This video may help "Can Present Day Greeks Understand the Greek of the New Testament?" @learnbiblicalgreek373

It’s because some of the ”diphthongs” were actually /aj/ instead of /ai/ 😊

Thanks for adding your opinion!

I am only starting to learn Ancient Greek, restored Attic. I am quite specific about Attic and keen with best language pronunciation as possible. To you, Ancient Greek professionals, I'd like to submit an idea. A major hurdle in proper language pronunciation acquisition is insufficient access to native speech. This has always been an issue with dead languages (though I like to think that Greek isn't really dead, nor even Latin, to the extent that various linguistic continuities can be found). So here goes my proposal... Why not take advantage of AI and LLMs, all developments, since some years ago already, to have a software learn and produce a natural sounding Attic Greek, etc. (any language of interest). Such a software could be refined several times, until reaching a version where most experts will agree they are absolutely or near absolutely happy with. Such a product could then be used by restored Attic Greek learners all over the world, listening to endless hours of ancient literature, thereby being able to acquire, if so they wish, a natural sounding Attic Greek. We could partially ressucitate the language and experience the joy of speaking it with near-native ease and pronunciation. At least for those who care this much about pronunciation. Another application would be making use of recorded native voices, from the purest speakers of each language today at risk of extinction or accelerated degradation (of which there are thousands), so we can teach AI how to speak it, for the benefit of concerned populations. Such a tool could be used to stop and even reverse language degradation and loss in a multitude of places around the world, Europe included. As a native Catalan speaker, I feel despair at how my language is fast becoming a radically impoverished and transvestite language, where not only words and expressions are lost by the thousands, every decade, but even the phonetics and syntax etc. are quickly being corrupted. Soon, the Spanish political framework and demographics, combined, will make this evolution unstoppable and irreversible. The only way we could prevent such catastrophic change would be some political miracle and/or a technological one, with AI.

Did you ever get ideas about real languages with real pitch accent in action pronounced by native speakers ? 1) Finnish 2) Japanese 3) Classical Arabic I include also Sanskrit because some speakers can show this caracteristic very clearly into the traditional recitation.

@@cattubuttas4749 , whatever the phonetics of a language, if it is alive, native speaker recordings can be used to train AI systems. Whether it is tonal, has pitch accent, clicks, or whatever. Sanskrit is alive, but I have no idea how today's real life phonetics are regarded in terms of a standard language. Around 15,000 people in India claim to speak it as their native first language, but how are their pronunciation and other language features regarded? They might be regarded as dialectal or modern, relative to some classical standard. Many more people learn Sanskrit as a second language. But again, how is their pronunciation (or prosody in general) regarded? No idea. Language experts should have a debate, in each case (for each language), about what standard(s) of language it is desirable for an AI system to learn/develop. Both classical and modern standards seem desirable for some languages. Even dialectical standards. Why not go for everything while we can? Everything is valuable. I have just started learning Sanskrit, by the way, together with Ancient Greek. I am still learning the alphabet. 😅

@@nomcognom2414 for the "live" languages there is no problem in finding recordings but for Sanskrit I use ASSIMIL recordings which are great for getting an idea. They have free samples of chapter 1, chapter 50 and chapter 100 of the book. Assimil courses recordings for Latin and Ancient Greek are less valuable in particular the Latin ones are very bad, Greek ones barely acceptable.

Modern Greek normally do not distinct length of the vowels, but as a native speaker if I observe it while I read, most likely pitch rules fall into place.

Yes, I think Modern Greek has retained a kind of vestigial pitch accent even if it isn't necessarily done consciously. Certainly it has a very flowing, sing-song quality to it.