How to Pronounce Ancient Greek

Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff,

History of Classical Scholarship (trans. Alan Harris):

“Erasmus’ name is linked with the Erasmian pronunciation of Greek, with the result that modern Greeks to a man – except the few trained philologists among them – curse him loud and long. Having learnt the languages from books, rather than from the lips of Greeks, he very naturally insisted on the pronunciation that had been current at the time when the script was formed. Nor was he even the first person to do so (as Ingram Bywater has demonstrated with rare learning); that was the Spanish humanist Antonius Nebrissenis, and no less a man than Aldus Manutius shared his view. Now that scholars have come to realize that every language in every age sounds differently as spoken by different people, and that in the course of time the accepted pronunciation of the written characters also changes, the dispute has lost its relevance. How we are to pronounce, or try to pronounce, ancient Greek is a purely practical question that admits of no universally valid answer, and the idea of condemning the living language of modern Greece as ugly, because, like ours, it has lost its sonority, is one that no scholar at least should ever entertain.”