Episode 70

Είμαι πάρα πολύ χαρουμένη για αυτά τα επισόδια! This episode and the next will be on one of my favorite topics--Modern Greek Diction! On this episode, baritone Aris Argiris works through the Greek alphabet with us, through the text Κόρες της Αττικής. Κόρες της Αττικής was set to music by Theodoros Karyotakis (I could only find this in German on Wikipedia), a student of Dmitri Mitropoulos. The text to this song can be found on page 49 of Lydia Zervanos' Greek Diction Guide for Singers, from a Presidential Scholars Project she put together several years ago. She has since tweaked some of the transcriptions for errors, but the rules to Greek diction in the first half of the project are invaluable. As I promised, here is the Greek alphabet, along with an Americanized form of their names plus the options for their pronunciation (not including the digraphs that we'll talk about on the next episode):

• Α α - alpha [a]
• Β β - vita [v]
• Γ γ - gamma [γ] [ʝ]
• Δ δ - delta [ð]
• Ε ε - epsilon [ε]
• Ζ ζ - zita [z]
• Η η - ita [i]
• Θ θ - thita [θ]
• Ι ι - iota [i] [j] [ç]
• Κ κ - kappa [k] [c]
• Λ λ - lambda [l] [λ]
• Μ μ - mi [m]
• Ν ν - ni [n]
• Ξ ξ - ksi [ks]
• Ο ο - omikron [ɔ]
• Π π - pi [p]
• Ρ ρ - rho [r]
• Σ σ ς - sigma [s] [z]
• Τ τ - tau [t]
• Υ υ - ipsilon [i] [v] [f]
• Φ φ - fi [f]
• Χ χ - xi [x] [ç]
• Ψ ψ - psi [ps]
• Ω ω - omega [ɔ]

Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, on the Facebook page (and now you can even "like" each separate episode here on the blog!), on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com