Vox Graeca
by W. Sidney Allen · first published 1968
6mentions
5recommended by
6HN commenters
2010–2025first – last mentioned
83% recommend17% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Explains how Ancient Greek was pronounced and how scholars know, drawing on grammarians' notes, graffiti, loanwords, puns and later Greek forms; recommended for readers curious about historical linguistics.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…Proulx, Fine Just The Way It Is. A new collection of stories from the best writer about rural America out there. Three are extraordinary, two so-so, the rest very good. Non-fiction: W. Sidney Allen, Vox Graeca and Vox Latina. If you want to know how ancient Greek and Latin sounded, these are the books to read. Elizabeth Lloyd. The Case Of The Female Orgasm. An interesting study into how available evolutionary…
on “Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?” ↗Get W. Sidney Allen's slim text _Vox Graeca_. It goes over not only how Ancient Greek was pronounced but also how we know. The evidence includes explicit notes from grammarians and other writers, graffiti, borrowings, puns, and later forms of Greek.…
on “Ancient Greek accents in ten rules” ↗…further apart from what is written. Historical linguistics is quite interesting once you get into it. I recommend the following books, although both quite technical in the linguistic sense: Allen, Vox Graeca: The Pronunciation of Classical Greek 3rd Edition (Cambridge University Press 1987) Horrocks, Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers, 2nd Edition (Wiley-Blackwell 2010)
on “Seikilos epitaph” ↗…teacher to one who pronounced it [i], he conformed to our standard rather than vice versa). The bLogicarian has an article [1] which goes into more detail with some recordings, or you can pick up a copy of Vox Graeca by W. Sidney Allen. [1]: https://blogicarian.blogspot.com/2012/10/ancient-greek-food-...
on “Spartan School (2019)” ↗Giving your friend the benefit of the doubt, sometimes one gets the wrong perspective from a careful, qualified statement. W. Sidney Allen wrote Vox Graeca[1] and Vox Latina which are well-known works which detail both what we know about pronunciation as well as explaining how we came to know these things. We surely don't know everything and scholarship…
on “How did Ancient Greek music sound?” ↗…stressed syllable, which might or might not itself have a long vowel. Even people who advocate for (classically-)correct quantity often don't consistently get it right. (And yes, Allen also did publish a Vox Graeca https://www.cambridge.org/ie/universitypress/subjects/classi... , too, but be careful: the pronunciation of Ancient Greek is a question that might actually get you into a fistfight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BybLbHPU7Qc&list=PLQQL5IeNgc...…
on “Schola Latina Europæa and Universalis” ↗