Re:Spartan School (2019)
by otabdeveloper4 on Thursday March 18, 2021 @08:04AM
(#26501772)
> because Greek sheep have not changed their accent over the millennia
I find that really hard to believe. Surely animal sound onomatopoeia changed over 3000 years?
So Greek was what is called a pluricentric language and had IIRC at least five major dialects (Attic, Ionic, East Greek, West Greek etc.). Of course these changed significantly over the centuries, too.
There is obviously a whole field of research into Ancient Greek phonology and they have various points of reference to determine possible pronunciation. There are also a number of surviving texts that do discuss pronunciation of some words.
However, to me the most interesting tidbit was always that they found out how to pronounce the letter "η" (which in modern Greek is similar to "ee" like "meet") when a fragment of an ancient comedy by Aristophanes was discovered in which a guy is about to be sacrificed by a priest (I think?) and the priest tells him to behave like a sheep (as a kind of proverbial "sacrificial lamb" I suppose) and imitate sheep noises (difficult to put in English but something like "baa").
This was rendered as "βῆ βῆ" in the fragment and because Greek sheep have not changed their accent over the millennia, we were able to get some insight in to how that must have sounded. ;-)