The greek letters (alphabet)

I find it a very interesting topic, the greek alphabet. Did it change with the evolution of the greek spoken language? Where are this changes reflected?

Originally posted by Arb�r Z Why would the greek use different letters like omega and omicron for the same sound? What about iota, ypsilon and eta?

Omikron means "small/little o" (o-mikron) and omega "big/great o" (o-mega). I think that in ancient Greek omega was pronounced different; like a long omicron. Similarly, iota, ypsilon and eta did not correspont to the exact same sound. [Those who know ancient Greek better that me are welcome to post more info on that or correct me if I'm wrong].
Today they correspond to the same sound.
Apart from pronunciation, omicron/omega and eta/iota/ypsilon were (and still are) "treated" differently for grammatical purposes. I'll give you a few examples from modern greek that I'm more familiar with ():
Verbs are ending on omega. Nouns or adjectives ending on -o, -os are written with omikron.
Feminine nouns or adjectives ending on -i (or -is) are written with eta.
Neuter nouns ending on -i are written with iota.

How many sounds does the actual demotiki language have? How many vowels, and how many consonants? What about the ancient greek (before roman occupation)?

For demotiki:
Vowels:
A        alpha                    like in March
E        epsilon                 September, seven
H/I/Y  ita/iota/ypsilon     three, six, analysis
O       omikron/omega    box, for
In addition, omicron and iota (oi) or epsilon and iota (ei) put together, correspond to the same sound with eta/iota/ypsilon. There is an exception, however: when a word has oi and we want to treat omikron and ota as two different sounds, we put two dots above iota [e.g. the word koroideuo=make fun of, in greek is written as κοροϊδεύω].
Finally, when epsilon is followed by ypsilon (u, υ) then, depending on the word, ypsilon is pronounced as f (foot) or v (vacation).


Consonants: (I will built on Giannis' post)

Edited by Neoptolemos - 12-Aug-2006 at 21:59

If you don't know the Greek language where you find all these informations regarding the phonetical sound of some Greek letters ?

Originally posted by Arb�r Z what about the voyel u, is it used only in the endings?

No, ypsilon (Y/u, Υ/υ) is used everywhere (beginning, endings, 'inside' the words), either for grammatical reasons or for orthography. Moreover, ypsilon is a "special" letter, in the sense that it is pronounced differently, depending on the preceding word:
- Normally it is pronounced like iota/eta.
- If it comes after alpha (αυ) or epsilon (ευ) it is pronounced like the english [f] or [v] (unless you put two dots above u (like in Arb�r), so it is pronounced normally like eta/iota)
- And sth that I should have written in my previous post:
omikron+upsilon (ou, ου)corresponds to the english letter/sound as in put; or the english [ou] as in could; or english [oo] as in look; and so on.
ou (ου) is used very often in the greek language

What about the glottalised k (like the third k in karaiskaki)? Are there any other sounds in greek?What about a strong R (often writen rr, like arriba in spanish)?

Regarding karaiskaki, the [ki] at the end sounds like "khi", with an almost silent [h]. There are many examples like this, involving many letters, not just [k]. I'm not a language/sound expert to explain this well to you and to identify all the different sounds, but I can tell you this:
Depending on the combination of letters in a word, a letter may sound a bit different from one word to another (it's a 'tongue' issue and I guess it holds for every language). Strong/weak consonants, 'open'/'closed' vowels, deep/sharp sounds and so on (I'm not sure if the terminology I used is correct ). It also depends on accents and dialects.
Examples:
- Thessalonikians pronounce the word Thessaloniki like there are three lamdas there 
- Peloponnesians pronounce the word ending [-li] in a different way than most of the rest of greeks; in a way that I can't explain it here, using just letters
- Or take the word Giannena (Yiannena). Some say a "clear" Yiannena (epsilon), some say Yiannina (iota), while for the average Giannioti (and many others) it's somewhere between epsilon and iota.


More to come if you are interested and you have more questions.


Edited by Neoptolemos - 13-Aug-2006 at 21:48

Originally posted by Arb�r Z So apparently the letters showing the same sound today, probably showed slightly different sounds to the ancients.

Arb�r the Greek language (vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, punctuation etc) has been evolving for thousands of years. Starting from the time that the Greek Alphabet was introduced we have: pre-Classical -> Classical [with several dialects in those periods] -> Koine -> Byzantine Greek -> Modern Greek. So it is safe to assume that if we could invite the great Socrates for a dinner and give him to read a text written in modern greek, he would pronounce (some) things differently. How differently I can't say. There are some theories (like the Erasmian) which claim that ancient Greek was pronounced very different from the modern one. Personally, (to put it politely) I believe they are exaggerating. The fact is that modern Greek pronunciation/phonology is very similar to late Koine, and whatever changes happened they occured during the early (and middle) Koine period.

What about sounds difficult to pronounce (for the greeks)? I heard them speaking english, and they have some difficulties pronouncing some sounds (like sh in share). What about the strong R (spanish - arriba)?What about the rotacised R (francais). What about french j (jambe)?what about the french U (sucre)?

Re share: It's not difficult to pronounce it but the point is that we don't really use this sound n the greek language, so we are not very familiar with it. Another example would be the english [r], which is different from the greek one.
Re rotacised R (francais): Greeks who can't properly pronounce the greek 'r', pronounce it like the french
Re french j (jambe): if it's the same with jamais, we can pronounce it.
sucre: I don't know it's exact pronounciation.
spanish - arriba: If it's like there are three r's there, we can pronounce it but we don't use it in Greek.

Originally posted by Arb�r Z But my interest falls on this slight changes, how could they pronounce those sounds?(I know this is a mystery, but its attractive to me. Which do you think are the documentated (written evidence) sounds used by the ancients that now lack in the modern greek?Like you said, there are some sounds which are not common in modern greek, do you think that any of them could have been used in some point of history?(and evidenced of course).

I would be very happy if I had the answers to those questions, but unfortunately I don't. Actually, I don't think that anybody could come with a definite answer. Of course reaserchers have come up with theories, and they will continue to do so (hopefully based on evidence), which is a good thing, but  I don't expect them to reach a consensus.  Anyways, I hope  people who know more than me will jump in this thread.


Edited by Neoptolemos - 16-Aug-2006 at 22:44

And another question, do you have any anachronisms (I mean words from the ancient greek which are still used but they sound inappropriate, or out of time, or unnecessary) in the modern greek language?