#erasmian

Erasmian vs. Modern Pronunciation: Philological & Linguistic Considerations

Researched by Eli Kittim

I’m not a linguist and I will not illustrate phonetic diagrams in philological nomenclature (e.g. IPA, etc.) lest I lose the audience's attention with such complicated jargon. I’m simply trying to understand the literature and summarize it in the best possible way. Since there’s not much interest in Ancient Greek pronunciation on the web, I compiled some material from a handful of links that might be of interest. Most of the paper is actually excerpted from various articles that are mentioned at the end of the paper.

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The History of the Reconstructed Pronunciation of Greek

“The study of Greek in the West expanded considerably during the Renaissance, in particular after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, when many Byzantine Greek scholars came to Western Europe. Greek texts were then universally pronounced with the medieval pronunciation that still survives intact.

From about 1486, various scholars (notably Antonio of Lebrixa, Girolamo Aleandro, and Aldus Manutius) judged that the pronunciation was inconsistent with the descriptions that were handed down by ancient grammarians, and they suggested alternative pronunciations. This work culminated in Erasmus's dialogue De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione (1528). The system that he proposed is called the Erasmian pronunciation. The pronunciation described by Erasmus is very similar to that currently regarded by most authorities as the authentic pronunciation of Classical Greek (notably the Attic dialect of the 5th century BC).” [1]

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The Reuchlinian Model

“Johann Reuchlin (1455 – 1522) was a German Catholic humanist and a scholar of Greek and Hebrew.” [2]

“Reuchlin, it may be noted, pronounced Greek as his native teachers had taught him to do, i.e., in the modern Greek fashion. This pronunciation, which he defends in De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione (1528), came to be known, in contrast to that used by Desiderius Erasmus, as the Reuchlinian.” [3]

“Among speakers of Modern Greek, from the Byzantine Empire to modern Greece, Cyprus, and the Greek diaspora, Greek texts from every period have always been pronounced by using the contemporaneous local Greek pronunciation. That makes it easy to recognize the many words that have remained the same or similar in written form from one period to another. Among Classical scholars, it is often called the Reuchlinian pronunciation, after the Renaissance scholar Johann Reuchlin, who defended its use in the West in the 16th century.” [4]

“The theology faculties and schools related to or belonging to the Eastern Orthodox Church use the Modern Greek pronunciation to follow the tradition of the Byzantine Empire.” [5]

“The two models of pronunciation became soon known, after their principal proponents, as the ‘Reuchlinian’ and the ‘Erasmian’ system, or, after the characteristic vowel pronunciations, as the ‘iotacist’ (or ‘itacist’) and the ‘etacist’ system, respectively.” [6]

“The resulting debate, as it was conducted during the 19th century, finds its expression in, for instance, the works of Jannaris (1897) and Papadimitrakopoulos (1889) on the anti-Erasmian side, and of Friedrich Blass (1870) on the pro-Erasmian side.” [7]

“The resulting majority view today is that a phonological system roughly along Erasmian lines can still be assumed to have been valid for the period of classical Attic literature, but biblical and other post-classical Koine Greek is likely to have been spoken with a pronunciation that already approached that of Modern Greek in many crucial respects.” [8]

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Controversies about Reconstructions

“The Greek language underwent pronunciation changes during the Koine Greek period, from about 300 BC to 300 AD. At the beginning of the period, the pronunciation was almost identical to Classical Greek, while at the end it was closer to Modern Greek.” [9]

“The primary point of contention comes from the diversity of the Greek-speaking world: evidence suggests that phonological changes occurred at different times according to location and/or speaker background. It appears that many phonetic changes associated with the Koine period had already occurred in some varieties of Greek during the Classical period.” [10]

“An opposition between learned language and vulgar language has been claimed for the corpus of Attic inscriptions. Some phonetic changes are attested in vulgar inscriptions since the end of the Classical period; still they are not generalized until the start of the 2nd century AD in learned inscriptions. While orthographic conservatism in learned inscriptions may account for this, contemporary transcriptions from Greek into Latin might support the idea that this is not just orthographic conservatism, but that learned speakers of Greek retained a conservative phonological system into the Roman period. On the other hand, Latin transcriptions, too, may be exhibiting orthographic conservatism.” [11]

“Interpretation is more complex when different dating is found for similar phonetic changes in Egyptian papyri and learned Attic inscriptions. A first explanation would be dialectal differences (influence of foreign phonological systems through non-native speakers); changes would then have happened in Egyptian Greek before they were generalized in Attic. A second explanation would be that learned Attic inscriptions reflect a more learned variety of Greek than Egyptian papyri; learned speech would then have resisted changes that had been generalized in vulgar speech.” [12]

By the 4th century, “The pronunciation suggested here, though far from being universal, is essentially that of Modern Greek except for the continued roundedness of /y/.” [13]

Single Vowel Quality

“Apart from η, simple vowels have better preserved their ancient pronunciation than diphthongs. As noted above, at the start of the Koine Greek period, pseudo-diphthong ει before consonant had a value of /iː/, whereas pseudo-diphthong ου had a value of [uː]; these vowel qualities have remained unchanged through Modern Greek. Diphthong ει before vowel had been generally monophthongized to a value of /i(ː)/ and confused with η, thus sharing later developments of η. The quality of vowels α, ε̆, ι and ο have remained unchanged through Modern Greek, as /a/, /e/, /i/ and /o/. The quality distinction between η and ε may have been lost in Attic in the late 4th century BCE, when pre-consonantic pseudo-diphthong ει started to be confused with ι and pre-vocalic diphthong ει with η. C. 150 AD, Attic inscriptions started confusing η and ι, indicating the appearance of a /iː/ or /i/ (depending on when the loss of vowel length distinction took place) pronunciation that is still in usage in standard Modern Greek.” [14]

Consonants

“The consonant ζ, which had probably a value of /zd/ in Classical Attic (though some scholars have argued in favor of a value of /dz/, and the value probably varied according to dialects – see Zeta (letter) for further discussion), acquired the sound /z/ that it still has in Modern Greek, seemingly with a geminate pronunciation /zz/ at least between vowels. Attic inscriptions suggest that this pronunciation was already common by the end of the 4th century BC.” [15]

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A Critique of Erasmus’ Knowledge & Methadology

Erasmus “succeeded in learning Greek by an intensive, day-and-night study of three years.” [16] That’s hardly the time needed to become competent in Greek. What is more, he sometimes confused the Greek with the Latin:

“In a way it is legitimate to say that Erasmus ‘synchronized’ or ‘unified’ the Greek and the Latin traditions of the New Testament by producing an updated translation of both simultaneously. Both being part of canonical tradition, he clearly found it necessary to ensure that both were actually present in the same content. In modern terminology, he made the two traditions ‘compatible.’ This is clearly evidenced by the fact that his Greek text is not just the basis for his Latin translation, but also the other way round: there are numerous instances where he edits the Greek text to reflect his Latin version. For instance, since the last six verses of Revelation were missing from his Greek manuscript, Erasmus translated the Vulgate's text back into Greek. Erasmus also translated the Latin text into Greek wherever he found that the Greek text and the accompanying commentaries were mixed up, or where he simply preferred the Vulgate's reading to the Greek text.” [17]

His 1516 publication became the first published New Testament in Greek:

“Erasmus used several Greek manuscript sources because he did not have access to a single complete manuscript. Most of the manuscripts were, however, late Greek manuscripts of the Byzantine textual family and Erasmus used the oldest manuscript the least because ‘he was afraid of its supposedly erratic text.’ He also ignored much older and better manuscripts that were at his disposal.” [18]

So although the modern critical edition of the New Testament rejected Erasmus’ versions, those same scholars that sat on these editorial committees nevertheless adopted his pronunciation (odd)!

On the other end of the spectrum, Johann Reuchlin was a German Catholic who had no axe to grind. He neither defended the Eastern Orthodox Church nor the Greek heritage per se. So he had no conflict of interests. He didn’t have a dog in this fight, so to speak. His interest was purely intellectual and academic.

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German Reconstructions

“The situation in German education may be representative of that in many other European countries. The teaching of Greek is based on a roughly Erasmian model, but in practice, it is heavily skewed towards the phonological system of German or the other host language.

Thus, German-speakers do not use a fricative [θ] for θ but give it the same pronunciation as τ, [t], but φ and χ are realised as the fricatives [f] and [x] ~ [ç]. ζ is usually pronounced as an affricate, but a voiceless one, like German z [ts]. However, σ is often voiced, according like s in German before a vowel, [z]. ευ and ηυ are not distinguished from οι but are both pronounced [ɔʏ], following the German eu, äu. Similarly, ει and αι are often not distinguished, both pronounced [aɪ], like the similar German ei, ai, and ει is sometimes pronounced [ɛɪ].” [19]

“While the deviations are often acknowledged as compromises in teaching, awareness of other German-based idiosyncrasies is less widespread. German-speakers typically try to reproduce vowel-length distinctions in stressed syllables, but they often fail to do so in non-stressed syllables, and they are also prone to use a reduction of e-sounds to [ə].” [20]

French Reconstructions

“Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in French secondary schools is based on Erasmian pronunciation, but it is modified to match the phonetics and even, in the case of αυ and ευ, the orthography of French.” [21]

“Vowel length distinction, geminate consonants and pitch accent are discarded completely, which matches the current phonology of Standard French. The reference Greek-French dictionary, Dictionnaire Grec-Français by A. Bailly et al., does not even bother to indicate vowel length in long syllables.” [22]

“The pseudo-diphthong ει is erroneously pronounced [ɛj] or [ej], regardless of whether the ει derives from a genuine diphthong or a ε̄. The pseudo-diphthong ου has a value of [u], which is historically attested in Ancient Greek.” [23]

“Short-element ι diphthongs αι, οι and υι are pronounced … as [aj], [ɔj], [yj], [and] … some websites recommend the less accurate pronunciation [ɥi] for υι. Short-element υ diphthongs αυ and ευ are pronounced like similar-looking French pseudo-diphthongs au and eu: [o]~[ɔ] and [ø]~[œ], respectively.” [24]

“Also, θ and χ are pronounced [t] and [k]. … Also, γ, before a velar consonant, is generally pronounced [n]. The digraph γμ is pronounced [ɡm], and ζ is pronounced [dz], but both pronunciations are questionable in the light of modern scholarly research.” [25]

Italian Reconstructions

“Italian speakers find it hard to reproduce the pitch-based Ancient Greek accent accurately so the circumflex and acute accents are not distinguished. … β is a voiced bilabial plosive [b], as in Italian bambino or English baby; γ is a voiced velar plosive [ɡ], as in Italian gatto or English got. When γ is before κ γ χ ξ, it is nasalized as [ŋ] … ζ is a voiced alveolar affricate [dz], as in Italian zolla … θ is taught as a voiceless dental fricative, as in English thing [θ], but since Italian does not have that sound, it is often pronounced as a voiceless alveolar affricate [ts], as in Italian zio, or even as τ, a voiceless dental plosive [t]) … χ is taught as a voiceless velar fricative [x], as in German ach, but since Italian does not have that sound, it is often pronounced as κ (voiceless velar plosive [k]).” [26]

Spanish Reconstructions

Due to Castilian Spanish, “phonological features of the language sneak in the Erasmian pronunciation. The following are the most distinctive (and frequent) features of Spanish pronunciation of Ancient Greek: following Spanish phonotactics, the double consonants ζ, ξ, ψ are difficult to differentiate in pronunciation by many students of Ancient Greek, although ξ is usually effectively rendered as [ks]; … both vocalic quantity and vowel openness are ignored altogether: thus, no effort is made to distinguish vocalic pairs such as ε : η and ο : ω; the vowel υ, although taught as [y] (absent in the Spanish phonological system), is mostly pronounced as [i].” [27]

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What Do the Experts Say?

Nick Nicolas, PhD in Modern Greek dialectology & linguist at Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, outlines the 3 current pronunciation models of Ancient Greek:

1. Erasmus' reconstruction of Ancient Greek phonology, as modified in practice for teaching Greek in Western schools.

2. The scholarly reconstruction of Ancient Greek phonology.

3. Modern Greek pronunciation applied to Ancient Greek (“Reuchlinian" pronunciation). [28]

Nicolas’ Critique of Erasmian:

It's not quite fully there with the scholarly

reconstruction of Greek; so some of the

phonology and morphology of Ancient

Greek still doesn't make sense.

Particularly with diphthongs, and

aspiration, if your local Erasmian doesn't

do them accurately. [29]

“Extreme variability from country to country, because of the concessions each country's teaching system makes to the local language.

Speak in Erasmian to a Greek, and they'll look at you like a space alien. … But they will genuinely have no idea what you are saying, or what language you are saying it in. … It's quite far from Koine. Koine was still in flux, and some critical changes were underway when the bit of Koine most people care about (New Testament) was spoken. But overall, Koine was much closer to Modern Greek than Homeric.” [30]

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Here’s what Daniel Streett, Ph.D & Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Houston Baptist University, says about the pronunciations debate that occurred approximately 10 years ago at the annual Society of Biblical Literature meeting in San Francisco. It was sponsored by the Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics Section & the Applied Linguistics for Biblical Languages Group, which addressed the topic of Greek phonology and pronunciation.

Dr. Daniel Streett says:

“There is a widespread consensus among historical linguists as to how Greek was pronounced at its various stages. If you want a good summary of the consensus, check out A.-F. Christidis’ History of Ancient Greek, which has several articles on the various phonological shifts. Especially relevant is E.B. Petrounias’ contribution on ‘Development in Pronunciation During the Hellenistic Period’ (pp. 599-609).” [31]

Then he critiques the Erasmian Pronunciation that was presented by Daniel Wallace of Dallas Seminary. Dr. Streett writes:

“He was asked to argue for the Erasmian pronunciation, although, as he explained at the outset, he has no firm conviction that Erasmian pronunciation best reflects the way Greek was pronounced in the Hellenistic world.

I found Wallace’s presentation very easy to follow and enjoyable to listen to, but frustrating at the same time. I think he seriously misrepresented the state of our knowledge on Greek phonology in the Hellenistic and Roman imperial eras. He did not deal with any hard evidence from manuscripts or inscriptions (as subsequent presenters Buth and Theophilos did). He merely pointed out a few of the difficulties with assessing such evidence and then (IMO) cavalierly dismissed them.” [32]

Dr. Streett Comments on the Reconstructed Koine:


“Randall Buth of the Biblical Language Center presented third and advocated his reconstruction of 1st century Koine Greek. If you want a summary of his system, take a look at his page on it here: https://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/koine-greek-pronunciation/

Buth’s presentation contained what Wallace’s lacked: a lot of evidence which demonstrated that however they were pronouncing Greek in the first century, it sure wasn’t Erasmian! Furthermore, he showed that the regional differences objection did not really hold, as the same sounds were ‘confused’ in texts from across the ancient world. So, while the pronunciation might have differed slightly from region to region, the phonemic structure remained stable.

Neo-hellenic or Modern Pronunciation

Michael Theophilos, who teaches at Australian Catholic University, presented last and advocated the modern pronunciation. Theophilos speaks modern Greek but also believes that most (or all?) of the modern phonology was in place by the first century. He made some very helpful methodological points. For example, he argues that we should be looking for phonological clues mainly in the non-literary papyri, which are more likely to contain phonetic spellings. He also offered several examples of iotacism in early papyri to show that there is at least some evidence that οι, η, and υ had iotacized by the 2nd century CE.

By the time you heard Simkin, Buth, and Theophilos, Wallace’s agnosticism seemed thorougly untenable. Theophilos didn’t have a whole lot to say about the practical reasons for using the modern pronunciation. I wish he would have, since it’s helpful for Erasmians to realize there’s an entire country of people who speak Greek and can’t bear to listen to the awful linguistic barbarity known as Erasmian. When Wallace was making the argument that Erasmians are by far in the pedagogical majority, he conveniently left out the millions of Greek students on this little peninsula in the Aegean.” [33]

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Conclusion

In the words of Daniel B. Wallace:

“Erasmian pronunciation is often considered cumbersome, unnatural, stilted, and ugly. The implication sometimes is that it must not have been the way Greek ever sounded; it is too harsh on the ears for that.” Not to mention fake and fabricated!

As regards Koine Greek, no one from our generation was there to hear the words being spoken. So no one really knows exactly how it sounded. But just as the closest pronunciation to Middle English is Modern English, so the rightful heir and descendant of Koine Greek pronunciation is obviously Modern Greek. It should be closer to the Koine Greek pronunciation than an invented phonetic system from the Renaissance. Just as Albert Schweitzer realized that most authors had interpreted Jesus in their own image, so Erasmians have interpreted Greek pronunciation in their own image as well. That’s why the Erasmian speakers don’t sound Greek but have the accents of their native countries.

What is more, many of their theories are erroneously based on Egyptian Greek papyri. Suppose that 2,000 years from now linguists try to reconstruct American pronunciation via English literature that was found in Australia. The pronunciations are vastly different. By comparison, what was spoken in Egypt or Palestine was certainly not spoken in Athens.

Besides, there’s much more literature on Erasmian pronunciation and a relative neglect or disinterest to write anything about the Reuchlinian or Modern Greek pronunciation. That’s a western bias that has been in place for centuries.

Let’s not forget that we learned so much about Koine Greek from the discoveries of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the like. The addition of approximately 5,800 New Testament mss. that we currently have just in Greek, compared to a handful that Erasmus had at his disposal, shows how much more equipped we are in understanding the intricacies and complexities of Koine Greek than he was in the early 1500s.

Philemon Zachariou——Ph.D Bible scholar, linguist, & native Greek speaker——uses various lines of evidence, including Plato’s writings, to show that ι = ει = η = [i] (kratylos 418c) is similar to Neohellenic Greek. He summarizes the evidence as follows:

“iotacism is not a ‘modern’ development but is traceable all the way to Plato’s day.” He further claims that “the phonemic sounds of mainstream Modern Greek are not ‘modern’ or new but historical; and the Modern Greek way of reading and pronouncing consonants, vowels, and vowel digraphs was established by, or initiated within, the Classical Greek period (500-300 BC).” [34]

He concludes that no pronunciation comes closer to Koine than Modern Greek.

Similarly, David S. Hasselbrook, who studies New Testament Lexicography, says that a number of new words that occur in the New Testament continue to have the same meanings in modern Greek. These words are closer to modern Greek than Classical Greek. Constantine R. Campbell, Associate Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, also says that Modern Greek helps to resolve text-critical issues related to pronunciation, whereas the Erasmian may lead down the wrong path! [35]

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Notes

1 Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching (Wiki).

2 Johann Reuchlin (Wikipedia).

3 Ibid.

4 Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching.

5 Ibid.

6 Ancient Greek phonology (Wikipedia).

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Koine Greek phonology (Wikipedia).

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Erasmus (Wikipedia).

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 What are the pros and cons of the Erasmian

pronunciation? (Quora).

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 The Great Greek Pronunciation Debate (SBL)

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 Philemon Zachariou, PhD - YouTube Video

35 Ibid.

A Comparison Between Erasmian & Modern Pronunciation

Matthew 7 - Erasmian Pronunciation -https://youtu.be/vKrqwhBwur8

Matthew 7 - Modern Greek Pronunciation -https://youtu.be/ktmnpVzxPw4

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Selected Bibliography

Allen, William Sidney (1987). Vox Graeca. A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Greek (3rd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. ix–x. ISBN 978-0-521-33555-3. Retrieved 22 June 2019.

Jannaris, A. (1897). An Historical Greek Grammar Chiefly of the Attic Dialect As Written and Spoken From Classical Antiquity Down to the Present Time. London: MacMillan.

Papadimitrakopoulos, Th. (1889). Βάσανος τῶν περὶ τῆς ἑλληνικῆς προφορᾶς Ἐρασμικῶν ἀποδείξεων [Critique of the Erasmian evidence regarding Greek pronunciation]. Athens.

https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/1466927

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koine_Greek_phonology

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_Ancient_Greek_in_teaching

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iotacism

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Reuchlin

https://quora.opoudjis.net/2016/01/24/2016-01-24-what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-the-erasmian-pronunciation/

https://danielstreett.com/2011/12/01/the-great-greek-pronunciation-debate-sbl-2011-report-pt-3/amp/

https://youtu.be/wYtrVlpnpg4

Every Classics professor abroad: This is the perfect Greek accent!

The Greeks in the comments after hearing this: 😬😟😮😯😵😫😩😣😖😞😥😓😵🤢

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ON THE ERASMIAN PRONUNCIATION

Well, unavoidably they got some letters correct. However, I am afraid that Erasmian pronunciation 1) makes the Greek language essentially dysfunctional 2) cannot explain how the language’s pronunciation evolved organically from ancient to modern times and 3) creates problems in Greek words which are written similarly but stressed on a different syllable and have different meanings.

I have rebloged a post from another Greek where she discussed about it. (Post)

Another user added to the discussion, as you can see, and we kept the:

“This is strengthened by the fact that when the Athenians reformed the alphabet in 403 BC, they distinguished ει from both ε and ι, meaning that it was still its own sound. (It probably wasn’t literally ε+ι either.) At this point, it’s more likely than not that the rest of the diphthongs, too, were still their own sounds. Things did start to change around the end of the Classical era, though we’re not exactly sure when. By the Hellenistic era, some of the diphthongs were clearly being pronounced as they are in modern Greek.”

I have a personal example, too. I had found an old tomb of a girl named ΧΑΡΙΚΛΕΑ. Today the name is ΧΑΡΙΚΛΕΙΑ indicating that “ει” was one sound if it could be converted from “ε”.

A very important clue comes from Thucydides History:

[2.54.3] So a dispute arose as to whether dearth and not death had not been the word in the verse; but at the present juncture, it was of course decided in favor of the latter; for the people made their recollection fit in with their sufferings. I fancy, however, that if another Dorian war should ever afterwards come upon us, and a dearth should happen to accompany it, the verse will probably be read accordingly.

Do you wonder why it was translated in English like “dearth” and “death”? Because in antiquity and in Thucydides’ text the words were “λιμός” and “λοιμός”. Λιμός meaning “great hunger” and λοιμός meaning “infectious disease”.

Here is the Greek text with those two words in red:

(SOURCE)

But this also has been discussed in the academic world. For example the “correctness” of this pronunciation was discussed in “The Error of Erasmus and Un-Greek Pronunciations of Greek” published in Filologia Neotestamentaria, in 1995. I think you can find parts of it here (Link)

Its writer is Chrys C. Caragounis, a professor of Greek descent in England who taught in the Erasmian way for twenty five years before he researched more and switched. Here is a small article of his. (Link)

Here you are going to find more of his works (thesis and papers) and reviews that support it. (Link)

I found another (Greek) article on the matter, posted by Eleni Papadopoulou in her blog (https://eranistria.blogspot.com). Ms Papadopoulou studied Classical Philology, took courses in History and Archeology and she specializes in Biblical and Patriarchal Language. She mentions the many problems created by the use of the Erasmian. The article she posted about is “The pronunciation of Ancient Greek” by f St. Archontidis (Η προφορά των Αρχαίων Ελληνικών του Στ. Αρχοντίδη). (Link)

I encourage Greeks speakers to read it. I may make a post about it in the future.

You may also want to search for this English article. (Link) Its synopsis says “This article shows that the so-called “Erasmian” pronunciation of Greek at large today is not only un-Greek, but also un-Erasmian, for it has little to do with Erasmus and contradicts his example and counsel.”

It’s important to have in mind that the study of Greek in the West expanded considerably during the Renaissance, in particular after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, when many Byzantine Greek scholars came to Western Europe. Various scholars judged that the pronunciation was inconsistent with the descriptions that were handed down by ancient grammarians, and they suggested alternative pronunciations.

The Erasmian pronunciation had its “debut” in 1528. You understand that Westerners in the 16th century couldn’t know how to construct the proper pronunciation. People forget that Hellenic people at that time had their own scholars, too. So, I have no idea why the Erasmian is so widespread since its creators didn’t have any real contact with the Greek language at the time. There were tons of Hellenic Byzantine scholars studying the language at the time but their judgment apparently wasn’t as important. The foreigners were like “I know that people with Hellenic heritage have kept and studied their ancient texts but THEY DON’T REALLY KNOW BETTER THAN US. Their pronunciation must be wrong.” Now that’s douchy :P

Another Greek comments “One must also remember that the Erasmian pronunciation of Attic Greek is based on the latinized version of Greek words and letters. Thus we have the 'Mu', 'Nu' pronounced 'muw' and 'nuw' in the Erasmian, sort of like a cows moo. What I don't understand is why did they ever thought the Latin variation of the Greek words and letters retained the proper pronunciation while the Byzantines did not?”

Erasmus didn’t even use the Erasmian pronunciation. The Swiss scholar Henricus Glareanus met with Erasmus in Paris and played a practical joke on him. He had told him that there were Greeks in Paris who pronounced ancient Greek in a different way than the one received in Europe and told him what this new pronunciation was. Excited, Erasmus went and wrote his famous Dialogus. But later, he found out that Greeks didn’t pronounce it that way and refrained from using it.

Erasmus also urged his friends and family to not use it. But it was late because the pronunciation had spread in Europe and Hellenic people suffered under the Ottoman empire and didn’t have a big enough influence to stop the spread. A few people in Hellenismos were aware of what was going on in Central Europe.

Western Europeans on the other hand were ready to forget the Hellenes – if they ever consider them Hellenes in the 16th century. Frederick II of Prussia (18th century) said that Greeks under Ottoman rule had become “undignified and humiliated” and that their language was “corrupt”and that’s why the Hellenes didn’t deserve freedom from the Turks. It reminds me of how the English colonizers viewed the languages spoken by the Indians in India. They said their language wasn’t “pure” and they had to return to the old ways of speaking.

To get a bit practical:

Reading words with the Erasmian goes against the very principles of the Hellenic language since antiquity, the most prominent being hasmodia (or hiatus in English). Because the Greek language started as a syllabic language (like Japanese, hence similar sounds and principles) there is a structure of consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel that characterizes Greek words since early antiquity. It's rare that you find two vowels together, and if you see it, it only happens once inside a word.

More on that and the system behind Greek words with examples from the Odyssey and more

One would expect professors to know that, if they teach the language. Greek-speaking professors of Literature, Classics, and Archaeology know it, Greek people know it, so it's not knowledge lost in time.

Honestly, the words sound like a MESS with the Erasmian. The average native Greek speaker can combine their innate knowledge of how the language works with many years of learning ancient Greek in middle and high school and understand how wrong it sounds.

Αccording to the Erasmian pronunciation the ancient and modern Greek word “οικειοποιείται”, should be pronounced oh-ee-keh-ee-oh-poh-ee-eh-EE-tah-ee. Yes, that would be a single word!!!

A note on different letters, same sound (the case of αι, οι, ει):

Perhaps the speakers of Germanic languages cannot fathom the existence of different letters which eventually have the same sound. But for Greek, this has been happening for a long time. Iotakismos, a phenomenon which gave many letters the iota sound, has been going on for more than a thousand years.

As for ancient forms of the language, we still have evidence for a similar - although less prevalent - phenomenon. In this post, I discuss how ε and αι most likely always had the same sound, "eh". Now let's go to the "ee" sound:

First of all, think that Greeks operate today with five letters or diphthongs for the "ee" sound (ι,η,υ,ει,οι) and we are doing just fine. We still keep the different letters in the words instead of replacing them all with iota, because spelling helps us make sense of words, to understand their linguistic roots, and trace their history.

This is because spelling is, many times, more important than sound. Take a look at those two words: ΑΝΑΓΚΑΣΤΗΚΑ and ΑΝΑΓΚΑΣΤΙΚΑ. Only one letter difference, right?

The first one means “I was forced” and the second means “out of necessity”. If we didn’t have the small difference there we couldn’t know in writing. (ancient written text didn’t have intonation so I didn’t bring it up). The suffixes –ΗΚΑ and –ΙΚΑ show different things in the language.

These words also differ in intonation, but if you write with capital letters, there is no stress mark system to guide you and you have to rely on spelling.

Greeks also agree that ι,η,υ would have been pronounced differently in antiquity, but we are not entirely sure that ει and οι were unique sounds. Due to archaeological evidence, we can see replacements between diphthongs and single letters. One example is the spelling mistake of the Hellenistic era, (Hellenistic is right after the Classical era) where a man wrote ΕΞΟΡΚΙΖΙ instead of ΕΞΟΡΚΙΖΕΙ. (Even today Greeks know the grammatically correct way is to write it with -ει at the end because it's a verb).

More hints for αι, ει, οι pronounced as one sound come from intonation from ancient sources, and the logic of short and long vowels. (Post with examples + Another post on intonation)

The Y:

You brought up the example of “υ”. In some dialects indeed some letters get replaced by other letters. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t use “υ” as intended on other occasions. If “υ” was “ου” in antiquity we wouldn’t need a real “-oυ” which appears a lot in ancient Greek in the genitive case. I bet the Tsakonian people pronounce “χρυσούς” as “χρουσούς”, still keeping the “oυ” sound in the end. (I bet because I have read old Greek books with such idioms). Let’s also mention that the diphthong “ευ”’s existence wouldn’t make sense if “υ” was originally “ου”. There is no “eoo” sound in the language.

Yes, sounds change but with the proper research and deduction we can pretty much see the basic rules for the ancient years. Still, it won’t be 100% accurate but it will be quite close.

There was some more discussion about the Υ/υ also in this post.

How should we pronounce the ancient Greek language, then?