A language, before anything else, is made of sound. It can be easy to forget this when dealing with ancient, or historical, or dead languages. For those of us studying a language that was spoken a millennia (or two) ago, often enough a language is above all a question of squiggles on a page, charts of morphology and vocabulary lists, of accent marks and contested readings of the fragmentary manuscript tradition.
But a language is not a writing system. Writing was invented in order to reproduce sounds, so that the sounds from a lover’s lips could travel in letters across open country, so that the sounds of a scribe’s mumblings could live in the permanent records of the king, so that the sounds from a poet’s mouth might be made on a page immortal, immortal as a hero’s glory.
So even if, in your own ancient language study, you don’t plan on using the language to write letters or record the capacity of a granary or read a poem to an assembly at the Olympic games, it is still worth learning how to have a conversation in that language, and thus how to listen to and understand the sound of the language, whatever it is. Your real goal, most likely, is to read Homer, or Beowulf, or one of the other great texts of a world long gone. But becoming intimately familiar with the sound of the language is indispensable.
The way that Greek echoes in the ear, the feel of Old English on the tongue—these are not distractions from the study of Greek, from the study of Old English. Many people think that they need to get this kid stuff out of the way so they can get to the real thing: the squiggles on the page. But that’s a bit like putting in earplugs so you can focus on the sheet music in front of you. Your understanding of music theory requires you to read music of course, but how much worse off will you be if you have never heard Bach before?
At the Ancient Language Institute, we teach students how to listen to and speak in their target language from day one. Not as a distraction, but as a tool. Some think we are binding heavy burdens and laying them on the shoulders of our students—far from it! It is harder to learn a language you never speak, you never hear. When a language is only ever squiggles on a page, well, there are some who could hear an organ fugue in the mind’s ear, and love and remember it, simply by looking at the sheet music; for the rest of us, it is probably best to hear the fugue as well as to see the sheet music.
Sound is thus a pedagogical tool. Languages begin with sound, so language students too should begin with sound. But sound is not just a tool, either.
Where and when the knowledge of a dead language has endured across the wind-tossed seas of centuries, it is so often because of the profundity and power of the literature written in that language. Whether it’s an oration for a courtroom, or the epic poem of a hero, or a hymn to a god, or a letter addressed to your fellow devotees of a mysterious new religion, so many of the texts that have survived were meant to be read aloud. And even if they were not meant for a literal, spoken address to a gathering of people, their authors meant for the sound of their words to echo in the ears of their solitary readers. Why this word and not that one? Why this meter and not another?
The work of a philologist will require close attention to the squiggles on a page. But so much of the attraction and motivation of the philologist’s work originates in the first place in the echoing enchantment of the contents of the texts, of the ways the texts work on us and surprise us and inspire us. We owe the philologists much. Without their work we would not have these texts to read. We hope, though, that you will also listen to them. If you just wanted a summary of the ideas, or a list of the facts, you could get them from a translation. You could get that from Wikipedia! But if you want to really know a poem or a speech or a letter or a treatise from the ancient or medieval world, then you need to know the sound of it.
This is why we created Ekho. After all, where are you supposed to go if you want to hear what Plato sounded like? Or if you want to listen to a Beowulf recitation like you’re a thane in a mead-hall?
Ekho is the ancient language streaming app, home to high-quality audio recordings of Ancient Greek and Old English texts read in historically accurate reconstructed pronunciations. We can’t revivify the corpse of Plato or of an Anglo-Saxon scop. But we can bring you the best voice performances of Ancient Greek and Old English literature anywhere on the internet.
Featuring the talents of Colin Gorrie, Luke Ranieri, and others from the Ancient Language Institute, Ekho specializes in creating audiobooks of the great texts of the ancient world that are recorded using carefully reconstructed historical pronunciations.
The Ekho app uses a simple and beautiful interface to make your experience listening to our audiobooks as pleasant and distraction-free as possible. So download the app on the App Store or on Google Play (or use the browser-based app if you prefer), crack open a copy of your favorite Ancient Greek or Old English text, then turn on the audio, and read along.
A note on pronunciation
On Ekho, you will hear Ancient Greek texts dating from across the span of antiquity all read in a Classical Attic reconstructed pronunciation. This is obviously anachronistic in many cases: Homer did not sound like Plato, and neither did the Apostle John. We are not hostile to other pronunciation schemes of Ancient Greek (in fact, everything from Modern Greek to the various other historical and pedagogical reconstructions have their own charms!), and eventually the Ekho app will probably have audiobooks with multiple pronunciations for at least some of the texts on there.
But we’ve decided, at least for now, to record all the Ancient Greek audiobooks using a Classical Attic pronunciation. Why? It is, in some ways, an accident of history. In 403 BC, when the Ionic alphabet was integrated with the Attic dialect, Ancient Greek spelling and writing conventions crystallized. So now, what you see on the page when picking up an edition of anything from an archaic poem to a Platonic dialogue to a late Hellenistic novel, you see the reflection of the Classical Attic dialect. Hearing a text pronounced in that way, therefore, removes ambiguities that would arise in a different pronunciation scheme. Each vowel is pronounced according to its own sound—in 403 BC they sounded different, and it is for this reason that since then the vowels have always been written differently (even when their sounds merged later on). Thus, even if you’re listening to a Greek novel from the 2nd century AD, you’ll be able to hear exactly how the words are spelled if you hear it in a Classical Attic pronunciation. This of course requires a pitch accent, so all the audiobooks have been recorded with a reconstructed pitch accent, another point in favor of clarity as well. Spelling and grammar are tied to pitch accent; for example, second aorist infinitives are never accented on the root, but always on the ending—this is something the Greek student needs to learn and acquire as he learns the language. Without this kind of knowledge, we will miss things, both at the subtle stylistic level as well as at a more fundamental, grammatical level. Luke Ranieri’s videos on Ancient Greek pronunciation and on the Greek alphabet are worth your watch.
As for Old English, all texts have been recorded according to a Late West Saxon reconstructed pronunciation. (Much as Colin Gorrie wrote Ōsweald Bera according to conventions of Late West Saxon dialect.) While the English we speak is a descendant of the Mercian form of Old English, most of the literature written in Old English is West Saxon, so recording the texts in our best attempt at reproducing the sound of the language in 1000 AD at the court of the House of Wessex was an easy choice. If you’d like a rundown of this approach to the pronunciation of Old English, Colin Gorrie’s 30-minute video guide and Simon Roper’s almost 3-hour video are excellent resources.
Download Ekho on the App Store, on Google Play, or access it on a browser. If you have any questions, get in touch with us at ekho@ancientlanguage.com.
Ryan Hammill, is ALI’s Executive Director and Co-Founder, and runs the marketing, editorial, and business operations side of the Ancient Language Institute. He co-hosts the podcast New Humanists with Jonathan Roberts, ALI’s President and Co-Founder. Get in touch with Ryan on X.
