Appendix—
Pronunciation of Greek Words of Power
The Ancient Greek language was spoken for a very long time over a very large area, so to say that there is a “right” pronunciation of Ancient Greek is a bit misleading. There are certainly bad ones (i.e., pronunciations that make it impossible to learn or read the language), and there are some accepted for scholarly purposes but are not historically accurate. And there are reconstructions for particular dialects. But probably the most historically authentic pronunciation of Ancient Greek, particularly Ancient Greek of Late Antiquity, is “badly.” After all, by the era of Koine or common Greek, it was the dialect of diverse people who used it as a trade language and a lingua franca, as well as for scholarly sharing of information. That means a lot of the people who spoke and wrote the language did so as a second (or third, or fourth) language. By the arrival of Christianity in Rome, a very large percentage of those speaking Greek were doing so with a “foreign” accent.
So take heart. Screwing it up is historically accurate.
Here’s a fast, dirty, and very much unscholarly approach to pronouncing enough Greek to get through some barbarous words of invocation with confidence. You can’t utter the words “pronounce” and “Greek” without picking a fight, so let me immediately say that I just downright concede. Yes, this isn’t reconstructed Koine. No, I don’t think Erasmus pronounced Greek the way the ancient Greeks did. No, Ancient Greek was not pronounced like Modern Greek. (No, it wasn’t. No. It has changed. Seriously. Really. If you insist, fine, pronounce it however you want. No skin off my nose. But really, it has changed.) I’m just not interested in any of the fights about it, except maybe that last one (really, seriously, it has changed—all languages do). Anyway, here’s how I pronounce the words of power.
All the letters are pronounced as in English except these:
A: like ah in “father.” Alpha can be long or short. There’s no way to know which it was in words of power, though, since it’s never marked with a macron. So I pronounce it long in open syllables and short in closed ones, on the theory that barbarous words of invocation may have sometimes been Semitic in origin and that feels kind of Semiticky to me. If that’s a word.
E: short eh as in “let.”
Ē: long ay as in “say.”
I: like ee in “feet.” It has the same long/short distinction as alpha, and similarly, isn’t marked. Wing it. Call it good. Just be confident.
O: short oh in “caught,” if you happen to speak my dialect of English.
Ō: long oh as in “boat.”
U: put your lips together as if saying “ew” but then say “ee” instead. This has the same unmarked long/short distinction as alpha and iota, but you’ve got enough stuff to worry about. If you know French, it’s like the French u.
OU: like oo in “boot.”
OI: like oy in “boy.”
ŌI: the i is silent.
EI: like ai in “bait” with that little “ee” sound at the end a little more pronounced.
ĒI: the I is silent (if you forget these silent i’s, it’s not a disaster. They were pronounced at one time, just not at the point most of this stuff was written). If you’re a native English speaker, you will probably end up pronouncing this a lot like EI and Ē. Try not to let that little “ee” sound at the end come out, but don’t obsess about it. So you have an accent! So what?
AI: the i may or may not be silent depending on whether the alpha is long, but since you can’t know for sure if it is or not, just say ay as in “sky.”
UI: like “buoy.”
TH: pronounce it like the th in “both.”
PH: like the ph in “telephone.”
CH: like the ch in “loch.” If you can’t do this sound, make a k sound and then drop your tongue enough to let some air hiss through. Lots of people will argue with these last three, saying they should be “windy” or aspirated t, p, and k. It is incredibly hard for native English speakers to distinguish between aspirated and unaspirated stops. It’s easier for us to turn them into fricatives, which is what happened to them anyway at some point late in the development of Greek.
X: like the x in “box,” not like “xylophone.” Even at the beginning of a word.
PS: both the P and the S are pronounced in all locations, unlike in English. So PSUCHĒ, meaning “soul” is pronounced like “p-su-khey,” not “sai-kee.”
Ancient Greek also had an elaborate system of intonation and accentuation you must learn if you’re going to learn to read it, but not if you’re just wanting to pronounce some words of power. Accents in Greek are not entirely predictable, so most Greek texts mark the accents on each word. These particular accents aren’t marked on the barbarous words, however, and since we usually have no idea what the words might have meant, we usually have no idea where the accent might have gone. I myself treat barbarous words as if they all have recessive accent, meaning that the stress falls as far as possible from the final syllable, but no farther than the antepenultimate syllable if the penultimate syllable has a long vowel; similarly, the accent falls on the penultimate if the ultimate syllable has a long vowel, and the … you know what? Put it on the second to last syllable. That’s just as likely to be right as anything we might guess.
It’s worth putting a little time into thinking about how you want to pronounce these words, or any words in magic from any foreign language. But don’t get hung up on it. And for the love of all that’s holy, if someone in a ritual is speaking Greek or Latin or Hebrew, don’t comment on their pronunciation. It doesn’t sound cultured and discerning when people criticize the pronunciation of dead languages; it just sounds annoying. Anyone who can wrap their tongue around any word at any time in any foreign language is doing pretty darned good, accent or not. I’ve heard some downright amazingly skilled practitioners brutalize Hebrew, for example. While it might not have been fun to hear them do such violence to the guttural consonants, their magic still worked.
If, however, you become a man or woman after my own heart and decide, “I want to learn to read these ancient languages myself,” then it does help to learn one or two of the reconstructed pronunciations and give them a try. In my experience, it won’t make your magic any better, but it is kind of cool to try to re-create as carefully as possible what Plato might have sounded like to contemporary Athenians.