Plato in Ancient Greek

[Ariphron]

I'm interested in doing a solo project of Plato dialogues in the original: Euthyphro, Crito, maybe Meno, Symposium, Phaedrus. I could do it either in my own Ancient Greek reconstruction, which is a little different from W. Sidney Allen's recommendation, or US-Erasmian. Modern Greek pronunciation is out. My guess is that more people would find my recording comprehensible if I use Erasmian, but I hate the sound of its stress accent. I suppose I could use US-Erasmian pronunciation with my own reconstruction of the tone accent. Then people would find it comprehensible, but wrong.

[annise]

I think you have to decide for yourself - use the one that you think best and are happiest with. Like most LV things some with like it, some won't, and someone one day will come along and read them in a different fashion.

Anne

[KevinS]

I'm interested in doing a solo project of Plato dialogues in the original: Euthyphro, Crito, maybe Meno, Symposium, Phaedrus. I could do it either in my own Ancient Greek reconstruction, which is a little different from W. Sidney Allen's recommendation, or US-Erasmian. Modern Greek pronunciation is out. My guess is that more people would find my recording comprehensible if I use Erasmian, but I hate the sound of its stress accent. I suppose I could use US-Erasmian pronunciation with my own reconstruction of the tone accent. Then people would find it comprehensible, but wrong.

I am only curious, and do not speak nor read any form of Greek, but for whom do you wish to record this? If you wish to introduce your own reconstruction, it would seem best to use it, no?

[Ariphron]

Here's a good example of my reconstructed pronunciation:

https://archive.org/details/Morice_stories_ariphron/morice+79+Doria+the+Patriot.m4a

I've already made quite a few recordings, and put them online without PL, because of course it isn't easy to find a PL for a language that nobody knows.

[annise]

Neither of us are able to give an informed opinion about Ancient Greek so what I said is general. And there are not any Ancient Greeks around at present We do have a number of ancient Greek recordings in the catalogue.
Our proof listening copes with English variation in accent and word stress and we always do find a way of a second listen to all contributions, So I repeat, as long as the text is PD (which it should be) and the tech bits are OK, use what you think best.

Anne

[Ariphron]

I'd do basically US-Erasmian, but with my reconstruction of the tone accent and some of the βδγ pronounced as fricatives (as in Modern Greek) instead of like English bdg, which is the Erasmian pronunciation. Fun for me, without significantly reducing the potential audience.

Now only to settle the exact list of dialogues, and it will be ready for launch.

[Ariphron]

I am only curious, and do not speak nor read any form of Greek, but for whom do you wish to record this? If you wish to introduce your own reconstruction, it would seem best to use it, no?

There is a small community of people who are trying to learn to speak Ancient Greek, complete with ancient grammatical forms, ancient vocabulary, and plausibly Attic neologisms for things that did not exist in the ancient world. Bedwere, whose Xenophon recording is complete but for PL (my bad, as I am PL), is a member of this community. Earlier this month I attended a workshop of this community, and met Bedwere in person for the first time. The outstanding teacher and linguist Christophe Rico was co-moderator. I wish to give this community high-quality listening material.

[KevinS]

I am only curious, and do not speak nor read any form of Greek, but for whom do you wish to record this? If you wish to introduce your own reconstruction, it would seem best to use it, no?

There is a small community of people who are trying to learn to speak Ancient Greek, complete with ancient grammatical forms, ancient vocabulary, and plausibly Attic neologisms for things that did not exist in the ancient world. Bedwere, whose Xenophon recording is complete but for PL (my bad, as I am PL), is a member of this community. Earlier this month I attended a workshop of this community, and met Bedwere in person for the first time. The outstanding teacher and linguist Christophe Rico was co-moderator. I wish to give this community high-quality listening material.

Quite interesting. I wish you good luck with your project.

[Ariphron]

Here's what I am currently thinking for the selection. There is an outstanding series of recordings by Julius Tomin.
http://www.juliustomin.org/greekreadaloud/plato.html

My own recordings will probably be most valuable if I record selections that he has not recorded. So I propose to record, as a warm-up, two short dialogues that already exist in very good recordings (Crito and Lysis), followed by three major dialogues that, to my knowledge, do not yet have excellent recordings (Protagoras, Gorgias, Symposium).