🤦♂ERRATA & COMMENTARII 🧐 I have made further comments about this topic in a follow-up video on the secondary channel polýMATHY+ ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6upURiH37sk.html At 14:20 and 18:00 I wrote πεζών, but πεζῶν is correct. (This makes my comment about "ignore the accent" unintentionally funny on another level.) 18:35 Here I imply something that I should have stated more clearly: the reason we see πέσδων etc. in Sappho is because the Hellenistic era scribes knew ζ = /zː/ to be the normal pronunciation of their era, suggesting that Aeolic, or at least the pronunciation on Lesbos, still had ζ = /zd/, even in the Koine period circa 3cBC. Who knows how long that lasted. The Dorians evidently have /zd/ in the 2cAD, but that doesn't mean they still did on Lesbos. According to Velius Longus, /zd/ is a pronunciation in some dialects of his day. That could include Lesbos among other places, but that's not clear. Thanks for watching, liking, and sharing! It really helps the channel. 🏺
the audio was not very loud in comparison with other youtube videos, I had to increase the device volume. hard to say, but maybe 15% more volume may totally solve the issue in future videos
There is a fundamental problem here. The Greek Zeta is not derived from the Phoenician letter zayin but tsade. The Phoenician city which we call Tyre starts with a Tsade or Zeta. The original name of the city is hence Tsur pronounced.
Well spotted!!!Another question arise how this letter relates to the same sign Russians are using on their tanks in Ukraine right now and their arms!!! As well as the host is Russian who made the video, his accent made him stand out!!! ;)
@@jaguar5969 Z likely stands for "запад" (transliterated as "zapad") which means west and was originally put onto tanks to help distinguish what force they are of during the 2022 invasion, but has since then become a symbol used to show support of the war for the side of the RF
One of the best channels around. I started learning to read Greek because of your encouragement. I have been learning about latin in tandem. The two are essential as a single study.
Very clarifying. I'm Costa Rican and studied classical Greek at the main university here (40 years ago), and I always wondered why my textbooks (published in Spain) indicated two so different pronunciations for ζ, "ds" and "sd". Your video doesn't make the question exactly easier (!), but it does give a full explanation of a very complex issue. Because of my New Testament studies I have mainly become familiar with koiné, and while I had mainly settled for the [dz] pronunciation, I now realize [z:] would be better. ¡Muchas gracias!
Thank you so much again ! My pronounciation of "The animals are running", thanks to your videos, has changed four times... !!! But it sounds much better now than before, when a french modern speaker pronounced an ancient language like french.
Actually a lot of the modern Greek dialects have a semi-long or long z(ζ) and it's not just the voiced equivalent of s(σ). So retracted z not long, long or semi-long z and also a dz(only in a few modern dialects)
I find your thoroughness dealing with this problem fascinating, and you have certainly made a convincing case that both pronunciations existed. This change from an affricate to a spirant plus stop seems rather unusual, actually. I am really struggling to find another example from the history of the World's languages. Can someone help?
It was interesting to see the "dj" to "j" transition, which also happened in Chinese and is preserved in both Chinese characters and regional dialects. For example, in the character 店 (dian), the phonetic element in the character is 占 (zhan, pronounced like the name "Jan"), while in the Mandarin Chinese the character for "middle" 中 (zhong) is actually pronounced "dyung" in the Southern Min dialect, which is considered to be closer in pronunciation to middle-Chinese.
Couldn’t it simply have been the case that both /zd~z/ and /dz/ existed in spoken Greek but they just didn’t distinguish between the two in writing? edit: I just finished the video and you said pretty much that. I’m thinking that [dz] might just be an allophone of /z/ after a pause or nasal, similar to the /z/ and /ʑ/ in Japanese.
Try This Word please. -Kozmos . In my etiological studies of Geg Albanian the word is as follows : KO ZE MOS . KO is Time . Ze is Fulfill/Expand/Voice/Capture/Start/ MAS is Space/Parameters Makes sense. Time expands space
That is incorrect. Don’t believe those conspiracy theorists. This video gives the background you need: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BssRITzWH7Y.htmlsi=yaiTbT9Vx3byybcG
I was trying to to the thing you actually didn't recommend, that is trying to figure out the etymological origin of the ζ in various words... since, from a certain point of view, it doesn't really seem as difficult as figuring out the origin of "ει" in the words... (ζ is a way more rare letter), you may find it two or three times in an ancient hymn... And I actually notice that, fun fact, it seems that kinda most of ζ are coming from those PIE roots that would have naturally evolved into /dz/... it seems that *sd root are very rarer... And it's even more surprisingly if you think that the latter pronounciation managed to impose the "unnatural" metathesis at least in attic and doric (even though here it was often written σδ)... For exemple the doric verb you cited in the video, μελίζω... the root ίζω is from *id-yō and in doric we also have words like τράπεσδα for τράπεζα, where even here the etymological origin would suggest the sound /dz/... From Proto-Indo-European *tr̥-ped-ih₂ (“having three feet”), from *tr̥- (“three”, combining form) + *pṓds (“foot”). It really seems that, at a certain point, in certain dialects convension managed to modify the natural flow of the language. Phenomen that was put to and end with the koinè, where we find /z:/ which is kinda more likely an evolution of /dz/ rather than /zd/. Which, from a certain point of view seems kinda to prove that the /dz/ sound with its derivated /z/ wasn't really minoritary, but probably turned into /z:/ in many dialects well before the /zd/ variant vanished.
Thanks for the comment; that’s very interesting about the Doric τραπεσδα. We see similar spellings in Aeolic, or rather neographemes with σδ after the general Koine spelling ζ becomes /z:/, as in Sappho’s poems as transcribed from Hellenistic times forward. You’re right about the metathesis seeming absurd, until we see examples like τραπεσδα in Doric and πεσδων in Aeolic; they make no sense etymologically, but seem to prove the metathesis notion correct. Otherwise, σδ does not mean /zd/ but is just a way to writing /dz/ the affricate or indeed /z:/. Raphael Turrigiano came up with this idea, and I find it intriguing.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Yeah, you talked of this hypotheis in the follow-up video, but if i can tell you my feeling about it... i don't know, it kinda seem a bit... weird maybe? I mean it doesn't really seem to match with how the "pro σδ" grammarians and even Aristotle explain the sound. Furthermore even if the majority of the words seem to stem from those PIE and proto-hellenic root that would result in /dz/, there are a bunch of exemple that are undoubtlessly. Now, the thing is, these latter words actually are those that more often have a double way of writing them. Like the verb ἵζω with its doric variant ἵσδω or even the word ὄζος which you mentioned in the video has ὔσδος in aeloic and ὅσος(could it be an early mutation towards /z/?) in the Cretan dialect. This fact could actually indicate that MAYBE these specific words were actually written σδ in an early period and only afterwards, when the metathesis started to take place, they have started to be was written with the ζ? It's kinda difficult to say without doing a deep research but, my impression is that actually ancient greek has kinda been "artificially" messed up. I mean they tried to create certain writing standards that where not anyway universal for every dialect in the first place and that probably originated many other problems and misleading trascriptions, especially when later these standards not universal standards became somehow obsolete. For exemple, talking about the educated people who were taught that ζ was absolutely σδ, they could have actually started to read and pronounce that in that way even words that they already heard as /z:/ trying to restore a presumed more archaic double pronounciation, but forcing it everywhere as a universal standard. And let me say, this is a trend that survived even in modern Greek. They do certain thing just for the "canon" without contextualizing it. Like for exemple let's talk about the diaeresis, we have certain words that hava natural diaeresis and we don't have any problem with them, but there are some other words, in particular in the epic language, in poems and hymns, where the diaeresis was meant simply to indicate a separate spelling during the singing but... it doesn't forcelly mean and it doesn't make any sense to me to completely change the sound of a vowyel in a song just because you are making it longer or pronouncing as an independent syllabe. Let's take the word ευστέφανος /eustephanos/, we have the epic alternative form ἐϋστέφανος, now if we if we follow the common rule we should assume it pronounced as /e.ystefanos/, but doubt that a merely metric diaereis could change the phonem of the vowel when this diaresis was conceived. It is simply unnecessary and weird, it would seem to me more natural a reading as /e.ustephanos/... So... just to summarize, i have many doubt XD I think that a universal standard for this letter is kinda difficult to find, we can probably say that in classical attic at least SOME people (the educated people) were reading it as σδ, but it doesn't mean it was something common, for sure it wasn't natural in most the cases, but it could actually derive from a misunderstanding, or from an assumption they made about an earlier pronounciation that they had already lost in the common language. However long story short if we want to be absolutely sure of the reading, remaining coherent with the etymological and more natural evolution of the language, the best solution remains actually to analyze the ζ when we encounter it, there's kinda no other way since every possibility is open. We must say though, that the σδ phenomenon, even if coming from a misunderstanding or from a wrong convention, actually manage to impose itself and was widely used and accepted in classical attic. So in the end of the day, i think the choise relies on our tastes. Talking for me, i prefer to stick with the etymological accuracy... I can't tell you why but it kinda hits my nerves to pronounce /zdeus/ in place of /dzeus/, or /zeus/(i can totally accept both /dz/ and /z/) when i know it comes from dyeus xD
What I know as a Greek, interested in Greek mysticism, is that the god Zeus has two names because of his attributes. Ζεύς (ζεύξη - coupling, connecting, recombining, reconnecting) Διας (διάσπαση - dissolution, disconnection, decay). In other words, the two names of Zeus are two different words with different/opposite meanings and properties. These are the two principles of this world that are constantly interacting (αέναον). - "Solve & Coagula". Since what I know, contradicts on what you stated in the video, namely that the word Δίας came from a corruption of the pronunciation of the word Ζεύς, I simply quote them for discussion. Not sure. I wish you health and a happy new year. 😀
Hello Luke! I have a different question for you about Latin. Two nouns: "arx" "arcus" In paradigms dative and ablative plural of the first one is "arcibus" and the second is "arcubus". Can I use sonus medius in both of them or "-ibus" doesn’t come from "-ubus"?
You probably could. The standard spellings reveal both the etymology having i or u in the stem, and were reinforced due to the desire to dissoniate homonyms. Note a similar occurrence with ars and artus.
Fun fact: Also, the fact that ζ had as 'zd' or 's' could explain why the name of the prophet Ezra in the bible is 'Esdras'. However, the transcripton is "σδ" as in Έσδρας' not 'Eζρας'.
It could be, but more likely this, as Hasdrubal in Latin, is due to the s and z sounds being retracted in Latin and Greek, creating the epenthetic effect we also see in Spanish: homo > omre > ombre
@@polyMATHY_LukeSome Greeks pronounce Ιζδραήλ, even though we always write Ισραήλ. Ι remember a high-school history teacher I had struggling to pronounce Benjamin Disraeli's name and producing the tongue-twister Διζδραέλι!
Zeta was classified by Greek linguists as a double consonant, like ksi and psi. It therefore must have been dzeta with very light d pronounced rather like th in this. Especially since Greek always swapped consonants in favour of the most fluid pronunciation when combining words. Moreover it seems that a double fricative or sibilant was preferably pronounced as an affricate : thalassa = thalatta, which suggests ss = s(t)s. Greek affricates, like most strange consonant combinations (pneuma, chthon...) were produced by simultaneous double articulation, not successive.
I would beg to differ with you a bit about the mutual intelligibility of Attic and Koine. It might be easier if you know Attic and are trying to read Koine, but the other way around -- not so much. The grammar is a bit more complex, the inflection more ornate in Attic, so that one might well be obliged to use an analytical dictionary to sort out the inflection, even if one can for the most part recognize the vocabulary. I admit to having learned a rather peculiar pronunciation from Teach Yourself New Testament Greek. The pronunciation of ζ recommended there is "dz". They also pronounce ε as an open e, and η as a closed e; ο as an open o, and ω as a closed o. And... they pronounce the little hook under certain letters as ι. This is the only place I have seen this pronunciation, but... it's what I'm used to :) At any rate, it seems to me that the bottom line here is that what you need to do is pick one variant for the given context and stick to it for consistency.
Well done, Luke! Of course if you had not to pacify us (i.e. modern Greek speakers) every 30 seconds (explaining how actual modern Greek accent is), your video would be about 8 minutes shorter in duration...😁😁😁
Hahahaha. Well, I like Modern Greek, and Greeks, and I wanted this video to be accessible and useful for many kinds of people, including and especially those familiar with Modern Greek. Ευχαριστώ! 🇬🇷
ZHTA (dzèta) akin to xi and psi Ḍ in Aromanian, d>>dz>>z in Romanian. Or as I have elsewhere seen (zdèta) Cœnobites, who live in common. While TT sampa refers to ts. Z=Th is uncommon in Iberia. , it tends to be s... I wonder about Mn bd pt phth ps as a set of labiolinguals, and similarly. Gn, gd ct chth x.
In catalan, the J is sometimes pronounced like in English Judge, sometimes without the initial d addition. No idea how the variants have been in use. Perhaps there are even more variants?
Αγαπητέ Δάσκαλε...Could you analyze a small part of THUCYDIDES ? It is about the pronunciation of "oi"... «Θά ᾽ρθει πόλεμος δωρικός και μαζί του λοιμός». [2.54.3] Πολλές φιλονικίες έγιναν τότε, γιατί άλλοι έλεγαν ότι στον χρησμό δεν γινόταν λόγος για λοιμό (αρρώστια) αλλά για λιμό (πείνα), επικράτησε όμως η γνώμη ότι το σωστό ήταν λοιμός, επειδή οι άνθρωποι ερμήνευαν τον χρησμό ανάλογα με τα παθήματά τους. Why did they "φιλονικούσαν" about λοιμός / λιμός ? Only if the two words sounded the same for them could they discuss it.... or not? Thanks
They didn’t sound the same. They had the same consonants but not the same thematic vowel; in λῑμός it is a long ῑ and in λοιμός it is the diphthong οι. This is what’s called a minimal pair, and the joke is funny only because they sound similar but not exactly the same. If they were identical it would not have made any sense.
I believe it was never pronouced /zd/ Concerning osdos, think the possibility that d shifts first into a fricative and then this Z that comes from σ+δ is pronounced as a fricative too, maybe non-sibiliant alveoral fricative, so ΑΘΗΝΑΖΕ would have been ~At:εnαð̠e. It is a misconception that it necessarily had the same pronunciation in all environements.
Credo che nel greco attico classico debba pronunciarsi SDETA, o qualcosa di simile, o almeno così ho letto in un libro che si rifaceva a Vox Graeca di Sidney Allen
What's the history of the word זוג and its Aramaic and Arabic cognates? They look to me (not an expert on Semitic etymology, but I know enough to tell that he:צ=arc:ע/ק=ar:ض) like they came from a common ancestor, but they also look like Greek ζυγός or ζεῦγος. The last common ancestor of Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic was spoken before Abraham; was ζ /dz/ yet, or still /dj/ or what?
In Slavic, the g/dz and k/ts alternation are a result of the 2nd and 3rd (or progressive) palatalization. As a side note, Proto-Slavic seems to have had phonemic /c/ and /ɟ/ at some point, which have reflexes as /ʃt/ and /ʒd/ in Bulgarian, and as /c/ and /ɟ/ in Macedonian, but as /ts/, /tʃ/, or /tɕ/ and /(d)z/, /dʒ) or /dʑ/ in other Slavic languages. That looks weird
Haha yup, it’s pretty silly that Erasmian Pronunciation, since it’s different in every country. They should use this instead: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dQBpwKWnZAo.htmlsi=7sgTMVOA3XWS8sw-
In Crete where I'm originally from, I have noticed a phenomenon where ζ gets pronounced as γ and viceversa γ as ζ. There is a mountain close to my mother's village that is called Γιούχτας, which looks like a man lying down facing up, and I remember my mother told me that the name came from the belief that it was Zeus that lies Ζεύς + Τας. I haven't researched it more but it's quite an interesting story.
Ο κ.Μπαμπινιώτης θα εκδώσει ένα νέο λεξικό για τοπωνύμια, ίσως να γίνει αναφορά. Dr. Babiniotis is publishing a new dictionary about toponyms and will cover a great amount of information, Γιούχτας may be in it.
I'm afraid that's folk etymology, Γιούχτας /ˈʝuxtas/ the name of the Cretan mountain, comes from the ancient Cretan Ἰυττός /iyˈtːos/ possibly from the interjection ἰΰ /iˈy/ a shout, yell used in order to scare beasts (onomatopoeic). Ἰυττός > Ἰυκτός and with dissimilation Ἰυχτός and following the semivowelization of Ἰυ- /iy-/ > *jου- /ju-/ > Γιούχτας /ˈʝuxtas/
There is a common thing in Greek language to replace some letters with an other, like κ, γ, χ or τ, δ, θ etc. Like in the word θάλαττα = θάλασσα. That does not mean that the pronunciation of the letters were different. It was just a topical idiom.
In Griko it could be an influence from Italian though. Also in Cypriot Greek the allophone of Standard Modern Greek δ at the beginning of words is usually ζ c.f. ζαυλός /zaˈvlos/ for SMG δαυλός /ðaˈvlos/ = burning torch. In Cypriot Greek, ζ is pronounced as the retracted alveolar [z̠]
@@apmoy70 In Cypriot Greek we have a long or semi-long z, I speak Cypriot Greek, I don't think is retracted at all. Indeed we have words like ποζαύλιν, never thought of that, it may have to do with what Luke stated about ζ in Ancient Greek. Maybe it's an influence of Italian but Italian languages have the z sound.
It is a sign of quality of content, when you can watch 38 minutes on “Let’s find out which one of these three pronunciations is more accurate” for one letter in the language you don’t even speak or learn, end up hearing “Well you can do all three, can’t you” and still be amazed by the amount of work done, the pure research and the genuine effort of a creator. Thank you so much, this is fascinating!!!!!!
Your content never fails to amaze Luke. You've taught me so many stuff about my own language that I could never even imagine, let alone learn at school. You're a class of your own on RU-vid. Thank you for your work 👏👏👏
not only, it's used in other areas of the Dodecanese too, Kasos(dz, zz or in between), and Karpathos in some pronounciations and areas for sure and also in Greek of Salento.
I suspect that this pronunciation is common in the Eastern Greek dialect. As I mentioned above, country folk in Chios, before their speach was infected by standard (Athenian) speech, pronounced ζ as dz. I think I have also heard it so pronounced in Cyprus and Crete.
@@ioannismamoulakis2404 oh really Chios too? Interesting. Not in Cyprus, we don't use dz for z and it wasn't observed in the past either as far as I know but it's semi-long or long z not short. In Cretan I've never heard it but there are so many subdialects there and I'm not Cretan. Maybe in Eastern Crete which the pronunciation starts to resemble the Kasos dialect.
You, sir, are the only person I know of that has made videos about the exhaustive history of just one letter and it's pronunciation and has managed to make it so damn engaging!!!!
4:20 This explains why in Polish; Jupiter (planet) is called "Jowisz" [pronounced "yoh-veesh"] and Jupiter (god) is spelt the same as the English but pronounced "yoo-pee-ter".
Hey! Just wanted to leave a positive comment. Really like your videos, and reading some of the other comments by my fellow compatriots was genuinely infuriating... can't imagine having to reply to them. Have to say sorry for bearing the brunt of the quite frankly horrendous teaching of Ancient Greek in Greece. You've helped me learn the ancestor to my language more than school ever did, and I owe you thanks!
Love the mention of Sardinian at the beginning ♥️ "lunch" in the dialect of my town (Tonara) is pronounced "pragnu" with the "gn" sound close to Italian "gn" and Spanish "ñ".
The sappho argument is very convincing. Even in modern Greek, the combination of σ and δ or μ makes the σ sound like a ζ. (Eg. Εισδοχή, εισδύω, ασμένως, σμύρνα, σμίγω) So it further supports the hypothesis of ζ being σδ (zd).
Δεν έχει νόημα αυτό που γράφεις. Το μόνο που δείχνει είναι ότι το Σ προφερόταν ως /z/ σε κάποια περιβάλλοντα όπως και σήμερα, πράγμα που είναι γνωστό. Δεν αποδεικνύει κάτι για το Ζ.
@@apo.7898 Σωστά! Μα είναι και ο Συριανός που περιγράφει με γλαφυρότητα το που θα πρέπει να τοποθετηθεί η γλώσσα για να προφέρει το "ζ"· πίσω από τα δόντια ώστε σχεδόν να εφάπτεται, όπως τοποθετείται για την προφορά του "δ". Σε αυτήν τη θέση της γλώσσας, οι σχετικοί ήχοι που μπορούν να σχηματιστούν είναι πολλοί ("δου", "θου", "ζου", "ζδου", "δζου", "τσου", "τζου").
Dear Professor Henry Higgins, I don’t understand half of what you say but your video landscapes are fascinating ❤️ Would you mind inserting their locations in future videos? It’d be an immense added value to them.
Hi Khang! I’m glad you liked the video. This video follows some others that are required viewing, which is what I think you mean: IPA Vowels ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tpR5GdKXpGc.html IPA Consonants: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-olM1mm66YPw.html
What a great video. And some lovely views too!! Btw, in case anybody's interested, you mentioned that in Southern British English 'dune' and 'June' are pronounced the same. This is true. The same thing with the unvoiced variant with words like 'tune' and 'tube' being pronounced 'choon' and 'choob'. But this is not restricted to the south. It is common across most of England and Scotland. I am from the north-east of England (Durham) and this is our pronunciation too. Saying dune, tube and tune as 'doon', 'toob', 'toon' can be heard in some areas like Norfolk, parts of London and Wales but it's not common.
Thanks! Indeed, it’s not restricted to the south; I just happen to know a few people from Southern England who have this trait, so I didn’t want to over-generalize. Thanks for the comment!
@@polyMATHY_Luke 👍Hope to welcome you to Durham and Northumberland some day. You could visit Hadrian's Wall. And our glottally reinforced p, t and k ( p͡ʔ, t͡ʔ, k͡ʔ ) are to die for.
Un grande giorno per tutti qui 😍 Nagy nap mindenkinek itt 😘 یک روز عالی برای همه در اینجا Μια μεγάλη μέρα για όλους εδώ 😊 Granda tago al ĉiuj ĉi tie 🖖 Hyvä päivä kaikille täällä 😀 みんなの一日を 🌻 모든 사람에게 좋은 날 😉
Thank you so much Luke! I always thought it was dz (in Eastern-slavic languages we name the letter traditionally Дзета, DZEH-tuh). I've learned about the Zd thing quite recently and it's still surprising to me.
This was a great video, I don't even know nothing bout ancient greek and don't have any intention of learning it, but if I do I definitely am the type of person to do the thing where you have different pronounciations based on the etymology
10 месяцев назад
This occurs in many languages , I name it: “convergency” via simplification… it’s sad to see how many sounds we have lost in comparison with Ubykh that lost caucasian tongue with more than 80 sounds… but is the way to survive…
If those compounds predate the shift that merged etymological zd and dz, then they wouldn't really point to one or the other being the merged value, and so I think it's not unlikely that the merged value was /dz/ rather than /zd/.
In Chios where I grew up, the country folk, not yet infected by standard Athenian speech, still pronounced ζ as dz down to our own times. Thus they would pronounce Ζωή as Dzoi and call animals dzaa (ζα, δηλ. ζώα). On the other hand, there is no evidence that any Greek speakers has pronounced ζ as zd for a long time.
Hello Luke, greetings from Germany. I just wondered the other day, when I accidentally found out that omega is the big o and omikron is the small o and ypsilon is the simple i - and I had never seen this meaning as I never had been really interested in Greek so far-, what the Romans called the letters of the alphabet? I couldn't find anyhting googling it and I wonder if historians actually have any idea about that? Was it nearer to modern Italian or nearer to ancient Greek letters? Have you got any idea about how Romans spelled their words and names? Was Marcus spelled like emme-aa-erre-sseh-uu-esse or something completely different? And in particular how were c, h, q and y named? That would make a great video, I think..... just a suggestion. Best from Hamburg, love your videos!
Romans, unlike the Greeks, usually didn't give any fancy names to the letters. A, Be, Ce (pronounced as Ke), De, E, and so on Basically if a consonant you add "e" at the end. If a vowel just say the vowel long. Exceptions on the Greek letters like "I Graeca" (the Y) and the Zeta (often pronounced Seta by native speakers of Latin) This can be looked up in for example a beginner's book for Latin learners. Some books start by teaching the alphabet. Edit: I forgot the letter H. That has a fancy name, look it up :)
@@crusaderACR More precisely, Romans gave STOP consonants names consisting of their sound + E (BE, CE (=ke), DE...) and CONTINUANTS names consisting of E + their sound (EF, EL, EM...). The letters K and Q are exceptions for obvious reasons; Y and Z are exceptions because they were later borrowed from Greek and in principle only used in Greek loan-words. J and V were not distinguished from I and U in Roman times, and W, of course, did not exist yet. I have no idea what they called H (particularly those who didn't pronounce it :) ) or why they didn't call X xe or xi.
@@angelostsirimokos8104 Stop vs continuants is such a nice observation. I tip my hat off to you. The H was pronounced "hā" and the X as "eks/iks" I guess that a Roman that didn't often pronounce the H would've put the extra effort to pronounce it old school when reciting the alphabet. There might be more to this tho, considering daughter languages of Latin all call it ash/ache/etc.
@@angelostsirimokos8104 Ok i found the answer for H. After the name became indistinguishable from letter A in the end of the Republican period, the name of the letter was replaced for "acca/hacca," and from there comes the words we use in modern Romance languages. Why it was named acca is disputed. I mean, it breaks the nice consistency, right?
thank you so much for your interesting video! My native language Lithuanian is the most archaic alive Indo-European language, we kept the old word "Dievas" (God); etymology of this word "clear, cloudless sky"
P.s the word ζυγός is related to the sanskrit/prakrit 𑀬𑀸𑀸𑁂𑀕 (yoga) which means union (as in union with brahman), hence 'yoke' (I think that's how it's written in Brahmi Script )
@@polyMATHY_Luke yep I actually edited after thinking more deeply about it a few minutes later Haha. By the way, which came first: was it sanskrit or prakrit languages? I would really like to know
@@PurwapadaHi! Your question triggered my curiosity and I've browsed a little over the wikipedia entry: prākṛta and saṃskṛta seem to have been contemporary, between the 3rd cBC and the 8th cCE. Prākṛta, "natural", were a group of vernacular informal languages of the middle period of Middle Indo-Aryan languages, while saṃskṛta, "constructed" or "refined", was the formal language used by the higher classes for literary and religious purposes. In any case, all these languages were descendants of the Old Indo-Aryan languages, first attested in the Rig Veda, composed between 1500 and 1200 BC in Vedic Sanskrit. As the linguists try to go further and further back in time the picture becomes increasingly foggy very quickly, and the hypotheses more especulative. They've tried to reconstruct the predecessor of the Indo-Aryan languages, the Proto-Indo-Aryan language, in turn being descended from a Proto-Indo-Iranian language, which is the term coined for the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European; the hypothetical Proto-Indo-Iranians are assumed to have lived in the late 3rd millennium BC, with their language likely removed less than a millennium from its ancestor, the late Proto-Indo-European language, and in turn removed less than a millennium from the Avestan and Vedic Sanskrit of the Rigveda, its descendants.
Thanks for clearing up the confusion with more confusion :D I do love this though, it's fascinating to try and pick through manuscripts and see where possible errors may indicate a pronunciation. I'm learning Koine Greek and I'm currently going through a transcription of Codex Alexandrinus (5thC) and noticed that where words end with σθε or τε its scribe almost always wrote σθαι or ται. I also found that at least once in Matthew 25:35 he wrote με as μαι which seems to indicate that wherever this scribe came from the ε and αι might be have had roughly the same pronunciation. That kind of thing didn't occur to me until I started to watch videos like yours going into great detail on the subject - keep up the good work.
It's a mistake the semi-literate make all the time in modern Greek, particularly as both -τε and -ται are verbal endings (πίνετε = 'you (pl.) drink' and πίνεται = 'it is drunk' are homonyms)
@@angelostsirimokos8104 That could be what's going on there. It is interesting to see what seems like a fairly modern error from a manuscript that was made about 1500 years ago. A fair bit has changed in Greek between the end of Koine and the beginning of Demotic Greek but there's one error that may not have.
I enjoy identifying the sound changes that may occur in the development of a language - how speech defects or laziness or rapidity of speaking or "fashion", etc, can lead to sound changes which over time become "standard". Your video introduced me to ss => tt in certain words in certain Greek dialects - like the divergence of English and German t and ss from proto Germanic forms: white/weiss, foot/fuss, etc. How/why does this happen? Fascinating!
Note that those Attic ττ that alternate with σσ in other dialects come from prehistoric palatalized gutturals (or, more rarely, dentals): compare φυλάσσω/φυλάττω with φύλαξ, φυλακή etc, πράσσω/πράττω with πρᾶγμα/πρᾶξις, φράσσω/φράττω with φράκτης/φραγή, ἅνασσα with ἅναξ, νῆσσα with νήχομαι... (originally *φυλάκ-jω, *πράγ-jω, *φράγ-jω, *άνακτ-jᾰ, νῆχ-jᾰ, cf στέλλω
@@angelostsirimokos8104 Thanks! And so we walk back into history (or up the Tower of Babel), when our ancestors spoke the same language. Isn't it marvellous?
That's what I always wondered about. As if in a century later the English words, "hey" and "yeah" would wholly replace their counterparts "hi" and "yes." And may even be taught in schools.
Some extra details on modern greek: is still a geminate in some varieties like Cypriot Greek and Griko. Also, funnily enough some dialects turned s: and z: into affricates ts dz (γλώσσα παίζω > γλώτσα, παίτζω), giving the impression that the sound's remained unchanged. Finally, Tsakonian, being a descendant of Laconian Doric Greek, has /d/ where every other Greek variety has . This /d/ was a geminated /d:/ < /dj/ in Laconian Greek. Compare the Tsakonian word for root /Si**d**a/ to Modern Greek /ri**z**a/, both from ProtoGreek *wridja.
Fascinating video; I consider myself somewhat of a language geek and am fluent in modern Greek, but never knew there was a ζ controversy. And although I had wondered about the reason for Ζεύς/Διός, I had never heard an explanation for it. Much less the connection between that and Jupiter! (Oh - the goals don't not "jive" - they don't "jibe.") 🙃
i loved it when you spoke Latin to folks in Roman today. was fun seeing them baffled, thinking there was something wrong with you and then figured out what you were saying--mostly
saepissime confundit me, Luci. Numquam scivi si pronuntianda zeta ut 'z' anglica, lusitanica, et cetera an 'z' italiana. Maximas gratias tibi, Luci, donum dei nobis es.
Thanks for the interesting content - and a highly fascinating channel. I only stumbled across it today when it turned up in my RU-vid recommendations, but will subscribe immediately 🙂
I'll watch te rest in a moment (I've paused one minute in) ... on Christmas Day I had lunch with the Greek side of the family, and he was having a bit of a go at me for my Erasmian pronunciation, but rather than the usual "you're wrong!", we had a great discussion about it. It centred around the pronunciation of -ει (I see you have a video on that which I'll watch next)
Herodotus writes the dacian god zalmoxis both with z and s which suggests it was pronounced as something in between or related in dacian and both approximations are possible but neither is perfect. While we don't know what dacian sounded like, it suggests greek zeta and sigma (without the following delta) could be used to partially approximate the same foreign sound, possibly ts affricate (which would point to zeta being pronounced dz, having the affricate quality, while sigma having the unvoiced quality) but maybe just plain modern z (which would also point to zeta being pronounced dz, having the voiced quality, while sigma having the non-affricate quality). if both zeta and zalmoxis were pronounced with plain modern z, there would be no ambiguity in Herodotus' rendering. Being a speaker of language which has both z and dz as separate phonemes, I understand how dz can be perceived as a single sound, and how it differs from sequential pronunciation of d followed by z. Also I know some languages related to mine have metathesized dz/dž affricates to zd/žd (or maybe my language did the opposite) Also it is interesting to me how you clearly pronounce "wh" pair as unvoiced /hw/, which I thought was ancient, but at the same time pronounce "thanks" with voiced th, which I thought was a modern trend. language evolution is funny and complex.
True! My voicing of “thanks” could be a modern phenomenon, but its wide distribution from Australia to Wales to England to the US in about 5% of speakers suggests that it may be inherited, ultimately from Old West Saxon (which gives us vixen (we did not inherit vox), instead of Old Anglian fixen/fox. I inherited this pronunciation of “thank” from my mother, as did my sister and my sister’s children, and my mother inherited it from her mother. Since it flies under the radar without anyone noticing it most of the time (unlike other speech irregularities), partially obscured by the ambiguous “th” digraph. My use of voiceless “w” is entirely learnëd; I only started doing that when I began practicing Shakespearean pronunciation: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gi7IyqOjarA.htmlsi=7pHvjHEBj33q7doX I discovered it still existed in native speakers of 21st century English, so I revived it in my own speech. As for zalmoxis, I’m inclined to guess the native sound was /z/, thus either /zd/ ζ or /s/ σ would be inadequate approximations and thus explain the spelling variation. I agree with your assessment. Thanks for the comment.
A must watch is the film *Z* (1969) by Costa Gavras starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Yves Montand, Irene Papas and Jacques Perrin, awarded which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, based on real events
You actually sound very British than American and your accents almost approximates to English RP. It was only when you said you were American that my eyes lit up and I’m British. Lol
Ancient Greek Z: Well, if we judge by ΕΛΠΙΖΩ, which comes from ΕΛΠΙΔ-JΩ, we must conclude it is a strongly palatalised sound equivalent to the French J. The same phenomenon is observed in French (Vulgar Latin ADJUNCTARE, Fr. AJOUTER), Portuguese (Vulgar Latin ADJUTARE, Port AJUDAR, Russian (originally VIDJU (ВИДЮ) becoming VIZHU (ВИЖУ)=see) and others. In Italian we have a palatal plosive (Latin ADJUNGERE, It AGGIUNGERE. In Greek too, by the way: DJEUS sounding ΖΕΥΣ (palatal Z). SD is nonsense. You just can't get ELPIZDO from EΛΠIΔJO. Such a thing occurs NOWHERE IN THE WORLD, like it or not.
actually, it happens in bulgaria. for example, межда = mežda "lane" goes back to indo-european medʰyā. bulgarian developed a жд, щ=/žd, št/, where the closely related macedonian has ќ, ѓ=/c, ɟ/
