From: nfotis@ntua.gr (Nick C. Fotis)
Subject: (19 Jan 93) Soc.Culture.Greek FAQ - Culture
Followup-To: poster
Reply-To: nfotis@theseas.ntua.gr (Nick (Nikolaos) Fotis)
Organization: National Technical Univ. of Athens
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 18:48:44 GMT

Archive-name: greek-faq/culture
Last-modified: 1993/01/19

Soc.Culture.Greek Frequently Asked Questions and Answers
========================================================
(Culture)
=========
Last Change: 19 January 1993

Items Changed:
--------------

[ WELL, THERE'S SO MUCH NEW STUFF, THAT I THINK I'LL HAVE TO SPLIT AGAIN
 THE FAQ!! I MAY TRY TO MAKE A MORE CAREFUL EDITING -- N. FOTIS

 I'VE STILL SOME STUFF FOR INCLUSION >:->

 WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT EDITION???]

--

Lines which got changed, have the `#' character in front of them.
Added lines are prepended with a `+'
Removed lines are just removed. Use 'diff' to locate these changes.
	
I have included my comments within braces '[' and ']'.

Nikolaos Fotis

=================

Disclaimer: that's only a hasty collection of texts and information as I
(or other people) remember it, so this file is worth only what you paid for it
(and even less! ;-) )

Subjects:
=========
1. Bookstores that carry Greek books
2. Greek cuisine -- recommended books??
3. Greek wines -- reference book(s)
4. The 12 Greek Gods : who are they?
5. Greek Popular Music
6. Athens Restaurants		[ NEW SUBJECT ]
7. Greek Mythology - Various questions, reference books	[ NEW SUBJECT ]
8. Travel Information -- Greece		[ NEW SUBJECT ]
9. Greek shortwave (SW) stations	[ NEW SUBJECT ]
10. Greek Coffee, Reading Turkish grounds	[ NEW SUBJECT ]
11. Ways for a Vegan to survive in Greece	[ NEW SUBJECT ]
12. What was the Mythical Labyrinth??		[ NEW SUBJECT ]

Proposed future subjects:
[ Please send me info to stuff these subjects!! -- nfotis]

 Graduate studies in Greece that are interesting for non-Greeks?
	(eg. archaeology)
 Is there any decent backgammon program?
[any ideas/info/... ??]

==============

I ask the people to send me stuff in order to make this file more
complete. I'm just a kind of editor, and I cannot know everything.

YOU'll determine if this FAQ is good or not!

==============

1. Bookstores that carry Greek books
====================================

Here are some addresses of stores/institutions
selling/publishing Greek books/periodicals/newsletters, in no particular
order:

US/Canada :
-----------

University of Toronto Bookstore
214 College Street
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5T 3A1
tel.: (416) 978 7905 (ancient Greek)
	    978 7923 (modern Greek)
(ask for the books used by the Classics department
 ancient/modern Greek courses)

Modern Greek Studies Association
Box 1826, New Haven, Connecticut 06508
U.S.A.
(ask for their Journal of Modern Greek Studies,
 their newsletter, bulletin, conferences, etc.)

Princeton University Press
Princeton Modern Greek Studies
41 William Street
Princeton, NJ 08540
U.S.A.
tel.:	(609) 258 4900
	(800) PRS ISBN or 777 4726 (orders)
(ask for a list of their books on modern Greek studies)

Pella publishing company, inc.
337 West 36th Street
New York, NY 10018
U.S.A.
(ask for a list of their books in general)

Schoenhof's Foreign Books
Cambridge, MA.
tel: 617-547-8855.

Greek books can be purchased in Montreal at the Greek Community Centre.
For more info. (prices, etc.) write to:

Communaute Hellenique de Montreal
Centre des Etudes Helleniques
5777, ave. Wilderton,
Montreal (Quebec),
Canada H3S 2V7

Attn. M. Chatzinikolaou
Tel.	(514) 738 2421  (until 17:00 EDT)
	(514) 340 3576  (after 17:00 EDT)

UK :
----

[ Can anyone bring us the FAX/phone numbers ? - we think that the area code
 is 071, but we aren't sure ]

The Hellenic Book Service
122 Charing Cross Road WC2
London
phone 836-7071

Zeno
6 Denmark Street WC2
London 
phone 836-2522

Kimon Bookshop
87-88 Plender Street NW1
London
phone 387-8809


Located in Greece:
------------------
Olympic Book Center
16 Efroniou
116 34 Athens
Greece

Avastatikes Ekdoseis
Bibliopwleio Diovusiou Notn Karbia
Asklnpiou 67
GR-106 80 A0HNA

Ekdoseis - Palaiobibliopwleio "KOYLTOYRA"
Mavtzarou 4-(Solwnos 54)
GR 106 72 A0HNA

Ekdoseis - Bibliopwleio Stratns G. Filippotns
Solwnos 69 & Asklnpiou
GR 106 79 A0HNA

Ekdoseis Aposperitns
Eressou 9
A0HNA

Ekdoseis Dwrikos
Ippokratous 72
A0HNA

Ekdoseis Epikairotnta
Mauromixaln 60
GR 106 80 A0HNA
FAX : 36.36.083 - 36.07.382

Ekdoseis Pella
0eof. Papadopoulos & Yios O.E.
Kwletth 15 & Emm. Mpevakn
A0HNA

Ekdoseis Stoxastns
Mauromixaln 39
GR 106 80 A0HNA
FAX : 36.09.197

Ekdoseis Kardamitsa
Ippokratous 8
GR 106 79 A0HNA


2. Greek cuisine -- recommended books??
=======================================

Look at gatekeeper.dec.com (anonymous ftp), under the directory
pub/recipes (there's also a compressed tar file that contains all
the files). Familiar names were:
(I just did a 'dir', and these were some names I found familiar)

avgolemono, avgolemono-2, baklava, briami, kourabiedes, lamb-kebab,
lasagna-1..4, margarita-1, meat-kebabs, melomacarona, moussaka,
spanakopita, spanakopita-2

From: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)

I can't attest to their authenticity, but the recipes in Jack Santa Maria's
"Greek Vegetarian Cooking" are absolutely yummy, which is enough for me.
It's in print in the UK (Hutchinson, I think) and you can get it in most
large bookshops.

3. Greek wines -- reference book(s)
=================================

Lambert-Gocs, Miles. "The Wines of Greece". Faber & Faber
London, 1989(?)

It contains over 2 hundred Greek wine brands, their characteristics,
history of large and small producers, etc.etc.


4. The 12 Greek Gods : who are they?
======================================

It's rather easy to remember most of the 12 Gods of Greek Ancient
Mythology. The most easy to remember are:

Zeus, Hera, Athena, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Ares, Apollo, Hermes,
Demeter, Artemis

The number 12 is the most troublesome:

> From: cla02@seq1.keele.ac.uk (Richard Wallace)
> Newsgroups: soc.culture.greek
> Subject: Re: REQUEST: Greek Gods

The most usual list has Hestia as number twelve. She was the goddess of
hearth and home, and so a rather passive figure, and from time to time
people seem to have thought that she didn't really earn her place, and
put someone else in instead.

So far as I know, Hades is one of the twelve only in the list in Plato's
Phaedrus (and perhaps, by implication, in the Laws), 
and there Plato makes it quite clear that HE has made the
decision to leave Hestia out. I think Hades does not figure in the
normal lists because they are the twelve OLYMPIAN gods, and Hades does
not normally come to Olympus (though Poseidon does).

Sometimes you get Dionysus instead of Hestia. He is a rather aberrant
god anyway (either because he was a late-comer to Greek religion or for
some other reason) - in any case he doesn't normally appear in the list.

There is some evidence that there was a local tradition at Olympia which
substituted Kronos, Rhea, and Alpheios (the local river god) for
Hephaistos, Demeter, and Hestia, and there are other cases of the
insertion of local gods into the list in particular localities,
presumably out of local patriotism.

Mostly, they referred to them simply as 'the twelve', no doubt leaving
it open to each individual to write in his own list!

[ Personally, I feel that Dionysus was mentioned most often in the
 mainland Greece mythology, at least in Attica -- nfotis ]


From: G0900@vmcms.csuohio.edu

THE MAIN GODS AND GODDESSES OF THE ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION
 
Greek		Latin		meaning
Name		Name
---------	------
Zeus		Zeus, Jupiter	Master of the sky, father of the
				gods and men.
 
Hera		Juno		Wife of Zeus, protector of marriage
 
Poseidon	Neptune		Brother of Zeus, god of the sea
 
Athena		Minerva		Goddess of wisdom, protector of arts
				and crafts
 
Apollo		Apollo		God of the sun and music
 
Artemis		Diana		Apollo's sister, goddess of hunting
 
Aphrodite	Venus		Goddess of beauty and love
 
Hephaestus	Vulcan		God of fire, protector of metal
				workers

Ares		Mars		God of war
 
Hermes		Mercury		Messenger of gods and god of trade
 
Demeter		Ceres		Goddess of agriculture
 
Persephone, Kore  Proserpina	Demeter's daughter, queen of the
					Underworld
      (Hades)
Pluton, Ades	   Pluton	King of the Underworld
 
Dionysus, Bacchos  Bacchus	God of wine, vegetation and fertility
 
Asklepios	Aesculapius	God of medicine

5. Greek Popular Music
=======================

   [This is from an article originally posted to soc.culture.greek by
Jon Corelis.]

  Greece has an exceptionally rich and varied musical tradition, so
that it's difficult to know where to start. But the most popular Greek
music, both in the country and with foreigners, is probably music of the
two types called "rebetika" and "laika."

  Rebetika music has sometimes been called the Greek blues, and
although musically it's not like the blues at all, the comparison is an
apt one in that like the blues, rebetika music grew out of a specific
urban subculture and was associated with a certain type of life-style,
in which poverty, oppression, sex, alcohol, drugs, and violence played
prominent roles. Rebetika music basically grew out of the culture of
the Greek refugees from Asia Minor in the early 1920's. These people
were settled in Athens and other areas and continued to live for the
most part in their own communities, usually under conditions of great
hardship. They created through the fusion of the Anatolian musical
modes they brought with them with native mainland Greek musical
traditions a unique new type of music called rebetika (no one really
knows where the name came from) which reflected both the rough,
oppressed condition of their lives and the resilience, toughness, and
good humor which enabled them to survive.

  Rebetika is also similar to the blues in the development of its
social position. In the twenties and thirties it was popular with the
urban poor who created it, later it became scorned as "low-class" music,
and then in the sixties it experienced a revival, becoming immensely
popular among young people, some of whom formed their own rebetika bands
to revive the music of the great rebetika artists of the past.

 Giving a discography for Greek music is always a bit difficult, since
records tend to rapidly go in and out of print. But I'll give the names
of a few popular records which are probably still available. Perhaps
the best place to start is with the soundtrack album from the film
"Rebetiko," issued in Greece by CBS records. This film, which told the
life story of a typical rebetika singer, included numerous musical
numbers, some of which were old rebetika songs, others of which were
especially written for the film in rebetika style. Rebetiko is one of
the very best Greek records ever, and remains immensely popular in
Greece.

 For the real thing -- collections of rebetika taken from the original
recordings of the 1920-1950 period -- an excellent series is the six
volume Rebetiki Istoria, issued in Greece by EMI. If you can find all
six of these, you'll have about the best introduction to rebetika you
could hope for. A very interesting record issued in the U.S. is
Greek-Oriental Smyrnaic-Rebetic Songs and Dances (Arhoolie/Folkloric
9033,) which concentrates on the early rebetika style which still
retained much of its Eastern flavor.

 As for other records, it's probably better to give the names of some
of the better artists rather than listing individual records that may
no longer be in print. So look for the names Toundas, Tsitsanis, Markos
Vamvakaris, Rosa Eskanazi, Sotiria Bellou, Papaiouannou, and Rita
Abatsi.

 Fortunately for us English speakers, there exists a very good book in
English on rebetika: Road to Rebetika by Gail Holst (Third ed., 1983,
Athens, Harvey.) This book is sometimes found in university libraries
in the U.S., and can probably be obtained by your local library via
interlibrary loan service. You could also try writing the publisher at
Denise Harvey & Company, Lambrou Fotiadis 6, Mets, Athens 407, Greece,
and see if you get a response. It may be a bit of trouble to track this
book down, but it's absolutely worth it if you want to investigate this
type of music.

 The other type of music is a looser category sometimes called
"laika," which basically means just "popular music." This is the music
"everyone" listens to -- sort of like rock music in the U.S. And like
rock it includes music of many different subtypes. Again, it will
probably be better to give names rather than individual recordings.
One of the best, and probably the most popular, of the artists in this
field is George Dalaras, who has worked in a wide range of genres --
recently he has branched out to include Spanish music in his
repertoire. Another good artist, who has often worked with Dalaras, is
Haris Alexiou. These two are perhaps the best introduction to laika
music at its best. A singer with a smaller but devoted following is
Arleta (she goes by her first name only,) who tends to do relaxed but
often very beautiful folk-type songs, with minimal acoustic
accompaniment. The composers Hadjidakis and Theoradakis have
innumerable records and have to some extent become popular outside of
Greece.

 Perhaps I should also note that there is a certain amount of overlap
between rebetika and laika: Dalaras has recorded several rebetika
albums, Alexiou usually includes some rebetika songs on her records, and
Hadjidakis frequently uses rebetika songs as the basis for his
orchestral arrangements.

 A final note for anyone who plans a trip to Greece: the best place
I've found to buy Greek music is the record shop Pop 11, at Pindarou 38
(corner of Tsakalof) in the Kolonaki section of Athens. They have a
huge selection, the staff are knowledgable and speak English, and they
take credit cards. The staff will also be able to advise you on places
to hear rebetica and other Greek music in Athens.

6. Athens Restaurants		[ NEW SUBJECT ]
=====================

From: jon@leland.Stanford.EDU (Jon Corelis)
Subject: Some Athens restaurants
Date: 28 Jun 92 17:58:44 GMT

 Here are some notes on Athens restaurants, resulting from a recent
trip there. These restaurants are all in central Athens, and in
each case I give the neighborhood or district where the restaurant is
located (most maps of Athens will indicate where these districts are.)
Except where otherwise noted, all the restaurants mentioned are
moderately priced. Most are open only for dinner unless otherwise
noted. Many Athens restaurants are closed Sundays, so if you want to
try one on that day you should check by phone (your hotel can usually
help you do this.) I've visited all of these places within the last
two months.

 Almost all visitors to Athens find themselves spending some time in
Plaka, the old neighborhood at the foot of the Acropolis. Plaka is
filled with restaurants, most of them serving bad, overpriced food to
crowds of tourists. There are some worthwhile establishments, though.
One of them is Zeus (in Modern Greek pronounced 'Zefs,') a pleasant
small restaurant high on the slope of the Acropolis which despite the
fact that it caters very much to tourists serves excellent, simple Greek
food at reasonable prices. Tables are all outdoors, and the place
usually isn't very crowded, probably because it's something of a climb
to get to it, and you have to pass a number of other eateries on the way
whose touts tend to rope in most tourists before they get to this one.
There are nice views from some of the tables. Try their gigantes (giant
beans,) a traditional Greek appetizer which is better here than anywhere
else I've had it. Open for lunch, and I assume dinner too, though I've
never been there at night. To get there from Plaka, find Mnesikleous
Street and follow it uphill until you can't go any farther.

 Another touristy but good place, which is at Hadrian and Kydathinaion
streets right in the middle of Plaka, is Costi's, which serves
traditional, somewhat elaborate taverna food. Most tables are outdoors,
and it's open for lunch and dinner.

 Sigalas, at 2 Monastiraki Square on the edge of Plaka, serves
authentic taverna food of the simpler kind in a colorful, bustling
atmosphere at lunch and dinner. They have good barrel retsina.

 Karavitis, at Pafsaniou and Arktinou in the Pangrati district,
remains one of the best traditional tavernas. Open nightly including
Sunday.

 The following restaurants are all in the Kolonaki area:

 Demokritos, at number 23 on the street of the same name, is an
altogether excellent taverna with particularly good barrel retsina.

 Rodhia, at 44 Aristippou near the base of the Lykavettos funicular,
is an upscale taverna with a limited menu -- almost everyone orders the
appetizers and the lamb with oregano -- and a very good red barrel wine.
Try to get a table in the garden. Somewhat expensive, but worth it.

 A long-time popular Kolonaki restaurant, Rouga, has closed. Someone
in the neighborhood told us they thought it would be closed permanently.
Another old Kolonaki place, Jimmy's Cooking, has turned itself into a
sort of snack bar; I didn't try it, but it doesn't look very promising
any more.

 Okio, on Haritos Street, remains the best restaurant I have been to
in Greece. It's expensive, not much English is spoken, and shorts or
other very informal attire will not be in place. 

7. Greek Mythology - Various questions, reference books	[ NEW SUBJECT ]
=======================================================

From: ccc@cs.toronto.edu ("Christina C. Christara")
Subject: Re: Mythology questions 
Date: 16 Oct 92 01:12:28 GMT

kambizm@fidibus.uio.no (Kambiz Iranpour Mobarekeh) writes:
>I am looking for the names of some mythological personalities
>whom I read about once. One is the guy who still rolls
>a stone up the hill again and again.

This is Sisyphos (Sisufos) who tried several times to avoid
death; he actually succeded many times. He visited Hades (Adns)
and he found some tricks to come back to life. In ceramic
paintings, he is depicted pushing a stone towards the top
of a mountain, and when he is almost at the end, the stone
slips and rolls down fast. He was from Korinthos.
His struggle symbolises people's struggle against death,
something he did not eventually avoid himself.

> The other is one who is 
>thirsty standing in a river in Hades trying to drink water but
>the water disappears each time. What was his name?

This is probably Tantalos, the king of Ludia (part of Asia Minor,
east of Smyrna). He was invited to dinner by the Gods,
but he could not reach anything, neither food, nor drink.
He was punished so, because when he invited the Gods to dinner
instead of sacrificing an animal for them, he sacrificed
his son, Pelops (Pelopas), whose name is the first part
of the name "Peloponnese." Tantalos was also punished,
because he gave the recipe of ambrosia and nectar
(the food and drink of the Gods) to the people.
(This story is similar to that of Prometheus, who gave
fire to people).

> Third question
>is was it Ogyas (or Ogias) barns which were cleaned by Hercul?

This must be the Avgias barns (stauloi Augeiou). Hercules (Hraklns)
was supposed to clean the barns of Augeias, king of Helis (Hlis),
in western Peloponnese. This was necessary, because the dirt (shit)
of the cows of Augeias was so much that deseases would spread to the
people. Hercules had 1 day to complete the job, otherwise he would
be a slave (doulos) for the rest of his life. Would he complete
the job, he would get a part of the kingdom and the daughter
of the king as his wife. Hercules did clean the barns (according
to some mythology version, he turned 2 rivers towards the barns
and all dirt was gone by the water), but then Augeias did not
keep his promise and Hercules fought against him. I don't
remember if he won (I wasn't there, anyway :-)).

From: nwbernst@unix.amherst.edu (Neil Bernstein)
[regarding the last question]

 Herakles (Latinized to Hercules) cleaned the stables of King Augeas. 
You may be thinking of the island of Ogygia, where Odysseus was restrained
by the nymph Kalypso after his Great Wanderings and before he returns to
Ithaka.

[ nfotis: we could continue ad infinitum with Greek Mythology, which
 is *very* rich and engaging, IMHO. You're advised to read some good
 books about Greek Mythology. cla04@seq1.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear)
 suggests these two books:

> A good reference book for Greek mythology is Robert Graves' book the Greek
> Myths which has copious references to the original sources. Don't believe his
> personal commentaries however as they are idiosyncratic to put it
> mildly. Another book that might interest you is H.J.Rose's A Handbook of
> Greek Mythology.

Note: I didn't read those books, so don't sue me it these aren't good for
your tastes! ]



8. Travel Information -- Greece		[ NEW SUBJECT ]
===============================

[ Note: that's a time limited subject. The time you read this, it may
 be already out-of-date, so *please* check with the respective embassies/
 consulates before starting to prepare for a travel to Greece. This
 information has a U.S. bias (of course!) ]

Newsgroup: rec.travel
From: 76702.1202@CompuServe.COM (Charlie Smith)

Subject: *NEW* TRAVEL INFORMATION -- Greece

STATE DEPARTMENT TRAVEL INFORMATION - Greece
============================================================
Greece - Consular Information Sheet
 October 7, 1992
 
Embassy and Consulate Locations: The U.S. Embassy in Athens is 
located at 91 Vasilissis Sophias Boulevard; telephone (30) (1) 
721-2951. There is also a consulate in Thessaloniki at 59 Leoforos 
Nikis; telephone (30) (31) 266-121.
 
Country Description: Greece is a developed and stable democracy 
with a modern economy. Tourist facilities are widely available.
 
Entry Requirements: A visa is not required for tourist or business 
stays up to three months. An AIDS test is required for performing 
artists and students on Greek scholarships; U.S. test results are 
not accepted. For further information concerning entry requirements 
to Greece, travelers can contact the Embassy of Greece at 2221 
Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20008, tel: (202) 
939-5800, or the nearest Consulate General in Atlanta, Boston, 
Chicago, Houston, New Orleans, New York, or San Francisco.
 
Medical Facilities: Medical facilities are available. U.S. 
medical insurance is not always valid outside the United States. 
Travelers have found that in some cases, supplemental medical 
insurance with specific overseas coverage has proved to be useful.
Further information on health matters can be obtained from the 
Centers for Disease Control's international travelers hotline on 
(404) 332-4559.
 
Crime Information: Greece has a low rate of crime, but some 
pickpocketing, purse-snatching, and luggage theft does occur in 
Greece at popular tourist areas. The Department of State's pamphlet 
"A Safe Trip Abroad" is availableKWARD
IN from the Superintendent of 
Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402.
It provides useful information on guarding valuables and protecting 
personal security while traveling abroad.
 
Terrorist Activities: Civil disorder is rare. However, there are 
several active terrorist groups, including the "17 November" 
organization, which at times has targeted U.S. government and U.S. 
commercial interests. Between 1975 and 1991, "17 November" 
assassinated four Americans assigned to U.S. diplomatic or military 
installations in Greece. Terrorists in Greece have seldom targeted 
tourists.

Drug Penalties: Penalties for possession, use, and trafficking in 
illegal drugs are strict, and convicted offenders can expect jail 
sentences and fines. Arrestees may spend up to 18 months in 
pretrial confinement.
 
Dual Nationality: U.S. citizens who are also considered to be 
Greek citizens could be subject to compulsory military service and 
other aspects of Greek law while in Greece. Those who may by 
affected can inquire at a Greek Embassy or consulate to determine 
status. In some instances, dual nationality may hamper U.S. 
government efforts to provide protection abroad.
 
Registration: Americans who register in the Consular Section of 
the Embassy or Consulate can obtain updated information on travel 
and security within the country.

9. Difference between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern
=============================================================
	Greek pronunciations??	[ NEW SUBJECT ]
	======================

[ This question spawned a HUGE thread!! I'm quoting from the various
 correspodents who participated in this thread . Basically, there are
 two subtopics here:

 a. How does one express pronounciation of Greek text in English-like
	languages?
 b. How did ancient Greeks pronounce their written works??

 There's no end to this debate. I'm just quoting the various opinions
 and (mis)information ;-) presented in USENET -- nfotis . I hope no one
 asks again about that subject :-/ ]

From: adjg@sour.sw.oz.au (Andrew Gollan)

drg@candidus.ma30.bull.com (Daniel R. Guilderson) writes:

|I have an English translation of Homer's Odyssey. There is a
|pronunciation key in an appendix but the author states that ALL 'c's
|are pronounced as 'k' and all 'ch's as 'kh'. Well I know that modern
|Greeks pronounce Chios as hee'os. So how would you pronounce Circe^
|(circumflex over the e) and Cynthera? I can't imagine pronouncing
|Circe^ as kir'kee, although anything is possible I suppose.

|Maybe someone from s.c.g can comment on some of the differences
|between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern Greek pronunciations?

You are pushing shit uphill trying to reconstruct the Classical Greek
pronunciation from the "English" equivalents. All but a very few English
works adopt the Latinized spellings of the Greek names, which were themselves
at best an approximation. We then apply modern English pronunciation to
the Latin spellings resulting in completely warped pronunciation.

	Latinized	Greek letter	Sound
	---------	------------	-----
	a (short)	alpha		u as in 'cup'
	a (long)	alpha		a as in 'father'
	b		beta		b as in 'bed'
	c		kappa		as french hard c: 'comment'
	d		delta		d as in 'dog'
	e (short)	epsilon		e as in 'pet'
	e (long)	eta		as all of 'air'
	f		-		-
	g		gamma		g as in 'god'
	h (initial)	rough breathing	h as in 'hot'
	i		iota		i as in 'pit'
	j		-		-
	k		kappa		as french hard c: 'comment'
	l		la(m)bda	l as in 'lid'
	m		mu		m as in 'mud'
	n		nu		n as in 'net'
	o (short)	omicron		o as in 'pot'
	o (long)	omega		aw as in 'awful'
	p		pi		as french p: 'Paris'
	q		-		-
	r		rho		rolled r as in french: 'rue'
	s		sigma		s as in 'sad' (mostly)
	t		tau		as french t: 'tu'
	u		omicron+upsilon	oo as in 'tool'
	v		-		-
	w		-		-
	x		xi		x as in 'fax' (even first in a word)
	y (short)	upsilon 	as french u: 'tu'
	y (long)	upsilon		as french u: 'sur'
	z		zeta		zd

	ch		khi		c as in 'cot' (emphatically)
	ph		phi		p as in 'pot' (emphatically)
	th		theta		t as in 'top' (emphatically)

	ae		alpha+iota	as all of 'eye'
	au		alpha+upsilon	as ow in 'cow'
	ei		epsilon+iota	a as in 'take'
	eu		epsilon+upsilon	as all of 'yew' (sort of)
	oi		omicron+iota	oy as in 'boy'

The latinization is not quite regular in its treatment of upsilon. Words
which start with upsilon in Greek always have a rough breathing (i.e. an
initial 'h') but this is not always transcribed into latin. Also some
upsilons are transcribed as 'u' not 'y', which adds to the confusion.
Note the major differences between the long and short versions of the vowels,
this, combined with the total absense of any marking for the length, gives
you a lot of leeway for mispronouncing these names. Without looking them
up in the Greek you just can't know the length.

The Greek accent of the time was a melodic rather than the modern stress
accent. There were three marks an acute ('), a grave (`) and a circumflex (~)
which indicated the type of pitch change to apply to a word. Almost all
words have exactly one stress mark somewhere in the last three syllables.
This is not recorded in the Latinization.


From: ccc@cs.toronto.edu ("Christina C. Christara")

It seems correct that the c's are pronounced as k's.
In ancient Greek,
an i is pronounced as i in kit (i.e. short ee)
An eta is pronounces as ee (i.e. long)
An y is also pronounced same as i (but thinner).
Therefore Circe^ should be Kirkee
and Cynthera Kintheera.
Here the `th' combination is pronounced as the first 2 letters in `think'.

In modern Greek, i, eta, and y are all pronounced almost the same.
There is no short, long, thin e.
As for the 'ch's I don't think that there is a respective sound
in English. The closest is a strong 'h'. 'kh' is not that far either.
Also, as far as I know, ancient Greeks pronounced the first sound
of some words deeper than modern Greeks.
These words, when they lost the deep sound in the beginning
(this could have happened at the end of the Hellenistic period),
were written with a so-called `spirit' (daseia in Greek)
to remind the deep sound. Such words are found in English
starting with `h'. Examples `hyper' (yper), hippopotamus
(ippopotamos), hero (eros, pronounced eeros, this does not mean love)
horizon (orizwn, the w is omega), rhetor (retwr) etc.
Another difference between ancient and modern Greek pronounciation
is the diphthong case. Modern Greeks pronounce `ai' as `e' (epsilon),
`ou' as `u' (as in put), `ei' as `ee', `eu' as `ef' or `ev',
`au' as `af' or `av', while ancient Greeks pronounced the two
sounds with their original sound, i.e. each phthong separetely,
without creating new phtongs.


From: kd@doc.ic.ac.uk (Kostis Dryllerakis)

	There is a wide debate about the pronunciation of ancient greek.
It is obvious that we have no sound record of the era and we can only 
reconstruct sounds from their evolution to modern greek (actually there
are studies about the "special" words that imitate sounds like pain,
and animal sounds but I haven't heard of definite conclusions).

	The controvercy on the pronunciation of ancient greek started when
European classic scholars requested a code to be adopted as the 
"standard one" among them. Erasmus is principally responsible for the
pronunciation given to ancient greek from scholars even now. His
proposal was based to the closeness of the ancient greek to the latin-based
languages and was many times arbitrary. Later in his life he is said to
have renounced his own pronunciation scheme.

	So the controversy will remain live. For us greeks, we would like
to believe that our language is not only close to ancient greek to its 
symbols but also to its sounds. I beleive that I speak for all of the fellow
scientists when I say that we are at least amused by the pronunciation of the
greek alphabet as used in mathematics related sciences.

Take care when you refer to "correct pronunciation" to mention a particular
era in history since you do not expect people at Homer's time to have 
pronounced things the same way as in classical or Hellenistic times. In case
you believe this is possible it might be wise to also check the modern greek
pronunciation.

From: wiener@duke.cs.duke.edu (Edward Wiener)

The languages of Western Europe absorbed many Greek words
and place names through Latin translations. Remember that
in Latin, Cicero is pronounced "Kikero," Caesar as "Kaisar,"
and so forth. When these Latinised names were transmuted
into English, French, and the other languages of Western
Europe, the spelling for the most part remained the same,
but the difference in pronounciation was not taken into
account. Circe, if I am not mistaken, is indeed pronounced
"kir'kee" in Greek. Interestingly, Russian and other Slavic
languages preserved the ancient pronounciation of Greek
names better than Western Europe. Cyprus, in Russian,
is Kipr, Plato is "Platon," Thucydides is "Fukidid," etc.

From: mls@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (mike.siemon)

>	There is a wide debate about the pronunciation of ancient greek.
>It is obvious that we have no sound record of the era and we can only 
>reconstruct sounds from their evolution to modern greek (actually there

That is part, but only part, of the data. There are, additionally, the
transcriptions of Greek words into other languages (Latin, Persian,
Coptic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and on into the later movements of peoples of
various languages), all variously well known -- plus of course borrowing
in the other direction INTO Greek, at various times. There are also the
comments on pronunciation BY ancient Greek grammarians (not as good at
this as the Sanskrit school leading to Panini, but still quite valuable).

All of this can be used to cross-check and validate/falsify hypotheses
about ancient Greek pronunciations, and the hypotheses themselves and
the standards for reasoning about them derive from a very considerable
modern development of phonology and theoretical linguistics.

None of this makes the results "certain" -- but a lot more is securely
known than in the first fumbling days of the rediscovery of Greek by
the Western Europeans. It is also a somewhat distinct issue from that
of a TEACHING pronunciation of Greek -- there are enough unresolved
(and probably unresolvable) problems like just how to produce the pitch
accents (simply importing Asian models begs the question) that teachers
generally follow and establish local practive even knowing that it is
not a good "reproduction" of the ancient sound.

From: michael.polymenakos@factory.com (Michael Polymenakos)

>Maybe someone from s.c.g can comment on some of the differences
>between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern Greek pronunciations?


The big differences:

 The differences between H, I, Y, EI, OI and YI (did I forget one?)
have become extinct. Actually, the popular Greek singer Savvopoulos and
some computer-armed speech scientists came forward a few years ago,
proving that a difference still exists, although it is nowhere as
pronounced as it used to be.

 Ditto for O and W (omega), ditto for E and AI.

The 'h' sound before some words (represented by ` on the first letter)
has dissapeared. Example Hellas -> Ellas. Ditto for the differences in
pronounciation marked by psili vs daseia vs perispomeni. For that
reason, (and to ease the transition to automation), all these
punctuation points were merged to one, a few years ago.

 But what do I know? I am a programmer, not a linguist. J.T.Pring writes
in his preface of the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Greek:

<<After the hellenistic period, the distinguishing power of word-accent
lay in its position rather than its pitch, and the former distinctions
in vowel length were lost. Certain words now show a stronger tendency to
keep the primary stress in their inflected forms. A E I O have remained
more or less unchanged in quality; OY was already U before the end of
the classical period; and W merged with O as a mid back vowel after the
first century AD, and the second element of AY HY had developed into a
labial fricative. H and EI had both become I by early Byzantine times. Y
and OI were being confused as `u' [thats two dots over the u] in
Hellenistic Greek, and both became i by the tenth century.

 Double consonants have been reduced to single, except in a few
dialects. The aspirated voiceless stops Theta, Phi, Chi had changed to
fricatives by the fourth century AD, and initial h (marked by the "rough
breathing") had dissapeared. By the same date, the voiced stops
represented by Beta, Delta, Gamma had become replaced by fricatives. but
in certain modern forms the labial and dental stops are still
preserved after M N, being now written as P T, eg GAMPROS < GAMBROS,
DENTRO < DENDRON. The original voiceless P T K following a nasal have
changed to voiced (which can also occur without the nasal environment,
especially in the initial position). Among other phonological changes
are (i) loss of many initial and medial unaccented vowels, including the
verbal augment. (ii) Loss of nasals finally and before a continuant
consonant. (iii) Dissimilation of voiceless consonant groups, eg FTERO <
PTERON, OXTW < OKTW, SKOLIO < SXOLEION, EKACA < EKAYSA [C = Psi].>>

[things in brackets are Michael's comments]

From: ls1@cec1.wustl.edu (Lambros Skartsis)

[ About the Erasmian model of pronounciation ]

> ccc@cs.toronto.edu ("Christina C. Christara"):
>
>> ls1@cec1.wustl.edu (Lambros Skartsis)
>>
>>I think that it was Erasmus who first claimed the above, as well as that
>>the today's "soft" greek consonents (ghamma, dhelta, etc.) were pronounced
>>as "hard" by the ancients (i.e., "g", "d", etc.) - and so the term
>>Erasmian pronounciation. I believe that this theory is very highly
>>disputed today.
>
>I received another message about this, and I think you are right.
>Indeed, I have heard that there is a dispute about the pronounciation
>proposed by Erasmus, and that many of his interpretations of the
>Greek sounds/letters/language are questioned.
>When I was in high-school I was taught the Erasmian interpretation
>and nothing else. I heard about the dispute later.

Actually, even this dispute became an emotional matter for the greeks.
If you really think about it, not only the language but the way it is
pronounced is a matter related to the national characteristics of a nation.
Imagine ancient greek pronounced the Erasmian way: with all these hard
consonents and the abundance of two-vowel sets (i.e., vowel followed by
vowel). The latter is something that we know very well that was
considered as quite bad-sounding to a anc.greek's ear ("hasmodia").
Actually the whole effect would be an almost .... dutch sounding - and
hence the accusation by many greeks that all these Erasmian theories 
so often adopted by germanic scholars were a part of the well-known
trend of association of ancient greek culture/arian theories/modern germanic
peoples. The greeks of course go to the other extreme and often preach that
hardly any basic change occured in accent. 
For the dipthong pronounciation argument (i.e., e.g. "oi"="i" or "o-i") I had
seen some time ago the following evidence against the Erasmian pronounciation
[the validity of the theory behind which , as I said earlier, I believe not 
to be that popular any more(?)]: an Athenian
speaker is said to have confused his audience by the use of the word
"loimos" vs. "limos" (both, in modern greek would be pronounced as "leemos",
while they mean [in both anc. and modern greek] a desease and hunger,
respectively). For a confusion to have occured, it is argued, both words
should have been pronounced the same in ancient greek, as well. 

From: rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires)

[Mr. Fouliras notes that
1) noone really knows what the *real* pronunciation was like,
2) that accent marks were added later to help with the learning task,
3) that there were various dialects of ancient Greek.]

As my final contribution to this thread, I will note that the author
of the above tape set spends many minutes at the beginning
of the tapes making all of these points, and more, discussing
why we should bother learning how to pronounce ancient Greek
(not only for intellectual honesty, but for a complete aesthetic
experience); how we know the way the language was pronounced
(a specific greek Grammerian was mentioned, talking about
the circumflex ("bending the pitch"), the grave and acute accents,
as well as a specific example of how the borrowing of a Greek
word into Latin (pilosopia) gives a clue to the pronunciation
of 'p,'); and finally, that there were various dialects -- the
Aeolic, the Attic, the Ionic -- and that the only one of these
that we have much evidence for is the Attic of classical Athens,
that though we have few clues how Homeric Greek might have been
spoken, since the received texts of Homer are from the later period
anyway, this is what is will be covered.

The narrator fully acknowledges that although his reconstruction
is necessarily hypothetical, nevertheless it is based on solid
scholarship, and he references the _Vox Graeca_ that others in
this thread have mentioned, and another work I can't recall now,
also discussing why his reconstruction is superior to that of Erasmus.

Included in the tape are examples of the opening lines of
the Iliad, as spoken by a modern Greek, by a person speaking
the Erasmeian reconstruction, and his reconstruction, including
all of the pitch and metrical accents. The tapes, after
covering the pronunciation of individual letters, progresses
to that of the various accent marks, and then to how to
master the poetical meter of e.g. Homer, using a five step
learning process. The last examples given are passages
from major authors like Aeschylus, Euripides, Plato, and
lastly, that of the only complete extant poem of Sappho,
with a soooo exquisite dovely cooing quality to it that my
spine tingles now thinking of it.

From: wiltinkm@dutiws.twi.tudelft.nl (M. Wiltink.a73A.telnr-015-138378)

It seems to me that most, if not all of the people here start with
English renderings of Latinised versions of Greek names and then
wonder where things went wrong.

The Greeks had no such letter as the c. They had sigma, which poses
no problems and becomes s, and kappa, k. This is where most of the
trouble starts. Most Greek words passed on to recent times came via
Latin. Latin, however, had no (well, almost no) k and used c, pronounced
...k. Then modern languages started pronouncing c as either s or k,
depending on what letter followed it. Believe it or not, ALL c's in
words derived from Greek should be pronounced k. The same, by the way,
goes for c's in Latin words, though this should not be taken to mean
that I want everybody to pronounce 'circus' 'kirkus'. There are words
that have become sufficiently English to pronounce them by the rules
for English, which say that ce, ci are pronounced se, si. But in most
Greek names, I myself do prefer to write and pronounce k - Alkibiades,
to name one example.

[ ccc@cs.toronto.edu ("Christina C. Christara") comments on the last
 paragraph:

I agree, with a minor comment.
I think the (ancient) Greeks had 2 alphabets, which were very similar
to each other. One was called western or Chalkidean (by people from
Chalkis) and the other eastern or Ionian (by people from Asia Minor,
centered in Miletos).
I think (but I am not sure) that the western had a 'c'.
But Athens at some point around 400 BC decided to adopt the eastern-
Ionian alphabet and drove all Greeks in that way. The western-Chalkidean
alphabet was used as basis for the Latin alphabet (indirectly
through the Etruscan one?). Todays Greek alphabet is the eastern-Ionian
one, with the lower case letters developed later.

End of parenthesis -- nfotis ]

The same goes for ai, which became ae in Latin and is generally, though
not universally, pronounced ay as in 'hay'. Personally and subjectively,
I prefer the sound found in 'high'. The upsilon, u, is a bit different.
It was transcribed y in Latin but in German and in Scandinivian languages
y is still pronounced u. This is sometimes a major source of irritation for
me, as most ski-jumping commentators pronounced 'Nyk\"anen' 'Nikaanen'
instead of 'Nukaynen' during the time he was all over Sportnet.

From: cla02@keele.ac.uk (R. Wallace)

[ Regarding the last post... ]
This is almost, but not quite, right.

There were in fact many Greek alphabets. I suspect every city had its
own variant. and even within cities there is not total consistency. They
do, however, fall into families, and the division between east and west
is significant.

The origin of the letter c is rather odd. The Romans got their alphabet
from the Etruscans, who got it from the Greeks. There is a dispute as to
whether the alphabet the Etruscans adopted was a west or east Greek
alphabet. Common sense would suggest that they got it from the nearest
Greeks to them, those in Cumae, who used a variant of the west Greek
alphabet. On the other hand, the occasional use of the east Greek letter
samech is evidence against this view. It was not, however, the Athenian
alphabet; it contained, for example, the letter Koppa, which became the
ancestor of our Q. Etruscan did not distinguish between voiced and
unvoiced gutturals (K and G), and so used both of those letters for the
same sound. The Romans, however, did (like us) make the distinction, but
instead of doing the rational thing and reinstating the original uses of
the Greek letters, they marked the gamma to signify when it was
unvoiced. So: C is originally a gamma (write a capital gamma leaning a
bit and you will see how it happened); G is a gamma with a marker to
show that it really is a gamma. And that is why the Roam alphabet
acquired 3 letters for the same sound: K,C and Q. 

Just to make life complicated, in some forms of Greek writing the sigma
is written a bit like our c. This has been adopted by some modern
scholars (we call it the lunate sigma) especially by epigraphists who do
not want to beg questions about where words end.

[ In another post, regarding Greek alphabets ]

Lambros Skartsis (ls1@cec1.wustl.edu) wrote:
:
: cla02@keele.ac.uk (R. Wallace) writes:
: 
: >... The Romans got their alphabet
: >from the Etruscans, who got it from the Greeks. There is a dispute as to
: >whether the alphabet the Etruscans adopted was a west or east Greek
: >alphabet. Common sense would suggest that they got it from the nearest
: >Greeks to them, those in Cumae, who used a variant of the west Greek
: >alphabet. 
: 
: Richard, wasn't Cumae a colony of the greek city called Cyme, in Euboea?
: (the colony retained the name Cyme, Cumae being the latin version).
: That is the only theory I am aware of (I can't pretend to have much
: knowledge on the 
: topic!), i.e., that Etruscans took their alphabet from Cyme. But did
: the mother-city (metropolis) in Euboea use the west form of the alphabet?

There is a tradition the Cumae was founded from the Greek city Cyme in
Aeolis in Asia Minor (just a bit north of Smyrna). Strabo says it was a
joint foundation of Chalcis and Cyme in Euboea, which explains its name
(he says that they did a deal that the city should be called after Cyme,
but be a colony of Chalcis) , but he also records traditions that it was
a colony of Chalcis alone, and gives another explanation for the name. I
would guess that this means that the Cyme stories are just attempts at
etymology (but who knows?).

Anyway, none of this is relevant, because they did use a version of the
Chalcidian alphabet in Cumae. I think the Chalcidian alphabet is
classified as a Western alphabet, isn't it?

[ He checked, in David Diringers 'The Alphabet' (3rd edition I think), and
 he seems right ]


From: rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires)

The Pronunciation and Reading of Ancient Greek: A Practical Guide
Stephen G. Daitz
ISBN 0-88432-125-8

Audio Forum, a div. of Jeffrey-Norton Publishers
On-The-Green, Guillford, CT 06437

New York sales office:
145 E. 49th, NY,NY 10017

London sales
31 Kensington Church St.
London W8 4LL, U.K.

Other tapes in The Living Voice of Greek and Latin Lit.:

_The Birds_
Cicero, selections
_Hekabe_
Greek Poetry
The P. & R. of Ancient Latin

From: filippou@cs.mcgill.ca (Dimitrios FILIPPOU)

From "Vox Graeca: A Guide to Pronunciation of Classical Greek", by W.
Sidney Allen, 3rd Edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
Great Britain 1987, pp. 177--179.


			SUMMARY OF 
		RECOMMENDED PRONUNCIATIONS

(`English' refers to the standard or `received' pronunciations of
Southern British English. Asterisks indicate less accurate
approximations.)

alpha (short)		As first `a' in Italian `amare'
			*As vowel of English `cup'
			(N.B. not as vowel of `cap')

alpha (long)		As second `a' in Italian `amare'
			*As `a' in English `father'

alpha with iota		As `alpha (long)'
	subscript

alpha-iota		As in English `high'

alpha-upsilon		As in English `how'

alpha (long)-		As `alpha-upsilon'
	upsilon

beta			As English `b'

gamma			(1) As English "hard" `g'
			(2) Before kappa, chi, gamma, mu:
			as `n' in English `ink' or `ng' in `song'

delta			As French `d'
			*As English `d'

epsilon			As in English `pet'

epsilon-iota		As in German `Beet'

epsilon-upsilon		Pronounce as two vowels: `epsilon' `upsilon'

zeta			[zd] as in English `wisdom'

eta			As in French `t^ete'

eta with iota		As `eta'
	subscript

eta-upsilon		As `epsilon-upsilon'

theta			As `t' in English `top' (emphatically pronounced)
			*As `th' in English `thin'

iota (short)		As in French `vite'
			*As in English `bit'

iota (long)		As in French `vive'
			*As in English `bead'

kappa			As French "hard" `c', or English (non-initial)
			`k', `ck', or "hard" `c'

lambda			As French `l', or English `l' before vowels
			*As English `l' in other contexts

mu			As English `m'

nu			As `n' in French or *English `net'

xi			As `x' in English `box'

omicron			As in German `Gott'
			*As in English `pot'

omicron-iota		As in English `boy', `coin'

omicron-upsilon		As in English `pool' or French `rouge'

pi			As French `p', or English (non-initial) `p'

rho			As Scottish "rolled" `r'

sigma			(1) As `s' in English `sing', or `ss' in `less',
			`lesson'
			(2) Before `beta', `gamma', `delta', `mu': as
			English `z' (N.B. but not elsewhere)

sigma-sigma		As `sigma' `sigma'

tau			As French `t'
			*As English (non-initial) `t'

upsilon (short)		As in French `lune'

upsilon (long)		As in French `ruse'

upsilon-iota		[no pronunciation rule given]

phi			As `p' in English `pot' (emphatically pronounced)
			*As `f' in English `foot'

chi			As `c' in English `cat' (emphatically pronounced)
			*As `ch' in Scottish `loch'

psi			As `ps' in English `lapse'

omega			As in English `saw'

omega with iota		As `omega'
	subscript

[The author of this monography discusses also how to pronounce the
accented vowels and the double consonants. In conclusion, he says 
that the accents should not be pronounced in a `melodic' way -- which,
he states, was the way Ancient Greek was spoken --, but rather in 
a `stress-based' way like Byzantine and Modern Greek, because the
Ancient Greek melodic pronounciation of accents is not known. He 
also states that the iota-subscript should not have any effect on the 
pronounciation of the vowel it accompanies. Finally, he says that 
double consonants should be pronounced the same as single ones, only
a bit longer.]


From: michael.polymenakos@factory.com (Michael Polymenakos)

>By the way, Greek netters seem to have some ideological reason
>to believe that their native language is very similar to
>classical Greek. In practise I've had a lot of troubles when

 I think that there is some confusion here between 'language' and
pronounciation. The language is extremely similar, especially if one
compares late hellenistic period Greek (circa 1 a.d.) with modern
Greek. It is much easier for me as a modern Greek to read the New
Testament (1950 years old), that it is for an english-speaking person to
read Chaucher (a modern piece of work, by comparison).

 The pronounciation changed a lot. But, again, changes since the late
hellenistic period are minor compared to the changes to English since
half that long ago. In general, it is agreed that Greek pronounciation
has changed very little since 1000ad.

 In fact, as recently as a few decades ago, a number of regional
dialects used syntactical and phonological features of corresponding
ancient Greek dialects (in mountainous northern Laconia, for example,
where the ancient Doric dialect survived practically intact).
Unfortunately, after WWII, control of education was taken away from the
local village/parish level, and all Greeks now sound like they are from
Athens. Only recently did Greeks realise what a terrible waste of
valuable cultural resources that was.

[ When challenged "why these valuable resources, in light of the need to
 rebuild the country from zero?", in my words, he replied:

1. There was no effort to study and record these languages. Where
some research was made (with the Tsakones, for example), dialects were
found that were completely identical to the corresponding ancient Greek
dialects for those regions. Having records of these dialects would
provide us with valuable information about ancient and byzantine Greek.

2. Ditto for all the regional literature of these areas. Along with
these dialects, we also tossed away volumes of oral tradition. Again,
where ever research was made, the knowledge gained was tremendous. By
the time the Greek state woke up to what had happened, and started
funding research projects, many papoudes and giagiades had died, and
with them many stories that the younger generation did not learn because
anything said in a village dialect was considered 'unimportant' and
'uncultured'. The end result was the same as if though thousands of
books had been burned.

 In all fairness, it is hard to blame anyone for what happened. With
Greece badly underdeveloped in the 1920s, the big restructuring of
education, which became totally centralised after WWII, was nescessary.
Back then development was the only priority, and the funds for research
were not available.
]


>pronouncing Greek names in the classical way, which is usual
>for Finns (even tourists without any classical education).
>I was unable to find my way to Herakleion before I learned
>to call it "Iraklio".

 But what is the 'Classical Way'? This subject started with a question
on the pronunciation of 'Circee'. All english educated people know that
this is pronounced 'Sir-see'. Yet, everyone who expressed an opinion on
this group so far has agreed that the right pronounciation is 'Kir-kee'.
As for "Herakleion', most americans would pronounce it 'He-ra-KLEI-on',
because the anglisezed word does not carry the accent mark, which makes
the classical prounanciation 'He-RA-klei-on'.

According to J.T. Pring's comments which I posted a few days ago:

Both the Eta (H) and the Epsilon-iota (EI) had become I by early
byzantine times --> hi-RA-kli-on

The initial h dissapeared by the fourth century AD --> i-RA-kli-on

The final 'n' began dropping out of use in local dialects sinse
Byzantine times, and is now becoming rare, but many people still use it,
in fact pre-1980 road signs and maps usually read "HRAKLEION".

So, one's classical pronounciation of 'Herakleion' would have been as
much understood in 1992ad as it would have been understood in 400ad. Not
bad, I think.

9. Greek shortwave (SW) stations	[ NEW SUBJECT ]
================================

From: pef@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Panayotis Fouliras; TA PhD)
Subject: Re: Need Help finding SW stations!

Try (around midnight UTC) 9.395MHz and 9.420MHz.

Other frequencies (time is important) are 9.425MHz, 11.595MHz
and 11.645MHz (one of the last two is not the Voice of Greece,
but the Radio Station of Macedonia, from the city of
Thessaloniki, which simply relays the local program; can be
heard clearly in London after 1pm UTC).

[ Anyone who can add more?? -- nfotis ]

10. Greek Coffee, Reading Turkish grounds	[ NEW SUBJECT ]
=========================================

wfk@cellar.org (William F. Kershner) writes:

>Can anyone explain the art of fortune-telling by reading Turkish coffee
>grounds? I enjoy my coffee metrio and would like to know more about it.

From: ccc@cs.toronto.edu ("Christina C. Christara")

First, all what you are going to read after this line is a fraud!

The part of the coffee cup which is positioned closest to the person
drinking it is the part of the heart. There all the sentimental
issues are depicted...  The opposite part of the cup describes the
"professional" issues. In general it is good for the grounds not to
be very dark. So when you drink your coffee, before it ends, shake
it a bit, then turn it upside down, so that most grounds go away.
You make your future better!

If you have a lot of imagination you look at the shapes the grounds
have done and talk about roads, houses, airplanes, trees, etc.

The bottom of the cup is the deep part of the heart... You make
a wish and put your finger there. If the finger leaves a clear mark
then the wish will come true. If the finger does not catch all the
grounds, then the wish will not become true ... So twist your finger
a bit, when you put in the bottom of the cup. But do this without
the person telling you your fortune to know about it!

Well, the fraud is over.

From kk@hpl-opus.hpl.hp.com (Konstantinos Konstantinides)
and jyc@leo.Stanford.EDU (Jon Corelis):


There is a monograph on the topic (in Greek) by Elias Petropoulos,
O tourkikos kafes en elladi (Athens, Ekdoseis Grammata, 1979).

The monograph has lots of figures and discusses the art of
coffee reading in Greek prisons.

A very interesting book, with many illustrations, including some of
coffee-grounds patterns with their supposed meanings. The title, of
course, is deliberately provocative. In case anyone wasn't upset enough
by it, Petropoulous makes a point of beginning his book by saying, "Oi
Tourkoi, opou deon na thewrountai paterades twn neoellinwn, metaksu
allwn agathwn kai deinwn pou mas eklirodotisan einai kai o kafes."


11. Ways for a Vegan to survive in Greece	[ NEW SUBJECT ]
=========================================

For Vegans (NOT vegetarians - they eat cheese and eggs and milk etc.), who
are people who don't eat animal products at all, there are some resources:

From: cpbuehrer@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu

Well...I just spent three weeks in Greece...most of that was spent in Athens.
And I'm a vegetarian. I remember a restaurant in Plaka in Athens called Eden.
It's a vegan/vegetarian restaurant...priced pretty decently. They had a ton
of bizarre dishes that I'm not going to even attempt to start listing them.
Suffice it to say that I could have eaten three meals a day there for those
three weeks and never would have had to eat the same thing twice. There's
also a fast food restaurant chain called "Goody's"...it's alot like Wendy's
or BK in the states. They had alot of different types of salads available.
I usually got this one called Mexican salad...which was beans, lettuce, corn,
radishes, and some other veggies. Anyway, those salads were completely free
of animal products (don't order the salad dressing though!).

And then you can always go to the marketplaces or supermarkets and stock up
on fresh fruits, veggies, breads, etc...those sorts of things are also readily
available. Probably the only problem your students will have (and personally
I don't consider this a problem) is that they'll have to eat a lot of raw
uncooked things...if they don't care about that though then they won't ever
go hungry!

From: trevore@vast.unsw.edu.au (Trevor Elbourne (Supr. Hell) BE)

Well Greeks have an intresting custom that might help. On relegeous 
ocasions they faast. When I mean Greeks honestly faast I mean all products that
come from animals with blood are excluded. A possible exception were the food
for fasting would not be OK is some sea food. Like kalamari or octupous. But
that would be obvious. So there is a range off food set up for the fasting that
would fit very well. I don't live in Greece now but I am sure if you ask
for food for the fasting then you should have no problem. There is quite a bit
of it.

12. What was the Mythical Labyrinth??		[ NEW SUBJECT ]
=====================================

From: nextug@ac.dal.ca

There seem to be two schools of thought:

One is that the palace at Knossos was itself also referred to as The Labyrinth.
Gerhard Sasse in his book "Crete" (APA Publications, 1990) writes:

"The Greek designation of part of the palace, if not the whole of it, as
the Labyrinth, could also mean "House of the Double Axe", if the derivation
of the word labyrinth from the Anatolian word 'Labrys' (double axe) is
accepted.

"In Knossos several of these artifacts were found, in the so-called
"Shrine of the Double Axe", and the holy sign of the double axe was scored into
pillars and on votive objects -- as in other Cretan palaces."

On the other hand The Labyrinth may have actually been a passageway of caves
in close proximity to Knossos. Lawrence Durrell in his book "The Greek Islands"
(Vicking Press, New York, 1978) writes:

"To revert for a moment to the vexing question of the labyrinth, it is
important to make a distinction between a man-made maze and a labyrinth
constructed by nature; and the natural geological labyrinth situated near
Gortyna has for long been a candidate for the honours of being the original
lair of the Minotaur. Sceptics have declared that it is simply an abandoned
quarry with a few corridors but, while I have not completely explored it
myself -- for lack of an Ariadne and a ball of thread -- I think it is more
suggestive than that.

"I can vouch ... for the fact that the place is known as "The 
Labyrinth" in the local speech. To the best of my knowledge the whole of it
has never been explored, though the villagers thereabouts claim the internal
network of corridors span an area of some ten kilometers. One must, as always,
subtract a bit of peasant exaggeration, but nevertheless the place is
impressive ..."

A certain Reverend Tozer who wrote a travel book in the 19th century (haven't
the reference at hand) wrote:

"Our host, Captain George, undertook to be our guide and accordingly
next morning we started in his company and, fording the stream close
under the Acropolis of Gortyna, ascended the hills towards the north-west
and in an hour's time reached the place ... It is entered by an aperture of
no great size in the mountainside, where the rocks are of clayey limestone,
forming horizontal layers; and inside we found what looks almost like a
flat roof, while chambers and passages run off from the entrance in various
directions ... We were furnished each with a taper and descended by a
passage on both sides of which the fallen stones had been piled up; the roof
above us varies from four to sixteen feet in height. Winding about, we
came to an upright stone, the work of a modern Ariadne, set there to show
the way, for at intervals other passages branched off the main one, and
anyone who entered without a light would be hopelessly lost. Captain
George described to us how for three years during the late war (1867-9)
the Christian inhabitants of the neighbouring villages, to the number of
five hundred, and he among them, had lived there as their predecessors
had done during the former insurrection, to escape the Turks who had
burned their homes and carried off their flocks and herds ..."

If you wish to pursue this issue seriously I would reccommend you go to your 
local library and do some research. A couple of books that might get you started
 (in addition to the ones already cited):

AUTHOR: Bord, Janet, fl. 1972-
TITLE: Mazes and labyrinths of the world /
IMPRINT: London : Latimer New Dimensions, 1976.

AUTHOR: Matthews, William Henry, 1882-
TITLE: Mazes and labyrinths : their history and development /
IMPRINT: New York : Dover Publications, 1970.

AUTHOR: Doob, Penelope Reed.
TITLE: The idea of the labyrinth from classical antiquity through the Middle A>
IMPRINT: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1990.

I don't know anything about the "Cave of the Cyclops" near Sougia. Are you 
certain that it exists? I'd be surprised if there were any pictures of it
even if it does exist, let alone ones available via ftp.

Not far away (a few km from Asogires, to the west of Sougia) is the well known C
ave of Soure in which the 99 Holy Fathers lived. Also east of Rodovani (also 
west of Sougia) is the Cave of Skotini in which ceramic remains from the 
Classical epoch (550-67 B.C.) have been found. To the east is the world famous
Samaria Gorge and en route is the Tzanis Cave where legend has it that on
moonless nights a shepherd, enchanted by a water sprite, plays his lyre and
sings of sorrow ...

Good luck!

Christopher Majka.

=================

End of Cultural Part of the FAQ
-- 
Nick (Nikolaos) Fotis         National Technical Univ. of Athens, Greece
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