, Me Knee Chi; Moo Noo Chi is not a pattern that the brain wants to stick, and yeah, It's been awhile so I've since long forgotten and most people don't see how I O Phi are the same as SYS, or Soos (סוּס). It's all about glue, you know? or gamma. Anyway. on to the video! I'm on Ubuntu, and don't have additional keyboards added yet. Gamma + fire = letter, and @ 8:20 ish, yes. You're right, these are clarified with each letter. Each letter was clarified so the listener would understand the definition. You are not listening to the word, you are listening to the letters, which are words, that give the new word in-depth meaning. Typically this is agreed upon by a community, although some things should be understood: A made the B and at that time made the T, so he Worked (S), to preserve the good between the Beginning (B) and the End (Taw), which X (T) "Marks" the spot." "T" sound." E.g. Pass? or Past? @ TODAY(), IF("assuming the conclusion"=true, TCP/IP, 0)

[@alexeyleontyev1249]

One small correction about the Russian Cyrilic. Up to the beginning of the 20th century it did distinguish between ѳ and ф. In the Russian empire the word for Marathon definitely was Мараѳон not Марафон as it is todday. But you are completely right about the sound: the Russians did pronounce the both letters as f. In Ukrainian the situation is a bit different: there is a competition between t and f as reflexes of theta. Like in efir / eter for ether or Feofan /Teofan for Theophanes

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Indeed! You’re right; I should have specified the phonetic meaning

[@charak100able]

enjoyed every minute of this vid. khaire! 😉

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks for watching!

[@benavraham4397]

Absolutely fascinating!!!👍🥳

[@euklidacragas]

I am placing this argument here because for some reason I am unable to reply to Luke's comment below, is that an attempt to prevent Thrax from being shown verbatim? Luke Ranieri said: "The term μέσα does not imply they are fricatives (indeed, since the aspirates φ θ χ were not fricatives, but aspirated stops, the realizations /v ð ɣ/ would not be “intermediate” either). To wit, the Romans, who did not have fricatives for b d g, describe these letters and their Greek equivalents with the exact same term. Thus the term μέσα means specifically /b d g/. The mediae/μέσα are not intermediate to the other stops, but to true sonorants, continuants or spirants like σ ξ λ ρ μ ν that are called ἡμίφωνα, meaning “semivowels.” Said in another way, φ θ χ π τ κ /pʰ tʰ kʰ p t k/, which were all voiceless stops (aspirated and unaspirated) were all perceived at one end, and semivowels like μ ν at the other end, and β δ γ /b d g/ were μέσα, middle, intermediate on that spectrum." In reality: Thrax defines the mesa(β,δ,γ) in respect to the psila(π,τ,κ) and dasea(φ,θ,χ) quite specifically and quite explicitly, they are mesa(intermediate) in respect with the psila and dasea, not in respect with the hemiphones and aphona as you interpret it this text. And to alleviate any doubt, Thrax does so 'explicitly': Link: en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AThe_grammar_of_Dionysios_Thrax.djvu/10 "Of these, three are smooth, κ, π, τ; three are rough, θ, φ, χ, and three are medial, β, γ, δ. [b]The last are called medials because they are rougher than the smooths, and smoother than the roughs. And β is the medial between π and φ, γ between κ and χ, and δ between τ and θ.[/b] The roughs stand related to the smooths thus: φ to π-ἀλλά μοι εἴφ’ ὅπῃ ἔσχες ἰὼν εὐεργέα νῆα· χ to κ-αὐτίχ’ ὁ μὲν χλαῖνάν τε χιτῶνά τε ἕννυτ’ Ὀδυσσεύς· θ to τ-ὣς ἔφαθ’, οἱ δ’ ἄρα πάντες ἀκὴν ἐγένοντο σιωπῇ." Now English B as a plosive stop in Erasmian and Lucian, CANNOT be in between p and ph. It simply can't. Hence certain people's mental acrobatics on this as well as Allen's rather ridiculous confusion of equating hemiphones with fricatives. LMNR, fricatives? grouped with β,δ,γ? The pipe must have had some really good stuff in it. You claim that φ θ χ were not fricatives but plosives and so /v ð ɣ/ only make sense as intemediates if they are. Thus agreeing at the very least with my spectrum, which also explains why you insist on φ θ χ being plosives, cause if they are not, neither are β, δ, γ αnd that ends all reconstructions(including your own) once and for all, thereby ending the Erasmian tradition and effectively wiping it off the map. So this is life & death for those who have dedicated their lives on Allen's fallacies. Teodorsson already took the vowels, so these 6 consonants are ALL that remain for Erasmians. The fact that b,d,g do not make sense as intermediates in either case does not seem to bother you, nor does it prevent you from treating them as plosives. More importantly, in this video, you cite Kantor who proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that χ was a fricative since at least 4th BCE Codex Vaticanus. You also cite numerous evidence for φ θ χ as fricatives as well. All that evidence you throw away as 'coincidence'? While the fact that no evidence for plosive b,d,g exists, this you bypass completely. On one side we have a real language telling you they are fricatives, we have evidence they were fricatives from Kantor, Buth, Teodorsson that you accept as valid, we have Thrax and Halicarnaseus, whose grammar(psila, mesa, dasea) does not make any sense unless we treat these letters as fricatives. On the other side we have zero evidence these letters were plosives and we have in fact a lot of evidence to the contrary. Yet somehow this makes more sense to you than the opposing argument. Why so much bias towards b,d,g? PS: Did you delete this reply which I sent 2 days ago?

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

I have not deleted any of your comments or replies. My response to you remains the same: you are simply out of your depth, and you need to read the majority of books I have cited here and elsewhere just to be on the same page, and taking extensive courses in linguistics would help a lot. Otherwise I feel like I’m arguing with a gentleman from the 1400s - however intelligent - that the four humors of Galen do not adequately describe human disease and health.

[@euklidacragas]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Cool thanks, I might not have clicked the blue button perhaps, I did try though(several times in fact) to place this reply again on your comment below before I made a new post here and I couldn't [place this reply there]. In any case, it is pleasing to know that you did not delete it. I would appreciate a more substantive reply though that just merely being condescending. After all what's the point of this?

[@not_milk]

As someone wanting to learn to read Coptic. I cry, thinking about how I read Greek with modern pronunciation, and don’t know where to compromise. If I retain my Greek pronunciation, I will have numerous duplicate sounds across letters in Coptic. And if I accommodate the Coptic pronunciation, I will end up having to aspirate all three Greek letters in order to remain consistent with how I see those letters.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Right, you see why I started to develop multiple pronunciation variants for the Lucian system that I talk about. More on that in a few weeks.

[@alsatusmd1A13]

Interestingly enough, the classical Attic aspirates used to be voiced in Pre-Proto-Greek. The distinction between voiceless and murmured consonants at the same place of articulation is even subtler than aspiration because they appear to have the same voice onset time.

[@berk1597]

Fascinating work!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks!

[@iberius9937]

Learning Homeric along with Modern and some Koine Greek, here. I'm quite indecisive about which pronunciation to STICK with, even though I can easily shift between pronunciation systems, though this is counterproductive for me. I REALLY want to use restored classical phonology for Homeric and Attic, but also wish to use modern pronunciation for consistency with my learning of modern. I ALSO wish to use restored Koine ( a la Randall Buth) for ALL Ancient Greek, or your suggested Lucian system. Oh, well. I may as well just use modern, if at least for the sake of consistency with my study of Neo-Hellenic.

[@argyrispouggouras3378]

If you want to stick with one, I'd suggest the modern greek then. If you're going to use a single pronounciation, use the one that'll allow you to understand and communicate with people who live in the same time period with you :)

[@CarlosGomez-tt4jh]

Oh my God, I haven’t watched your videos in a while and was NOT prepared for the new facial hair. What a trip! Looks good, though!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Haha thanks. It will be temporary since I’ll need to shave it for a future video. But then I’ll let it grow back

[@davidpitchford6510]

Excellent. Thanks.

[@stevenv6463]

I don't know if this video is just particularly clear and understandable or if after listening to you on the subject of pronunciation, I'm finally understanding everything but I am picking up wha you're putting down.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

That’s great, Steven, I’m really glad

[@alaksiejstankievicx]

1. It is not for the first time I see that initial zealous position becomes a much more nuanced and compromised one through growing up in the topic. It happen in many areas of expertise for me as well. 2. I was taught (or rather I learned myself trough the books as I never have a teacher in Ancient Greek and Latin) the Erasmian system with change to `th` as `t`, as there is no proper `th` fricative sound in Russian. However, exactly the studying of Ancient Greek taught me how to pronounce "th" in English, as in the school years it was traditionally taught it as between teeth "s" what is kind of very inconvenient movemently for me and many other and they stop to distinguish between "s" an "th". The clear reference in the books about the system of similarity of the 9 letters ("β", "δ", "γ", "π", "τ", "κ", "φ", "θ", "χ" ) guided me at first that this is simplification in Russian pedagogy for Erasmian, as well as I was able to finally pronounce "th" as fricative "t" (what perhaps is not true common pronunciation in English, but much better than merger between "th" and "s"). 3. In two my native languages (Belarusian and Russian) the г despite being same letter in Cyrillic are different: Russian has plosive sound and Belarusian has fricative (Ukrainian also is fricative but is additionally in different in place, it is not velar but rather uvular). There are words in each languages using different to common variant (in Russian it is "Бог" (which leads to "почить в Бозе" the expression properly, but not very often used, where the modern speakers of Russian lost almost entirely connection to Nominativ "Бог") in Belarusian words loaned from german like "гузік" and "ганак"), but they are not marked in script (usually, however in Ukrainian and Belarus "ґ" is starting used more and more often for plosive sound) , so people start to lose distinction. Me interesting in linguistic a lot now hear clear difference between fricative and plosive "г", however, I can attest it is still no so distinctive acoustically as "к" and "х" (voiceless variant of the same sounds). Which leads me to the question: how do real acoustic difference influence the evolution of languages? Because in the linguistic we so often focussed on human and its adaptable perception that sometimes we forget about the real physical characteristics. Like we are taught that proof of phonemic difference is minimal pair, which logically leads us that "і" and "ы" sounds are just allophone of the same sound (which functionally is so), however, even non-native speaker hears the essential difference between them produced by native-speaker (despite for them it is very difficult to reproduce it). Could it be that this acoustical similarity leads to "th" and "f" merger so often appears, and you have mentioned in your video? 4. I think we disregard too often difference in dialects, because as we taught this way: like it was PIE and it split to satem and centum langauges, from which branched families and langauges modern to us. However, very probably neither PIE nor any stage of its evolution were big enough uniform glosses. 5. I attest on usage of German in Berlin, that for dialects it is also additional force for evolution and interaction. Namely it is function as identity, which leads up to "artificial" use of dialect: I mean when some real feature of dialect subtract is applied to literature norm to produce "dialectal" form. So it is more like langauge game. I have heard very often people saying "Juten Tach" for special effect reason, despite their normal Berlin dialect was much more subtle and closer to Hochdeutsch. I'm curious with so high intensity of communication and travel inside Roman Empire could such tendency in underscored dialect also existed, leading language evolution processes as well.

[@MenelionFR]

Cool you told about the difference between fricative Г pronunciations in Ukrainian and Belarusian. Unfortunately many people (both natives and learners) don't hear the difference, and many Ukrainians also started pronouncing this sound as in Belarusian which is not pertinent to the Ukrainian phonology. That's just to say thank you. I'm glad I'm not alone :).

[@alaksiejstankievicx]

@@MenelionFR if we are talking about difference between two fricative Г in Ukrainian and Belarusian it worth to add even more details: 1. as with any sound in any language it is more like range of possibilities than something fixed, so both velar and uvular Г is native and possible in both languages. However, at stage when current common language formed, in Belarusian a velar and in Ukrainian an uvular variant were much more spread. So it is kind of overlapping distribution but with different focuses. I myself remember a guy at university whose Russian was entirely produced trough Belarusian phonology (i think even unconsciously), but he has namely uvular Г. 2. Languages are evolved (constantly), it could happens that phonology will change for the Г as well. It is nothing specially bad, the only true non-grammarnazi way to preserve some feature create quality content using it, by which people will be influenced. it is also possible that it will be not shift of focus in distribution, but increase of spread. Like both uvular and velar variant becomes frequent enough. Something like that happens to German: it has now three normative (if simplified) realization of phoneme /r/: uvular trill (distributed in conservative varieties), uvular fricative (the most common) and alveolar trill (characteristic to old theatre style), and plenty variant in between and this is only for Hochdeutsch without touching dialects. And both Belarusian and Ukrainian are now at situation of essential changes, as it always happens when languages receive plenty of new carriers. Just observe them it is historical times.

[@leoamarino]

since hindi has a 4-way stop contrast, I'd argue an even better living-language model than Hindi for the greek stop systems would be Eastern Armenian, since it has basically the same 3-way stop contrast for velar, alveolar, and labial consonants as ancient greek. the same goes for many other languages of the caucasus, though I should note that in many of those languages, including some dialects of eastern armenian, the voiceless unaspirated series is also ejective. I'm sure Luke knows this bc he mentions armenian and georgian orthography. I'm sure he used hindi as an example because it's more widely spoken but I wanted to add this for anyone interested in modern languages with similar contrasts.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very cool

[@MARIOSTHEpunky]

An interesting point in modern greek is the reserved form of the d sound of delta and not the fricative that is accompanied with the appropriate change in spelling. for example the word ανήρ του ανδρός τον άνδρα is mainly in its coloqial form written άντρας and pronounced andras or adras. Where ντ indicates the sound d. also the word Δενδρον is now δέντρο. in the last case we see the non fricative form maintained in the middle of the word but not in the beggining. These for me as a non-expert is similar to how the v and b sounds in spanish some time are indicated by b and v respectiveley, like vamos and bailar, compare these with volver and bueno. another interesting fact is the word βαινω and the word μπαινω. with μπ indicating the b sound whereas β the v sound. however these to words are the same have now a slightly different meaning but they are the same word one with reserved spelling but not pronunciation and the other with reserved pronunciation but not spelling

[@zoetkarel]

Fantastic and informative video!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks for watching!

[@georgios_5342]

23:19 funny how depending on context and era, Greek words can either show aspirate assimilation or dissimilation, which is the opposite effect 😂

[@raederle9070]

Hey Luke! I've been doggedly clinging to a classical attic asperates (as in 5th Century BC per your awesome videos) as I learn ancient Greek. (Because it's fun) I'm basically both a native French and English speaker so I understand the difference between asperated /non asperated consonants and your reminder that it shouldn't be exaggerated is super helpful - BUT though something like φιλόσοφος isn't a problem for me - I don't quite know what to do with say a θ before a nasal as in αποθνῄσκω. Any tips? Hmm for all I know you've already addressed this somewhere - uh-oh a good excuse to do another wallow in your pronunciation videos 😂 - but if you done it yet would love the PolyMATHY+ asperate how-to video!!!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Hi! Yes, I myself prefer speaking and reciting with aspirates as they make a lot more sense both pedagogically and historically. I’m pretty sure I have θν among there recordings: www.patreon.com/posts/116061131? Think of it as t+h+n, as a sequence of three consonants. With time, you’ll get the sound you want in rapid speech.

[@choboltovski]

What's interesting for me that in old borrowings into Ukrainian Φ was transformed to /p/ like in Φίλλιπος → Филлипъ → Пилип, but in most later borrowings it became a /xʷ/ sound: Εύφημος → Ѥѵфимꙏ → Юхим, φόρμα → форма → хворма. For the most times Φ and Θ were mixed and pronounced the same way, so we have: Θεόδωρος → Ѳєодорꙏ → Федорꙏ → Хведір, but after so-called Second South-Slavic affection a lot of books were taken from Bulgaria and Serbiа, where Ѳ was pronounced like T, authors of Ukrainian grammars mixed two ways of pronunciation Θ and created a new one - /xt/: Μεθόδιος → Мєѳодїи → Мефодий + Методїй → Мехтодій. And even the name of the Greek letter Θθ and it's Slavic analogue Ѳѳ - θήτα had two ways of pronunciation: фита→хвита and тита+хвита→хтита.

[@yccmzimmy]

just at 0:43... and I know i will love this! Put my like without esitation 😋 è il genere di video che amo, alla scoperta delle lingue antiche e della loro evoluzione! Grazie

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Grazie! Spero che ti piacerà tutto il video ahah

[@yccmzimmy]

​@@polyMATHY_Luke absolutely! but I am splitting into smaller slices, since it is not my matter, I am working in IT, but i am very curious about languages' evolution. But you deliver so many information in this video that i cannot absorb them all at once. But I am wondering how much study and preparation you had to do to prepare a video like this! Just the books that you mention would require a lot of time to be read, digested and connected together... my hat's off to you, tanto di cappello!

[@Sp-zj5hw]

Every person in order to call himself civilized should know one of the two Roman languages (Greek and Latin). I am fortunate to have a good level in both.

[@DesignerShark44]

Finally! I now know how to pronounce Greek roots so I can get an A in English!

[@alkishadjinicolaou5831]

Do we know the sounds of these letters in the standard Koine Greek in the 1st century A.D that is the language of the New Testament?

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Absolutely that is best represented by Romaic Lucian Pronunciation: kzbin.info/www/bejne/i4Lce3qjdtNmnZosi=wwwC0SSQoYgTrkJl

[@tristanholderness4223]

a discussion of Ancient Macedonian could have been useful as well. Whilst its status (either a divergent Greek dialect, or a separate but closely related language) isn't certain, it (at least in the ancient wordlists and personal names, but not in certain inscriptions like the Pella curse tablet which appears to be reasonably typical Northwestern Doric) generally uses beta, delta, and gamma for typical Greek phi, theta, and chi this was originally interpreted as evidence of a deaspiration of the PIE voiced aspirates, retaining their voicing, as in Phrygian (where Greek instead devoiced them retaining their aspiration), but is now more typically believed to be an attempt by non-Macedonian speakers to render fricatives (likely voiced, at least allophonically in certain positions), which could explain why this shift doesn't appear in the actual inscriptions we have for the most part, as these speakers would simply consider it a perfectly normal phi/theta/chi and write it as such, whilst other Greeks would substitute the letter they considered closest given the evidence of a spirantised theta in Lakedaemonian Doric, I wonder if spirantisation of the aspirates might have been a broader Doric shift. If so, this could explain the dominance in the West (which was largely Doric, especially after the Pyrrhic wars bringing Epirote Doric over), whilst Asia Minor was largely Ionic & Aeolic, with the Greek of the greater Hellenistic world coming from an Attic-educated elite

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks for this comment; I've found it really illuminating. I went back to Horrocks (p.28-32) to examine the Doric evidence, and Elean even has ζ for δ before all vowels, not just front ones, like in the first Egyptian attestations of ζ for δ, so that dialect group might have been quite far along in the process. As for Doric in Italy, I just took a look at this map: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_dialects#/media/File:Magna_Graecia_ancient_colonies_and_dialects-en.svg Apparently the original settlers in the zone of Pompeii would have been Ionic, but assuming Achaean had similar traits to Doric (as it is generally assumed, being West Greek), plus an increase in Doric influence, as you note, fricatives for the aspirates could have spread quite a bit. But I don't know; it's endlessly mysterious. Hence my embracing of the possible variety for the sake of practical approaches in the classroom, as mentioned in the video.

[@VladTevez]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Interestingly, Livy describes (XXXI, 29.15): Aetolos, Acarnanas, Macedonas, eiusdem linguae homines

[@theskoomacat7849]

I think it's actually fine to try the best with what you've already got with respect to your native/L2 phonemes and only add or change things if you feel really comfortable doing so. For example hungarian doesn't have θ δ χ γ as fricatives akin to modern greek so we pronounce them as aspirated plosives. On the other hand we do possess the f sound, so we inconsistently pronounce the former letters as aspirated plosives but Φ as a fricative f, even though it is entirely within the possibilites of hungarian phonology to make an aspirated p. So in this case, I only need to change one sound to correct it in the direction of the ancient pronunciation but I would have to change way more sounds to make it sound like the modern greek. In other languages the case may be the opposite, therefore my introductory statement.

[@caenieve]

One thing I have found useful as a native English speaker is to imagine aspirated plosives the same way the Romans did when writing them. I think learning not to aspirate at all is a perfectly feasible challenge for an English speaker, and those of us with a Romance language under our belts may already do so by default in other languages. Then, when learning your initial ps- and ks-, just imagine ph-, th- and kh- in the same biphonemic vein. Of course, as with the affricate solution, there is a risk this will turn into heterosyllabic /p.h t.h k.h/, realised furthermore as [ʔkh ʔth ʔkh] for certain English speakers. But I don’t think this challenge is much more difficult than the /ps ks/ clusters, and if you _want_ to go for the Attic glam it could be a good place to start.

[@iberius9937]

My final individual comment (sorry!): Will there be a video about ήτα anytime soon?

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Haha I enjoy all your comments, thanks man. Yes there will be! I intend to cover all the letters.

[@StergiosMekras]

The dialect theory holds water, as even modern Greek dialects have different sounds. Especially the ones that carried over from antiquity.

[@JoCaTen]

You're about to bring many Greeks with this I might be the first one Speaking of Ancient Greek, I'm sure you're about to also bring literature students or even professors as well.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

That would be great if so.

[@stellakourtesi9609]

❤ ΑΠΟ ΑΘΗΝΑ ΧΑΙΡΕΤΙΣΜΑΤΑ !!! ... ΘΕΟΣ,ΘΕΑΤΡΟ ,ΘΩΠΕΥΩ, >ΔΕΟΣ,ΔΑΙΜΩΝ,ΔΙΑΒΟΛΟΣ,ΔΙΚΑΙΟΝ.>ΨΑΡΙ,ΨΗΝΩ,ΨΑΧΝΩ,ΨΕΥΔΟΣ ? THANKS A LOT FOR YOUR NICE WORK IN THE GREEK LANGUAGE !!! ΘΆΥΜΑΖΟΜΕ ΤΙΣ ΤΟΣΟ ΒΑΘΕΙΕΣ ΓΛΩΣΙΚΕΣ ΓΝΩΣΕΙΣ ΠΟΥ ΜΑΣ ΠΡΟΣΦΕΡΕΤΕ !!! ΣΥΓΧΑΡΗΤΗΡΙΑ !!!

[@micayahritchie7158]

31:54 or you speak an English creole that doesn't have aspirated stops so you had to learn how to say all the words you know with aspiration on the voiceless stops in the right position so you know what the difference sounds like so in your head you just have to code switch to pick the right one. Though admit I found voiced aspiration much harder when I tried my hand at Hindi

[@levirouse1701]

Eastern Armenian also has both aspirates and voiced stops as well as the unvoiced, non-aspirated stops. Edit: oh you bring that up later 😮

[@Demetrios123]

I like the map used for the thumbnail!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks! I drew the colors of the borders on it myself

[@brianm.9451]

I noticed this when I was studying koine. The pluperfect on deduplicated the the first letter of the verb. And, oddly enough, φ were deduplicated as π, χ as κ, and θ as τ.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Indeed! This demonstrates that the aspirates were of course stops, and also that Greek went through a stage that prevented duplication of aspirates in one word, hence ἕξω retains the initial etymological /h/ while ἔχω removes it.

[@Tapajara]

Something you may not know is that φ and ϕ have different Unicode encodings. The first one is in the Greek Alphabetic series and has the Unicode Code Point U+03C6. The second one stands alone and has the Unicode Code Point U+03D5. The first one I call “Alphabetic Phi” while the latter one I call “Mathematical Phi”. “Mathematical Phi” is most likely a carry-over from the ASCII days when standards organizations were trying to extend ASCII via the ISO and other extensions.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very cool! Yes indeed, while the Greek letter can appear variously, the IPA character is only [ɸ]

[@skywindow6764]

@@polyMATHY_Luke capital letter

[@jhynjhiruurekrap5725]

There's a really rather lovely parallel in modern Welsh. The voiceless stops (p, t, c /k/) are all aspirated (with a really rather annoying inconsistency with only t), but under aspirate mutation (treiglad llaes "flowing mutation" < Latin laxus; in actuality spirantisation) they become ph /f/, th /θ/, ch /χ/. This is the only place ph occurs in the language; /f/ is normally written as ff, even in loanwords with Greek origins, e.g. ffotograffydd /ˌfɔtɔˈɡrafɨ̞ð/ "photographer". When /θ/ and /χ/ occur elsewhere, they're still written as th and ch, e.g. peth /peːθ/ "thing", chwech /χweːχ~ʍeːχ/ "six". I'm not really sure why this is - /f/ is the only sound in the language that's written two different ways (well, not really, but there are good reasons for the others). I suppose it could be to help with recognising lemma forms; 'ffen' is much harder to recognise as a form of 'pen' than 'phen' is.

[@wordart_guian]

can't laconians have evolved tʰ>tˢ like english and danish? iirc modern tsakonian has /s/ for ancient theta, not /θ/ so i don't think it initially had it

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Ah indeed. Could be. See Allen p26

[@Michail_Chatziasemidis]

26:00 What about the situation in Athens around the same period?

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

I only have information as late as the 1cBC, but there we still have aspirates according to Teodorsson’s analysis kzbin.info/www/bejne/i5y7fXSbZ5J3grs

[@vitalitihomirov5781]

Th in Russian is replaced by F or T, depending on historic circumstances. For example, Feodor for Greek name, and Teodor for Spanish name.

[@Z1BABOUINOS]

That's also a *very* rare speech impediment for Greek speakers (Th replaced by F, Θ -> Φ ) My school mate had it, and kept it all his life.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very interesting!

[@iberius9937]

29:13 Definitely the οἶνοψ πόντος (wine-dark sea) and ῥοδοδάκτυλος ἠώς (rosy-fingered dawn) of Homer!!! Was this an obvious reference to that?

[@Κασσάνηρ]

In Cyprus they still call Θ , Φ with original sounds, and in modern Greek Θ/Τ Φ/Π Χ/Κ is still used interchangeably or are causing spelling mistakes. example: ΠροσΘέτω/ΠροσΤέτω Πτέρνα/Φτέρνα ΠροσεΚτικά/ΠροσεΧτικά.

[@apopet]

Πρόστετο; Τι είναι αυτό;

[@Κασσάνηρ]

@@apopet ορθογραφικό

[@apopet]

@@Κασσάνηρ Λέει κανένας "προστέτω"; Πρώτη φορά το ακούω...

[@Κασσάνηρ]

@@apopet "προσΘέτω" είναι το σωστό αλλά προφέρεται προστέτω.

[@apopet]

@@Κασσάνηρ Αυτό ρωτάω, από ποιους προφέρεται έτσι; Πουθενά δεν το έχω ακούσει. Τα άλλα δύο που έγραψες μου είναι γνωστά, αυτό όχι.

[@SchmulKrieger]

It's interesting. In German the evolution of the /pf/ started withe certain aspirated p sounds. Aphel, pherd etc.

[@Ded_Silu]

At 25:30 what is the name of the modern town?

[@Music-yx9uv]

Ancient Greek phonology is very similar to that of Armenian. I am Armenian and I can distinguish between all of Ancient Greek sounds which is also fascinating as Armenian is the closest living language to Greek. Also, Ancient Greek borrowings in Armenian preserve all original phonemes.

[@ardeshirmehta9327]

Excellent video. As one born and raised in India and fluent - or semi-fluent - in quite a few Indian languages, and as one who is _also_ fluent in Italian and modern Hebrew, having lived in Italy and Israel for many years, may I suggest a few additional things to consider? I have noticed in India that the "V" sound is often pronounced either as a "V' as in "Victor" sound or like a "W" as in "William" sound, _depending on the word._ And consider the fact that in Tuscany, the word "carne" is pronounced almost, though admittedly not _quite,_ like "harne": something that's not done in "proper" Italian or in other parts of Italy, especially in the north of the country. Could that sort of thing not have been the case in ancient Greek too? After all, languages start off as _spoken_ long before they are _written,_ and if slight variations of sound exist in a given language which do not have _exact_ written symbols to represent them, people just adapt, and use the written form which is _as close as possible_ to the spoken sound, don't they? Indian languages certainly have done this with regard to Arabic and Persian words which entered Indian languages after the rise of Islam, and which have now become standard words in several Indian languages, albeit written, in most cases, using the Devanagari writing system, or a variant thereof (Sindhi being a bit of an exception). I might suggest that both the "ph" and "f" sounds existed _simultaneously_ in ancient Greek, at least in certain times and places, as the "Phoenix felix et tu" reference seems to indicate. Likewise there may well have been cases of both "khronos" and "ḥronos" (in the spoken language) existing simultaneously and even in the same locality in ancient Greece. I notice that when Westerners who come to India learn Indian languages in order to interact more closely with rural Indians, they, especially when speaking languages like Marathi, tend to use affricates rather than aspirates, and yet they are easily understood by _all_ Maharashtrians. Could not that also have been the case in ancient Greece? And when we Parsis speak our peculiar yiddish-like version of Gujarati (and you may well be aware that there are a _great_ many similarities between Parsi Gujarati and Yiddish, especially when contrasting the former to _"shudh"_ or pure Gujarati and the latter to both German and Hebrew!), we are _easily_ understood by _"shudh"_ Gujarati speakers, though admittedly they do make fun of our ways of speaking (as I am pretty sure Germans do of Yiddish speakers, though probably not openly now after the Hitler era, which may come across as racist). Just some thoughts for your consideration, no more.

[@hamzaabdelhaleem5579]

Luke, I love your videos! This is great stuff, and I appreciate your effort into making this recondite content. Keep up the good work my friend.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks so much, Hamza, I’m really grateful for the comment and the support.

[@OneStepToday]

I feel very proud of the Hindi, since it is evident that its pronunciation has remained the same, although ph has become fricative now. They never taught us the alphabets are divided based on pronunciation, the children had to blindly memorize all of them. The only drawback is that it's not alphabetical hence writing is difficult and still we cant write it on phone, but Greek can be easily written which compromise with the pronunciation alteration.

[@servantofaeie1569]

They don't teach the periodic table-like organization of Brahmic letters in Indian schools? As an American who learned the Brahmic order with that in mind it made it very easy to memorize.

[@LinguarumFautor]

But that's the best thing about it!

[@Akuryoutaisan21]

Great work. Incidentally I use fricatives because i'm lazy

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks. You know, I used to think it was “lazy” as well, but both pedagogically and historically, it has a good amount of justification, depending what you’re after.