The Greek Alphabet

[pic]
The alphabet is among the few linguistic elements that have remained essentially unchanged between the Classic and Modern Greek languages. Before listing the letters, let us make a brief comment on the pronunciation of the language, as it evolved through the millennia.

Pronunciation

How close is the sound of Modern Greek to that of Classic Greek?
Phonetically, Classic Greek would sound rather alien to contemporary Greeks, but don't ever say this to them! It is an issue that most Greeks, even educated ones, ignore. I suspect it is because the alphabet has remained the same, so Greeks can read classic texts with no trouble (pronouncing in Modern Greek). After all, it all looks Greek to them! If any (non-Greek) scholar attempts to pronounce classic text in the reconstructed (Erasmian) pronunciation, that, to Greeks is tantamount to sacrilege. As a contemporary Greek myself, I can give my personal feeling for how the Erasmian pronunciation sounds: it is as if a barbarian is trying to speak Greek. For example, take the word "barbarian" itself (which is of Greek origin): in Classic Greek it would be pronounced [barbaros]. In Modern Greek, it is [varvaros]. In general, the second letter of the alphabet, beta, was pronounced as [b] in Plato's time, but was changed to [v] by the time the Gospels were written. Now, to the modern Greek ear, [v] is a soft sound (a "fricative" in linguistics), sort of smooth and gentle, while [b] is a hard one (a "plosive"), kind of rough and crass. The same can be said about the letter delta, which was pronounced as [d] by Plato, and as [th] (as in this) since around Christ's time, and the letter gamma ([g] in Classic Greek, [gh] later [pic]the latter sound is a "voiced velar fricative"; click here to see the full repertoire of Modern Greek sounds). Greek readers of this text who do not believe that Plato, Socrates, etc., were sounding so barbaric, may take a clue from this very word: "barbaros" was coined