Erasmian pronunciation

Ancient Greek has been pronounced in various ways by those studying Ancient Greek literature in various times and places. This article covers those pronunciations; the modern scholarly reconstruction of its ancient pronunciation is covered in Ancient Greek phonology.

Among speakers of Modern Greek, from the Byzantine Empire to modern Greece, Cyprus, and the Greek diaspora, Greek texts from all periods have always been pronounced using contemporaneous, local Greek pronunciation, which makes it easy to recognize the many words which have remained the same or similar in written form from one period to another. Among Classical scholars, this is often called the Reuchlinian pronunciation after Johann Reuchlin.

Nevertheless, Greek textbooks for secondary education give a summary description of the reconstructed pronunciation of Ancient Greek. This includes differentiation between short and long vowels and between the various accents, pronunciation of the spiritus asper as /h/, of β, γ and δ as plosives and of diphthongs as such, whereas often no mention is made of the pronunciation of θ, φ, and χ.

The Theology faculties and schools related to or belonging to the Eastern Orthodox Church use modern Greek pronunciation, following the tradition of the Byzantine Empire.

The study of Greek in the West expanded considerably during the Renaissance, in particular after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, when many Byzantine Greek scholars came to western Europe. At this time, Greek texts were universally pronounced using the medieval pronunciation which survives intact to the present day.

From about 1486, various scholars (notably Antonio of Lebrixa, Girolamo Aleandro, and Aldus Manutius) judged that this pronunciation appeared to be inconsistent with the descriptions handed down by ancient grammarians, and suggested alternative pronunciations. This work culminated in Desiderius Erasmus' dialogue De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione (1528). The system propounded in this work is called the Erasmian pronunciation.

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