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The Error of Caragounis: Detailed Critique of "The Error of Erasmus" by Chrys Caragounis

polýMATHY PLUS

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This video is a detailed critique of "The Error of Erasmus and Un-Greek Pronunciations of Greek" (1995) by Χρήστος Καραγκούνης (Chrys Caragounis). Caragounis' paper is often shared by those who affirm that the Ancient Greek pronunciation was the same or nearly the same as that of Modern Greek. This paper and its ideas usually appeal to the linguistically illiterate, among whom Caragounis is to be named, who favor Modern Greek phonology for one reason or another. Since most people don't have the linguistic knowledge to readily challenge each of Caragounis' notions head-on, this video is an attempt to shine light on the incredibly numerous of errors of logic and facts made by the author in this quite infamous work on "historical" phonology.

SOURCES

Vox Graeca, by w. Sidney Allen
https://amzn.to/3FsiCT6

Vox Latina, by W. Sidney Allen
https://amzn.to/3WdPxSY

Greek: A History of the Language and its People, by Geoffrey Horrocks
https://amzn.to/3FXYedR

Medieval and Early Modern Greek, by David Holton et al.
https://amzn.to/3zkhgqO

The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, Edgar Howard Sturtevant
https://amzn.to/3W4nt45

The Phonology of Attic in the Hellenistic Period (1978), by Sven-Tage Teodorsson

The Phonemic System of the Attic Dialect 400-340 BC (1974), by Sven-Tage Teodorsson

Romanitas and the Latin Language (2003), by JN Adams
https://archive.org/details/j.-n.-ada...

The Regional Diversification of Latin 200 BC - AD 600 (2008), by JN Adams
https://amzn.to/3TRGZ2w

Antonius Jannarius “A Historical Greek Grammar” (1890) https://play.google.com/books/reader?...

ARTICLES
Will Annis “The Error of Caragounis” (2008) http://www.aoidoi.org/articles/caraer...
Erasmus “Dē Rēctā Latīnī Graecīque Sermōnis Prōnūntiātiōne” https://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/Ch...
Luke Amadeus Ranieri "Variants of Lucian Pronunciation" (2023) Patreon: 80661461

Erasmian Pron. and its divergences: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunc...
Archaic Greek Alphabets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic...
Isochrony: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrony

CITED VIDEOS
Reading the Bible in Greek with Maria, Matthew 6 Modern Greek Pronunciation: Matthew 6 Modern Greek Pronunciation
Reading the Bible in Greek with Maria, Matthew 6 Erasmian Pronunciation: Matthew 6 Erasmian Pronunciation
Delphic Paean by Athenaios Athenaiou: Delphic Paean by Athenaios Athenaiou
Accompanying sheet music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphic...
Ioannis Stratakis’ (Podium-Arts) recording of the Apologia of Socrates: Apology of Socrates, by Plato (reconstruct...

MY VIDEOS
Ancient Greek Pronunciation: https://shorturl.at/QRSW2
IPA Vowels: Vowel Pronunciation Tutorial • IPA (Intern...
IPA Consonants: Consonant Pronunciation Tutorial • IPA (In...
What Classical Attic ACTUALLY sounded like 🤯 Vulgar Attic pronunciation: What Classical Attic ACTUALLY sounded like...
"Vulgar" Attic vs. Classical Attic Pronunciation: "Vulgar" Attic vs. Classical Attic Pronunc...
Retracted S in Greek & Latin:
How to recite Latin meter: https://shorturl.at/jEO14

OTHER
Armenian audio samples: http://archive.phonetics.ucla.edu/Lan...
Audio file 1: http://archive.phonetics.ucla.edu/Lan...
The corresponding Aremenian text: http://archive.phonetics.ucla.edu/Lan...
Intercapēdinēs Latīnae by Rodrigo Portela https://www.spreaker.com/show/interca...

Timeline of Greek Pronunciation Changes:
http://bit.ly/ranierigreekpronunciation

Timeline of authors of Latin, including the grammarians:
https://bit.ly/ranierilatingreekauthors

🦂 Latin Pronunciation & Conversation:
Patreon: 53942894

📚 Luke Ranieri Audiobooks:
https://luke-ranieri.myshopify.com

🦂 Support my work on Patreon:
Patreon: LukeRanieri

📚 Luke Ranieri Audiobooks:
https://luke-ranieri.myshopify.com

🎙 Latin & Greek audio:
https://lukeranieri.com/audio

#greek #attic #pronunciation

0:00:00 Intro
0:08:17 Summary of Teodorsson
0:11:53 Will Annis’ “The Error of Caragounis” (2008)
0:28:19 Erasmus’ Dialogue
0:38:48 His error on the circumflex accent
0:54:16 Cargounis’ “The Error of Erasmus and Un-Greek Pronunciations of Greek” (1995)
0:54:26 1. The Problem
1:02:17 2. The Error of Erasmus
1:08:34 The original “practical joke” explained
1:18:22 Problems with Erasmian in practice today
1:25:36 3. Historical Circumstances
1:29:18 Jannaris’ error
1:37:29 4. The “Historical” Pronunciation of Greek
2:01:55 Wrong alphabets
2:17:25 Vowel length
2:25:21 Delphic hymn
2:39:05 4.1 Criteria for determining the Pronunciation
2:55:40 4.2 Vowels & Diphthongs
3:19:10 4.3 Consonants
3:38:38 5. Accents, breathings, etc. (Prosody)
3:59:25 chain of wrongness
4:05:36 μh λh ρh explained
4:10:10 6. Corollaries
4:15:21 watch me agree with Caragounis wholeheartedly!
4:43:49 Romance Speakers & Classical Latin: Rodrigo Portela & Irene La Preziosa

20 Comments

@HighWideandHandsome 3 years ago

Caragounis puts the LOL in philologist.

@unquietthoughts 2 years ago

My dialect has a pitch accent (it has rising instead of falling though) and Mr. Caragounis' claim was, well, hilarious.

@pooroldnostradamus 3 years ago

Bloody hell, look at the size of that fooker!

@isancicramon0926 3 years ago

I for one find a certain bucolic charm in the “is impossible to pronounce!” argument. Reminds me of late-medieval Arabic grammarians (more often than not, persian-born, or turks) who argue that in no human language can a word start by a consonant cluster.

@Thelaretus 3 years ago

As a moustache appreciator, I approve of this video.

@tante8074 3 years ago

His point about pitch accent is so weird considering Swedish, a language he speaks, has pitch accent.

@Nick_G. 1 year ago

As a Greek who’s studies natural sciences, am surprised that this paper was even published in the first place.

@gunnar7902 2 years ago

finished it!! 😅 very interesting, as a fellow language nerd and hellenophile this was a great way to spend an afternoon at home recovering from a cold lol

@Contrapunctus1984 3 years ago

Length of Luke's videos seem to correlate with how much he is pissed off. Remember folks - correlation, not causation!

@Thedeepseanomad 2 years ago

The reason why so many Greeks resist reconstructed pronunciation is quite simple: they do not want the "Golden Age of yore" to sound Awful in their ears.

@lorenzomurrone2430 1 year ago

I’d never thought of Italian as having vowel quantity, even though it’s not phonemic. Thanks, you opened my eyes to an easier way of explaining this! Haha

@eleftheriosgeorgouletis3306 3 years ago (edited)

I haven't watched the whole video yet, but let me share some initial thoughts. In my experience, Greeks who have had any interest in their lives in the ancient form of our Language, do not believe that the modern pronounciation was in use during antiquity, unless they have engaged in the subject with the intention to "prove" that it were (and that comes seperatelly with other improbable claims, like the claim that Greek letters are a descendant of linear B). What some Greeks who are half learnt about the history of Greek pronounciation think, is that, because they do not know about the reconstructed pronounciation, they have to choose between erasmian and modern pronounciation and among the two, they prefer the modern. The other thing which needs to be mentioned is that Greeks who consider that the ancient form of Greek is the same language as the modern form of Greek, do not make the claim that either the pronounciation hasn't changed, or that ancient Greek is mutually intelligible to modern Greek. As other people mentioned (in your Ancient Greek Chat GPT video), it is just that in Greece we have a differnt definition of what a language is (for example, we consider old English to be a different form of modern English, but still English, and that old Egyptian and Coptic are a different form of the same language). As you have said, the definition of a language is not set in stone either way. I will edit the comment should I think that I must add something else. On a final note, the linguistic establishment of Greece are trained linguists, they are not bloggers promoting pseudoscience. Therefore, please do not conflate the claim that ancient Greek and modern Greek are the same language, which is a matter of perspective, with opinions such as that modern and ancient Greek have the same pronounciation, which no Linguist employed in our universities believes.

Edit 1: Polytonic writing is an acceptable choice for modern Greek demotic. It isn't tied to the whole Katharevousa - Demotic question at all. The official support for it was withdrawn in 1982, but many publishing houses officially use it. It isn't used to artificially bring ancient and modern Greek closer.

@sot11cat 3 years ago

Contraction for Karagounis means just "from two vowels to one", but he cannot get ANYTHING about morae, long vowel pronunciation, diphthongs etc. I admire your patience and chill throughout the video 🙂

@tim1730 2 years ago

The language reflected by old runes as the oldest recorded form of Germanic languages, before other sources came into being, is called 'Runisch' in German historical linguistics sometimes.

@RoyalKnightVIII 2 years ago

Luke's getting spicy here, love it

@saarl99 3 years ago (edited)

2:22:10 I find it interesting that you say that Japanese doesn't have diphthongs structurally. I've always considered /ai/ and /ae/ to be diphthongs in Japanese, since for the purposes of pitch accent rules they behave exactly like long vowels or like sequences of a vowel + coda (/VN/ or /VQ/).

That is, the downstep may not occur after the second element of these sequences, only after the first one. That's how you get verbs like 入る /haꜜiɾu/ and 帰る /kaꜜeɾu/: by normal verb accenting rules you would expect */haiꜜɾu/ and */kaeꜜɾu/, but the downstep shifts back to avoid accenting the second element of a diphthong. This mirrors what happens with, for example, the verb 申す /moꜜosu/ (not */mooꜜsu/ as expected) which avoids accenting the second mora of a long vowel, and the form 信じて /siꜜNzite/ (not */siNꜜzite/) which avoids accenting the moraic coda /N/.

Great video by the way!

@landoonline6393 3 years ago

Got through it! Fascinating stuff.

@Theo-mm7oh 3 years ago

there is a Greek dialect called romeika that may also shed light on pronunciation in ancient Greece. is that something that can be a subject discussion in Polymathy

@aaronschmidt8631 3 years ago (edited)

Yes i have watched 1:07:33 mins of your video so far and enjoyed every bit of it haha. One small, really unecessary comment on the name "Philipp Melanchthon": in German it is pronunced with a soft "ch" as in "Lächeln", although, it is derived from the Greek μελανος and χθων (as a translation of the German: Schwarz-erdt) :P. Other than that I love how you pronounce German Names :D.