The Modern Greek; Its Pronunciation and Relations to Ancient Greek

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 Excerpt: ...these words. Oekonomos also says, that o and e become long in Kloov (OS. K), dnb e0ev (IX. ), hmoT-qv ('EnLypapp. Jlavcrav. 0, 10), (deayevyv (Avr. err. 11, 2), etc. Likewise in the dyvid Ko.1 opyvid (Herod, and Xenop.). Now, it is only by the placing of the accent on the antepenultimate that final a becomes short, as, for instance, ayvtav (IX. v, 254), opyvC inrep (OS. 1, 328). It is on this account that the Attic tragedians, by shortening the last syllable, used the jEolic forms rip.iv, vpiv instead of r/plv, vfiiv, etc. Now, we believe that the accents always existed in the Greek language. There is no language without its accents. Aristophanes of Byzantium (200 B. C.) might have introduced written accents, in order to preserve the true pronunciation of Greek at the time when it was becoming the vernacular of many Oriental races, but accents existed long before Aristophanes, and, in fact, long before the Homeric era. Accents, we say, always existed, but the ancient Greeks did not generally write them. The fact that many of the inscriptions that have been discovered are without accents does by no means prove that accents did not exist among the ancient Greeks. Now, the modern Greeks seldom, if ever, put any accents on capital letters, that is to say, on words composed of capitals, and it would not be strange if the ancient Greeks likewise were accustomed to leave off the accents from inscriptions, which were generally written with capitals. It is, however, worthy of remark that a verse of Euripides, with accentual marks, has been discovered written on the walls of Herculaneum. It was natural for the ancient Greeks to pronounce their language correctly, even without marking the syllables on which the stress ought to fall by means of the accent. To thi...