Erutuon

I created soundfiles of the words to illustrate the pronunciation. I put them in a dropbox folder. Here's what they illustrate: accidō aggrediar (double stops cc gg) aedēs aedificābō (ae vs. long e) agrum colam cōgam restituam incēdam (nasal um and am) ambulābō pugnābō aedificābō cūrābō (long vowels and stress) quid quod (different pronunciations of qu) You know, if you like my soundfiles, maybe I could record the words. But I don't want to put you and others out of a job....

I've been reading Sidney Allen again, and I think the diphthong ae should probably be pronounced as a long open-mid vowel [ɛː] (that is, a long version of the vowel quality of short e, contrasting with normal long e). That's probably what it would be in colloquial Latin even as early as the Roman Republic. It certainly changed to [ɛ] in Vulgar Latin, which gave rise to the Romance languages. (The diphthong au would also be pronounced as long open-mid [ɔː], but none of the words have it.) I edited my original post to reflect this. I also changed ɪ and ʊ to i̯ and u̯ before vowels. This represents a semivowel like English y or w. In fast and colloquial speech, the short vowels were probably pronounced this way. I added periods to mark syllable breaks. So, anything between periods or [ˈ] (stress marks) is a separate syllable.

The IPA transcription I have provided is based on the Latin spelling and pronunciation article on Wikipedia, which in turn is based on several books on reconstruction of Classical Latin pronunciation, particularly Sidney Allen's Vox Latina. It's certainly true that relatives of Latin such as Ancient Greek, and its closest descendants, like Italian and Spanish (if they're what you're referring to), didn't have nasalized vowels (Sanskrit and Proto-Germanic did, though). But nasalization in Latin is suggested by the fact that the nasals n and m were lost in certain cases (both in inscriptions and in the Romance languages: cosol for consul; Italian mese and French mois for Latin mensis), final vowels + -m were elided before vowels in poetry, and in the cases where n and m are lost, there's indication that the preceding vowel was lengthened. Loss of nasal with lengthening points to nasalization. This is the reasoning given in Vox Latina. (Another source is Allen and Greenough's Latin Grammar; The Blackwell History of the Latin Language mentions only nasalization of final vowels before -m.) I've been doing some recordings of Latin lately for Wikipedia, and maybe I will try pronouncing the phrases and see if I can see what you mean about emotional expressiveness. Italian has similar stress and is emotionally expressive, so maybe the problem can be worked out.

Hey, I listened to most of the sound files. I'm familiar with Classical Latin pronunciation, so I have some comments. First, the list needs some macrons and IPA transcription: Hello — Avē — [ˈa.we] (final vowel shortened in popular speech)What is it? — Quid est? — [kᶣɪˈdɛst]My lord? — Domine? — [ˈdɔ.mɪ.nɛ]I will walk — Ambulābō — [am.bʊˈlaː.boː]I will fight — Pugnābō — [pʊŋˈnaː.boː]I will build — Aedificābō — [ɛː.dɪ.fɪˈkaː.boː]I will work land — Agrum colam — [ˈa.grũː ˈkɔ.lãː]I will gather together — Cōgam — [ˈkoːgãː]I will herd — Agam — [ˈagãː]I will fish — Piscābor — [pɪsˈkaː.bɔr]I will attack! — Aggrediar! — [agːˈrɛdi̯ar]I will repair — Restituam — [rɛˈstɪ.tu̯ãː]I will hunt — Vēnābor — [weːˈnaː.bɔr]I will heal — Cūrābō — [kuːˈraː.boː]I will march! — Incēdam! — [ɪŋˈkeː.dãː]I will retreat! — Recēdam! — [rɛˈkeː.dãː]Battle cry — Clāmāte! Victrix!! — [klaːˈmaː.tɛ ˈwɪk.trɪks]I will garrison — Praesidium (mē pōnam) — [prɛːˈsɪ.di̯ũː meː ˈpoː.nãː]Now some notes. Latin has a long-short vowel distinction. Long vowels are pronounced longer, even (usually) if they're not stressed. Long i, u, e, and o are also pronounced differently from the short versions: for instance long e is like ey in they; short e is more like e in met. In In the recordings, some of the vowels were short when they should have been long, such as the e in incedam and recedam. I marked the long vowels with macrons in the Latin text above, and with the colon-like symbol in the transcription. The vowel quality difference is also marked by using the correct IPA symbols. The stress of some of the words was incorrect; for instance, curabo and all the words in -abo and -abor are accented on the a. In the IPA transcription, stressed syllables are marked by the apostrophe-like symbol before the stressed syllable (not after, as it would be in an English dictionary). Finally (pun intended), -um and -am at the ends of words are nasalized long vowels. The m is not pronounced; it just indicates that the vowel before it is nasalized The IPA transcription above shows the length with the colon symbol and nasalization with a tilde. Hope this is helpful.

Hmm, my apologies for mistaking your native tongue. :? I didn't actually base what I said on your pronunciation, but was simply ignoring the possibility you were not an English speaker (even though your name is quite clearly French!) and telling the things I found difficult from my experience as an English speaker. Probably you as a French speaker would find it easier to distinguish voiced and voiceless unaspirated stops, whereas the other difficulties may remain. I guess the advice may be unnecessary, but if you are interested, I have recorded a few attempts at demonstrating contrasts in pitch accent and vowel length and uploaded them to a Dropbox folder: εἰμί εἶμι εἴσειμι ἔπειμι (I am, I will go, I will go into, I will go against) οὕτως οὗτος (thus, this) θηράσω θεράπων (I will hunt, servant) The last example has a word with long a, then short a (since this is not visible from the spelling). Regarding aspirated stops, you may be trying to make them too explosive if you are running into problems with sound quality. My advice would be to breathe gently, but to stop your vocal chords from vibrating for a longer time after the release of the stop than for unaspirated stops. That way you can aspirate "strongly", but not by blowing hard into the microphone and messing up sound quality. Let me know if the recordings are helpful; I can make more if you are interested.

Excellent. I will appreciate some further checking when you do it, because even looking back at my work now, I can see some possible errors. And there is one question that I am not sure about: since I assume the language of the phrases should be in the Koine period, whether some of the future tense forms should be like Attic with contractions, or like Ionic with an s marker (for example, μαχοῦμαι or μαχέσομαι or μαχήσομαι; ἀκοῦμαι or ἀκέσομαι). If you can find any information regarding that, it would be helpful. It seems that my Greek grammar (written by Smyth) doesn't have much information on post-Classical Greek. There's also the question of whether a future marked by -ασ- should have a long or a short α. It seems that it varies depending on the present-tense form, but I am not sure. These are rather small questions, but it would add to the accuracy of the game to get them right. I'll probably do some work revising my list over the next few weeks. Edit: Further possibilities are to find dialectal forms for the different Greek civilizations. Based on the distribution map on Wikimedia, viewable from the page on Ancient Greek dialects, The Athenians are in the Attic dialect region, Macedonians are near the Ionic area, and the Spartans are in the Doric region. There are some fairly simple dialectal differences, like long alpha changing to long eta in Ionic, and contraction in Attic, and tt for ss in Attic. We can try to follow those correctly, and look for dialect-specific forms in lexicons, if we want to show dialectal differences.

Hey, I just posted some additions and changes to the audio voice list on the the corresponding thread. I was actually the one to submit the phrases in English, Ancient Greek, transliteration, and International Phonetic Alphabet. That was quite a while ago; not sure how long. I never finished the job back then; I guess it seemed too overwhelming to me then. But today I came back to it and got most of the phrases translated. Nicolas, I listened to your recordings and have some input. (I studied Attic and Homeric Greek and researched the pronunciation on the side, so this is from my personal experience practicing the pronunciation.) There are three characteristics of Ancient Greek that are difficult for English speakers: vowel length, aspiration and voicing distinctions, and pitch accent. These are some areas where your pronunciations could use work. Or at least vowel length and pitch accent. I'm not sure about the aspiration thing, because it's hard to hear in the recordings. Ancient Greek, unlike English, has vowel length distinctions everywhere in a word. In English, long vowels usually occur in stressed syllables; lengthening of a vowel is part of what indicates stress in English. To an English speaker, Ancient Greek will sound like it doesn't have regular stress, because stress is marked only by pitch, not by lengthening vowel of the the stressed syllable and shortening and reducing the vowels of unstressed syllables. Some of your audio files need work in this area, such as γεωργήσω "I will farm". (I thought νέμω "I am herding" needed work, but then I thought I could hear a little length in the o.) There's also the pitch accent. Ancient Greek had a pitch accent, unlike Modern Greek, which has a stress accent (hence the removal of the grave and circumflex accents from the Modern Greek alphabet). Pitch accent is usually placed on one mora in a word. A mora is a short-vowel unit. Long vowels and most diphthongs have two morae. There are four possibilities for accent: no accent, high pitch on one morae, high pitch on first of two morae, high pitch on last of two morae. These can be notated as à, á, áà, àá. (Here à, grave accent, represents no accent or medium pitch.) áà is equivalent to â, the circumflex: thus, the circumflex is a falling accent. àá is equivalent to acute accent on a long vowel or on the last vowel of a diphthong, as in ἁλιεύσω. We don't know exactly how pitch was (or what the grave accent was like), but I like to pronounce it as a gentle hill, with the high-pitch mora as the top of the hill. The difference between the highest and lowest pitches, or the high pitch and medium pitch, is supposed to have been about the musical interval of a fifth. I've noted the pitches in the IPA using acute accent (high pitch on single mora), circumflex (high pitch on first of two morae), and caron or háček (high pitch on last of two morae). I also added this to the Wikipedia page on IPA for Greek. Finally, there was a three-way distinction in voicing and aspiration in Ancient Greek. We have a two-way distinction in English. Ancient Greek had voiceless unaspirated (p, t, k), voiced (b, d, g), and voiceless aspirated (ph, th, kh). I think you tried to capture this in the two audio files with aspirated consonants. At the very least, you're not pronouncing it the Modern Greek way. The distinction is hard to capture because English has a simple distinction of voiced and voiceless, and voiceless is often accompanied by aspiration, and voiced by lack of aspiration. Both unaspirated p, t, k and voiced b, d, g can sound voiced to an English speaker. It was hard for me to properly make the distinction when I was trying to pronounce Ancient Greek, and still is. Maybe it would be easy for a Hindi speaker to make the distinction. Anyway, those are my thoughts. Curious how much of this you already are aware of, because you do seem to know the differences between Ancient and Modern Greek pretty well, based on the several sound files I listened to.

Hey, guys. I contributed to the audio voice list for Ancient Greek a while back (not sure how long ago exactly), but never finished the job. You can tell where I left off; that's where the list reverts to just English and Greek in transliteration with accents marked by graves. Here's the remainder of the phrases, with transliteration and IPA. I used the Liddell and Scott lexicon of Ancient Greek (http://www.tlg.uci.edu/lsj/) to search for the best word in each case. I've significantly expanded the number of the phrases in cases where the Ancient Greek seems to have unit-specific words. If the game engine doesn't allow for this specificity (I don't know anything about programming myself), I can try to merge some of the phrases, like making the attack phrases be the same for all units. I will repair — ἐπισκευάσω — episkeuā´sō — [episkeu̯ǎːsoː]I will heal or repair — ἀκοῦμαι — akoûmai — [akûːmai̯] (or ἀκέσομαι?)I will heal — ἰάσομαι — iā´somai — [iǎːsomai̯]I will hunt — θηράσω — thērā´sō — [tʰeːrǎːsoː]I will go — εἶμι — eîmi — [îːmi]I will go into (a building; see below for entering a ship) — εἴσειμι — eíseimi — [ǐːsiːmi]I will fight (of any unit) — μαχοῦμαι — makhoûmai — [makʰûːmai̯] (or μαχήσομαι or μαχέσομαι?)I will ride (of mounted units) or steer (of ships) — ἐλῶ — elô — [elôː] (or ἐλάσω?)I will ride against (attack of mounted units) or attack (of ships) — ἀντελῶ — antelô — [antelôː]I will go out (marching of land units) — ἔξειμι — ékseimi — [éksiːmi]I will step up or go on board (of land units entering a ship) — ἀναβήσομαι — anabḗsomai — [anaběːsomai̯]I will step off or disembark (of land units exiting a ship) — ἀποβήσομαι — apobḗsomai — [apoběːsomai̯]I will go against (attack of land units) — ἔπειμι — épeimi — [épiːmi]I will go back (retreat of land units) — ἄπειμι — ápeimi — [ápiːmi]I will sail (of any ship) — πλεύσομαι — pleúsomai — [pleǔ̯somai̯]I will be led or go against (attack of warship) — ἀντανάξομαι — antanáksomai — [antanáksomai̯]I will sail against (attack of warship) — ἐπιπλεύσομαι — epipleúsomai — [epipleǔ̯somai̯]Let me know if this list will work as a replacement and addition to the current audio voice list, and if there are any changes or additions to make. Also, any questions regarding the words I chose are welcome.I also need to give some instruction to the person who's going to record these phrases, but that's for the other thread.

Have these phrases already been recorded, or could I provide tweaking and transcription for them still?

I'm around, but haven't heard anything more from Miles than what he last posted on this thread. I don't know if he's still available or not, nor do I have another way to contact him besides on this thread.

I assumed λέγω was a verb with a future tense that is only found in a middle voice, thus λέξομαι rather than λέξω. But perhaps I'm wrong on this particular verb. I looked at my dictionary and it's not clear. There are several verbs whose future tenses have middle-voice form but active-voice meaning. Same with βήσομαι, rather than βήσω, from the verb βαίνω. Usually changing from active to middle voice changes the meaning of the verb, but with some future-tense, middle-voice forms, the meaning of the middle-voice form is no different from the active voice, and the active voice is not used.

I'll use an early Koine Greek pronunciation given on Wikipedia. It's similar to Classical; it has just a few modifications, and lacks some changes that occurred later in the Koine Greek period. It should represent more learned pronunciation around the time of Alexander or a little later. I'm posting phrases with their pronunciations on the Voice-Actor Application thread. Should I also post a simpler list here (just English and Greek, maybe with a literal translation of the Greek)?

I'm a little unsure about the pronunciation, since it's supposed to be Koine Greek but I'm more familiar with Classical pronunciation. But I guess I'll try out a learned early Koine Greek pronunciation given on Wikipedia. Below is English, Greek, transliteration, and IPA transcription. This pronunciation differs from Classical in a few ways: ει and ου represent [iː] and [uː] rather than [eː] and [oː]; η and ω represent [eː] and [oː] rather than [ɛː] and [ɔː]. It, however, still has aspirated consonants, voiced stops, long vowels, and pitch accent. On accent: one mora (one short vowel or one half of a long vowel) is given the highest pitch in a word. Pitch rises gradually before this pitch and falls gradually after it. Logically, then, there are four pitch patterns possible in a given syllable. The first two are represented by the acute, the third by the circumflex, and the fourth by no accent mark. The grave is the odd one out, a variation on a final-syllable acute accent. It may have represented normal pitch or a fifth type of pitch, low pitch. high pitch — á — [á]rising to high — aá (written ā́) — [ǎː]falling from high — áa (written â) — [âː]normal pitch — a — [a]low pitch — à — [à] ? Phrases: What is it? — τί εστι; — tí esti? — [tí esti] My lord? — δέσποτά μου — déspotá mou — [déspotá muː] I will walk — βήσομαι — bḗsomai — [běːsomai̯] I will go out against — ἀντέξειμι — antékseimi — [antéksiːmi] I will build — τεύξω — teúksō — [teǔ̯ksoː] I will work land — γεωργήσω — geōrgḗsō — [geoːrgěːsoː] I will gather together — συλλέξομαι — sylléksomai — [sylːéksomai̯] I will herd — νέμω — némō — [némoː] I will fish — ἁλιεύσω — halieúsō — [halieǔ̯soː]

I just updated my game and the ā́ and ī́ display correctly, but the ḗ and ṓ do not. The ḗ and ṓ are the characters with dedicated codepoints. Apparently they need to be replaced by two-codepoint sequences: ḗ and ṓ. Whoever fixed ā́ and ī́, could you fix ḗ and ṓ in the same way?

Aha, you were doing synaloepha or whatever the proper term is. Contraction. That's one part of Latin pronunciation that I haven't properly attempted to get right. That makes much more sense then. No criticism on that then, since I'm not sure exactly how it's done (a and e changed into a diphthong, or one of the two vowels elided). Although I think the e is elided, from examples I vaguely remember seeing of phrases in colloquial pronunciation in early Latin plays (Plautus, I guess). And in Vergil, elision rather than formation of a diphthong is assumed, since vowels between words coming together are not counted as a long vowel in the dactylic hexameter, as they would if they formed a diphthong. From reading this article on JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org.../stable/3289867; you can maybe get access through a local library), the exact phrasing of Cato's mantra isn't known from any works of his own, even which verb he used, and the delenda form was given by writers long after his time. So I'm not sure which word order should be chosen.