Pronouncing a dead (or ‘just resting’, as this dramaturg prefers to say) language can be hard, especially one that’s been filtered through as many different lenses as Attic Greek! When we pronounce Ancient Greek words in the present day, we are filtering them through two and a half millennia (or more) of linguistic static from Latin, French, English itself and much more besides. Original pronunciations sound bizarre and even off-putting sometimes to an English-speaking ear; common practice in theatrical circles is to use an amalgam of pronunciations, sometimes leaning into traditional structures and sometimes intentionally using the more modern interpretation.
Though there is a lot of wiggle room with vowels, here are a few consonant guidelines to pay attention to:
I: No soft ‘c’s!
There is no letter ‘C’ in the Greek alphabet! When a ‘C’ crops up in a modern transliteration of a Greek word (in our case, usually proper nouns), it is almost always a ‘K’ sound. The following examples are all written with the letter kappa in Greek, correspondent to our English ‘K’.
Example: Mount Cithaeron --> Kithairon
Cadmus --> Kadmos
Creon --> Kreon
Jocasta --> Jokasta
II: No soft ‘g’s!
When something is transliterated using a ‘g’, that ‘g’ will always be hard! The Greek letter gamma has some variation in pronunciation, but for our purposes it will correspond to the English hard ‘g’ as opposed to a ‘j’ sound.
English words with hard G: Golf, Grand, Golden
English words with the soft G: Gem, Large, Gesture
III: No ‘ch’!
When ‘ch’ appears in an English transliteration of a Greek word, it is usually standing in for the letter chi, pronounced either as ‘Kai’ (just like our very own cast member!), or ‘key’. Chi’s sound is very similar to kappa and, for the purposes of an already-heavily-Romanized pronunciation, can be made indistinguishable. So, this is another instance where the ‘K’ sound will be your friend.
Examples of chi-words in English: Chaos, charisma
The transliteration in our scripts is extremely user-friendly. With these three rules in place, we are well on our way to reaching consensus in any other points of confusion! If there is any further clarification needed or anything you would like on paper or spoken, please reach out!
-Emma
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