Part 2

But what of the pronunciation? After what has been shown of the living continuity of the Greek tongue, from Byzantium downwards to the present day, there cannot be the slightest doubt that Greek orthoepy should be treated in the same fashion that the orthoepy of French, German, or any other living tongue is treated. The pronunciation is ruled by the practice of the present, not by philological facts or fancies as to the pronunciation of the past. No doubt, as Heraclitus says, πάντα ῥεῖ, _all things flow_, as in the universe, so in language, there is no fixation—there is always change. But the changes which take place in living languages, like English or Greek, are of a very different kind from those which take place when a language like Latin becomes dead, and rises to a new life in the form of such specific varieties as Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. They are of the nature of a normal growth, and are at all events only exaggerations or expansions of a native tendency. To such exaggerations every spoken language is subject, and few more than our insular English, as any one may see who will compare the accentuation of English in the time of Chaucer with the orthoepy of the present hour. But in respect of accents at least Greek has been far more conservative than English, so much so indeed that the accentual marks placed on Greek words by the Alexandrian grammarians two hundred and fifty years before Christ, in the practice of the Greek Church and the Greek people still indicate the same dominance of voice on the accented syllable that the Athenian ear recognised as classic in the orations of Demosthenes and the apostolic eloquence of St. Paul. There can therefore be no greater barbarism than to disown this legitimate music of Greek speech, as is done both in England and Scotland, when we pronounce ἀγαθὸς ὁ θεός, like Latin or English, ἄγαθος ὁ θέος; not to mention the staring absurdity and loss of brain implied in the practice of the great English schools of first pronouncing the word with a false accentuation, and then stultifying the daily practice of the ear by learning a rule to say where the accent ought to have been placed! Nothing could more distinctly show the falseness of our habit of flinging the burden of learning languages on formulas of the understanding and leaving the living organ of linguistic practice altogether out of account. Therefore, by all means, either drop the accents out of the grammar, or use them whenever you give the written word voice in the air. As to the quantity of the vowels, which is the stumbling block with most English scholars, we have no lack of words, even in our own unmusical English, such as _lándholder_, in which, as in the Greek ἄνθρωπος, the antepenultimate has the rising inflexion, while the penult is long; and if the modern Greeks pronounce ἄνθρωπος as if written ἄνθροπος, that is only a natural curtailment of the unaccented syllable which lies in the nature of human speech, and will be found exemplified more or less in all languages. As to the vocal value of the separate vowels and consonants, this, no doubt, is a point in some cases of considerable difficulty; but it is quite certain that _a_, both in Latin and Greek, has the broad sound as in Italian and Scotch, not the sound of the English in _pātent_, that ι is the most slender of the vowel sounds, not the broad semi-diphthongal sound of the English in _prime_ or _sigh_, that ου has the soft sound of _oo_ in _boom_, not the _bow-wow_ sound of _ou_ as in _howl_; also that αι in all probability was pronounced as in the English _vain_, not as in the German _Kaiser_. On the whole matter of pronunciation, however, the English scholar should bear in mind that the poetry of the ancients was composed on musical principles, with a strict regard to the quantitative value of the vowel on which the rhythmical accent fell, a practice which necessarily caused the spoken accent to be dropped in verse, or very much subordinated; and again, if his ear should happen to be very much offended by the predominance of the slender sound of ι in the familiar πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης of Homer, there is no reason why he should not adopt a special vocalisation for the reading of the Greek poets, just as we in our reading of Chaucer must constantly put a final accent on words that, if applied to the spoken tongue, would render the speaker either ridiculous or unintelligible. But in whatever fashion the teacher of Greek in this country may choose to settle this delicate point, the matter of pronunciation has nothing radically to do with the great principle of linguistic practice which this little book inculcates. To start with the practice of speaking will facilitate the acquisition of a new language under any system of pronunciation; only this must distinctly be said, that the scholar who has learned to read Greek with a vocalisation and an accentuation invented by himself for himself has deliberately cut himself off from all intelligible communion with the people whose literary tradition he values so highly, and with whom to maintain a familiar intercourse, both in a political and a literary point of view, should be no secondary consideration with the wise.

In conclusion, I have great pleasure in returning thanks to the learned Hellenists who kindly undertook the task of revising the proofs of this little work as they came from the press, viz. Mr. Hardie, Balliol College, Oxford; Principal Geddes, Aberdeen; Principal Donaldson, St. Andrews; and Mr. Gardiner, Edinburgh Academy; and if I have not in every instance taken advantage of their suggestions, it is because on principle I have no sympathy with the nice sensibility which refuses the stamp of classicality to all forms and idioms unsanctioned by the usage of Attic writers, preferring to float my skiff freely on the great Catholic Greek of all ages, from Plato to Polybius, from Polybius to Chrysostom, and from Chrysostom to Thereianos and Paspati.

EDINBURGH, _April_ 1891.

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE GREEK LETTERS 3 NOTES 5 ACCENTUATION AND QUANTITY 7

LESSON I.—Nouns: Nominative and Objective Case, First and Second Declension; Verbs: Three Persons Singular, Present Indicative 12 II.—Cases, Genitive and Dative 15 III.—Plurals, Numerals, Diminutives 17 IV.—Third Declension, Singular 19 V.—Third Declension, Plural 25 VI.—Degrees of Comparison in Adjectives 26 VII.—The Future Active 28 VIII.—The Past Tense 30 IX.—Infinitive Mood and Participles 33 X.—The other Past Tenses 35 XI.—Verbs in μι 38 XII.—Compound Verbs 40 XIII.—Moods: Subjunctive and Conditional 42 XIV.—The Optative Mood 44 XV.—The Particle ἄν 47 XVI.—The Passive Voice 48 XVII.—The Middle Voice 51 XVIII.—Participles 53

APPENDIX I.—Elementary Hints on Etymology 55 II.—Vocabularies 57

THE ALPHABET

ACCENT AND QUANTITY

THE GREEK LETTERS

The Greek letters, borrowed as they were from the East and adopted by the Romans, are substantially the same as the Roman letters of our common English usage, and in fact differ from them both in figure and power scarcely more than our present English type differs from the old English black letter or the common German type. A few remarks will suffice to show where or how far the pronunciation varies from our English use of the same letters.

Greek English Figures. Names. Figures.

Α, α ἄλφα alpha a Β, β, ϐ βῆτα bêta b Γ, γ, ⲅ γάμμα gamma g Δ, δ δέλτα delta d Ε, ε ψῑλόν epsilon e Ζ, ζ, ζῆτα zêta z Η, η ἦτα êta ee Θ, θ, ϑ θῆτα thêta th Ι, ι ἰῶτα iôta i Κ, κ κάππα kappa k Λ, λ λάμβδα lambda l Μ, μ μῦ mu m Ν, ν νῦ nu n Ξ, ξ ξῖ xi x Ο, ο μῑκρόν omikron ŏ Π, π πῖ pi p Ρ, ρ ῥῶ rho r Σ, σ, ς σῖγμα sigma s Τ, τ, ך ταῦ tau t Υ, υ υῑλόν ’upsilon u Φ, φ φῖ phi f _or_ ph Χ, χ χῖ chi ch Ψ, ψ ψῖ psi ps Ω, ω ὦ μέγα omega ō

NOTES

Α is always the broad _a_ (=ah) of all European languages, and never softened down to the English _ā_, as heard in _pātent_, _nátion_.

Β in the spoken Greek of the present day is softened down to the cognate _v_, exactly as in Gaelic _b_ with the _h_ appended becomes _v_, as _ban_, fair, with _h_, _bhan_ = _van_.

Γ, when followed by the broad vowels _a_ and _o_, is pronounced hard as in English and Gaelic; but when followed by soft vowels the _Greeks_ now give it the sound of the English _y_ in _yes_, _yellow_—γέλως, γέρων,—just as in German the _g_ in the third syllable of _Göttingen_ is so softened down as almost to disappear.[3] This euphonic action of a weak vowel upon a strong consonant preceding is natural and found in most languages; exactly as the Italians in their soft dialect of Latin have changed Κικέρων into _Chichero_, _ch_ being pronounced as in the English _church_.

Before κ, γ, χ and ξ, the letter γ has the sound of _n_, as in ἄγγελος, in Latin _angelus_, English _angel_.

Δ, or D, is in like manner softened into _th_ as in the English _mother_; thus δέν _not_, from οὐδέν, pronounced οὐθέν.

Ε is our short _e_, as in _get_; never long _ē_.

Η, or ἦτα, was in ancient times always a long _ē_, English _ā_ as in _gate_; now it is always _ee_ as in _seem_ or _theme_.

Θ is the English _th_, as in _mouth_, _south_.

Ι is always the slender English _ee_, either short as in _peep_ or long as in _scēne_.

Ξ is _ks_, _gs_, contracted into _x_.

Υ, from which our _y_ came, was in ancient times identical with the delicate _ü_, _ue_, of the Germans, halfway between οὐ = _oo_ and _ee_, into which in the living language it is always softened, exactly as in some parts of Germany _Brüder_ is pronounced _Brēēder_.

Χ is an aspirated _k_, but pronounced like _milch_ in German or _loch_ in Scotch, which the English, who do not possess this beautiful soft guttural, generally sharpen into a _k_, as in _lake_.

Ω, omega, as the name indicates, is simply a long _o_, as in πῶλος, _a foal_.

For the English _h_ the Greeks used a simple mark of aspiration turned to the right thus, ἱερός _sacred_, pronounced _hee-er-ŏs_, while the same mark turned to the left, as in ἔρως, simply signifies the absence of the _h_. Whether this _spiritus lenis_, as it is called, was put on the initial vowel to indicate the presence of an original _h_ which had vanished, I cannot say; but one can readily fancy that if the Cockney fashion of calling Highgate _Igate_ were to become general, every such curtailed word might receive a mark thus, _’igate_, as the survival of a lost breathing.

Besides the vowels in the alphabet we find in Greek, as in other languages, compound vowel sounds called diphthongs. They are seven—αι, ει, οι, αυ, υι, ευ and ου. Their ancient pronunciation is very difficult to expiscate, and in them we note the partiality of the Greeks for the slender sound of _ee_, called by a Latin writer _gracilitas_, and by modern scholars _itacism_. This tendency has wiped off the diphthongal character altogether from οι, υι, and ει, which are all pronounced like a single ι, English _ee_. To balance this, αι becomes the English _ai_, as in _vain_; ου retains its full soft roundness as in _gloom_; while in αυ and ευ in the living Greek the υ has assumed a consonantal value and become _v_, from which usage the εὐαγγέλιον of the Gospels has become the _evangelium_ of the Latin Church, and the _evangel_ of English; so αὐλός, _a flute_, is pronounced _avlóss_, and this _v_ is aspirated into the kindred _ƒ_, when the following consonant is κ, π, τ, θ, χ, ξ, σ, or ψ, as in αὐτός, _aftos_, εὔξεινος, _efxeinos_. That the ancients, at least in poetry, did not do this is evident from the full diphthongal value of a long sound given to the εὐ in εὐαγής and such-like words by the dramatic writers.

[3] See Zampolides’s _Modern Greek_. London, Williams and Norgate, 1887.

ACCENTUATION AND QUANTITY

In respect of accentuation the Greek language has the advantage above most others that, while in Latin, English, or German the proper intonation of a word in doubtful cases can only be known by an appeal to a dictionary or to an authoritative speaker, in Greek every word in a book, as it stands before the eye, exhibits and perpetuates the tonic relation of the syllables to one another. The student has but to observe the rise or fall of the syllables on his page as he would do the notes in a piece of music, and he cannot go wrong. Only a few characteristic points require to be laid down to make the principle on which the practice depends intelligible.

The word _accent_, taken from the Latin grammarians, evidently signifies a certain music of speech, a singing to or with (_ad_ and _cano_) an articulate word; while the expression used by the Greek grammarians, τόνος from τείνω, indicates a stretch, stress, or intension of the voice on the syllable so affected. Taking these two elements together we see that a Greek word, say καλός, _beautiful_, with the mark of the acute accent on the last syllable—hence called oxytone, from ὀξύς, _sharp_—is pronounced with an elevation of the voice, which brings along with it a dominance of the syllable on which it stands above the other syllables with which it is connected. It stands to reason that after such a dominance given to one syllable the voice, if there be a subsequent syllable, will fall; and so, as in πραγμάτων, the final syllable will be pronounced in a lower tone which is called grave. In the general use this lower-toned syllable requires no special mark, being sufficiently indicated by its necessary subservience to the accented syllable; with the Greeks, however, it seems to have been the practice to pronounce an oxytone word, when it occurs in the middle of a sentence, in a lower tone than at the end, and so the word καλός in the middle of a sentence, as in καλὴ παρθένος, is marked with a grave accent from left to right instead of from right to left; but this, though it lowers the tone, does not affect the dominance of the syllable. It is just as if in music the same note, with the same rhythmical dominance, were sung an octave lower. Practically, the learner need not concern himself curiously about the matter.

It is a rule, both in Greek and Latin, that no word can be accented farther back than the third syllable from the end, the antepenultimate, the favourite accent of the English language. But, while this rule, in a musical point of view, preserves the language from such a rattle of insignificant sounds as in _lámentable_, _mílitary_, and not a few other quadrisyllables in our unmusical English tongue, it manifestly requires a correction from the side of penultimate and oxytone accentuation to achieve the just balance of the music of speech. In this respect Greek is decidedly superior to both Latin and English; for, while Latin rejects the sonorous cadence of the accent on the last syllable altogether, English uses it only in some verbs, remnants of the past participle of Latin verbs, as in _rejéct_, _suppóse_, _accépt_, and such-like; and in the case of the penult the fine swelling cadence of the Greek words, in which the acute accent of the penult is followed by a final long syllable, altogether fails, as in πραγμάτων, which an Englishman, following his English ear, will pronounce not only πράγματων but πράγματον, as if ω were ο. The student, therefore, will carefully train his ear to give all oxytone words their full value, and never to say ἄγαθος ὁ θέος instead of ἀγαθὸς ὁ θεός, or κάλος ὁ ἄνηρ for καλὸς ὁ ἀνήρ.

By the quantity of a word we mean the comparative duration of the sound, exactly as in music a [symbol: minim] is related to a [symbol: quaver]; and in Greek the accentuation stands in a very marked relation to the quantity of the syllables, which in practice asserts itself prominently as follows:—

(1) It is an invariable condition of the antepenultimate accent that the last syllable be short, as in ἄνθρωπος, a man; and in consequence,

(2) If in the course of flexion a word with an antepenultimate accent takes a long final vowel, as in the genitive and dative singular of the second declension, the accent of the first syllable is advanced to the penult, as in ἀνθρώπου.

(3) The converse takes place in verbs, where the accent is naturally on the root, as in λέγω, of which the imperfect is ἔλεγον; but in the aor. mid. indic., while the third person is ἐλέξατο, the first person is not ἐλέξαμην, but ἐλεξάμην.

A long syllable of course, as in προφήτης, may have an acute accent on a long vowel with the same right as a short syllable; but there are many long syllables in Greek which are marked neither with an acute nor a grave but with a circumflex, which is a prolonged accent compounded of a rise and a fall marked thus ^, or for greater ease, ~. These words are generally compounds of which the elements are quite plain, as in φιλοῦσι for φιλέουσι, τιμῶσι for τιμάουσι; in other words, as in σῶμα, a body, or the genitive plural of the first declension, as πολιτῶν, and some others, the single elements from which the complex tone arose were either historically known to the grammarians or legitimately assumed. At all events, every syllable in Greek with a circumflex accent is practically treated as if it had two accents; σῶμα as if it were σάὸμα, χρῶμα as χρόὰμα, πρᾶγμα as if it were πράὰγμα, and so on. It follows from this, and the principle that no word can be accented farther back than the antepenultimate, that, if in the course of flexion a word with a circumflex on the penult receives an additional syllable so as to become, in accentual value, a quadrisyllable, the accent must be advanced; thus from τιμῶμαι,[4] I am honoured, we can say τιμᾶσθε in the second person plural, but we cannot say τιμῶμεθα, so must say τιμώμεθα. The change of accentual marking in this instance is of no practical value to the student, but in the case of enclitics, of which we shall now speak, it affects the ear most decidedly.

[4] Final αι and οι for accentual purposes are pronounced short in the terminal flexions of nouns and verbs—τέτυμμαι, ἄνθρωποι, τράπεζαι.

Enclitics are small words, which, so to speak, have not force enough to stand on their own legs, but lean (ἐγκλίνω) on the weightier word that precedes them for support, and become absorbed in it; just as in English we say _don’t_ for _do not_, and in Italian _dimmi_ for the Latin _dic mihi_. These enclitics are πού, ποτέ, γε, and a few others, the oblique cases of the personal pronouns, the indefinite pronoun τις, and the verbs εἰμί, _I am_, φημί, _I say_, except in the second person singular. The effect of their being thus taken up by the previous word and forming a new whole must, in not a few cases, materially affect the position of the accent; for, while in καλός τις, _a certain good-looking fellow_, there is no change in the intonation of καλός to the ear, the moment I say κάλλιστος τις, I either violate the rule which forbids the accent on the fourth syllable from the end, or I keep to the rule and say κάλλιστός τις. In the same way when I say ὁ διάβολος, _the devil_, simply, I preserve the antepenultimate accent with full effect in its natural place; but if I apply the reproachful term to a special person, and say, as in John vi. 70, ἐξ ὑμῶν εἷς διάβολός ἐστιν, _one of you is a devil_, I immediately, to give the ἐστιν something to lean on, must make the διάβολος oxytone. Similarly, I cannot write πνεῦμα ἔστιν, which in accentual value would be a compound word of five syllables, but I must say πνεῦμά ἐστι (John vi. 63), when the last syllable of the supporting word with the two syllables of the enclitic become accentually a new word of three syllables with a legitimate antepenultimate accent.

If the position of the accent, a point often not a little troublesome even to natives in the orthoepy of their own language, has been relieved of all practical difficulty by the curious prevision of the Alexandrian elders, the quantity is even more simple. With the double aid of the two separate signs for long vowels, η and ω, and the quantity of the final vowel as determined by its relation to the previous accented syllables, the only difficulty that remains is obviated by the mark ¯ over the long vowels, and the ◡ over the short ones found in all good dictionaries. In the present little work it will be sufficient to mark the long vowel where it occurs in doubtful cases, and leave the short ones to be understood as short from the absence of the long mark. But the real difficulty that prevents both accent and quantity from being easily acquired by English scholars is the negligent practice of transferring Latin or English habits of accentuation to Greek words, as when θεός is pronounced like _Déus_, and Σωκράτης as _Sócrates_, and again the supposition that the accent cannot be put on a syllable without making it long, or removed without making it short. Let only the honest attempt be made to pronounce ἄνθρωπος, not as _anthroāpos_, but as in _lándhōlder_, _córndēaler_, and other such words, and the α in Σωκράτης, not like _a_ in _claw_ or _maw_, but like the _a_ in _lattice_ and _scatter_, and the difficulty will vanish like the gleam of a mirage before the firm foot and the cool eye of the traveller.

LESSON I.—NOUNS

NOMINATIVE AND OBJECTIVE CASE

FIRST AND SECOND DECLENSION

VERBS

THREE PERSONS SINGULAR, PRESENT INDICATIVE

A noun is the name of a thing or person, a verb signifies an action, an adjective a quality as good or bad belonging to a noun. The nominative case is the person who is or may be doing what the verb means; the objective case is the thing or person to which or towards which the action of the verb tends. The verb _to be_, denoting simple existence, not action, of course is followed by the nominative, not the objective case.

Nouns are masculine, feminine, or neuter.

Masculines generally end in ος. Feminines in η or α, a few in ος—ὁδός, _a way_, βίβλος, _a book_, παρθένος, _a maiden_. Neuters in ον.

The objective case ends in ν, the ν being added to the termination of feminines, and substituted for the ς in masculines. In neuters the nominative and objective are the same. Adjectives follow the same rule.

Verbs: first person ends in ω, second in ς, and third in ει or ᾳ, as—