Philemon Zachariou

One could reasonably describe growing up as the process by which one ascertains just how much one has been lied to throughout their lives. And now I learn I’ve almost assuredly been led astray about how to pronounce Ancient Greek throughout my life.

Reading and Pronouncing Biblical Greek: Historical Pronunciation versus Erasmian by Philemon Zachariou is not at all subtle about what it’s about: it’s on crusade against Erasmian pronunciation of Attic/Koine Greek.

For context: Attic/Koine Greek, like Classical Hebrew and Classical Latin, are generally reckoned as “dead” languages. Sure, there are modern versions of Greek, Hebrew (and Ecclesiastical Latin remains a thing), but we are at least fifteen hundred years removed from when those languages were spoken. When learning said languages one is taught a way of pronouncing them which purports to be the best representation we can imagine: for Classical Hebrew, based on the Masoretic vowel pointings of the first millennium; and for Attic/Koine Greek, especially in academic settings, is Erasmian, based on De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione written by Desiderius Erasmus in 1528.

Zachariou represents a very different school of thought, no doubt influenced by the continued beliefs and practices of the Greek and the Orthodox. To him Erasmian was a major digression rooted as much in anti-Byzantine sentiment as anything substantive in pronunciational differences. In this work Zachariou argues for the “Historical Greek Pronunciation” to be best reflected in modern Neohellenic Greek.

The author marshals a lot of interesting evidence. Without audio recordings it is difficult to ascertain how a language is pronounced; the author will point to common misspellings throughout the Classical and Koine periods to suggest similar sounding vowels or letters. The author sets forth the theory of the last major shifts to happen in the pronunciation of Greek took place in the Classical period when Attic speakers took on certain vowels from the Euboean dialect of Greek, and he argues for strong consistency in the pronunciation of Greek ever since.

The author is aware of the strongest argument against his premise: with as much change languages tend to go through over time, can it really be well sustained that Greek sounds almost exactly the same after 2000-2500 years? He makes his arguments to resist comparisons with other languages.

I am not well-versed enough in all the conversations to be able to well adjudicate between the various positions, but I can understand enough to believe that Zachariou should be taken seriously. And even if I may not be entirely sold on the premise that Plato, or the Apostles, could find themselves in modern Athens and be able to fully understand the language being spoken, I absolutely can believe Neohellenic would make more sense to them than the artificially constructed Erasmian pronunciation. The author should compel all of us who learned Erasmian to grapple with an important question: why do we trust in the opinions of a 16th century Dutch scholar with a decent enough understanding of Greek for his time but by no means a master of all things Greek when it comes to how we pronounce the language?

If I can find the time I am now quite interested in learning more about Neohellenic and would be willing to try to adapt how I thus pronounce Greek; if nothing else, it would provide the opportunity to make living use out of the learning of the language I have devoted countless hours to studying and reading.

I am definitely interested in hearing about opinions on the pronunciation of Attic and Koine Greek from those who have studied it more in depth.… (meer)