Greek Alphabet Cards(labs.randomquark.com) |
Greek Alphabet Cards(labs.randomquark.com) |
All 24 Greek letters are used as math variables, depending on the field. Eg κ, λ, μ for arithmetic, χ, ψ for equations, graphs and differential, θ, ω for probability. Someone should definitely know to handle them easily.
These cards are designed for kids, though they seem effective for adults too, as their language knowledge is similar to a small kid's. Another simple way is to print and fill pre-school charts that show repetitive large letters. It's never too late to learn Greek!
But when the probability theory class started, everyone found themselves in one of two groups: those who could reliably draw "ξ", or those who instead drew some random snaky thing which probably does not even have a proper Unicode representation. I spent half an hour finally memorizing how the damn thing is actually written to move myself from the latter group to the former.
Naturally had to skill up on everything else.
Greek: an Intensive Course by Hansen and Quinn.
Basics of Biblical Greek by William Mounce
Both are standard texts with solutions easily available online.
Just listing the letters below and my rating for each letter, maybe someone has a better idea for some of them:
α - αχλάδι (pear) 5/5
β - βάρκα (boat) 5/5
γ - γίδα (goat) 4/5
δ - δεινόσαυρος (dinosaur) 4/5
ε - έντομο (insect, bug) 4/5
ζ - ζώνη (belt) 3/5
η - ηλιοτρόπιο (sunflower) 3/5
θ - θρόνος (throne) 4/5
ι - ιππόκαμπος (seahorse) 3/5
κ - κάκτος (cactus) 2/5
λ - λιοντάρι (lion) 4/5
μ - μάσκα (mask) 4/5
ν - νυχτερίδα (bat) 4/5
ξ - ξύλο (wood, stick of wood) 2/5
ο - ομφαλός (belly button) 1/5
π - πόρτα (door) 4/5
ρ - ρακέτα (racket) 4/5
σ - σαλιγκάρι (snail) 5/5
τ - τραπέζι (table) 5/5
υ - υποβρύχιο (submarine) 4/5
φ - φίδι (snake) 5/5
χ - χιόνι (snow) 2/5
ψ - ψάρεμα (fishing) 3/5
ω - ωκεανός (ocean) 5/5
I'm basing my rating on how common a word is, and how much the shape resembles the drawing and vice versa.
Anyway, some of my strongest language class memories from college are from translating parts of the Odyssey and New Testament.
a lot of reading skill is in connecting one letter to the next, syllable-grouped
teaching should incorporate that
It uses the silly-picture mnemonic approach. For instance, the verb εγειρω features a fellow raising up a suction-cup arrow with an egg stuck in it.
Present-indicative conjugations are in a picture of an omelet oozing in an oasis:
-ω -ομεν
-εις -ετε
-ει -ουσιν
https://www.randomquark.com/alphashapes
The feedback in this thread has been incredibly useful for refining some of the design.
I’ve now added a small updates/interest page linked from the original article because several people asked whether they’ll become available somewhere.
That just reminded me I have a teach yourself devanagari by practicing book waiting for me.
A BRA
EZ HO
I KAM
NEON
PETY
OXY OHuh? A simple web search shows many, many, many results.
Can you share what you found?
Maybe my Google foo sucks but could someone actually link what they're seeing?
If you tried to teach English-speaking children with words that start with that letter in German, you'd probably confuse them quite a bit.
Also, "foreign" is always relative. How about an Ancient Greek referring to the barbarians who have no Greek? And, the author's using Greek while living in China.
- a bear that looks like B
- an orange that looks like O
- a snake that looks like S
- a tree that looks like T
(and so on; that's just what I can think of off the top of my head)
For example, π is pronounced "πι", or probably closed to "pee" in modern and in ancient Greek. It's never pronounced like "pie". Same with all letters that end with "i", for example "φ,χ,ψ" (pronounced as phee, chee, psee, never rhyming with pie). T (τ) was never pronounced as "ta-oo", either, not in ancient nor modern Greek.
There are differences between modern and ancient Greek of course. For example "β" (beta), originally pronounced more like it's now in English, only with a longer "e", while in modern Greek it's more like "vita")
For Latin, there's a handy wikipedia page telling you all about the difference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_English_pronunciat... .
No. In ancient Greek, π contrasts with φ. Φ is the one that indicates the sound an English speaker would hear as "p"; it's the one you would pronounce "pee". You'd hear the name of π as "bee".
> T (τ) was never pronounced as "ta-oo", either, not in ancient nor modern Greek.
That's exactly how it was pronounced in ancient Greek (modulo the same issue as π), unless you meant to indicate a disyllabic pronunciation.
π, φ, χ, ψ never rhymed with pie though. That was my focus there.
Regarding the "αυ" sound: Same as all the original diphthongs such as "ου", "αι", "οι" etc. sounds, the "ι", "υ" etc were mostly supplemental/modifiers to the first vowel (also υ sounded more like e.g. modern German ü or indeed modern German y Ι guess). They were indeed never disyllabic.
EDIT: I think the transformation of some diphthongs had already started by the time the Roman empire conquered Greece, so ta-oo might have been closer to the pronunciation at that time. But Roman times are not classical times, they are after the Hellenistic times which changed so much already (I think iotacisation happened during that time?).
Koine Greek started off as more like Ancient Greek pronunciation and ended up as Modern Greek pronunciation.
Ancient Greek is needed to get a full Western education, for reading some of our foundational literature properly.
Unless you wish to be part of an effort to further improve the quality of these translations, including to adjust them for the fact modern languages themselves are a moving target, just read those translations.
Modern Greek, on the other hand, is a living language with new art and culture coming from it. I may not be able to write "a cup of tea please" without misspelling tea, nor pronouncing it so badly they reply in English (as per my user profile), but this is infinitely more valuable than knowing if the ancient Greek character inviting people over for a meal is saying the people will eat the meal or be the meal.
I find ancient Greek not so helpful when it comes to etymologies. Some are helpful, but many are obscure or misleading. Climax comes from the word for a ladder apparently, and electron comes from the word for amber. There are stories behind both but they won't get you far. Any word beginning with psych- tends to relate to the mind, but the Greek means "soul".
I studied koine Greek with my dad. Today, I study Aristotle alongside half-a-dozen English translations (the latest, Adam Beresford's Ethics, is hilarious, "like Han Solo and Chewbacca, Achilles and Patrocles" in the notes; his Aristotle uses "Perhaps...but that's a bit off-topic").
None of the English translations is as convincing as knowing the original vocabulary. Many phrases and idioms are still obscure or debated. Why should the student not want to look behind the curtain?
Finally, there is something bracing about knowing the ancient grammar. Greek has features long-vanished from English.
You would separate students into those who never need to bother looking a bit into "foundational to western literature" and those handful who are on a PhD track. Eventually, nobody would grow up to be recruited into the latter.
You're right in saying Classical (inc. Koine) Greek is far more influential, but modern Greek is not "frankly irrelevant".
I don't mean to deny someone's fun side hobby, if anyone wishes to get into the archeology of linguistics that's obviously fine and good for them, but it's not really a useful or necessary thing for a "full" education as claimed by the quotation:
> Ancient Greek is needed to get a full Western education, for reading some of our foundational literature properly.
I wonder if the ancients complained about μονογενής the same way modern people complain about "very unique"? But again, what I question here is if this matters, I don't think knowing the answer is necessary for a "full" education.
Funny enough, I went to double-check the IPA and realized the textbook classical Attic should be reconstructed as /ɛ/, so /bɛːta/ anyway. Which is still closer to the American version as both are open front vowels.
BUT, I just went down a rabbit hole and found this video on the history of the letter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS5POB2rLsw
It turns out that while /bɛːta/ is the old academic reconstruction, statistical analyses of spelling mistakes from then shows that Athenians had already closed that vowel to /e:/ or even all the way to the modern /i:/ sound as early as 500 BC. So the how they spoke daily was even messier.
Attic/Athenian Greek were considered a bit weird by other Greeks at the time, especially with replacing "ss" with "tt". But if there was nothing else to connect us modern Greeks to ancient Greeks, the constant infighting and bickering would be enough :)
Doric Greek had replaced η with α in the same time period (eg ή ταν ή επί τας which would be ή την ή επί της in other ancient Greek dialects of the time.
> EDIT: I think the transformation of some diphthongs had already started by the time the Roman empire conquered Greece, so ta-oo might have been closer to the pronunciation at that time.
Vox Graeca says the opposite in regard to upsilon:
>> In both αυ and ευ the υ preserved its original quality as a back [u], i.e. it was not fronted to [ü] as elsewhere
https://archive.org/details/allen-vox-graeca-the-pronunciati... [page 76]
(The reason this statement isn't also applied to ου is not that the upsilon is fronted - it's that in ου, the upsilon is lost.)
Upsilon by itself began as [u] and developed into [y], but diphthongs ending in it didn't follow that development. Tau starts with the pronunciation /tau/ and stays that way.
Obviously saying it's stayed that way is wrong on its own, since it had converted to taf as early as 500 CE, in the branch that led to modern Greek. The branch that followed Latinization and Anglicization (much later) converted the unpronounceable waw sound to plain "oo"
What? There is no sound "between" /u/ and /w/; they are the same sound. We call that sound /u/ in the nucleus of a syllable and /w/ in the onset.
> Obviously saying it's stayed that way is wrong on its own, since it had converted to taf as early as 500 CE
Early?? You were talking about ancient Greek. Are you calling 500 AD "ancient Greek"? At that point the ancient, classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods have all concluded. You can call it koine. It's the end of koine.
Huh? "oo" is a very different sound than "w". One is a vowel, one is mostly/technically a consonant, I'd say mostly related to the modern γ/gamma sound! One is spoken with open mouth, for the other you put the back of your tongue on the roof of your mouth.
> Early?? You were talking about ancient Greek. Are you calling 500 AD "ancient Greek"? At that point the ancient, classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods have all concluded. You can call it koine. It's the end of koine.
I think I might have confused CE with BCE. In my defense, I was writing on mobile. I mean 500 years *before* the birth of Christ. It was certainly taf in early medieval Greek of course, but my point was indeed that it was also taf in some Ancient Greek dialects.
I'm saying that the notion that "tau" was always and forever ta-oo (two syllables, open /u/ sound) is wrong. It might be right on the branch of pronunciation that was mixed with Latin and later English (and only AFTER it was converted for use from Latin speakers), but not in the branch that started with archaic Greek and led to modern Greek.
The fact of the matter is that there aren't two distinct languages, Ancient Greek and Modern Greek. The language evolved naturally and gradually (granted, with a very accelerated pace in the Hellinistic/Koine period). The distinction of Ancient and Modern Greek is a modern educational tool. There is a branch that led to "ta-oo" and "pie" (that's apparently only the English pronunciation), but since it's been converted to be used by Latin (and English) speakers, it's really a Latin adaptation of Greek.
Neither is spoken with open mouth. That would be a low vowel, something more like /a/. And neither is spoken with tongue contact to any other part of your mouth, such as the roof.
They're both spoken with the same tongue position and the same lip position, because they're the same sound. Compare wikipedia:
> The close back rounded vowel, or high back rounded vowel,[1] is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨u⟩.
So much for /u/ - it's a vowel in which the tongue is pulled close to the roof of your mouth, and back to the rear of your mouth, while your lips are rounded.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_back_rounded_vowel )
What about /w/?
> The most common labiovelar consonant is the voiced approximant [w]. It is normally a labialized velar, as is its vocalic equivalent [u]. (Labialization is called rounding in vowels, and a velar place is called back).
It's a consonant that is pronounced with the same tongue position as /u/. And the same lip rounding as /u/. And it's the consonant that is the equivalent of the vowel /u/. What makes them equivalent? Well, mostly it's the fact that there are no differences.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labialized_velar_consonant )
> I mean 500 years before the birth of Christ. It was certainly taf in early medieval Greek of course, but my point was indeed that it was also taf in some Ancient Greek dialects.
Well, from the same page of Vox Graeca:
>> at a later date, which cannot certainly be determined,³ the second element (which could alternatively be analysed as a semivowel /w/: cf. p. 5) developed a fricative pronunciation [v], so that in modern Greek the value of these digraphs is [av] and [ev]
>> ³ The Jewish catacombs at Rome still indicate a diphthongal value in the 2-3 c[entury] A.D.
Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers states in a footnote that there is evidence for frication of diphthong-final upsilon having "gone through" by 150 BC. The detailed evidence for this development is given as a habit in Egypt of misspelling αυ and ευ as αου and εου; it is inferred that the "ου" must represent a consonant or at least something a bit more consonantal than an ordinary vowel. It goes on to note that "spellings with β become increasingly common in late Roman and early Byzantine documents."
( https://archive.org/details/horrocks-2/page/168/mode/2up )
A date of 500 BC definitely cannot be supported. I also found a comment on reddit stating that this change still hasn't occurred in Pontic Greek today.
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> "pie" (that's apparently only the English pronunciation)
Yes, that's related to the Great Vowel Shift, a specific English phenomenon. You're right about "pie" for π. You're way off on "tau" for τ; pretty much every language that isn't modern Greek has it as the equivalent of /tau/. Check out the list of translations for "the letter Τ / τ in the Greek alphabet" here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tau#Translations .