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Erasmian Pronunciation

Erasmian Pronunciation refers both to the specific ideas proposed by Erasmus (among others) in the
16th century for reforming the pronunciation of Ancient Greek (and Latin), as well as to the later
adaptations of his conclusions, which modern linguistics broadly confirms, although modern
pronunciation of Ancient Greek differs widely in practice.

The term 'Erasmian Pronunciation' has both a specific and a general meaning.
Specifically, it refers to the views about correcting the contemporary methods of
pronouncing Greek (and Latin) expressed by the Renaissance humanist Desiderius
Erasmus in a 1528 treatise entitled De Recta Latini Graecique Sermonis Pronuntiatione. More
generally, the term embraces the various attempts since that time to 'restore' a more
accurate pronunciation of Ancient Greek, as opposed to pronouncing it in the manner
of Modern Greek; in this latter sense the ‘restored’ pronunciation seeks linguistic
accuracy according to the best available evidence, and does not necessarily adhere to
the findings of Erasmus, which, not surprisingly, have been superseded in many
respects since the 16th c. (see Allen for the linguistic data). In this broader sense,
'Erasmian pronunciation' is essentially followed by most Classicists outside of Greece
today, although the results are not uniform.

Erasmus was not, nor did he claim to be, the first to discover the acoustic divergence
between Ancient and Modern (or rather Byzantine) Greek. Both the Spanish humanist
Antonio de Lebrixa and the Venetian Aldus Manutius had written on the subject prior
to Erasmus, and it is surely no coincidence that all three men spent time together in
Venice in 1508, when Aldus established a group dedicated to reading and speaking
Ancient Greek. Even contemporary Byzantine scholars such as Constantine Laskaris and
Ianos Laskaris apparently acknowledged discrepancies between Greek pronunciation
and orthography (→ → Byzantine phase and reception of ancient Greek, the). But it
remained for Erasmus to systematize in a thorough way the pronunciation of
individual phonemes in his treatise, and his prestige guaranteed a wide audience for
his views.

The book itself is cast in the form of a dialogue between a learned Bear (Erasmus’ alter
ego) and his friend, a Lion, who is seeking a tutor for his new cub. Erasmus chose the
jocular setting ostensibly to enliven the dreary subject matter for the young noble
Maximilian of Burgundy, to whom the work is dedicated. There are indeed some
lighthearted moments, but the bulk of the dialogue contains a thorough examination of
the constituents of speech, including vowels, consonants, accent, tone, and even larger
units of discourse. Throughout, Erasmus displays an impressive mastery of the ancient
grammarians, as well as familiarity with the most important languages and dialects of
contemporary Europe, which are brought to bear to offer proper examples of
pronunciation. Though lacking the crucial evidence of ancient inscriptions, and of

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course the tools and concepts of modern linguistics, Erasmus was able to reconstruct
the Ancient Greek phonemic system (in particular, by differentiating vowels and
diphthongs that sound the same in contemporary Greek) with considerable success.

Although his ideas were apparently never put into practice by Erasmus himself, the
book was a moderate success and was reprinted a respectable 17 times in the next 70
years. Initial opposition (especially in Germany and England) was eventually overcome,
and some version of the reform has now been adopted and adapted in basically every
academic system in the world, with the prominent exception of Greece, where Erasmus
remains persona non grata to this day, at least among a limited circle of traditionalists.

Some of this animus stems from resentment that a non-Greek might presume to school
the Greeks themselves on their own language. And indeed the argument was from the
start unfortunately framed in terms of right and wrong, not in terms of language
evolution. Thus Lebrixa published a list of 15 'Errores Graecorum', and Erasmus himself
often refers to the incorrect or degraded Greek pronunciation of his day; his title
explicitly promises the ‘correct pronunciation’. The idea that Byzantine Greek was
somehow degenerate and inferior naturally provoked a spirited reaction, all the more
since Greek pronunciation was fairly uniform, unlike the widely diffused versions of
Latin, which were apparently mutually unintelligible in Erasmus’ day. Latin
pronunciation, still at that time a major medium for communication, was more in need
of serious reform than Greek, where such a reform actually detracted from mutual
intelligibility. In contrast to Latin, the pronunciation of Greek had essentially stabilized
by the 4th c. CE, and thus had a thousand year old tradition (at least) by the time of
Erasmus’ attempted reforms (→ → History of Teaching of Ancient Greek). Reasons for
changing that tradition must be compelling indeed. To be sure, the loss of vowel and
syllable quantity in Modern Greek (→ → Developments in Medieval and Modern Greek)
renders the complex metrical structures (→ → Song And Recitation) of Ancient Greek
poetry meaningless, and some attempt at restoring this aspect of the language would
seem to be justified. But this still leaves us far short of authenticity, since most
scholars agree (though this was unknown to Erasmus) that Archaic and Classical Greek
had a → pitch, not a stress accent, for which any reconstruction is almost entirely
hypothetical. Our best written evidence for the nature of Greek pitch consists of a
controversial passage from Dionysius of Halicarnassus (De Comp. xi, 40f.) and some
equally controversial musical texts, but these have led to no consensus (the nature of
the grave accent is quite unclear, for example), and even Allen advises against making
the attempt. The numerous recordings of Stephen Daitz provide the most authoritative
example of restored pitch accent, but remain necessarily experimental. Compromise at
some level is unavoidable (→ → Accentuation).

Erasmus himself was less of a purist than often thought, and in the treatise stresses his
willingness to compromise his principles of pronunciation in order to be better
understood by his listeners. Perhaps even more importantly, he recognized the
necessity of modeling his reformed pronunciation on living tradition: he reports that
his reading group included a Byzantine Greek, purely for the sake of his native accent.
Unfortunately, the modern Erasmian approach ignores this crucial insight, and

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typically rejects Modern Greek completely as a model for reconstruction. In the

absence of a legitimate model, the results, however solidly based on linguistics, are
inconsistent and unconvincing. Consequently, the schism between the pronunciation of
Modern Greeks and the ‘Erasmians’ remains practically absolute, and even among the
latter there is a wide gap between theory and practice. Erasmus deserves much credit
for drawing attention to ancient Greek phonology, but true authenticity remains
elusive.

Allen, W. Sidney. 1987. Vox Graeca: the pronunciation of Classical Greek. Cambridge.
Bateman, John J. 1969. “The development of Erasmus’ views on the correct pronunciation of Latin and Greek”. In: Classical studies presented to Ben
Edwin Perry: Illinois Studies in Language and Literature 58:46-65.
Bywater, Ingram. 1908. The Erasmian pronunciation of Greek and its precursors. Oxford.
Caragounis, Chrys C. 1995. “The error of Erasmus and un-Greek pronunciations of Greek”, Filologia Neotestamentaria VIII:151-185.
Daitz, Stephen. 1980. The pronunciation and reading of Ancient Greek: a practical guide. New York.
Dillon, Matthew. 2001. “The Erasmian pronunciation of Greek: a new approach”, CW 94.4:323-334.
Drerup, Engelbert. 1930. Die Schulaussprache des Griechischen von der Renaissance bis zur Gegenwart. 2 vols. Paderborn.
Hesseling, D.C, and H. Pernot. 1919. “Érasme et les origines de la pronunciation Érasmienne”, REG 22:278-301.
Petrounias, E.B. 2007. “The pronunciation of Ancient Greek in modern times”. In: A history of Ancient Greek, ed. by A.-F. Christidis, 1266-1286.
Cambridge - New York.
Roterodamus, Desiderius Erasmus. 1528. De Recta Latini Graecique Sermonis Pronuntiatione, ed. by Maria Cytowska. Amsterdam 1973. (English transl. by
Maurice Pope: The right way of speaking Latin and Greek: a dialogue. Collected works of Erasmus, vol. 26:348-625, Toronto 1985).

MATTHEW DILLON

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