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I tried the mod yesterday and would like to congratulate whoever made the Greek voicemod. I was expecting with horror that it would be in moddern Greek accent and was indeed pleased to hear it in clear (not blurbed English-like), correct ancient Greek accent. So congratulations again!
P.S. I am a Greek myself if anyone wonders.
That would be me Tiberius. Thank you very much for the kind words. I tried to make it sound as correct as I can, at least.
Great work, Keravne, I knew it must have been a Greek doing the voices, because they sound very clear indeed :)
Now as to that:The Greek academic community does NOT support that ancient Greek sounded like modern Greek. From the very first year in uni we were introduced to the correct way of pronounciation which does NOT 100% coincide with "Erasmian" accent. This mainly has to do with the matter of true diphthongs, since some diphthongs like "ei" and "ou", in some environments, which have been written as EI and OY after the early 4th century, were not written thus before, but as E and O respectively. So "EINAI" was actually written "ENAI" before the spelling reforms. This shows they were not actually diphthongs, but Erasmian pronounciation again for reasons of convenience makes no distinction of these.Quote:
Why the greek academic community has a 180 degrees stance to all the others?
Why Greek kids are being taught one way and NONE from abroad reacts?
If we are wrong why none from the global academic community has not even stated anything to his Greek colleages?
Im baffled with the whole thing since its like we live in a ghetto with no communication with the outside world....
Foreign academicians don't react, because they don't care and why should they. And again I have no idea where you get the "noone has stated anything to his Greek colleagues". They don't need to, because if you have attended 4 years of Greek uni and actually attended even 10% of the classes on linguistics, Ancient Greek and epigraphy/palaeography/papyrology, you would know that Ancient Greek sounds a whole lot different and there is good evidence to support it.
The whole pronounciation of ancient Greek in a modern Greek environment is a matter of convenience; we use the same script, the same orthography and we are just too damn lazy to learn to pronounce what is perfectly Greek to us ( ~;) ) in a way that reminds most modern Greeks of Norwegian.
I hope that helps to clear things a bit.
So if I correctly understood the "EI" and "OU" is wrongly pronounced "EΪ" and "ΟΟΎ" by the foreign academic community? Like the word "ΗΠΠΕΙΣ" was written "ΗΠΠΕΣ"?Quote:
Originally Posted by Tiberius Nero
Then its wrong to pronounce it as "Hππεΐς"? So there is a disagreement at that topic?
Also is it OK for the Erasmian pronounciation to change things for its convenience (as you said) and not OK for us to do the same?
Despite Shigawire's sad attempts to make fun of me (that sadly for him lowers himself) Im not bashing anyone....Im just trying to find the truth and the reasons for the current situation in Greece....
In "Hippeis" actually yes, in that case of the ending of third declension nouns the "ei" is not a true diphthong and this is the reason you also have the spelling ΙΠΠΗΣ (as for the title in Aristophanes' comedy). The -ei ending of verbs is actually a true diphthong on the other hand, pronounced correctly as -ei. OY as in the word meaning "no" is indeed a true diphthong correctly pronounced as "o-u". -ou as the ending of 2nd declension nouns like "theou" is not a true diphtong as per the case of -ei above. You can also actually see the Doric version of this ending as a long "o", an omega, in doric texts. "Theou" would have been written "ΘΕΟ" in Attic inscriptions before the spelling reforms. It takes a language historian to be able to tell where the diphthong is true and where not, if one doesn't have ready access to the testimony of pre 4th century inscriptions, and since all greek texts since the 4th century up to now have used pretty much the same spelling convention, in a foreign academic context, scholars don't make distinction of true and false diphthongs for reasons of convenience, because it isn't easy to tell on the fly which of the two it is.
As for whether it is ok for us to ignore the rest of the world for our convenience, I really can't say. Imo it would have been beneficiary for modern Greeks to adopt a stance of learners towards the ancient form of their language, which means to be ready to accept that it is a fundamentally different language, even though remarkably similar in more respects than any modern language is to its ancient counterpart (except Hebrew maybe). Most Greeks think that Ancient Greek is somehow part of their DNA and that simply needs to change, if more of us are indeed to learn the language in depth.
Γειά σου και πάλι Τιβέριε!
I am very interested in your views about the ancient GR voicemod. If you have some time and feel like it, do check the samples. I know I have made mistakes. Some were intentional, like the incorrect spelling of fricative F (which ancient Greek didn't have), when Hellenic speaking units flee, yet most must have slipped under the radar. I would love to get the ancient greek voicemod 100% correct, if I can.
Thanks again for setting the record straight!!!
The "Erasmian" pronunciation has always been a strawman that have been set up to be attacked, because the ancient pronunciation agreed upon today is a much more refined one, as Tiberius notes. Not the system from the 1500s that so many tend to refer to.
The Erasmian is very similar to the one agreed upon today, but not 100% similar.. For the voicemod, we did not use the pure Erasmian (1500s) pronunciation, but a modern perception.
If you have great difficulty seeing how this is even possible, miseducation occurs even today, in the best of countries as well as worst.
It depends on what kind of school you go to. Basic school will most likely teach you such myths, while higher education will tend to have a more refined view.
It's typically in basic schools where group delusions or historical myths persist.
Ok, Keravne, can you tell me which files to look for the samples in? I will do so when I find some time and get back to you.
Tiberius, some background:
I'm the one who organize all the voicemods
Teleklos Archelaou made the translations back in Jan 2005.
Keravnos recorded all the voices just recently..
I compiled it together and edited textfiles for EB 0.8
You will find the soundfiles here:
\EB\DATA\SOUNDS\GREEK\
:yes:
If you find things to correct, we'd appreciate it if you told us what you think we should use, and reasons for doing it.
Thanks.
Thanks for the vote of confidence; I will look into it and let you know, if I find anything amiss. :D
Thats one HELLOFAJOB!!!!
I don't know squat about Greek but its sounds awesome and totally different. I was begging to get used to KH speaking Lating and that REALLY bugged me. Nice to see that was fixed.Quote:
Originally Posted by keravnos
Like I said, EB is the S(beep)! :thrasher:
Yep, Shigawhire made it all possible. Teleklos laid the foundations for what you will hear. We 're a team. I MADE the voicemod, only so far as recording it and a very basic editing, goes. *Many commands are also done by me HEAVILY influenced by Xenophon. Kyrou anabasis books 1+2. Shigawhire handled the rest. Now, as for finding probable mistakes on the voicemod, do use the path he gives, put them all into either winamp or media player and let'em rip!Quote:
Originally Posted by Shigawire
Well, I just heard the Greek voice mod. I am not going to argue their validity since you guys know much more. But it struck me as very crude. Especially with all the fuss the Greeks made about their refined language.
Well, as to that this is a general, a leader of men shouting to his troopers, trying to get some basic things understood in the least amount of time, trying to get his voice heard over the noise of battle. We thought that was the best approach, and will stick by that.
Xenophon and his accounts were used for most of the commands you hear, a merc. recounting battle.
If you expect flowery prose and a calm voice, a battlefield is NOT the place to search.
First: great to see that it actually came into being, I can remember that thread we had here...
Probably mentioned before, but still: if a word ends on -oi (like prodromoi) it seems to sound as -o-i, rather than -oi. So it's a bit like French people not accustomed to English, trying to sound English... Weird.
Now, I thought this could have been because you figured out that in those days it was exactly that way. So I asked about it, and heard that the very reason scholars believe those sounds are pronounced as one (like in English: boy) was based on ancient texts such as Euripides' plays and Homer's Illiad. Question remains, why did the Ancient Greek Voice Mod take a different approach?
EDIT: You can hear this also in the Rome Total War\EB\Data\Sounds\Greek\units\agrianikoi_pelekephoroi file, 'watch' the 'agrianikoi' bit. It seems as if it depends, sometimes the -oi suffixes are pronounced as in boy, sometimes as -o-i. :inquisitive:
It sounds right to me as o+i. It just has to be pronounced faster together but the sounds are still distinct as o+i.
edit: Perhaps your confusion is because of the stress/accent: in agrianikoi the accent falls on the final -i of the -oi actually, so that is why it sounds weird to you probably ~;)
Hold your horses Keravne. I am not attacking you. The effort you put in this thing alone, regardless of what people think of its validity, is worthy of respect. Like I said, you guys are much more knowledgable so even if I believed that the pronunciation is not correct, you have enough evidence to wrap me up and send me home. :P
I was not talking about the tone of the language being crude, but the language itself. Is that Attic dialect? It is kind of hard to imagine Pericles giving his "Epitaphios" speech sounding like that.
Ummm... I am not sure what you mean, Cataphract, but this is really as close as to what we know Greek sounded like. If you find it crude, ummm, fine, what's to be done then? :P
There is a common misconception floating in the air that Greeks were to the ancient world equivalent to what the Eldar in Tolkien's universe are; well, no, generally, Greeks were quite ordinary people really, e.g. when they sneezed it sounded like sneezing, not like Beethoven's 9th.
Keravnos
IIRC Xenophon lived 100-150 years BEFORE EB's era...so having the pronounciation is like having modern Greeks sound like the rebels from 1821...:dizzy2:
What is the reason for not having teh HELLENISTIC pronounciation that albeit MOST of the troops had?
How many Seleucid/Makedonian/Ptolemaic troopers sounded like an Athenian philosopher?
Was the Attic taught to every general/officer?
Isnt the Hellenistic pronounciation more approriate to cover the era from 272 and onwards?
And last what about Tiberius' -EI=E aki OY=O cases? Are they valid so should ΗΠΠΕΙΣ sound like ΗΠΠΕΣ?
It should sound HIPPES with the second E sounding like the first e in German ablehnen. Also we don't have exact evidence about how Greek sounded every year in history. There are conventions that have to be followed and most of our evidence is for the classical period. And anyway, I find it unlikely that cataclysmic changes had occured so early in the hellenistic period and besides, those of non Greek stock who learned Greek as a foreign language pronounced it in unpredictable ways; in Egypt natives rarely make a distinction between t and d for example, as one can see from spelling mistakes in the papyri, they use them interchangeably, as it must have sounded pretty much the same to them, just like few foreigners today can actually pronounce modern Greek gamma and delta correctly.
Hear hear! :laugh4:Quote:
Originally Posted by Tiberius Nero
If some people think it sounds 'different' from what they 'expected' to hear - that is totally irrelevant to us. Indeed, EB has already squashed a number of historical misconceptions or myths already. Such as the misconceptions people have of Gauls. Only in EB, did they get treated as something more than "generic hairy barbarians." So, it's really a healthy sign when people admit they have no idea about X, yet complain that X "appear" or "sound" different from what preconceptions those people had about X. It means we are helping squash yet another historical myth or misconception, it's a sign that people are being educated.
But if someone DO know about X, and there is something specific they would do differently, we suddenly become interested in this - provided the argumentation is sound. Vague opinions is something that we simply do not care about. To my brain, vague opinions come across as "bzzrrt!" It's more fruitful to give specific and targeted criticisms, such as the diphtong-discussion.
It seems that you guys are so used to being attacked that you can't take a compliment. I pretty much expected this to happen. I clearly said that I do believe this is how the Greeks of the period spoke. But it sounds crude to my modern Greek ears. I am sure you will agree that modern Greek is much softer and refined "phonetically" compared to ancient Greek. I just said that is sounds crude to me, not that its not accurate. Is my observation so insignificant that you have to be aggresive?
Anyway, I would rather stop here. Congrats on the new mod release.
Oh, right, sorry, didn't know you are Greek, Cataphract. Yes it sounds a lot rougher than moddern Greek, to my moddern Greek ears too, that's for sure. But as to what "refined" in language is, this is one of those terms which cannot be objectively defined and therefore don't really mean anything; why is saying "vlima" more "refined" than saying "bleema" why is "evghenis" more "refined eugenees"? What are your objective criteria of establishing refinement? ~:)
Note that I am not arguing, I simply want to disspell some misconceptions so painfully common in our country and the more unfounded they are, sadly the more widespread.
Ok. First things first. Thank you Tiberie for all the hard work.
Short answer about dipthongs.... I thought it had become a non issue by the time we talk about, with the dipthongs sounding as you heard them in the mod.
Long answer...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_century_BC
4th century started in 400 ( Right when Xenophon was taking arec little trip through the middle east along with 10000 other naturalists...) If I immitated compeletely Xenophon, I should probably use it entirely, and try to find out the false/true dipthong thing.
However this is 272. The language has changed , but only some. Not in its wording but in the way it was spoken. In fact the only obvious difference to the previous one is that there are pneumata (This doesn't affect Greeks, since only non Greeks have troubles with the intonation that those pneumata were created to facilitate). Dipthongs also become double vowels. (they were single before, and became single again later, as I will show further down)
In fact if what I have read is correct, Native Greeks in the Hellenistic era tried to be MORE correct than they should. Hire Athenians to tutor their kids, have rhetoric classes in wherever Greeks could be found from Emporion to Baktria, and generally be SUPER correct, since, for the most part, correct pronounciation is what separated Hellenistic Aphentes, from subservient peoples. (Genetic exchanges being what they are in many cases...:laugh4: ) Hellenistic states, especially Arche Seleukeia and Ptolemaioi were becoming very much Greek Supremacists, which sped up their downfall among other things. One of the other consequences is that they tried conciously to pronounce and accent everything (hence the change from IΠΠΗΣ to ΙΠΠΕΙΣ).
In the greek voicemod, as I pronounced it I should try to be a bit more brief in the ending of each and every word with a dipthong... aka EIS or OI, basically every word. However, not doing that was conscious as well. Having been in the military, and a sargeant to boot, I believe I have an "ear" as to how a military order should sound. So I lenghtened, just a bit all orders. We 're talking half a second, or lower. Shorter ones just didn't sound right for a voicemod. Longer ones sounded right for my "grunt" ears. So the choice was a no brainer really.
To be able to further explain what diphtongs are about *to any non greek, or non greek educated reading this...
HIPPEIS you heard in the mod and its history...
HIPPES ... (In the Gallic mod it is EPOS, EPONES, same Indoeuropean root)
HIPPEES, or in greek ΙΠΠΗΣ, (attic greek lenghtened e, to ee aka η )
HIPPEIS, (after the dipthong alteration TIBERIUS is talking about
HIPPIS, Hellenistic Koine and Biblical Greek pronounciation.. 150 BC and on..
IPPIS, ... medieval and modern greek.
Tiberie, I had two ancient greek philologists friends of mine go through both the voicemod. One warned me of the dipthong thingie, but observed that by the time of EB, it would probably be a non issue. The other mentioned that at that time the Generals tried to sound like Orators, to shout to the world their 100% Hellenism roots and upbringing, even pronouncing subscripts in some cases, (as do I).
Thank you so very much about your input.
@Shigawhire, I know it is a given, still, thanks for the support,
@Kataphrakt, I wasn't aiming at you or trying to be harsh in any way. Just wanted to intonate my position. I really don't want you to think that there is any malice towards you, because there isn't.
@Hellenes, all your points have been answered earlier. I hope this here little account answers the rest.
If you will permit a joke...
One thinks I sound harsh, the other that I sound like an Orator, not a warrior, hell I must be doing SOMETHING right.
I'm sorry if that's the impression I gave you. You must have misunderstood me just as much as I misunderstood yourself. We appreciate your compliments. :beam:Quote:
Originally Posted by Cataphract_Of_The_City
I misunderstood your opinion that it sounded 'rough' - because it came across as a linguistic observation we ought to listen to, rather than the subjective observation which it was. Of course now that you have refined the opinion, it's clear you meant it as a personal/subjective observation. Of course, we are all egocentric when we make judgements on historical variants of our own languages. For example, when I listen to old Norse and compare it to Bokmål (modern Norwegian) - completely different languages! As a Norwegian, I of course observe that it sounds "rough." What do I mean by rough? I mean that it's difficult for myself to pronounce. Now, that is indeed not an objective criteria as Tiberius have pointed out. Because if I grew up in 900 AD speaking the old Norse, I would think the modern Norwegian sounded 'rough' - and would feel comfortable with Norse! It would most likely be easier for a non-Norwegian to be objective about the differences between Norse and Norwegian.
Ethnocentricism clouds the judgement for some of us, but egocentricism clouds the judgement for all of us. Despite the best intentions.
The Greek language, like all other human developments - in languages or technology, has had a development towards laziness. Too lazy to make the effort to pronounce Beta? Make it Veta.. Of course, it didn't happen consciously necessarily, but the tendency is the same as with technology - which IS conscious. Too lazy to learn to sling? Learn to use a Bow - too lazy to learn to use a bow? Use a musket.. etc etc. All human development has been towards simplification and less expenditure of human physical energy. From manual labour to automated factories. Our evolution is moving us toward expending more intelligence than physical labour.
What can I say. We humans are clever lazy buggers..
Thank you, Keravne, it is not hard work at all for me, I actually enjoy those kinds of discussions and wish I had the opportunity for more of them. ~:)
Now I am not sure if I have interpreted what you say correctly, but are you saying that after the 4th cen. BC spelling reforms, which orthographically meant writing a lot of the older long vowels as diphthongs, those vowels were actually pronounced as true diphthongs? This is a linguistic impossibility, not least because as you see the general tendency in languages (and the history of Greek bears witness to that) is towards simplification. If anything the true diphthongs themselves must have been on the way of being pronounced in the same way as the non true ones, i.e. as long closed vowels (like German ablehnen or bedrohen), not previously inexistent diphthongs cropping up systematically. I don't recall seeing this (reverse) tendency in any relevant language I have studied (like Sanskrit, Arabic, or Hebrew), if anything diphthongs tend to become contracted into long vowels in time. So the word "horsemen" would have never been pronounced HIPPE-IS, the universal appearence of EI in orthography, in places where you found true and not true diphthongs previously, is more likely signifying a variety of a long E distinct from the one which the letter H signified after the reforms. The same should apply to OY-O. So I think that for the period that interests us, probably the pronounciation of EI and OY as diphthongs should not be there at all in any context, those orthographic signs must universally simply denote long closed vowels (as in the examples from German I gave earlier). All these observations of course don't apply to AI and OI which are still diphthongs in the time period of EB.
Also as you said about the aspirates Φ, Θ, Χ those must have still been pronounced as voiceless aspirate stops and not fricatives (but you intentionally ignored that as you say, why?). Even by the end of 1st cent BC it must have been so, since I remember reading that Cicero was making fun in court of some Greek (witness? I don't remember) for not being able to pronounce Latin F but pronouncing it PH (Φ) instead.
You must have misunderstood or haven't listened to the sounds. We took great care to use the voiceless plosives of Chi, Theta and Phi. Not the fricatives. As a non-Greek outsider, I was able to spot many of the "mistakes" that Keravnos recorded, and I prompted him to redo them. This happened a lot, but Keravnos kept going.. Also with regard to acting. I thought the retreat sounds he made were not convincing enough, so I made him record over again. This happened some 5 times, and he kept going. Until his throat couldn't do any more.. Not to mention he was not exactly in good health when he was doing this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tiberius Nero
Only in some "retreat" sounds does Keravnos' native fricatives sometimes sneak in. But I think he came up with a rationalization for this.. overall though, I proof-listened to many of the sounds, and made sure these fricatives on the whole did not exist. :beam:
True I haven't listened to the sounds yet, and I am way too early in my pontic campaign to have come across many units, but I am pretty sure I hear FALANGITAI, not PHALANGITAI. :S I will listen to the sounds carefully then and come back to this.
There seems to be a misunderstanding here.
Teleklos and other members said that some Greek people complain about the voice mod again and again and that they are not respecting the efforts needed to be done for it. Well i cant talk for others, i ll say what bothers me. if EB said that ''we have this view on the subject, this is our work you can agree or disagree'' i would have absolutely no problem. The thing is that EB presents itself as a solid historical research project. Indeed its the most highly researched mod and members deserve every credit, BUT its a conclusion of opinions of the members that did historical research and sources they chose to base their work on not the absolute true. Why not? Cause we cant possibly know for sure we just speculate. So grabbing pitchforks and torches and burn the heretics that wanna discuss the subject and have a diffrent view is not the indicated way in my book.
There are many scholars and many opinions, you know... everybody has one. Even in Greece there are people that have the same views as your team. What i expected was a discussion where you discuss and prove to the point possible your case. instead we have people that propably cannot say ''goodmorning'' in greek writing aggresive posts that if they were mine i would be damned to tartarus by your admins.
Trying to say that people that not share your views exactly are nationalists, living in a bottle or have notions that classical greek are identical to modern greek can only be considered hits bellow the belt and demagogic tricks.
Shigawire accused me in twc that i built a case on just the ''bee'' ''bee'' if he wanted to sit for awhile and think what i posted (in terrible engleish i admit) and most of all knew greek he would understand my point. There are many other animals that in modern greek we changed the name but when we use the verb of its sound we speak the ancient the came from the ancient assigned sound. I cant recall how you call ΤΖΙΤΖΙΚΑΣ n english, its the characteristic summer bug. In ancient it was called TEΤΥΞ. When we reffer to the sound we use the verb ΤΕΡΕΤΙΖΩ which is the ancient form. I know that my english doesnt help so i hope Keravnos can make it clear.
My questions are to you and if you want you reply. Why all greek populations speak D and B the same way if there was an alteration affecting only greece?
If thre was a general transformation on the pronounciation of those dipthongs when did it took place? Is there a theory why it happened? Eclessiastic psalms are the very same since dark ages so i assume that the ''change'' happened earlier.
If we use a work case where soem englishmen will be called to speak modern greek, we will see that they tone the words wrong and pronounce the letters different as its expected. The same for a greek group trying to speak in short time fluent english. I spent when i was in Russia 10 minutes just to say ''lighter'' in russian and everybody laughed at the end. So if a modern englishman cannot speak easily modern greek, why a roman, gaul, iberian, persian wouldnt alter the sounds and adjust them to their accent?
I dont claim that i know the truth quite the opposite, im interesting in finding the truth and i seek a logical answer not ''it is, cause i am big scholar of that uni and i say so''.
And for the last time just drop those ancient=modern and nationalistic arguements cause i cant see how they serve the discussion especially when i dont reffere to such points at all.