Vocabulary, Paradigms, Sentences
Hearing Ancient Greek and reading it aloud are important parts of learning the language—and the only way to appreciate fully the poetry of the Iliad.
It is particularly important to distinguish and hear every syllable because clues to meaning are sometimes found in the interior syllables of a word, not just in its ending.
So, too, in reading aloud the practice sentences in Homeric Greek (if you do it correctly), you should begin to hear some of the metrical patterns (i.e. rhythms) in the poem.
Note: the recordings on this site do not use the restored pronunciation of the Greek alphabet, primarily because English speakers find it very difficult to distinguish between aspirated and unaspirated consonants, i.e. if θάλασσα sounds as if it’s τάλασσα, spelling and reading will be more difficult. Moreover, reconstructions are based primarily on how scholars think Attic Greek sounded in the classical period.
To those committed to the restored pronunciation, we extend an invitation to send us recordings to post on this site. We will, of course, attribute them to their authors.