Ancient Greek on the Streets: Casual Phrases to Speak Like a 5th Century BCE Athenian!

It's easy enough for someone to find the truly 'Classical' Ancient Greek we see in the Epics and Tragedies, but was this beautiful (yet oh so formal) language really what we would have heard on the streets of ancient Athens?

In this video we go behind the formal classics to uncover and translate a more casual reimagining of Ancient Greek. With piss-poor pronunciation!

PLEASE NOTE: this is meant to be 'Classical', which I've taken to be a modified form of Erasmian/restored pronunciation of Ancient Greek - in later videos on the Hellenistic age I've been making efforts to improve my Lucian pronunciation! The χ, φ, θ sounds especially are meant to be as close to 5th century BCE Greek as I (a linguistically poor Brit) can manage!

00:00 - Introduction
02:06 - Preamble
02:54 - Greetings
05:30 - Language Barriers
06:27 - Shopping
08:14 - Going Out
10:30 - Insults
11:54 - Finishing Words

All translations are my own, but that's not say they're all correct! We live and love to learn, so please point the mistakes out.

I have saved all the phrases I created in the below document for you to download and read:

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Sources Used
Socrates Scholasticus - Historia Ecclesiastica (Ἐκκλησιαστική Ἱστορία)
The Suda (Σοῦδα)

Credits
If you see any of your artwork in the video, please let me know so we can give you credit.

Film Clips:
'Alexander the Great' (1956), Robert Rossen
'Agora' (2007), Alejandro Amenábar

Music:

#Ancient #Greek #Phrases #Casual #Athenian

[AntiquityforAll]

This one was a little different to previous videos but please let me know if you'd like more language-based videos in the future! We're here to bring antiquity to life, whether by telling the stories of significant historical figures, epic mythology or ancient life. What would you like to see next!

[fractal_gate]

I just got back from ancient Greece and these worked great!

[thanoskokkas]

As a Greek I understood the meaning of the last "naughty" words :D Also, the crow related curse is still in use today in the form ¨Άϊ στο κόρακα!¨. Thanks for this video btw, it was great

[TheCossak]

the only greek word one needs to know: malaka!

[dimspil]

As a Greek I want to thank you for your effort, but it would be wise to ask a Greek person first, you could avoid some mistakes. Most of the phrases can easily be understood by a modern Greek person. Keep doing this!!!

[martyroma]

Thank you so much for your hard work! I recently started learning Greek again via Duolingo (I have Hellenic heritage, nevertheless that I am Bulgarian; many Bulgarians have Greek ancestors since we are neighbouring countries). Now I clearly see that there is a huge difference between Old and Modern Greek. But now I can clearly see how the language has evolved. Definitely the pronunciation has changed a lot and knowing how Modern Greek sounds like. Cheers!

[Kobzar]

Χαῖρε. I am not an ancient Greek speaker, and I am not even too sure of my knowledge of the ancient Greek language, which is one of the most awkward and unpredictable I have ever started to learn. I am listening to this video, and first of all I want to say thank you for your work and for sharing it, but I also would like to point out some minor details that can be improved: the expression for telling your name should be written ὄνομά μοι, instead of ὄνομα μοι (since μοι is an enclitic), and the one for asking how you are should be written πῶς ἔχεις; instead of πῶς ἐχεῖς; If I find something more, I shall let you know. Thank you one more time, keep up the good work, and ἔρρωσο.

[fifthpint]

Can’t thank you enough for the effort. Having spent more than a month in the Peloponnese this year, I really enjoyed this. Very educational, thank you

[GRkillers]

incredible i always struggled in school as all of us receive classes of ancient greek for junior high and high school but this i can undestand perfectly and its quite close to the vernacular of modern many of them with slight alternations could be used today and if someone spoke like this i would feel like my grandma is speaking to me ''since she spoke kathareuousa and demotikh to me''

[isancicramon]

Great video ! (even if the wall background is a bit gloomy, for all the outdoors activities Athens may have honed).

I think it speaks volumes about what philosophy has become that you mention Plato in passing (as a “serious writer”),

when in fact, so many of his dialogues are like little plays, full of little phrases of people meeting and greeting each other. (Even if they are less colourful than Aristophane's ones).

[KTA]

You did a great job on this. Thanks for putting this together.

[eugeniakatsafadou]

This is such an underappreciated video! As a greek many of the words and phrases are very familiar and, with the modern pronunciation, some of them are still in use! Particularly, my grandpa still says "άι εις τον κόρακα!".
The only thing I wanted to correct is that ει would have been pronounced as a long /eː/ sound. Also υ would have been pronounced as /y/, similar to ü in german or to the u in french.
Overall great video, though, very informative and fun, liked and subscribed!

[jimmypellas]

Very interesting and entertaining.
I note many people who speak modern Greek, argue that the pronunciation you use is incorrect. I disagree. The pronunciation has changed in 3000 years. Modern Greek speakers that imagine it should be spoken as they speak today are wrong. Keep up the good work!

[fallenstate]

Hello fellow learner, χαίρετε συνάδελφε, I must say you guys are doing an impressive job, συγχαρητήρια για την εξαιρετική δουλειά, I appreciate the effort and professionalism on this project. I could give you some tips on pronunciation since I noticed you don't feel so certain due to English being a latin based language and I know it's tough to attempt reading the Hellenic alphabet but you were doing good overall. I'll just point out a few things written in simple new Greek form because my keyboard don't have all the punctuations etc. For example in "Όνομα σοι τι εστίν;" think of σοι as σι just like you would pronounce τι. Unless there is tonality σόι, it's not pronounced as <soi>. Same logic when you say όνομά μοι(again this how you'd write it in today's greek) and even ειμί which would be pronounced onoma mi and imi with the same tonalities. Also for ναι, ει σοι δοκεί think of ναι written as νε so νε, ι σι δοκί as pronunciation. Maybe all of this is of no importance or maybe you find it helpful, anyway keep it up. Καλή δύναμη εύχομαι

[bellerophonneptuni]

Ἔργον ἐπιφανέστατον! καίτοι γ’ ἐν μέρει οἶδα τὴν γλῶτταν, ἱκανὰ ἔμαθον σήμερον πράγματα! εὔχομαί σοι τουτονὶ τοὖργον ποιῶν διαγάγεσθαι· ἔρρωσο φίλτατε!

[dgrewar]

I've recently retired and am busy learing Ancient Greek with 'Alpha with Angela' on YouTube. Absolutely loving it and I'm making steady progress. But thank you so very much for this video which popped up on YouTube, I'm going to take notes and try practicing a few of these phrases on my upcomming holiday on Rhodes Island next week.

[saschaforeal]

Wow thank you! Incredible video. Animation content background music. Everything is perfect.

[rl]

nice now I’ll be set next time I’m in Athens in 480 BC

[HufflepuffsPanda]

WONDERFUL help! I'm doing a presentation on Ancient Greek insults and expletives for class 😂😂😂

[gregoryrowe]

Thank you for this! Nice job with the Attic pronunciation. As an expression of gratitude ;-) here are are a couple of tiny errors I spotted:
ὄνομά μοι, ὄνομά σοι (unless the pronouns are emphatic, in which case ὄνομα μοί, ὄνομα σοί)
πρωΐα or πρῴα (unless you're Herodotus)
τὸν ἀγῶνα