Quote Originally Posted by Ayce
Well, my native language is Romanian, a WYSIWYG language, so diphthongs do not transform into other vowels, like in Greek and French, but if I try to pronounce Greek words directly I don't find it ergonomic at all. I mean I can't see how a guy from that period could transmit information to another guy with any efficiency by talking like the guy that said a-i-gos po-ta-mo-i. In common speech you had to use some reading rules or spoken abbreviations or your tongue would tie itself into a knot.
Well that is subjective to personal experience, or rather inexperience. For instance if you travel up to Germany or the Netherlands, people who can read the Greek alphabet will have no trouble at all pronouncing it (with a bit of an accent, most likely, but still it'd be a piece of cake). Reason: their nativ e language is vowel and diphthong heavy as well, and especially so with Dutch relatively little simplification has occurred. French or Latin for instance will take more effort to master.