Ancient Greek phonology - Consonants

In comparison with the vowels, the structure of the consonant inventory of Greek has remained relatively stable over time as far as the number of distinctive sounds is concerned. However, the phonetic nature of many sounds is thought to have changed radically, as a whole set of plosive sounds has turned into fricatives. Ancient Greek phonology - Plosives. All the following sounds are thought to have been plosives in Attic Greek. Ancient grammarians (beginning with Aristotle, Poetics) collectively refer to them as See also:

Ancient Greek phonology, Ancient Greek phonology - Vowels, Ancient Greek phonology - Alphabetic representation of the vowels of Attic, Ancient Greek phonology - Diphthongs, Ancient Greek phonology - Consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Plosives, Ancient Greek phonology - Other consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Doubled consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Syllables, Ancient Greek phonology - Accent, Ancient Greek phonology - Types of arguments and evidence used in reconstruction, Ancient Greek phonology - Internal evidence, Ancient Greek phonology - External evidence, Ancient Greek phonology - History of the reconstruction of ancient pronunciation, Ancient Greek phonology - The renaissance, Ancient Greek phonology - The nineteenth century, Ancient Greek phonology - More recent developments, Ancient Greek phonology - Bibliography

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The above information is based on a large body of evidence which was discussed extensively by linguists and philologists of the 19th and 20th centuries. The following section provides a short summary of the kinds of evidence and arguments that have been used in this debate, and gives some hints as to the sources of uncertainty that still prevails with respect to some details. Ancient Greek phonology - Internal evidence. As is the case whenever an alphabetic script is devised or adopted for a langua ...

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Ancient Greek phonology, Ancient Greek phonology - Vowels, Ancient Greek phonology - Alphabetic representation of the vowels of Attic, Ancient Greek phonology - Diphthongs, Ancient Greek phonology - Consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Plosives, Ancient Greek phonology - Other consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Doubled consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Syllables, Ancient Greek phonology - Accent, Ancient Greek phonology - Types of arguments and evidence used in reconstruction, Ancient Greek phonology - Internal evidence, Ancient Greek phonology - External evidence, Ancient Greek phonology - History of the reconstruction of ancient pronunciation, Ancient Greek phonology - The renaissance, Ancient Greek phonology - The nineteenth century, Ancient Greek phonology - More recent developments, Ancient Greek phonology - Bibliography

Read more here: » Ancient Greek phonology: Encyclopedia II - Ancient Greek phonology - Types of arguments and evidence used in reconstruction

Ancient Greek phonology - The renaissance. Until the 15th century (during the time of the Byzantine Greek Empire) ancient Greek texts were pronounced exactly like contemporary Greek when they were read aloud. From about 1486, various scholars (notably Antonio of Lebrixa, Girolamo Aleandro, and Aldus Manutius) judged that this pronunciation appeared to be inconsistent w ...

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Ancient Greek phonology, Ancient Greek phonology - Vowels, Ancient Greek phonology - Alphabetic representation of the vowels of Attic, Ancient Greek phonology - Diphthongs, Ancient Greek phonology - Consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Plosives, Ancient Greek phonology - Other consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Doubled consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Syllables, Ancient Greek phonology - Accent, Ancient Greek phonology - Types of arguments and evidence used in reconstruction, Ancient Greek phonology - Internal evidence, Ancient Greek phonology - External evidence, Ancient Greek phonology - History of the reconstruction of ancient pronunciation, Ancient Greek phonology - The renaissance, Ancient Greek phonology - The nineteenth century, Ancient Greek phonology - More recent developments, Ancient Greek phonology - Bibliography

Read more here: » Ancient Greek phonology: Encyclopedia II - Ancient Greek phonology - History of the reconstruction of ancient pronunciation

In Ancient Greek one syllable of a word was normally accented. Unlike Modern Greek, this was a pitch accent; in other words the accented syllable was pronounced at a higher pitch than the other syllables; Dionysius of Halicarnassus states that the interval was approximately that of a fifth in music. In standard polytonic orthography (invented in the Hellenistic age, but not adopted universally until Byzantine times), the acute accent (ὀξεῖα) is used to indicate a simple accented ...

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Ancient Greek phonology, Ancient Greek phonology - Vowels, Ancient Greek phonology - Alphabetic representation of the vowels of Attic, Ancient Greek phonology - Diphthongs, Ancient Greek phonology - Consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Plosives, Ancient Greek phonology - Other consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Doubled consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Syllables, Ancient Greek phonology - Accent, Ancient Greek phonology - Types of arguments and evidence used in reconstruction, Ancient Greek phonology - Internal evidence, Ancient Greek phonology - External evidence, Ancient Greek phonology - History of the reconstruction of ancient pronunciation, Ancient Greek phonology - The renaissance, Ancient Greek phonology - The nineteenth century, Ancient Greek phonology - More recent developments, Ancient Greek phonology - Bibliography

Read more here: » Ancient Greek phonology: Encyclopedia II - Ancient Greek phonology - Accent

Attic Greek phonemicaly contrasted long and short vowels. The vowel inventory of Attic Greek, as reconstructed, contained five short and seven long vowels as distinct phonemes. Their exact pronunciation at any particular period is difficult to establish with precision but the following scheme proposed by Allen (1968) is generally accepted. The following tables show the vowels in IPA notation together with the corresponding letters of the Greek alphabet, as us ...

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Ancient Greek phonology, Ancient Greek phonology - Vowels, Ancient Greek phonology - Alphabetic representation of the vowels of Attic, Ancient Greek phonology - Diphthongs, Ancient Greek phonology - Consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Plosives, Ancient Greek phonology - Other consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Doubled consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Syllables, Ancient Greek phonology - Accent, Ancient Greek phonology - Types of arguments and evidence used in reconstruction, Ancient Greek phonology - Internal evidence, Ancient Greek phonology - External evidence, Ancient Greek phonology - History of the reconstruction of ancient pronunciation, Ancient Greek phonology - The renaissance, Ancient Greek phonology - The nineteenth century, Ancient Greek phonology - More recent developments, Ancient Greek phonology - Bibliography

Read more here: » Ancient Greek phonology: Encyclopedia II - Ancient Greek phonology - Vowels

Ancient Greek had a large number of diphthongs. All of them were closing diphthongs, ending in either /i/ or /u/ as a semi-vocalic offglide. The first element of the diphthong could either be short or long. This gives the following inventory: The dipthongs (δίφθογγοι) developed differently during and after classical times. Two of them, ει and ου, had already b ...

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Ancient Greek phonology, Ancient Greek phonology - Vowels, Ancient Greek phonology - Alphabetic representation of the vowels of Attic, Ancient Greek phonology - Diphthongs, Ancient Greek phonology - Consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Plosives, Ancient Greek phonology - Other consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Doubled consonants, Ancient Greek phonology - Syllables, Ancient Greek phonology - Accent, Ancient Greek phonology - Types of arguments and evidence used in reconstruction, Ancient Greek phonology - Internal evidence, Ancient Greek phonology - External evidence, Ancient Greek phonology - History of the reconstruction of ancient pronunciation, Ancient Greek phonology - The renaissance, Ancient Greek phonology - The nineteenth century, Ancient Greek phonology - More recent developments, Ancient Greek phonology - Bibliography

Read more here: » Ancient Greek phonology: Encyclopedia II - Ancient Greek phonology - Diphthongs