- 20 Mar 2024 15:17
#15308415
No problem, I believe you. It's also not relevant to our topic, so we can leave this on the side and move on.
I have considered of potentially having this debate over a video or zoom as that makes things a lot more simple phonetically and prevents the confusion resulting from the text. I'm not very good at making videos but I think this is something to consider.
Yes, I agree with all this. And this is a point I have made to you and Farya a couple of times. That sounds do not come out of logic pro and that people of different phonetic traditions have distinct aesthetic vagaries. It is also one more reason as to why Greek ought to be taught by Greeks just like Japanese is taught by Japanese and Chinese by the Chinese. Luke and the neo-Erasmians tell people to literally ignore the Greeks when learning Greek. I am assuming you agree with such a statement. I also want to add that ancient grammarians like Halicarnaseus goes a bit further in his description of these sounds and literally tells us word for word the exact same thing wiki tells us in its article of obstruents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstruent
All these sounds are obstruents. The three plosive sounds: k,t,p weaken to fricatives velar k->gh->ch, dental t->th->th, labial p->v->f depending on the stricture of the air. Halicarnaseus literally tells us the exact same thing when he describes the mesa and dasea letters(artirias ypichousis to pneumati), which really puts the nail on the head as it does not actually permit any other kind or type of interpretation.
In the neo-Erasmian theory, where no fricatives are accepted for Classical Athenian Greek and only plosives are theorised the whole body of ancient Greek grammarians telling us how to use obstruency to get these fricatives, gets discarded along with all their phonetic categories.
It could be, but I doubt it has to do with my Greekness because a) same applies in Greek, .ie we have both mp=b and mp=em-pi, though the mp=b is the more regular phenomenon and I have been living in the UK for 21 years and counting. So not only I no longer have a Greek accent on me, but Greeks distinguish naturally mp=b and mp=mp as they have a plethora of words where both are the case.
I totally disagree with this claim, we can argue about the nuances of Japanese /β and Greek /β being slightly different, but you can not argue that they are not both fricatives which is really the actual crux of our argument. You can call it nasal component or chord vibration(which results from air stricture as I keep harping about), fact remains that the Japanese lenited b is a fricative and not a plosive, regardless of what you or other people hear. Our argument is whether Greek B was a fricative(which is what I argue) or a plosive(which is what you argue). You used Japanese as an example of a language that does not have(or rather never ever had) a fricative /v between its plosive /p and fricative /f. But it does, not only sometime in the past like Chinese, but also in the present day.
Even though the nasal component is irrelevant to the crux of the argument, it is however interesting so...think of the sound BOOM. To build the explosion before you speak it you lock your mouth with the nasal m, there is absolutely no way you can pronounce the b without first placing your mouth into the m position, effectively your mouth builds mmmmmmboom even if the m is silent.
Similar thing applies to doom. There is an inherent n in doom, regardless if it is sounded or not. Positionally the mouth assumes the n position before speaking doom regardless if the n is heard or not.
Take also the word for angel. The real word is merely en-kalo, n+k = gk, so the 2 words en+kal become an+kel, the vowels swap(metathesis) and the combined n+k starts merging into a 'ngk'(goo) sound represented with a double Loggu Λογγou to precisely mark the occasion and distinguish it from single γ(.ie lacking an 'n'). The n transforms into a γαμμα to inform the reader of the transition so when you see double gammas you know that they are nk's original n+kous written often as Angous and pronounced as Angkous=Angkel=Angel=Angle but with a silent n like prologue sounds in English. In the general sense of gk, the n position is not required in the mouth to get to g as it is required for doom and boom but in this example of aggelos=angel=angkel it is required to go there first because you [are supposed to] know you are saying en-kalo and not agk.
Sure in these videos I can hear more of a /b than a /v, but in your first link of 4 examples of 'video', in all 4 I can hear /v, not /b. I played it to my wife who agreed with me. I'll play it for some friends too, Italians and Portuguese and see what they hear later today when they come see me.
Why would anyone even consider? let alone believe that in Classical Athens the letter B sounded like a /b?
Based on what?
None of the Erasmians ever replies to this simple question. Not only where is your evidence, which I know there is none, but where is a little something, a little cheese to even point towards that? As far as I know there is absolutely nothing at all. Just, it was /b because it's /b in Romance and English/German and that makes it "kewl" for us Anglo-Romance speakers, means we don't have to train ourselves to speak v whenever we see a B when we read Greek or Latin anymore.
Audibly yes you have a point and hence why 'Bini et vini' is certainly 'vini et wini'. Because b or p do not fit anywhere in this equation, audibly.
Yet, they are all spoken from the lips. B, P, V, F are all labials, though one can easily make the case that b and p are one set of pure labials and v and f another set of labiodentals as you need the addition of the teeth to play a little part to get to v and f. Consider "The pram goes vrooom". Bram, Pram, Vram, Fram. or Boom, Poom, Voom, Foom.
D, T, TH(/δ), TH(/θ) are all dentals and G, K, GH(/γ), CH(/χ) are all velars. Effectively they are simply variations of each other and the one and only variable is air either obstructed or exploded through the nose for the ultra-plosives, g, d, b or both.
Velars: for 'Can eat gum' 'can eat yam' 'can eat ham'
Dentals:
Theo thought this dot. Tio Θot Δis Ντοτ.
T, Δ, Θ, ΝΤ.
Lastly, think of pater & father, see how sharp plosive /p turns into a soft fricative /f and sharp /t turns into a soft /th. Same with mater, mother, broder->brother.
In Gaelic, words starting with a p or even b turn into an audible v.:
/p/ → /v/ bog /pok/ "soft" → glé bhog /kleː vok/ "very soft"
B,P,V,F = labial continuum.
D,T,TH,TH = dental continuum.
G,K,GH,CH = velar continuum.
Lenition which is a process of softening to make something more sonorous(sweeter in the ears and mouth of the beholder) is a huge part of linguistics globally. Every single language follows largely similar rules among the labial, velar and dental consonants. The difference between these sounds is more often than not represented by different letters as well. .ie f is not a bloody p as the Erasmians claim for Greek. If the Greeks wanted to write p where they wrote f, they could just write p instead of having 2 p's(p and f for /p) and no f as Philoglossos and Luke claim.
What Luke and Philoglossos claim is the following:
Athenians alone between the 5th and 4th BCE had:
2 pi's: p and f, and no f and no v sounds
2 ti's(t and θ), 2 di's(nt & d), and no theta /θ sound and no delta /δ sound.
2 ki's(k and χ), and no hi(/χ) or γαμμα sound.
From 9 consonantal sounds + 3 for the(diphthongs mp/b,nd/d,ng/g) = 12 consonant sounds of ancient and modern Greek letters, they have kept only 6 sounds instead(k,g, t,d, p,b) and have effectively removed half of the phonetic inventory. Greek has 6 plosive phonemes and 6 fricative phonemes made out of 9 letters. They have deleted all the fricative phonemes.
In even more simple terms, their claim means that modern Greek is a far superior phonetic dialect than classical Athenian, while at the same time mocking it in the same breath.
The curious thing is that they speak of this inferiority of phonetic skill applied only to the Athenians and even more particularly only to the Athenians of the 5thBCE-4thBCE.
They claim that Greek words like: phone, photo, philosophy, philoglossos are all supposed to be: pone(instead of phone), poto(instead of photo), pilosopy, piloglosos, etcetera. There is absolutely nothing cringier than hearing these people speak their Greeklish, but the worst part is that they actually mock the real Greek people as ignorant of Greek, they openly tell people to avoid speaking to Greeks when learning Greek because they will be tainted by the fallacies of the Greeks and they openly insult any Greek person that speaks up on this subject. This is one of the biggest wtf's in history. It is even curiouser that this is still ongoing in this day and age of. While they refers to the majority of western "classic" departments and the various youtuber supporting acts.
But why do they even bother arguing, let alone thinking of such nonsense? Because if they don't, then they will have to actually learn ancient Latin and Greek pronounciation and not simply use Anglo-German sounds when reading ancient texts as they have historically been doing.
So for them, it is merely a case, of turning the entire world upside down so they do not have to actually learn how to pronounce these languages and so that they can feel "superior" by having their own modern languages "equated" with ancient Greek, Latin and PIE.
For all these people, it is a case of B = /b because it is so in English dammit. And no barbarian Greek dude is going to tell me how to pronounce the Greek I'm reading, I will pronounce it like a proper Englishman and that's that.
Philoglossos wrote:Hi again! I am happy to go onto a video call with you, screen share, and show you myself logged into my Philoglossos account on YouTube, if you are so certain I am lying lol. Luke and I do both speak Japanese - he was stationed there while serving in the US military, while I have studied it in university and lived there for a little over a year in total. What's so funny is that I can completely see why you might think we're the same person not knowing that he just isn't the sort to use sock puppets and not knowing who I am, but the fact remains that we are two different people, and as I mentioned, this is very easy to prove.
No problem, I believe you. It's also not relevant to our topic, so we can leave this on the side and move on.
I have considered of potentially having this debate over a video or zoom as that makes things a lot more simple phonetically and prevents the confusion resulting from the text. I'm not very good at making videos but I think this is something to consider.
I very deliberately won't discuss any of the Greek or Latin historical evidence here, because I think it's impossible for us to have that conversation now via text in a productive way, and because there are fundamental differences in our opinions of what language is and how it works that must be resolved first. We really will have to start from our respective claims about phonology in general to get anywhere.
In particular, I think we need to start with this issue of p, f, b and v - this is a very interesting disagreement, and if we can resolve it, I think it is the key to moving forwards. In order to resolve this issue, we have to both understand each others' reasons for believing what we believe about these sounds. I think I know why you believe what you do about them, but I am quite possibly mistaken. I do not think you understand my reasons for believing what I believe about these sounds - my assumption is you think my view is driven by ideology or orthodoxy, but once again, I may be completely wrong. So, to resolve this, I will first summarize what I think you believe about p, f, b and v as well as what I believe your reasons to be - not to put words in your mouth or erect a strawman, but so that you can correct me if I do not understand your position. Similarly, I will in my next response summarize my own view, and I hope you will make the effort to understand it from my perspective, even if you don't accept it as true.
1) As you've stated above, you believe that /v/ is softer (more lenited) than /p/, and that /f/ in turn is softer (more lenited) than /v/. You believe that this means that it is impossible for /p/ to develop into /f/ without first developing into /v/, and you believe that the difference between these sounds is primarily the amount of air being expelled - v involves expelling more air than p, and f involves expelling more air than p. Thus, you believe that lenition (softening) is a process whereby more air is expelled while creating the sound. Furthermore, you believe that /b/ is a sound is a combination of a nasal sound /n/ or /m/ with the sound /p/.
2) You believe the above for the following reasons:
a) You believe, for all of the reasons you have given elsewhere, that at the time of the descriptions of π β φ provided to us by Greek grammarians, that they were pronounced as they are today.
b) Ancient grammarians describe β as between π and φ, and you take this as an accurate observation for the sounds /p/ /v/ /f/
c) It makes intuitive sense to you that /p/ should turn into /v/, and then /v/ into /f/
d) It makes intuitive sense to you that the sound /b/ is a combination of /n/ or /m/ plus /p/
So to summarize, as far as I can tell, your position specifically regarding this issue is completely based on what makes intuitive sense to you, and the statements of the ancient grammarians. Once again, I am not trying to put words into your mouth - please correct or elaborate on my understanding of your view if necessary. After that, I will elaborate on my view.
Yes, I agree with all this. And this is a point I have made to you and Farya a couple of times. That sounds do not come out of logic pro and that people of different phonetic traditions have distinct aesthetic vagaries. It is also one more reason as to why Greek ought to be taught by Greeks just like Japanese is taught by Japanese and Chinese by the Chinese. Luke and the neo-Erasmians tell people to literally ignore the Greeks when learning Greek. I am assuming you agree with such a statement. I also want to add that ancient grammarians like Halicarnaseus goes a bit further in his description of these sounds and literally tells us word for word the exact same thing wiki tells us in its article of obstruents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstruent
All these sounds are obstruents. The three plosive sounds: k,t,p weaken to fricatives velar k->gh->ch, dental t->th->th, labial p->v->f depending on the stricture of the air. Halicarnaseus literally tells us the exact same thing when he describes the mesa and dasea letters(artirias ypichousis to pneumati), which really puts the nail on the head as it does not actually permit any other kind or type of interpretation.
In the neo-Erasmian theory, where no fricatives are accepted for Classical Athenian Greek and only plosives are theorised the whole body of ancient Greek grammarians telling us how to use obstruency to get these fricatives, gets discarded along with all their phonetic categories.
Finally, there's the issue of the Japanese word ビデオ. I hear the initial sound as basically identical to /b/, and quite different from /v/. Both your and my language distinguish the sounds /b/ and /v/ at the beginnings of words, though I will point out, this sound is fairly rare in Greek compared to English, and it alternates with /mb/. My hypothesis is that maybe it is this expectation of a nasal component which affects your perception of the Japanese sound. I'm happy to elaborate more on this when I describe my view of the preceding issue, but fundamentally, /b/ is not a combination of /m/ and /p/ - this is clear, because languages like english fully distinguish /b/, /mb/ and /mp/. For instance, we have words like 'amp' (not pronounced 'amb'), and we distinguish 'ambi' as in 'ambidexterous' from 'abbey', or 'zombie' and 'swampy'. A telltale sign of a Greek accent in English is the inability to distinguish /mb/, /mp/ and /b/.
It could be, but I doubt it has to do with my Greekness because a) same applies in Greek, .ie we have both mp=b and mp=em-pi, though the mp=b is the more regular phenomenon and I have been living in the UK for 21 years and counting. So not only I no longer have a Greek accent on me, but Greeks distinguish naturally mp=b and mp=mp as they have a plethora of words where both are the case.
What /b/ is fundamentally, is the exact same sound as /p/, but with the vocal chords vibrating as the sound is produced. There doesn't need to be a nasal component to it whatsoever.
I totally disagree with this claim, we can argue about the nuances of Japanese /β and Greek /β being slightly different, but you can not argue that they are not both fricatives which is really the actual crux of our argument. You can call it nasal component or chord vibration(which results from air stricture as I keep harping about), fact remains that the Japanese lenited b is a fricative and not a plosive, regardless of what you or other people hear. Our argument is whether Greek B was a fricative(which is what I argue) or a plosive(which is what you argue). You used Japanese as an example of a language that does not have(or rather never ever had) a fricative /v between its plosive /p and fricative /f. But it does, not only sometime in the past like Chinese, but also in the present day.
Even though the nasal component is irrelevant to the crux of the argument, it is however interesting so...think of the sound BOOM. To build the explosion before you speak it you lock your mouth with the nasal m, there is absolutely no way you can pronounce the b without first placing your mouth into the m position, effectively your mouth builds mmmmmmboom even if the m is silent.
Similar thing applies to doom. There is an inherent n in doom, regardless if it is sounded or not. Positionally the mouth assumes the n position before speaking doom regardless if the n is heard or not.
Take also the word for angel. The real word is merely en-kalo, n+k = gk, so the 2 words en+kal become an+kel, the vowels swap(metathesis) and the combined n+k starts merging into a 'ngk'(goo) sound represented with a double Loggu Λογγou to precisely mark the occasion and distinguish it from single γ(.ie lacking an 'n'). The n transforms into a γαμμα to inform the reader of the transition so when you see double gammas you know that they are nk's original n+kous written often as Angous and pronounced as Angkous=Angkel=Angel=Angle but with a silent n like prologue sounds in English. In the general sense of gk, the n position is not required in the mouth to get to g as it is required for doom and boom but in this example of aggelos=angel=angkel it is required to go there first because you [are supposed to] know you are saying en-kalo and not agk.
But to confirm, here's some more examples of this sound in Japanese - I recommend setting the video speed to 0.5x - I will really be surprised if an unbiased listener whose native language distinguishes /b/ and /v/ hears anything but a clear /b/ sound:
Sure in these videos I can hear more of a /b than a /v, but in your first link of 4 examples of 'video', in all 4 I can hear /v, not /b. I played it to my wife who agreed with me. I'll play it for some friends too, Italians and Portuguese and see what they hear later today when they come see me.
Let me put it this way: if you showed these videos to any linguist who has worked on ancient Greek and describes the sound of β as /b/ in the Classical period whether the sound used in the above videos is correct for that sound, I think they'd all say 'yes'. Even if you found an example with more lenition where the sound is more like a bilabial fricative, I think nobody would insist that was categorically wrong for ancient Greek.
Why would anyone even consider? let alone believe that in Classical Athens the letter B sounded like a /b?
Based on what?
None of the Erasmians ever replies to this simple question. Not only where is your evidence, which I know there is none, but where is a little something, a little cheese to even point towards that? As far as I know there is absolutely nothing at all. Just, it was /b because it's /b in Romance and English/German and that makes it "kewl" for us Anglo-Romance speakers, means we don't have to train ourselves to speak v whenever we see a B when we read Greek or Latin anymore.
Saeko wrote:3) I do not perceive any audible similarity between "p" and "f" sounds. "f" and "v"?
Audibly yes you have a point and hence why 'Bini et vini' is certainly 'vini et wini'. Because b or p do not fit anywhere in this equation, audibly.
Yet, they are all spoken from the lips. B, P, V, F are all labials, though one can easily make the case that b and p are one set of pure labials and v and f another set of labiodentals as you need the addition of the teeth to play a little part to get to v and f. Consider "The pram goes vrooom". Bram, Pram, Vram, Fram. or Boom, Poom, Voom, Foom.
D, T, TH(/δ), TH(/θ) are all dentals and G, K, GH(/γ), CH(/χ) are all velars. Effectively they are simply variations of each other and the one and only variable is air either obstructed or exploded through the nose for the ultra-plosives, g, d, b or both.
Velars: for 'Can eat gum' 'can eat yam' 'can eat ham'
Dentals:
Theo thought this dot. Tio Θot Δis Ντοτ.
T, Δ, Θ, ΝΤ.
Lastly, think of pater & father, see how sharp plosive /p turns into a soft fricative /f and sharp /t turns into a soft /th. Same with mater, mother, broder->brother.
In Gaelic, words starting with a p or even b turn into an audible v.:
/p/ → /v/ bog /pok/ "soft" → glé bhog /kleː vok/ "very soft"
B,P,V,F = labial continuum.
D,T,TH,TH = dental continuum.
G,K,GH,CH = velar continuum.
Lenition which is a process of softening to make something more sonorous(sweeter in the ears and mouth of the beholder) is a huge part of linguistics globally. Every single language follows largely similar rules among the labial, velar and dental consonants. The difference between these sounds is more often than not represented by different letters as well. .ie f is not a bloody p as the Erasmians claim for Greek. If the Greeks wanted to write p where they wrote f, they could just write p instead of having 2 p's(p and f for /p) and no f as Philoglossos and Luke claim.
What Luke and Philoglossos claim is the following:
Athenians alone between the 5th and 4th BCE had:
2 pi's: p and f, and no f and no v sounds
2 ti's(t and θ), 2 di's(nt & d), and no theta /θ sound and no delta /δ sound.
2 ki's(k and χ), and no hi(/χ) or γαμμα sound.
From 9 consonantal sounds + 3 for the(diphthongs mp/b,nd/d,ng/g) = 12 consonant sounds of ancient and modern Greek letters, they have kept only 6 sounds instead(k,g, t,d, p,b) and have effectively removed half of the phonetic inventory. Greek has 6 plosive phonemes and 6 fricative phonemes made out of 9 letters. They have deleted all the fricative phonemes.
In even more simple terms, their claim means that modern Greek is a far superior phonetic dialect than classical Athenian, while at the same time mocking it in the same breath.
The curious thing is that they speak of this inferiority of phonetic skill applied only to the Athenians and even more particularly only to the Athenians of the 5thBCE-4thBCE.
They claim that Greek words like: phone, photo, philosophy, philoglossos are all supposed to be: pone(instead of phone), poto(instead of photo), pilosopy, piloglosos, etcetera. There is absolutely nothing cringier than hearing these people speak their Greeklish, but the worst part is that they actually mock the real Greek people as ignorant of Greek, they openly tell people to avoid speaking to Greeks when learning Greek because they will be tainted by the fallacies of the Greeks and they openly insult any Greek person that speaks up on this subject. This is one of the biggest wtf's in history. It is even curiouser that this is still ongoing in this day and age of. While they refers to the majority of western "classic" departments and the various youtuber supporting acts.
But why do they even bother arguing, let alone thinking of such nonsense? Because if they don't, then they will have to actually learn ancient Latin and Greek pronounciation and not simply use Anglo-German sounds when reading ancient texts as they have historically been doing.
So for them, it is merely a case, of turning the entire world upside down so they do not have to actually learn how to pronounce these languages and so that they can feel "superior" by having their own modern languages "equated" with ancient Greek, Latin and PIE.
For all these people, it is a case of B = /b because it is so in English dammit. And no barbarian Greek dude is going to tell me how to pronounce the Greek I'm reading, I will pronounce it like a proper Englishman and that's that.
EN EL ED EM ON
...take your common sense with you, and leave your prejudices behind...
...take your common sense with you, and leave your prejudices behind...