Expert: Maria - 5/4/2005

Question
Only one more question:  I promise.  Indeed, this one might not have an answer since I doubt that we've heard much spoken ancient Greek.  "Storge (accent)" "Tharsos" and "Time(accent)" would all appear to be two syllable words.  In our script (to be recited during our induction ceremony) we have the emphasis on the second syllable in "Storge(accent)" and "Time(accent)", but on the first syllable in "Tharsos."  I suspect there is something not quite right about that as well.  Do we even know what syllable the emphasis would be on in these words, or is there a modern interpretation?

Again, I thank you very much for the help.  Over the years, we have inducted 350,000 members, and we've apparently had this wrong in not only each circumstance, but since inducted members attend inductions, many of our members have heard this incorrectly repeatedly.  Here's to getting it correct for the next 350,000 members, thanks to you.
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Followup To
Question -
Dear Maria:
 Thanks so much for your help.  Again, we are getting our literature changed to read Storge (with accent) Tharsos and Time (with accent.)  My accents won't print out when doing this, but they will on our Web site.
  Only one more question:  might you be able to give me a phonetic pronunciation for each of these words?  We send our chapters scripts to read for their initiation ceremony and we want to ensure that those are correct.
   Thanking you once more for your help.

Marty Lanus
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Followup To
Question -
I work for an honor society for nursing students.  It is called Sigma Theta Tau International and is named for the ancient greek words "storga" "tharsos" and "tima".  Recently, though, someone has suggested that these words are really "storge" and "time," both, I believe with the lightfaced horizontal bar about the "e" at the end of each word.  Can you clarify this?  I was thinking that these discrepancies might be pronunciational variants of declensions or conjugations of "storga" love and "tima" honor.
Thanking you in advance for your help.
Answer -
Hello,

In  classical Greek the correct words are:

-“Storgé” (sigma-tau-omicron-rho-gamma-eta with the acute accent),  meaning “Love”,” Affection”, “Fondness”.

-“Tharros” ( theta-alpha with the acute accent-rho-rho- omicron-sigma)  or  “tharsos” (theta-alpha- with the acute accent -rho-sigma- omicron-sigma), meaning “courage”.

-“Timé (tau-iota-mu-eta  with the acute accent), meaning “honour”.

I must however add that both the nominative cases “storgé” and “timé”, which belong to the 1st. declension, feminine nouns, originally  ended in a long ‘a' (i.e. ‘a' with a horizontal bar), while later  in classical Greek the ‘a' gradually came to be replaced by  a long 'e' (eta) with the acute accent .

Therefore the correct words are “Storgé” and “Timé”, as I've already said.

As for “Tharros” or “Tharsos”, it is the nominative case, neuter, of a noun which belongs to the 3rd.declension.

Finally, please note that  I wrote in brackets the name of each Greek letter, since unfortunately the  system does not allow the use of the Greek characters and diacritic marks and then I was obliged to  write each word ( Storgé, Tharros/ Tharsos, Timé) into corresponding letters of Latin alphabet.
For the Greek alphabet see at: http://www.ibiblio.org/koine/greek/lessons/alphabet.html
 

Hope all is clear enough.
Anyway, should you have some doubt, feel free to ask me again.
Best regards
Maria

Answer -
Dear Marty,

Glad to have helped you.

So, here's the phonetic pronunciation of Storgé, Tharsos and Timé.

1-Storgé (sigma-tau-omicron-rho-gamma-eta with the acute accent)

S as ‘s' in ‘sound'
T as ‘t' in ‘tendency'
O as ‘o' in ‘off'
R as ‘r' in ‘or'
G as ‘g' in ‘give'
E as ‘e' in ‘end' or in ‘bet'(with the accent)

2-Tharsos (theta-alpha- with the acute accent -rho-sigma- omicron-sigma)

Th  as ‘th' in ‘thick'.
A as 'a'  in ‘father'(The accent is on this vowel.)
R as ‘r' in ‘or'
S as ‘s' in ‘sound'
O as ‘o' in ‘off'
S as ‘s' in ‘sound'

3-Timé (tau-iota-mu-eta  with the acute accent)

T as ‘t' in ‘tendency'
I as ‘y' in ‘copy' or ‘ee' in ‘see'.
M as ‘m' in ‘mountain'
E as ‘e' in ‘bet' or in ‘end' (with the accent)

See also this site to hear the pronunciation of each Greek  letter by clicking  on them:
http://religion.cumberlandcollege.edu/biblang/bibgreek/greek/letters.htm#alpha (with verbal pronunciation)


Hope this can be helpful to you.
Best regards
Maria


Answer
Hello again,

First of all I have to point out that the accents,  which in ancient Greek can be acute, grave and circumflex, are not  a modern interpretation, but date back to the 3rd. century BC, when they were introduced  by the grammarians  mainly because large numbers of non-native Greek speakers had begun to use Greek and then it was necessary to mark "accents" above the text, so that the barbarians could pronounce the Greek language  correctly.
In fact the ancient Greek authors and poets of the best time did not use accents, which were introduced a few hundred years later to provide a better readability and more information about the pronunciation.
Moreover in ancient times  there were no spaces among the alphabetical  characters, that were only capital, while small letters began to be used later, but however before the 3rd.century BC.

Therefore we  know  exactly what syllable the emphasis would be on in ‘storgé' and ‘timé' which have an acute accent on the second syllable,  and ‘tharsos', which has an acute accent on the first syllable.


As for the correct pronunciation of Ancient Greek, obviously to reconstruct one and only one ancient pronunciation model is impossible.
So we have two kind of Greek pronunciation:
1) the standardized Erasmic pronunciation, which is currently used and pronounces Ancient Greek  as it is written
2)the Reuchlin pronunciation (also called 'iotacistic' pronunciation;see 'Iota') which  uses the modern Greek pronunciation where the sound ‘e' is pronounced as ‘i'.

The Erasmian  pronunciation was introduced in 1528 by Erasmus Desiderius (Dutch humanist ) in an attempt to restore, at least in part, the genuine pronunciation of the Ancient Greek language, which was rather different from the way in which the Greek language is pronounced today, while the Reuchlin pronunciation was introduced by the german hellenist J. Reuchlin (1445-1522).


To conclude, I used the Erasmian  pronunciation, of course.

Hope I've fully answered your question.
Feel free however to ask me again  for clarification.

All the best
Maria