Transcriber’s Notes:
Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_
in the original text.
Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.
Old or antiquated spellings have been preserved.
Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.
GREEK PRIMER
[Illustration]
GREEK PRIMER
COLLOQUIAL AND CONSTRUCTIVE
BY
J. STUART BLACKIE
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
Scribendo dicimus diligentius, dicendo scribimus facilius.
QUINCTILIAN.
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1891
_All rights reserved_
PREFACE
One cannot have moved much in the world without hearing complaints,
both from parents and young persons, about the amount of time and brain
spent in the learning of languages, and the little profit derived from
this outlay. These complaints, no doubt, arise partly from the want
of judgment on the part of the parents, and the want of capacity and
inclination on the part of their young hopefuls: parents often acting
thoughtlessly on the vulgar notion that far birds have fair feathers,
and preferring what is foreign to what is native, and what lies at a
great distance in time or space to what is near; and young persons
being forced to submit themselves to a grammatical indoctrination in
which they feel no interest, and from which they derive no benefit.
But it is no less true that these complaints are due in no small
measure to false methods of linguistic training generally, or to some
cherished prejudices in favour of certain languages on the part of the
teachers; and it becomes therefore, at the present day, a matter of
great practical importance to inquire how far our traditional methods
of teaching languages are in conformity with the method of Nature in
her great art of thought-utterance, and how far they may justly be
called on to submit themselves to a revision and a reconstitution.
We say at the present day emphatically, because it is quite evident
that education, following in the train of democratic reform, is one of
the watchwords of the hour, to which every good citizen must lend an
obedient ear; and not only so, but circumstances have so changed since
our schooling received its traditional form, that the wants which were
satisfied by our school curriculum and school practice in the days
of Milton and Locke now demand an altogether different treatment. In
particular, the so-called learned languages, two hundred years ago the
only medium of culture to an accomplished English gentleman, have now
become the luxury of the leisurely, or the arsenal of the professional
few, while other languages, such as German, not named in those days,
are now sought after as the keys to the most valuable storehouses of
all sorts of knowledge. Add to this that Great Britain, which was then
a secondary naval power, and following the French and the Spaniards
slowly in the great world-transforming process of colonisation, is now
mistress of a world-wide empire from the Ganges to Vancouver Isle,
through which stretch she exercises a dominant influence, combining
the political virtue of ancient Rome with the commercial activity of
Carthage. In these circumstances it becomes the special duty of every
British man to acquire a familiar knowledge of the languages of the
various races with which he may be brought into political or commercial
relations; and, as languages after all are not valuable in themselves,
but only as tools by which effective work in certain fields falls to
be performed, we ought to see to it, both that we get the proper tools
for doing the work, and that we learn to use them in such fashion as to
work pleasantly and profitably; and in this view it may be truly said
that, while the wrong language in the wrong place is of no use at all,
even the right language in the right place, when imperfectly learned,
is a tool with which the best workman can do only bad work, and perhaps
cut his own fingers in the process.
As language is a function which belongs as much to every normal human
creature as seeing or hearing, there can be no difficulty in finding
out the method of Nature in its acquisition. We have to answer only
two questions: first, What are the factors of the process by which
the human babe, from being capable merely of inarticulate cries, like
any of the lower animals, is developed into an easy and graceful
manipulator of articulate speech? and again, How far, and in what
respects, does this model require to be modified in order to enable
the expert handlers of the mother tongue to use any second or third
language with like expertness? That this cannot be a very difficult
matter demands no far-sought induction to prove, as the fact lies
before us; for from the Greeks in the South-East to the Highlanders
in the North-West we find bilingual and trilingual peoples largely
scattered over Europe. It is in fact as easy to learn two or three
languages as to learn one, if only the learner be habitually submitted
to the natural influences, and guided by the steps of a natural process.
What then, in the first place, are the steps of the process which
analysis presents as elevating the inarticulate babe to the
significant-speaking boy or girl? There is (1) the direct connection
of certain objects with certain sounds and gestures; (2) these objects
are such as stand in the nearest relation to the learner, and are
presented to him in an atmosphere of the most natural and most pleasant
surroundings; (3) the imitative faculty, by which he appropriates the
proper sounds, is encouraged and cherished by frequent repetition, till
the original impression becomes permanently stamped into his soul,
and, so to speak, jumps up spontaneously with the object. Let us, in
the next place, ask how far this child’s linguistic ladder is affected
by the performer being an adult. Manifestly the difference lies only
in one point, and that altogether in favour of the adult, viz. the
application of a regulated system to the accidental sequences by which
the child learns its mother tongue, easily indeed and pleasantly, but
slowly; for he learns not architecturally as a mason builds a house,
but by the way, as one picks up a pebble on the shore or a daisy from
the meadow; whereas the adult, with his firm will and his reasonable
purpose, wishing to learn a language can submit himself to a reasonable
and a calculated treatment; and in so doing experience has shown that
in favourable circumstances, and under wise training, he can learn a
foreign language more perfectly in six months than a child can do in
as many years. Why then, you ask, is this not always done? Why does it
seem such a difficult business to acquire a familiar knowledge of any
foreign language, and why is so much brain and so much time spent so
frequently on their acquisition with such scanty results? The answer
can be only one: because your teacher has ignored the method of Nature,
and given you a bad substitute for it in his own devices; instead of
speaking to you and making you respond, in direct connection of the old
object with the new sound, and thus forming a living bond between the
thinking soul, the perceptive sense, and the significant utterance,
he sends you to a book, there to cram yourself with dead rules and
lifeless formulas about the language, in the middle of which he ought
to have planted you at the start. The evil results of this neglect of
the living model of Nature are only too manifest. Books are useful, but
they are only secondary; in all matters of observation and practical
exercise they may form an apt accompaniment or a supplement, but they
never can supplant the vital function of which they are only the dead
record. No one learns dancing, or fencing, or golf, or lawn-tennis
from a book. The evils caused by this unnatural delegation of the work
of a living teacher to the formulas of a dead book are three: (1) The
direct connection between the reasonable soul and the new articulate
sign of the object is lost; the learner does not shake hands, so to
speak, with the object, but he cumbers himself with the phraseology of
his mother tongue, and instead of saying at once δός μοι ἄρτον, _give
me bread_, he must first ask what is _the Greek for bread_. In this
way the new term remains a stranger to his thought, and he uses it
uncomfortably, as when a man puts on a pair of shoes which have only
an occasional acquaintance with his feet. (2) Then again, when, after
being sufficiently tortured with mere grammatical forms, he acquires a
certain vocabulary from the elementary reading books, the objects for
which this vocabulary supplies the new names are seldom the objects
with which he is familiarly surrounded and in which he has a living
interest, but they relate to something Julius Cæsar did in Gaul or
Cicero said in Rome some 2000 years ago, a region of strange sounds,
in which the linguistic neophyte of this nineteenth century has no
particular inclination to move, and to which his memory cannot ally
itself with any feeling of kinship; and he easily forgets the word,
because he does not care for the thing. But (3) even when he does care
for the thing, the mere reading of a lesson every day does not in the
least ensure that frequent repetition of a new vocable in connection
with an object, on which the familiar knowledge of a language depends;
whereas, if the teacher had commenced by making his schoolroom an
echo-chamber of daily repeated sounds in connection with interesting
and familiar objects directly in the view of the learner or near to
his daily life, familiarity with a new language, be it Greek or be
it German, would come as naturally and as pleasantly to a clever lad
of seventeen as the use of the mother tongue to a dainty girl or a
rattling boy of seven.
These things being so, and the method of Nature being so plain in the
matter, we now ask what are the causes that have led so many of our
teachers, even the most accomplished of their class, to neglect so
infallible a guide, and to follow methods of linguistic inculcation
equally unpleasant in the process and unprofitable in the result? These
causes, fortunately, are as patent as the consequences to which they
have led. The first cause is ignorance. In not a few of our educational
institutions it is to be feared there are teachers—an over-worked and
under-paid class—who are employed to teach languages of which they have
only a very superficial knowledge and no firm hold. With persons of
this class the whole process of linguistic training amounts to this,
_Read your book, Get your lesson, and I will hear you_. Of a living
appeal from the tongue of the teacher and a living response from the
tongue of the learner these gentlemen have no conception. They must
do the most they can, confine themselves within page and chapter of a
printed book, where they require no knowledge beyond the marked limits
of the lesson, and where the scantiness of their linguistic furniture
and the feebleness of their linguistic vitality cannot be exposed.
Let them pass. But what of the men of high accomplishment, exact
scholarship, and fine taste: why should they scorn the practice which
is the foundation of the rules, and the conversation which made great
speeches and great poems before rules or schools were heard of? Simply
because they have forgotten the lesson taught in a well-known dialogue
of Plato,[1] that the printed papers which we call books, useful for
record, are rather prejudicial than profitable to the culture of
memory; they have become the slaves of their tools, and defrauded the
ear and the tongue of their natural rights in the field of significant
speech by a wholesale transference of their functions to the eyes. The
scholar, in their conception, is a reading animal, and without books he
is nowhere. Why then, they will argue, when our object is to read and
to understand books, should we trouble ourselves with conversation? We
do not learn Latin in order to talk with Cæsar and Cicero, but to read
their books; and in like manner we do not study German to drink beer
and smoke pipes and sing songs with rollicking students in a _kneipe_,
but to ponder with many-sided thought over the poems of Goethe or the
speculations of Hegel. So be it. Let books and not living converse be
the final end of the study of languages; so they certainly are with
the dead languages; but even with regard to them it is quite certain
that the familiarity and frequent repetition which are the special
virtues of the conversational method both render the mastery of books,
as in the case of the mother tongue, more complete, and the hold of
the printed signature at once more firm in the grasp and more easy in
the approach. But some one will say, Does not speaking in a language
imply thinking in it, and is not thinking in a foreign tongue one of
the most difficult and rare attainments even with the most accomplished
linguists? Not at all. The difficulty lies merely in starting from
the wrong end and following the false direction thus given till it
culminates in the persistency of a bad habit and the imagination of an
impossibility. It is as easy to look the Sun in the face and say שׁמּשּׁ,
SHEMISH, as to say SUN, and there is no more difficulty in saying λαβὼν
τὸ σκάλευθρον κίνει τὸ πῦρ, than in saying, _take the poker and stir
the fire_. In both cases the direct connection of _thought_, _thing_,
and _word_ is equally obvious, equally easy, and equally natural; only
at the start the habit of thinking exclusively in the mother tongue
must be broken.
[1] _Phaedrus_, 275 E.
There is one other objection to the conversational method in the
teaching of languages, viz. that it makes a man a parrot. Well, a
parrot is an imitative animal, and so is a man, and so far must not be
ashamed to own his kinship with the plumy prattler. But he is a parrot
and something more; and this something more every sensible teacher will
take into account. For myself, I have no preference for random talk:
my contention is for regulated talk; the talk first and the regulation
afterwards, in the order of gradation so succinctly stated by Lord
Bacon—_speaking makes a ready man, reading makes a full man, writing
makes an accurate man_;—all the three. But have your nails first before
you pare them; this is the common sense of the matter.
In conclusion, I have a word or two to say with regard to the occasion
and the plan of this little book. In the first place, whatever may
be said of Hebrew or Latin, Greek is a living language, and must be
treated as such even by those who persist in the notion that, while
the method of living vocal appeal applies in its full extent to
modern languages, it is certainly out of place in the treatment of
the two ancient languages which justly claim the first place in the
linguistic culture of our highest schools. The delusion that Greek
is a dead language, springing as it does mainly out of our “insular
ignorance,” as Professor Seeley calls it, and partly, I fear, our
national insolence, will be dispelled in a moment by a glance at any
current Greek newspaper; as for instance the following paragraph, the
first that met my eye, from the 2d November number of the Athenian
“Ἀκρόπολις,” giving a short notice of the application of Koch’s remedy
for consumption.
ΝΕΑ ΚΑΙ ΠΕΡΙΕΡΓΑ.
Ἡ φθίσις ἐν Ρωσσίᾳ.
Ἡ ἀνακάλυψις τοῦ μεγάλου Κὼχ δίδει ἀφορμὴν εἰς τὰς
ρωσσικὰς ἐφημερίδας νὰ ἐξετάσωσι πόσοι εἰσὶν οἱ
πάσχοντες ἐκ τῆς νόσου ταύτης. Ἐκ τῶν 120,000,000
τῶν κατοίκων τῆς Ρωσσίας, ἂν ὑπολογίσῃ τις μόνον
5 ἐπὶ τοῖς (0)0 πάσχοντας ἐκ φθίσεως, 6,000,000
μόνον Ρῶσσοι ἔχουσι τὴν ἀνάγκην τῆς θεραπείας
τοῦ περικλεοῦς καθηγητοῦ. Ὁ ἀριθμὸς εἶνε μάλιστα
ἐν τούτοις ἀκριβής. Ἐν Ρωσσίᾳ καὶ ἰδίως εἰς τὰ
βορειότερα αὐτῆς μέρη ἡ φθίσις κάμνει μεγίστην
θραῦσιν. Ἐν Πετρουπόλει ὡς ἐκ τῆς ἀθλιότητος τοῦ
κλίματος καὶ τῆς κακῆς διαίτης τάξεών τινων τῆς
κοινωνίας ἡ φθίσις καταστρέφει φρικωδῶς. Ἑν ταῖς
οἰκίαις ἀπομεμακρυσμένων τινῶν συνοικιῶν, εἰς
οἰκίας εἰς ἃ σπανίως διεισδύει ἀκτὶς ἡλίου βλέπει
τις νέας καὶ νέους ὠχροὺς αἱμοπτύοντας καὶ ἐκεῖ εἰς
ἀνήλια δωμάτια ἀναμένοντας τὸν θάνατον. Μειδιάσατε
δυστυχεῖς· ὁ Κῲχ ἐργάζεται ὅπως ἁρπάσῃ ἀπὸ τὰς χεῖρας
τοῦ θανάτου ὅλα αὐτὰ τὰ ἑκατομμύρια τῶν ὑπάρξεων.
Any person who can read classical Greek without a dictionary will
have no difficulty in understanding this passage; and, if he is
familiar with the New Testament in the original, he will find that
some of the principal peculiarities which distinguish the Greek used
by the living political and public men of Athens, so far from being
corruptions, are no less distinctive features of the κοινὴ διάλεκτος of
the Greeks now than they were in the days of the Apostle Paul and the
Evangelist John. But this is not all. It requires only a superficial
acquaintance with the most patent facts of Greek literature to know
that some of the most popular and the most profound teachers of Greek
wisdom—Plato, Aristophanes and Xenophon—use the conversational style.
The Greeks, in fact, were, as they are still, a lively and a talking
people, and Socrates, their greatest name, cannot be better described
than as a talking street preacher of reason and common sense. Well,
then, on this double basis that Greek is a living language, and that
the colloquial style is that in which its highest and best thoughts
are expressed; and knowing, moreover, by large experience, that the
most effective way to get a firm grasp of any language is to begin
by speaking it, some twenty years ago I published a small volume of
Greek and English dialogues,[2] which I used in my class in as far
as it was possible to do so in such a multitudinous huddlement of
untrained lads as the Scottish Universities, contrary to the practice
of all educated nations, admit into the junior classes of the Faculty
of Arts. The little book came to a second edition; but that it was
in anywise generally used by classical teachers I have no reason to
believe, partly because, of all classes of men, teachers are the most
closely wedded to old bookish habits, and partly because Scotland is
not a country to which the world, governed as it is by authority and
by names, would look for anything worthy of imitation in the Greek
line: “_Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?_” This, as the world
goes, was quite legitimate, and gave me no concern. But since that
time, as a natural consequence of the great educational movement of
the age, some very distinct voices have come to my ear, to the effect
that there is something radically wrong in our way of dealing with
languages, and that the method of teaching by rules and grammar mainly
can no longer be tolerated. I therefore felt it my duty to appeal a
second time to the public and to teachers on this important matter, the
more so that my little book stood too far apart from the educational
attitude of the teachers, and, if it was to find its way into general
school use, required a more elementary book as an introduction. This
elementary book I now send forth under the title of a _Greek Primer,
Colloquial and Constructive_, indicating by this title that the lessons
in talking go hand in hand with the grammatical forms naturally educed
from them, each lesson being regulated talk, according to a natural
progression from the more simple to the more complex forms in ordinary
use. This progressive incorporation of the grammar is the feature which
distinguishes the lessons of this introductory book from the dialogues
in its predecessor; and the necessity of having constant reference to
grammatical forms prevented me from giving that unity of subject to the
dialogue as dialogue which belonged to the previous volume.
[2] _Greek and English Dialogues for the use of Schools and Colleges._
London: Macmillan, 1871.
I have only further to state, with regard to the use of this little
primer in the hands of a teacher, that I have no desire that he should
bind himself slavishly to the text. The scraps of talk that are given
under each lesson are meant to lend him a helping hand in the use
of a new organ; and, to enable both teacher and learner to furnish
themselves with a living vocabulary of Greek words in direct connection
with their daily surroundings, I have added an alphabetical list of the
names of the most familiar objects that belong to the field of life
in town or country where the learner may happen to be. When the young
Hellenist has stamped its Greek designation directly on every object
that meets his eyes, and connected it with some single verb that
belongs to its significance in familiar life, I would then suggest that
the teacher, besides the daily repetition of certain forms of common
conversation, should give a _vivâ voce_ description of pictures hung on
the wall two or three times a week, which the learner shall be called
on to repeat without any written notes; the principle of the method
being always to maintain the direct action of the mind on the object,
through the instrumentality of the new sound, without the intervention
of the mother tongue. As to when, and how far, and in what kind the
usual furniture of elementary books of grammar, reading, and exercises
should go parallel with colloquial practice, this I leave altogether
in the hands of the practised teacher, being well assured that easy
reading and accurate writing, so far from being inconsistent with, are
the natural blossom and the ripe fruit of the root of living utterance
from which I start.
One other matter requires special notice—a matter not necessarily
connected with the colloquial method, but which may be wisely used as
a help. To each lesson I have appended a short list of English words,
either by family affinity, or by direct borrowing, or by indirect
borrowing through the Latin, radically identical with the Greek. The
habit of identifying such words under an English disguise will perform
the double function of facilitating memory and giving a lesson on the
transmutation of sounds and meaning, the tracing of which gives so
peculiar a charm to comparative philology. In Appendix I. I have added
some of the principles on which these transmutations depend, so far as
they are suggested by the words used in the text.
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—
ὁρῶ, ὁρᾷς, ὁρᾷ, _I see, thou seest, he sees_.
ἀκούω, ἀκούεις, ἀκούει, _I hear_, etc.
So—
θαυμάζω, _I wonder_.
μῑσῶ, _I hate_.
φιλῶ, _I love_.
ἔχω, _I have_.
USEFUL IMPERATIVES
φέρε, _bring_.
δός, _give_.
ἰδοῦ, _behold! here!_
The article _the_ is declined masculine, feminine, and neuter like the
nouns, thus—
ὁ ἡ τὸ
τὸν τὴν τὸ
It never has α in the feminine.
The verb _to be_, εἰμί, has second person εἶ, third ἐστί, or before a
vowel ἐστίν, and in plural ἐσμέν, ἐστέ, εἰσί.
The pronouns of the first and second persons are—
ἐγώ μοῦ, ἐμοῦ μοῖ, ἐμοί μέ, ἐμέ
_I of me to me me_
σύ σοῦ σοί σέ
_thou of thee to thee thee_
λαμπρός ἐστι ὁ ἥλιος, _the sun is bright_.
καὶ καλὴ ἡ ἡμέρα, _and the day beautiful_.
ὁρᾷς τὸν ἥλιον; _do you see the sun?_
ὁρῶ νεφέλην, _I see a cloud_.
νεφέλην στυγνὴν ὁρῶ, _I see a dark cloud_.
ὁρᾷς τὸν καπνόν; _do you see the smoke?_
ὁρᾷς τὸν οὐρανὸν τὸν κυανοῦν; _do you see the blue sky?_
ἀκούεις τοῦ ποταμοῦ; _do you hear the river?_
ἀκούεις τῆς βροντῆς; _do you hear the thunder?_
θαυμάζεις τὸ δένδρον τόδε τὸ ὑψηλόν; _do you admire this tall tree?_
θαυμάζω καὶ μ́ᾰλα γε, _I admire it extremely_.
ὁρᾷς τὸ ῥόδον τοῦτο τὸ καλόν; _do you see this beautiful rose?_
καὶ τὸ λείριον τὸ λευκόν; _and the white lily?_
καὶ τὴν πόαν τὴν χλωράν; _and the green grass?_
καλός ἐστιν ὁ κῆπος, _the garden is beautiful_.
καὶ σοφὸς ὁ κηπουρός, _and the gardener wise_.
ὁρῶ ἄκανθαν, _I see a thistle_.
κᾰκόν, κᾰκόν, _bad, bad!_
αἰσχρόν, αἰσχρόν, _ugly, ugly!_
μῑσῶ τὴν κακὴν ἄκανθαν, _I hate the ugly thistle_.
φιλῶ τὸ ῥόδον τὸ καλόν, _I love the lovely rose_.
μῑσεῖς τὴν ἀκαλήφην; _do you hate the nettle?_
μάλιστα, _certainly_.
σφοδρός ἐστιν ὁ ἄνεμος, _the wind is strong_.
φιλῶ τὴν σκιάν, _I love the shade_.
καὶ τὴν σκέπην, _and the shelter_.
φέρε τὴν τράπεζαν, _bring the table_.
ποῦστι ὁ πέτασος ὁ ἐμός; _where is my hat?_
δός μοι τὸν πέτασον, _give me the hat_.
φιλῶ πῖλον ἐγώ, _I love a cap_.
κ́ῑνει τὸ πῦρ, _or_ τὴν ἐσχάραν, _stir the fire_.
δός μοι τὸ σκάλευθρον, _give me the poker_.
ἔχεις πυράγραν; _have you tongs?_
ἰδοῦ, _there_.
ὁρᾷς τὸ κάτοπτρον; _do you see the mirror?_
ἔχεις ἕδρᾱν; _have you a seat?_
ἔχεις ὑποπόδιον; _have you a footstool?_
ἔχεις κλ́ῑνην; _have you a sofa?_
δός μοι τὴν βακτηρίαν, _give me my stick_.
τὸ παιδίον τόδε τίς ἔστι; _who is this little boy?_
ὁ ἀδελφὸς ὁ ἐμός, _my brother_.
ἔστι σοι ἀδελφή; _have you a sister?_
φιλῶ δεῖπνον, _I love dinner_.
ἔχεις ἄρτον καὶ βούτῡρον; _have you bread and butter_?
καλὸν τὸ ἀργυροῦν ποτήριον τοῦτο, _this silver cup is beautiful_.
φέρε τὸ καλαμάριον, _bring the inkstand_.
λάβε, _take it_.
οὐχ ὁρῶ κάλαμον, _I do not see a pen_.
ἰδοῦ, _here_.
χάριν ἔχω, _thanks_.
δός μοι χειρόμακτρον, _give me a napkin_.
ἔτι δὲ τοῦ σάπωνος, _and some soap_.
ἰδοῦ σάπωνα τὸν τοῦ Πεαρσίου, _here it is, Pears’ soap_.
θεῖον πάνυ χρῆμα τοῦ καθαρτικοῦ, _a splendid cleanser!_
νῦν δὴ λευκαί μοι αἱ χεῖρες ὥσπερ ἡ χιών. Ἔρρωσο.
_now my hands are white as snow. Farewell_.
ENGLISH AFFINITIES
Panorama. Lamp. Heliotrope. Calisthenics. Ephemeral. Urania. Acoustics.
Thaumaturgy. Rose. Lily. Chlorine. Sophist. Cacophony. Misanthrope.
Democrat. Animation. Philanthropy. Fire. Optics. Ophthalmia. Cathedral.
Clinical. Philadelphia. Adelphi Court. Soap. Chiromancy. Cathartic.
LESSON II
CASES, GENITIVE AND DATIVE
The genitive case signifies the source _from_ which a thing comes and
to which it belongs, as the _folly of fools_, the _fool’s folly_,
the folly that comes from the fool. The dative case means either the
secondary or more distant object of an action, as _I gave the book
to the boy_; or it _signifies rest_ or _residence in a thing_, for
which in English there is no special form; also in Greek it signifies
the instrument with which, or by which, a thing is done, as to _cut_
with a _knife_. In Greek masculines in ος have the genitive in ου and
the dative in ῳ; feminines in ρᾱ or ρᾰ and ίᾱ have the genitive in ας
and the dative in ᾳ; other feminines in α—as τράπεζᾰ, _a table_—and
feminines in η have ης in the genitive and ῃ in the dative.