Which school is this friend?
A private American high school, which uses the "system most commonly used in the United States" (out of Hansen & Quinn, which also notes the existence of a "pronunciation reconstructed by modern philology," though it does not use it in its pronunciation guide).
As for the phonology, I don't quite get what you mean in terms of a gamut of schemes. Basically historical and comparative philology is pretty damn sure what the values were (I really, really, can't stand it when some idiot who can't even spell laryngeal comes around and says "we" don't know it's "just a guess" so I'll post before s/he inevitably turns up). Of course what values you ascribe to depend on what you're doing with Greek. I mean if you're working in dialectology or epigraphy you need a great grasp of local variants for example. Most will use Classical Athenian, however.
While I do doubt that comparative philology can be sure about how Greek was pronounced in any given text, with the likely exceptions of Platonic Attic Greek and New Testament Greek (for example, about the exact effect of the various accents on the pronunciation), that wasn't really what I meant by a "gamut of schemes"; I was more referring to something similar to the variation in Latin schemes, and to what you touched upon - should I try to reproduce Homeric phonology when reading Homer, or read Greek texts the same way regardless of the time period in which they were written? I have found it very common, for example, for people to read the New Testament the same way they were taught to read 5th century BC Attic, which, as you have said, seems to be the most prevalent system among the reconstructed versions (understandable, considering the confusing number of vowels read /i/). Though the accents are allegedly tonal markers and not stress markers, I have found it exceedingly rare for anyone actually to attempt a change in pitch in reading Greek, and I have heard a few classicists disregard them in pronunciation altogether and instead stress the word where the English word would be stressed (apparently, Erasmus followed Latin stress rules in Greek and disregarded the accent marks). I have generally heard the aspirates pronounced as fricatives as well, though that runs contrary to the philological reconstruction. I have only heard two real Greek people attempt to read Homeric Greek; both of them pronounced the words as if they were Modern Greek. At my school's declamation contest, the guest judges (classics professors at Boston University) awarded high marks for pronunciation to those who followed the Hansen & Quinn scheme (somewhat adapted to suit English speakers, with υ read /u/ instead of /i/ or /y/). This may very well be a rather old-fashioned approach on the part of classics in the US, so I'm curious whether this lax pronunciation is practiced worldwide (though I have definitely heard the German system, which is heavily adapted to suit German phonology).
I wouldn't be hard on people for being unable to spell laryngeal any more than I would expect someone to remember the difference between phoneme and phenome.
I try to vary my accent based on what period etc I'm reading but the base I use is definitely modern Greek modified. Look, here's the thing, letters and spelling are arbitrary, its meaningless when you say α = a. Which a? in English the a sound is more often a mid frontal vowel whereas in Ancient Greek (as in modern) the short a is an open front rounded vowel to try and be as colloquial as possible. A lot of people don't get that and just apply their native language values to these letters which is wrong. You have to respect a language's phonotactic environment too.
That's useful to know that you start with Modern Greek, and that you vary your accent depending on the period you're working with. As for /a/, I meant the IPA value, essentially the "a" employed in most Western European languages besides English. As for applying one's own language values being "wrong," this is sort of what I was touching upon when I referenced a "gamut of systems" - there are certainly many systems out there whose goal is not to reconstruct the author's pronunciation as accurately as possible - for instance, the anachronistic application of Attic letter values to the New Testament for clarity in distinguishing η, ι, υ. I think it's sort of how Catholic scholars would use ecclesiastical pronunciation even while reading Virgil, or how we don't generally attempt to read Shakespeare as Shakespeare would have read it (and how in the US we don't read Shakespeare in British accents). But of course, many would argue (not without merit) that one shouldn't read Attic Greek with an English "r" or glided vowels (or that a German shouldn't read ευ as /
ɔʏ̯/ (the German "eu"), as I have certainly heard) - and so I was curious how much people who use Ancient Greek aim for historical accuracy vs. clarity and consistency. As I presume you are fluent in Modern Greek, your perspective is particularly interesting and appreciated.
Well you don't have to. I see a lot of people sweat this stuff online or, even worse, try to correct others when their own is bloody horrible. If you're the kind of person who is very good with languages, give it a go. If not, don't swear it, just get as close to the ancient scheme you can get in order to be able to read and comment on poetry. I spent a good few years obsessively practising the right types of sounds, running minimal pair drills and so on but then I always intended to teach this stuff and I do that with all languages (apart from German).
I'm sorry, you probably wanted corrections but I figure you'll have a dozen guys coming along so I'd rather tell you just not to worry.
Good luck!
I certainly agree with you on the first point. Thanks for the advice.
Goose at Greek that I am, I would probably do better to stay out of this
but when I was reading New Testament Greek at University I used a pronunciation very much like what Arca set out above. My aim was to use a pronunciation system that would help me learn the words by keeping as near as possible a one-to-one match between phonemes and graphemes. That meant rejecting the already iotacised Koine pronunciation in favour of something more Classical. I did not, for the most part, try to reproduce the tonal accent, but generally put stress accent on the tonos whether acute or grave. I did, however actually intone any circumflex vowel as a flexus, and tended to render circumflex vowels with iota subscripta as rising and falling intonations of 'a:-ai', 'e:-ei', and 'o:-oi'.
So basically your first concern was clarity, it seems. As I noted in my response to Lyceum above, in my experience the norm with Biblical Greek has been
not to attempt to reproduce the Koine pronunciation, which intrigued me, to say the least (especially due to the pains Arabs take when reading the Koran to pronounce it in the classical tradition instead of their native dialects). The system I have been using is somewhat of a messy mix between a halfhearted attempt at approximating the historical pronunciation and a concern for clarity and consistency (i.e., not changing pronunciation to match the period, generally speaking).