classical Greek pronunciation w/out IPA

[callunav]

Sorry to be difficult here. It's becoming clear to me that I need to learn IPA, but since there are about a hundred other things on the list of things I need to learn - including Spanish, lock-picking, and Linux - it may not happen soon

Comments

[merirustryfe]

Sorry, I can't really help with the Greek, but I'm here to vouch for IPA. :D

It really is worth a TON to learn it, especially if you're studying several different languages. Heck, I even learned stuff about English that I never realized before, and English is my native language. I've found the general study of phonetics/phonology immensely helpful in my efforts to learn French, Russian, and Japanese.

And once you get into it, it's really not so difficult. In fact, you could probably find all you need to know on a website somewhere.

Anyway, good luck!

[peacebone]

I think it would be along the lines of ee-ah-keh-eye-ruh, but I'm lousy at reading Greek when it's in Roman letters, and without accents, macrons, et cetera, I can't say anything about stressing or syllable length, as I don't know the word in question myself, and I haven't been studying Greek for very long.

People who are more familiar with the word are welcome to correct.

[oddcellist]

The Greek in question is Ἰοχέαιρα, so your intuition is pretty good. I'd transliterate the omicron slightly differently - I'd say something like ee-oh-KEH-eye-ruh, but I tend to be pretty sloppy about my vowels (the iota would probably slide over into a glide, if I'm being honest, and I use [x] as often as [kh] for chi).

[iohanne]

There's an aspiration, isn't there? On the first syllable? It should be approximately the "h" sound in English. Because of that apostrophe thing.

[theonides]

I found it in Liddell & Scott. Forgive me, doing HTML code takes too much thought this time of night; it's spelled: iota-omicron-chi-epsilon-alpha-iota-rho-alpha, with the accent on the epsilon. So it should be pronounced something like ee-o-keh-eye-ruh as a previous commenter suggested. But that short o is not like ah. It's further back and rounder. In my dialect, it's more like caught, but I know most Americans don't distinguish between that and cot. Just try not to make it sound like alpha would by itself. A Latin short o would be better than making it sound too much like alpha. And a nice breathy k. Later Greek turned the chi into the ch in German ich.

Liddel & Scott say it means "shooter of arrows".

Pronouncing Greek names in English

[lysimache]

To add to what others have said, if you're trying to pronounce it as a name in English, rather than in Classical Greek (i.e., if you're writing about Artemis in an English-language essay, rather than reading a line of Greek poetry or something), the stress rule is a little bit different than just 'where the Greek accent was'. One takes the Greek name, puts it into *Latin*, and then stresses according to the *Latin* rule. (It's just how things are traditionally done, for historical reasons.)

Iocheaera (to give you the Latinate transliteration) would be stressed on the diphthong 'ae'/'ai' (sounds like English 'eye').

You'll find this rule generally followed for ancient Greek names in English, regardless of where they would've been stressed in Greek.

Re: Pronouncing Greek names in English

[lysimache]

As an example: In Greek, my username has the accent on the penultimate syllable (Λυσιμάχη = lue-sih-MAH-khē), but to say the name in English, we pretend it's a Latin name, and in Latin, the penultimate syllable is light, so we stress the antepenult (lie-SIH-muh-key), among other changes. :P

Re: Pronouncing Greek names in English

[lysimache]

Good to know! I wasn't sure about other languages than English-- I know the spelling can be different (particularly in French; makes searching for articles or whatever rather irritating!), and I wasn't sure if it was the same 'pretend it's a Latin name' rule.

[bernmarx]

Since IPA is easier to learn than any of those other things, and would give you a head-start in learning Spanish (the IPA vowels that look like standard letters [i e u o a], are pronounced the same way in IPA as in Spanish), start there. :)

I took Japanese after I took Phonology, and my pronunciation was head-and-shoulders above my classmates.

ok

[asura_000]

there are phonemes that are Pronounced differently when native speakers are using poetry or are relaxed and in rapid normal speech.

Re: ok

[bernmarx]

That's true of any language.