Correct pronunciation - where to find the information?

[Xenophon]

Why are you certain of this? If it’s true then you’re pretty much screwed with any ancient language, as uncertainty, speculation, and debate abound for all of them.

You're right about that! I took an intensive course in Ancient Greek in grad school. One Oxbridge-educated prof was steeped in certainty suretain that the double-sigma was pronounced "ch" as in "churlish." His colleague (same educational chops) was ready to thrash any man who didn't agree double-sigma was "sh" as in the "sh**" the first prof was full of. In class? They both taught it as a slighthly emphatic "--ss--" like the books all said.

The joy of satan website is meticulous enough to give variant pronunciations for the Hebrew alphabet in theit "Reverse Torah Rituals" (RTR). Likewise they offer pronunciations (including audio) of the Elder Futhark runes in Old Norse, modern Icelandic, modern German, and mebbe one or two others. I can't speak for the other languages, but their German is near enough Hochdeutsch to pass (although slightly theatrical.) (Come for the pronunciation; don't stay for the rituals. JOS wanna be Temple of Set when their other testicle drops.)

Post automatically merged: Mar 16, 2024

one of the issues with the Barbarous Words is that the difference in pronunciation between many vowels is length, not sound. We don't have this in English really but the closest is, say,, the difference between the "o" in got vs gone. You extend it a little for "gone", without changing the sound. cf boot vs boon. That short vs long but SAME SOUND vowel is in a lot of languages but especially ancient greek. In most times and places, the two E vowels werent "eh" and "ay", they were "eh" and "ehh"

the problem here is that, when you're vibrating vowels at length, they're ALL "ehhhhh". So, I've kept each vowel as a distinct sounds, even though this is historically less plausible.

Another one that really threw me: in pretty much all variants of Ancient Greek, they distinguish between the letter P. We actually make both these sounds in English, but we don't write them differently or even realise we're saying it differently. It's the difference between the P in "pin" vs "spin" (say them both out loud right now - one is aspirated). Apparently, getting those mixed up to an Ancient Greek is like us mixing up S and SH. Important! But god I can't track it. So I don't make this distinction and I just say whichever P it would be in English. And so do 99.9% of native-English-speaker magicians

Post automatically merged: Mar 15, 2024

There's a big problem here: most Americans in formal study were taught Erasmian pronunciation of Greek. Erasmus was explicitly NOT trying to reconstruct the original sound. We care about reconstructionism now, but they didn't back then. He was just trying to make something you could say clearly and distinguish between sounds. It served his purpose well, but not our purpose.

So a lot of people with formal study find it really hard to break out of that - even though it's dead, dead wrong. I don't know if there's a Latin equivalent of Erasmian pronunciation but I wouldn't put it past them.

If there is uncertainty, how can you assume Erasmus was wrong?

Post automatically merged: Mar 16, 2024

nah you good. pronouncing words and hitting the right "frequency" on a vowel is not the same

For the right frequency you might need a real live teacher. There are some chants I'd like to perform. But the old-fashioned system of notation the present-day authors use is a bit hard to wrap my ear around. And even having looked up their "classical modes" (Phyrgian, Dorian, etc.) I'm uncertain how to apply that to actual chanting.

Post automatically merged: Mar 16, 2024

Some of the "Egyptian," "Hebrew", etc. words in the PGM are either words made-up to sound like they're from those languages, or are hopelessly garbled so that no one can figure out which words they were supposed to be. They use bits of Coptic Christian prayers (fun fact: the deity named most often in the PGM is Jesus). They are highly syncretic documents and it seems crazy to me to get scrupulous about pronunciation. I mean, just think about how any language works. Think of the language you speak. Does everyone speaking it today pronounce it the same way everywhere? Of course they don't, and this is an era of mass communication and mass literacy where grammar, spelling, pronunciation, etc. have been well standardized for most living languages.

Let's say some of these texts were written by Hellenized Egyptian priests. Would their spoken Greek have sounded the same as someone in Athens or Byzantium? Would a learned Rabbi be impressed with their Hebrew? Would the Coptic they spoke sound right to their forebears of centuries past?

Yeah: there's a saying in China, from the old days: "Walk three days and you need a new language."

 

[pixel_fortune]

If there is uncertainty, how can you assume Erasmus was wrong?

He wasn't wrong - he succeeded at a different goal to the one we have. He was explicit about not making an attempt at reconstruction. He never claimed it was historically accurate. He was just trying to make it studyable. His pronunciation was designed as an educational tool.

Secondly it's not that there's uncertainty, exactly, it's that there are many, many correct ways. Lots of things are like this - there are many right answers but you can still say "that, right there, is not one of them". It's not like "because there are some unknowns, we just throw our hands up and declare the whole thing impossible to know anything about"

Thirdly, because there is very widespread consensus on this. No one thinks Erasmian pronunciation is historically accurate (again, including Erasmus). Experts might argue over whether something is X or Y, but they can still agree on "it's not Z"

Post automatically merged: Mar 16, 2024

It's actually quite cool how they figure out pronunciation, or one of the ways

Scribes were taught by a guy standing in the middle of the room and reciting a text, while all the students copied it out. So there are texts where we have hundreds of copies of them, all don't by students

Where there are spelling mistakes, it tends to be (except in English) between to similar sounding letters. You might mishear a (rolled) R as a D, but you wouldn't mishear it as an S. So they compare the mistakes across these hundreds of student copies and see which ones are common, which letters often get misheard.

 

[HoldAll]

Length is a good point; personally, I tend to draw out vowels for their dramatic effect (in vowel strings, not so much in barbarous names).

Additionally, there's the matter of pitch: Some authors, for example Michael Kelly in "Words of Power", associate the 7 Greek vowels with the 7 classical planets which doesn't work for me at all. What does work, however, is the attribution of vowels to the 7 chakras. You don't even have to believe in them to feel an effect. The heart chakra, for example, would correspond to the standard "A" ("AH", 440 Hz), the "U" ("OO") sound to the root chakra, "I" ("EE") to the Third Eye and so on; the crown chakra then would be ultrasound to express its ineffability but that's just my personal theory.

What inspired me here is probably the Gnostic Pentagram Ritual by Peter J. Carroll:

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So whenever there is a "U" ("OO") in PGM vowel strings, I tend to chant it in a very low pitch, almost like a growl; it's a chthonic sound, like a descent into the underworld. I'd declaim "I" ("EE"), on the other hand, in a higher pitch - it is piercing yet subtle. I could very well imagine myself droning "U" for ten minutes and come out of this exercise feeling like a caveman, or "I" and slightly stoned. Amazing things, vowels.

 

[Xenophon]

He wasn't wrong - he succeeded at a different goal to the one we have. He was explicit about not making an attempt at reconstruction. He never claimed it was historically accurate. He was just trying to make it studyable. His pronunciation was designed as an educational tool.

Secondly it's not that there's uncertainty, exactly, it's that there are many, many correct ways. Lots of things are like this - there are many right answers but you can still say "that, right there, is not one of them". It's not like "because there are some unknowns, we just throw our hands up and declare the whole thing impossible to know anything about"

Thirdly, because there is very widespread consensus on this. No one thinks Erasmian pronunciation is historically accurate (again, including Erasmus). Experts might argue over whether something is X or Y, but they can still agree on "it's not Z"

Post automatically merged: Mar 16, 2024

It's actually quite cool how they figure out pronunciation, or one of the ways

Scribes were taught by a guy standing in the middle of the room and reciting a text, while all the students copied it out. So there are texts where we have hundreds of copies of them, all don't by students

Where there are spelling mistakes, it tends to be (except in English) between to similar sounding letters. You might mishear a (rolled) R as a D, but you wouldn't mishear it as an S. So they compare the mistakes across these hundreds of student copies and see which ones are common, which letters often get misheard.

Makes sense.

Length is a good point; personally, I tend to draw out vowels for their dramatic effect (in vowel strings, not so much in barbarous names).

Additionally, there's the matter of pitch: Some authors, for example Michael Kelly in "Words of Power", associate the 7 Greek vowels with the 7 classical planets which doesn't work for me at all. What does work, however, is the attribution of vowels to the 7 chakras. You don't even have to believe in them to feel an effect. The heart chakra, for example, would correspond to the standard "A" ("AH", 440 Hz), the "U" ("OO") sound to the root chakra, "I" ("EE") to the Third Eye and so on; the crown chakra then would be ultrasound to express its ineffability but that's just my personal theory.

What inspired me here is probably the Gnostic Pentagram Ritual by Peter J. Carroll:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

So whenever there is a "U" ("OO") in PGM vowel strings, I tend to chant it in a very low pitch, almost like a growl; it's a chthonic sound, like a descent into the underworld. I'd declaim "I" ("EE"), on the other hand, in a higher pitch - it is piercing yet subtle. I could very well imagine myself droning "U" for ten minutes and come out of this exercise feeling like a caveman, or "I" and slightly stoned. Amazing things, vowels.

Maybe more than just your personal theory. I recall reading something last year where the author said one knew one hit the right pitch when one felt it in the chakra being worked on. Danged if I recall the source at the moment.