Society For The Oral Reading Of Greek And Latin Literature (sorgll)

Since someone asked a while ago how Latin was pronounced I thought I would post a link to a website with audio files of speakers reciting some famous excerpts of Latin as well as Greek.

http://www.rhapsodes.fll.vt.edu/

My first suggestion is to check out the Greek section just to see how drastically different it sounded from Latin. That pitch accent is trippy. Aristophanes is a must listen.

As far as the Latin - Vergil is a great listen; as is Cicero. Watch out for elision though. However, that first Martial poem... those Romans had a great sense of humor.

Aristophanes has got himself one trippy poem there!

In fact, all of the Greek stuff is messing with my head.

I enjoyed the Latin though, and despite not speaking the language, I managed to follow some of what was said when reading the English along with it.

I'd really liked to have learned Latin, but not being a Catholic or a Public Schoolboy, never got the chance.

Yeah, it IS a great link and well worth installing Real Player for. It isn't up to me to pass judgement on the Professor speaking out the Ancient greek, let us just say we have some slight differences regarding pronounciation of certain dipthongs. Besides being an "orator" speaking before a gathered crowd, isn't the same as being a general speaking before your troops, a lot of whom aren't going to make it.

I love the word dipthong!

The pitched accent in Aristophanes is actually Voice acting (imitating birds). Then there's the metre - which especially with modern perfomers - tends to distort some dipthongs. I heard at least one instance of EI being pronounced as I. Furthermore it uses a good deal of synizesis - which, actually gives it a more colloquial touch. ("Gonna" instead of "Going to" for example.)

If you compare the Aristophanes sample with Alkman... that too has undergone a heavy deal of Voice acting; but it ends up quite the reverse (imitating yawning, to assert that everything is asleep in the text).