Aoidai 3: Homeric Hymn XXIX, line 1, word 3: πάντων

[justben]

In the first installment of the Αοιδαί project we began a word-by-word examination of Homeric Hymn XXIX to Hestia. It begins:
ἑστίη, ἣ πάντων ἐν δώμασιν ὑψηλοῖσιν

Today we continue with the third word, πάντων. It is transliterated "panton" and pronounced "PAN - ton". We'll translate it roughly as "of everyone".

Comments

[kallistos]

Due to the presence of the Omega, it should be pronounced PAN-tone. PAN-ton would imply the presence of an omicron.

[justben]

Thank you sincerely for your reply! I'm grateful to know that I have readers paying attention, and especially ones eager to correct me when I make the inevitable error. I'm sure I'll need that check as this project continues.

In this case, though, I'm going to have to disagree with you. W Sidney Allen in his excellent text Vox Graeca goes into some depth on the pronunciation of ω in ancient Greek. While he admits the possibility that it was pronounced similar to English "tone" (though he suggests French côte as even closer), his final recommendation for this letter is in favor of a sound more like English (British, I presume) "saw".

If you have a copy of the book handy, the relevant section is on pages 75-79.

[kallistos]

I don't have the book handy unfortunately.
However, every single book on learning ancient Greek, as well as Koine that I have read and studied from are quite clear that the most common pronunciation of O-Mega is along the line of "Oh" though I suppose Cote would apply as well. I've never read a description as Saw before. That is very interesting.

However, I don't see -ton being close to saw. Since we can't be sure how it was pronounced, a disagreement is not necessarily fatal.

[justben]

They sure do. There are a handful of letters and constructions where classics texts teaching the language to new students will recommend one pronunciation, while scholars studying how the language was pronounced by its native speakers will come to very different conclusions

[justben]

Whoops! I left off my response to the second half of your comment.

Phonetic transcriptions have plagued linguists and lexicographers for a very long time. Linguists created an international phonetic alphabet so that they could discuss more precisely the sounds of human speech. For average English-speakers, though, we're stuck resorting to the irregular sounds of English. And as you point out, sometimes it takes more explanation than will fit into a short one-or-two-letter dictionary-style pronunciation guide. That's why I supplement my short pronunciation guides with a sound file and with a whole pronunciation section. And though I didn't talk about this difference in this particular pronunciation section, I suspect we'll see a few more omegas before I'm done. :-)