Talk:Ancient Macedonian language/Archive 6

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Hesychius and Properties

Am I correct in believing that the Hesychius Glosses contained rare words that Hesychius considered dialectic? With regard to the more detailed material in the Talk section, the treatment in the article is rather cursory. The so-called Properties might give the impression of there being special features, especially with some morphology noted by Panayotou being contrasted with 'standard Greek', the definition of which is uncertain, since some of the Macedonian forms (which were not unique or even uncommon) became standard (e.g. the first declension noun grammar and the loss of 'sth' aspiration), or were the standard (e.g. syncope). The proposed 'occasional' examples of voiced aspirates (if that is what they were, which Babiniotis doubts) pronounced as voiced stops are not unique to ancient Macedonian. In any case, of the properties given, none seems exclusive to ancient Macedonian. Ancient Macedonian could be more usefully compared to ancient Epirotan or Thessalian, which are neighbouring forms. Attic is obviously a standard reference but not always a useful comparison. Late Attic itself is quite unusual in its peculiar orthography following the 403BC reform and is also atypical in some of its morphology. Is ancient Macedonian truly special with some such regard, when compared to Epirotan or Thessalian? If so, any such genuine peculiarities should be included in the article. Other than the few interesting Macedonian words in the Glosses, is there something that is especially unique about ancient Macedonian, except of course for the hot air? Skamnelis (talk) 17:02, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I see your point. The article needs a refreshment with recent data, cause right now it feels like we're stuck on 1996. Fkitselis (talk) 18:07, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

In my view, some of the information you posted from linguists, etc, should be included, while the list of idiomatic words need not be so all-inclusive (or could go into a new article on ancient Macedonian glosses). Because of the somewhat misleading notion of "standard Greek", I feel it would be useful to leave examples with cognates in different Greek dialects (especially Epirotan, Thessalian and Northwestern Greek) and, of course, other languages, if there are such examples, rather than aim at a full list of all known idiomatic words. If toponymy is left in, there ought to be a scholarly reference, ideally one using evidence from inscriptions on toponymy, with a comparison of the situation elsewhere. Another potential source for inclusion could be Ancient Macedonian as a Greek dialect: A critical survey on recent work – Julián Méndez Dosuna (2013) in G.K. Giannakis (Ed) Ancient Macedonia: Language, History, Culture. On the question whether ancient Macedonian is Doric (or whether indeed it is Greek), perhaps Herodotus could be included as a relatively primary source, stating that the Macedonians were of the Doric ethnos. His opinion is as valuable as the opinions of modern scholars.Skamnelis (talk) 11:57, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

The (occasional?) occurrence of Beta/Delta/Gamma where other dialects have Phi/Theta/Chi is the defining characteristic of Macedonian and is, as far as I can see, indeed unique to Macedonian if it is only a Greek dialect. Which is exactly why scholars do not all agree that Macedonian is simply a Greek dialect. If this curious (for a Greek dialect) trait were not there, there would be no discussion, basically, point blank. It's the whole point. (Ignoring petty nationalism for the time being, as it has nothing to do with the scholarly discussion – no scholar seriously proposes that Ancient Macedonian was a Slavic language, as far as I'm aware.) Basically, what many scholars have suspected is that there was 1) a Greek dialect in Macedonia and 2) a different, non-Greek language, the indigenous, "real" Macedonian language, which is undocumented but may have affected the Greek dialect by way of loanwords or other interference. This other language might have resembled Balkan languages such as Thracian, or perhaps rather Phrygian, more than Greek.

A roughly analogous situation would be if future scholars knew nothing about Scots and Northumbrian, but occasionally encountered words with ā instead of English ō and other highly unusual (for mainstream English dialects) features in Scottish English. The solution is, of course, that there are two closely related but distinctively different Germanic languages in Scotland, namely Scottish English (which is a mainstream English dialect and not radically different from other mainstream English dialects) and Scots, which is pretty much a different language (an "Anglic" language). Or think of how Swiss German words in Swiss Standard German appear curious even though hardly any typical trait of Swiss German is unique among German dialects. Among the varieties of Standard German, these traits are highly unusual. Or in Northern Germany, an unshifted Low German loanword such as ick or name such as Schreinemakers in Standard German can stick out even though the missing shift k > ch is nothing special for a Germanic language – but for High German dialects, it is absolutely unheard of, special, unique. So if you did not know about Low German and learned that people in Berlin say ick instead of ich, you would say: "What a strange German dialect! No other German dialect fails to shift ick to ich!" It doesn't help to point out that Dutch and Frisian too lack this shift, because they're not German dialects. It's still a trait exclusive to the German dialect of Berlin among (non-Low) German dialects. In the Berlin analogy, "Macedonian Greek" corresponds to the contemporary Berlin dialect, "real (non-Greek) Macedonian" corresponds to the (extinct) local Low German dialect, and Attic Greek corresponds to Standard German.

Of course this does not mean that "real Macedonian" may not have effectively been a dialect of a Balkan language such as Paeonian, Illyrian or Thracian, or relatively closely related to Greek. (Paeonian or the language of the Bryges are the candidates that suggest themselves most as the origin of the non-Greek elements in Macedonia in my opinion, but I'm just guessing.) Who's to say that a Thracian (or whatever) dialect locally spoken in Macedonia does not rightfully deserve the designation "Macedonian" at least as much as some Doric, Northwest Greek (or other Northern Greek) dialect locally spoken in Macedonia? (Likewise, does the indigenous Low German dialect formerly spoken in Berlin not deserve the designation "Berlinisch" at least as much as the contemporary dialect, which is mainly based on High German?) I'm just saying it is more a matter of definition than people may realise. One should also keep in mind the possibility (pointed out by Fktselis above) that differences between Greek and a divergent but closely related regional language could have easily been camouflaged in spelling (a kind of Deckmantelorthographie), rendering native words, names and even whole texts in a superficially Hellenised form not unlike the way speakers of German dialects sometimes render dialect texts word for word as if Standard German in writing (via literal translation and much use of cognates; this may lead to slightly alien or even awkward looking literary German) but may convert the texts back to dialect when reading them out loud. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:24, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

The only serious non-Greek candidate is B/Phrygian, which according to the most quoted source of the last 20 years (Brixhe) could be the reason for the phonological features. Phrygian is the only known language that could be easily camouflaged under a Greek mantle. The Thracian & Illyrian hypothesis are more of faith statements than theories with a basis. Both of those languages are poorly attested, hence a very bad idea to connect them, while most modern skeptic scholars question the dialect designation in terms of attestation. On top of that the Illyrian connection was suggested a) in a time of pan-Illyrian theories, b) by scholars who had an "Illyrian fettish" but no real data (see Bonfante). Why I am saying all these? Because, we're all stuck in very very old scholarship. If we're about to speak based on modern material then we have two main groups: a) Scholars who consider AM a Greek dialect, with various classifications (distinct dialect, Doric etc), b) Scholars who see a kinship with Greek (which could still mean a different sibling language), but won't make any statement before more data is available. The truth could have quantum properties, that is to say depending on the region of Macedon all cases are true. Fkitselis (talk) 21:29, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

That's a good point. Both "ancient Macedonian language" and "ancient Macedon(ia)" (as a region) are ill-defined concepts. So it's (at least!) doubly a matter of definition, especially if there were (as many scholars suspect) both distinct Greek and non-Greek dialects present in the region. (I don't know enough Illyrian and Thracian to be able to tell if the "camouflage theory" is plausible for them; I agree it seems plausible for Phrygian, but then, my Phrygian is quite poor, too. How good is your Phrygian, Illyrian, Thracian, Dacian and Paeonian? :-) ) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:32, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

My Phrygian is quite good actually, because I have a special interest for it :-). For sure it is not a well attested language, not because we lack of inscriptions, but because they are repetitive. However, the situation got much better during the last 15 years, especially after the discovery of the Vezirhan inscription (AKA Germanos inscription). The difference compared to Thracian (that has too some few inscriptions) is that we are able to understand the general context of Phrygian texts. Thracian seems to belong to a different group of languages than Greek and Phrygian. For Illyrian we only know glosses and nothing else. Paeonian... We're lucky to know it's name and that it might have been similar to some languages. However, the key are the names too. Thracian names are distinct and vary depending on the region of Thrace (Bythis, Moukatralis, Auluzenis, Bitoulousos, Kotys, Sese, Abezelmis). Phrygians on the other hand, could have names not very different from Greeks. Some examples: Ermolaos, Akmonia, Ekataea, Benagonos, Poukros, Myksos, Yrgitos, Kallyriates to name a few. Fkitselis (talk) 20:41, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

My impression is the same. Thracian (with an Armenian-like stop shift?), Dacian (very close to Albanian, per Duridanov?) and possibly Illyrian (close to Messapic?) seem to be satem languages, which I think does contribute to the impression of greater dissimilarity. (Paeonian does seem close to Greek, and scholars share this impression; Dysoros, if it is genuinely Paeonian and not a hybrid name, and if the interpretation is correct, would seem to confirm this, and in any case, Agrianes seems to point towards kentum, although it's before r so possibly not conclusive, in view of Weise's law and similar later depalatalisations in Albanian, Armenian and Balto-Slavic.) I wouldn't be surprised if (as I have suggested before) non-Greek Macedonian was closer to B/Phrygian (and Paeonian?) than to Greek. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:45, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

In view of p. 69 (on the bottom), Macedonia was probably inhabited by tribes that spoke Greek as well as tribes that spoke "Para-Phrygian" dialects. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:58, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

That is probably the most safe hypothesis I believe. However, I don't know what to say about Paeonian. Practically it is almost non-existent. About Thracian and Illyrian I agree. They seem to be satem (Thracian at least). However, that is not the main problem. They are very different in their lexicon. It is funny how people concluded immediately that those two were the candidates (instead of a Phrygian-like remnant) regarding the Macedonian phonology, when many IE-languages share such a phonology, but not the lexicon. Fkitselis (talk) 08:02, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Sadly, I have no knowledge of Phrygian, and I am grateful for the introduction. Indeed, the consonant shift may be the most interesting characteristic. However, except for the preference for Berenike rather than Pherenike, it is not the norm, it rather seems an exception. In fact ΒΙΛΙΠΠΟΣ is very rare, I think ΒΙΛΑ occurs only once (the Pella Katadesmos has mostly ΦΙΛΟΙ, etc) and some of the other words that we have with a substitution seem not the norm. I understand that Babiniotis' view is that there was a kind of spelling confusion, in the way we have ΗΙΕΡΑ and ΓΕΡΑ or ΗΟΡΟΣ and ΧΩΡΟΣ or instances of iotacism. Besides, we have ΒΑΛΛΑΚΡΑΔΕΣ from the Argolid, ΒΑΛΑΚΡΟΣ in early Attic, ΒΩΝΗΜΑ from the Laconic, ΑΔΡΙΑ from Epirotan and ΚΕΒΛΕΠΥΡΙΣ in Aristophanes, so these consonant shifts are not unique to Macedonian either. FKitselis, moreover, brought up the point of vocabulary. The litmus test is whether Greeks understood the language as Greek and Herodotus at least classes Macedonian and Doric as a single ethnos. Ancient Macedonian is also very similar to the Greek of the Dodona inscriptions, except for the discussed but rare consonant shift.Skamnelis (talk) 09:43, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Good that you mention Dodona. Dosuna (2007, 2012) brings it up in his monographs where he discusses the existence of K in Κεβαλινός, where Γεβαλινός (PIE *gʰebʰ(e)l-, OHG gebal) would be expected if Macedonian followed the Phrygian (or Thracian) phonology. With that he takes the discussion to a completely other level. Fkitselis (talk) 15:38, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

True, but with the close intermingling of Macedonian (whatever it was) and various forms of Greek it is hard to rule out the possibility that a genuine **γεβ° was replaced by κεβ° on the model of Greek, once the equivalence of Greek φ and (sometimes?) Macedonian β (on any level) was established, or a Greek κεφ° was simply "Macedonified" superficially (analogous things, i. e., hypercorrections, happen when, for example, Low German, Bavarian and other German dialects are translated, or rather transposed, into High German superficially, or vice versa; or think Scots, Jamaican Patois etc. vs. Standard English, Occitan vs. French, Italian dialects vs. Standard Italian, Portuguese vs. Spanish and the like, in bilingual speakers). So this example has never convinced me either of the full Hellenicity of Macedonian. Lexemes like ἀδῆ rather than simply **αἰδήρ (which we would expect if Macedonian was simply a Greek dialect replacing – regularly or irregularly, phonetically or only graphically – φ with β, θ with δ and χ with γ, whatever the precise pronunciation) are hard to understand from a Greek point of view and look definitely alien. Indeed, the loss of -r after a lengthened grade ē in a final syllable (the product of Szemerényi's law) is reminiscent of Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian, while it just doesn't occur in Greek and I don't know any ancient Greek dialects with loss of final ρ in any way (at least I haven't encountered this phenomenon in any dialect). Granted, it doesn't look like Phrygian either: Based on ματαρ, you'd expect **αἰδᾶρ.

So it's not only the mediae aspiratae that make Macedonian material look un-Greek (at least sometimes). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:46, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Florian, you seem to assume that "Macedonian" is a priori a pre-existing non-Greek language, which is not warranted given that the word is not known to have been used by a people preceding the historical Macedonians, whose only attested written language was Greek. Dosuna has found similarities with neighbouring Thessalian Greek, on which he is probably the best expert. Greek is not a diversified form of Attic. In terms of its revised spelling system, Attic is certainly a latecomer. In any case, the same types of rare substitutions are found elsewhere in Greek. Κεβλέπυρις, found in Aristophanes, was a word in Attic, it was not a Macedonian word. It is difficult to see why the Athenians would have hypercorrected from γεβ- to κεβ-.Skamnelis (talk) 19:37, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

And you seem to assume a priori that in Ancient Macedonia, only Greek dialects were spoken and nothing else. The example I gave strongly suggests that there wasn't only Greek, because it cannot be explained in terms of the variety from known Greek dialects. This is the entire reason why the classification of AM has been so controversial, and many scholars have not been satisfied with the idea that AM was simply a regular Doric/Northwest Greek dialect (and that no other language was spoken in the region). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:55, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

A revert solely due to no consensus

Please, do not revert solely due to no consensus, read WP:DRNC.Judist (talk) 05:56, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't think you read all of my edit-summary in which I wrote: "No consensus for your POV". Your edits across WP:ARBMAC articles have the doubtful distinction of being heavily POV. This is highly disruptive and if it continues a report will have to be made at Arbitration enforcement. Dr. K. 06:21, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

You only allege anything at any article simply for being POV without a description why is something POV. I can also call anything I want POV, it is not so hard, it is harder to explain why it is POV. If you do not have evidence these are simply false allegations.Judist (talk) 07:00, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm going to guess this is yet another waste of time, but it goes like this: 1) You added Paleo-Balkan using a source of unknown quality (i.e. without providing full bibliographical info, thus making sure it is impossible to verify). But there is already a source for the "Hellenic" classification (and a very up to date one), so with your edit, you made Hellenic a branch of "Paleo-Balkan", which is both WP:SYNTH and WP:OR. You also replaced a very high quality academic source (Sarah Pomeroy, a well-known scholar of classics) that specializes on the topic, with a very generalist one ("Western Civilization: A Brief History"). In doing so you added a whole bunch of your own WP:OR ("there are no examples of literature surviving which makes it difficult to investigate Ancient Macedonian precisely, which is also the case for the neighbouring Illyrian languages and Thracian languages"). Your parallel with the Illyrian and Thracian languages is POV-pushing by insinuation. You have been consistently and aggressively pushing a Slavo-Macedonian POV throughout the encyclopedia, so let's not pretend ok? If you don't want to be accused of POV-pushing, then stop doing it. Athenean (talk) 07:13, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

The currently used source "Blažek, Václav (2005). "Paleo-Balkanian Languages I: Hellenic Languages" classifiy the language as PaleoBalkan. Neghbouring Illyrian or Thracian have also not left any literature survaving, this is a matter of course. Your allegation that POV is connected to anyone's nationality and must be therefore (unless it is your POV and your nationality) stopped is not far from a personal attack. You are very detailed here but have not explained the removal of more than fifteen sources in another article in which your removals are comletely unjusified. Athenean, your constant point that something is POV because you dislike it does not make sense. And your aggressive and arrogant manners, allegations and personal attacks are beyond civility and more than enough already. What kind of antisocial discussions, no answers, no explanations, no debate, just offensives! Give me a break.Judist (talk) 07:54, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

And now you are going through my contribs and reverting my edits in every dispute I have been involved in [1] [2] [3], in clear retaliation. This is clear WP:BATTLEGROUND and WP:HOUND. What are you hoping to achieve by this? Do you really think this is going to work? Do you really think you will get what you want by behaving this way? I am done here, there is absolutely no point in discussing with someone like you. Athenean (talk) 08:12, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

You have arrogantly undone all my contributions, including reverts such as a removal of seventeen sources only because you do not like them. Commenting editors like "editors like you" instead of the content is a WP:Personal attack, you made several more today.Judist (talk) 08:46, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

I have reverted the following text:

There are no examples of literature surviving which makes it difficult to investigate Ancient Macedonian precisely, which is also the case for the neighbouring Illyrian languages and Thracian languages. There is a disagreement among scholars as to whether Ancient Macedonian was a Greek dialect or a separate language.<ref>[[Jackson J. Spielvogel]].''Western Civilization: A Brief History, Volume I: To 1715''. Cengage Learning, 2013. p. 70</ref>

First, it is based on a reference written by a generalist with no specialised knowledge of linguistics. Second, it introduces complex linguistic issues at the lead involving not only the Ancient Macedonian language but also Illyrian and Thracian. This is simply too much controversy to put at the lead especially since the reference is not a specialist one and the claims are not even analysed in the main body of the article so per WP:LEAD it does not belong at the lead. Third, sweeping claims such as There is a disagreement among scholars as to whether Ancient Macedonian was a Greek dialect or a separate language. is full of weasel-type generalisations. "Disagreement" is a vague weasel word. How big is the disagreement? Who disagrees? What does the majority of the scholars think? etc.. Please do not continue to add this until there is agreement at the talkpage as to the inclusion of this material in the article and in what form. Dr. K. 18:23, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

The mentioning of Illyrian and Thracian is also highly weaselish. It's the old "guilt-by-association" trick, used to imply that somehow Macedonian could be related to them because it also wasn't written down. There are lots of languages for which there is no written attestation, e.g. Hurrian and Hattian. Shall we mention those too? Athenean (talk) 18:30, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree. Also the presence of weasel words indicates the presence of original research and synthesis. So we have to investigate how much of the proposed text is the original research and synthesis of the proposer. Dr. K. 18:33, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Hurrian and Hattian have no written attestation? Hogwash. Of course they have, in cuneiform. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:03, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

1 or 2 Ancient Macedonian languages/dialects?

Does anyone know if there is a published comparative analysis of the Macedonian words in Hesychius' glossary to the ones in Pella curse tablet? Is that the same language/dialect? To me, as a non-linguist and also a person who speaks neither Ancient nor Modern Greek the language of the Pella curse tablet seems more Greek than the one in Hesychius' glossary. Some words from the latter source are said to "reveal, for example, voiced stops where Greek shows voiceless aspirates". Does this phonetic feature occur in Pella curse tablet words too? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2F07:91EF:FFFF:0:0:4F72:9391 (talk) 20:25, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Hellenic

The infobox should follow the labels that Wikipedia assigns to the classification of any language. The top node for Ancient Macedonian is Indo-European. The classification labels adopted by Wikipedia for the next level in Ancient Macedonian's ancestry is not "Greek", but Hellenic. Whether Ancient Macedonian falls under the aegis of Greek proper or is a closely related language is immaterial. The first-order branch of Indo-European to which it belongs is "Hellenic" per Wikipedia's labeling. The article then proceeds to describe the debate over Ancient Macedonia's relation to Greek, but that is immaterial to the label for the first-order branch of Indo-European to which it belongs--it's in Hellenic either way. --Taivo (talk) 13:49, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

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Lockwood

An editor recently added the following to the lead:

Others suggests that Macedonian was rather an aberrant form of Greek than an independent language, with borrowings from Illyrian and Thracian.

W.B. Lockwood, "A panorama of Indo-European languages", Hutchinson University Library, London, p.6

I removed it, because it seems redundant, especially in the lead, and because the cited source is old and is an overview of I-E, not a research publication; all the author says is "it is generally held that the evidence suggests rather an aberrant form of Greek than an independent language". That is, the author is summarizing others' positions ("it is generally held"). By the way, the direct word-for-word quotation is also inappropriate. For that matter, Lockwood was primarily a specialist in German, and published almost nothing on Greek, and nothing at all on Macedonian.

The other editor put it back. Rather than edit-war, I moved it to the Classification section, where it seems more appropriate. But I still think it's not a useful addition. What is meant by "aberrant"? What particular varieties of Greek is it close to? etc. What do others think? --Macrakis (talk) 20:21, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Certainly not an "act of war". The book is of 1972 (not obsolete) and seems to summarize the author's view of previous works. Also includes the point of loans from other languages, which is not found in the rest of the article. Since 70's, I think we don't have any breakthrough regarding the pre-classic macedonian language. We have only new interpretations of the old stuff, some influenced by the post-yugoslavian nationalistic endeavours. Although Lockwood's opinion is not a θέσφατον, it doesn't do any harm to the artilce or the reader, me thinks.--Skylax30 (talk) 21:29, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be better to cite the actual research? Ah, but Lockwood doesn't cite his sources! That seems like a problem.... --Macrakis (talk) 02:37, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it would, if we assume that WP articles are academic papers. But they aren't. This work of Lockwood is cited by at least 73 other scholarly papers [4] , and should be OK for WP. It seems that W.B. Lockwood has authored several text-books for linguistics for the general public, with no bibliography, and this is fine for an academic of his calibre. On the other hand, we know well the quality of sources like (Macedo-bulgarian) Eugene Borza, co-worker with Palagia in that failed attempt (full of bibliography) to claim that in the royal tomb of Vergina is not Philip II but Philip III. Fortunately for archaeology, they are not the only scientists around and the case is closed.--Skylax30 (talk) 09:26, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Relationship between Ancient Macedonian and Ancient Greek compared to the one between Baltic and Slavic language

Ancient Macedonian language is much more similar to Ancient Greek than Latin or any other ancient language is to Ancient Greek. They might not have been been two dialects of the same language but then again there is no precise criterion for distinguishing bewteen language and dialect. The most similar Indo-European languages to the Slavic languages are the Baltic languages. Let's image that nowadays there exists only 1 Slavic language (for instance Russian) and no Baltic language anymore. In such a case the Russian nation is the sole descendant not only of all the other Slavic nations but also of the Baltic nations. This means that in a potential conflict between Russians and Germans or Finno-Ugrics (Finns/Estonians) for the territories of the former Baltic nations Russians are the only ones with historical rights to own and inhabit them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2F07:91FF:FFFF:0:0:6460:54DB (talk) 02:49, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

You didn't bring up a single source for the improvement of the article - your comments in their entirety are a waste of time.50.111.51.247 (talk) 04:56, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

North Greek Dialect

Greek dialect, of the Northwestern group —->> — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.70.172.119 (talk) 14:27, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

References

The suggestion of a "Hellenic" group with two branches, in this context, represents the idea that Macedonian was not simply a dialect within Greek but a "sibling language" outside the group of Greek varieties proper as suggested by B. Joseph (2001): "Ancient Greek". In: J. Garry et al. (eds.) Facts about the World's Major Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past and Present. More, other approaches describe Macedonian as an unclassified Paleo-Balkan language. For more see: Brixhe C., Panayotou A. (1994), "Le Macédonien", in Bader, F. (ed.), Langues indo-européennes, Paris:CNRS éditions, 1994, pp 205–220. Jingiby (talk) 14:45, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

(I assume that there's an unsigned comment at the beginning of this thread from a proponent of the All-Greek, Only-Greek camp.) We have carefully crafted the first sentence of this article and achieved a good compromise sentence that reflects the two primary views concerning the Ancient Macedonian language. It combines the majority of opinions on the matter (although not all opinions). --Taivo (talk) 16:34, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Yes it is fixed now. Taivo is correct, there is no need to change anything in the sentence which reflects both primary views. The consensus needs to be respected. --- ❖ SilentResident ❖ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 10:23, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

@TaivoLinguist and Future Perfect at Sunrise: I am curious on your opinions on whether we should include the recent view of Claude Brixhe (2018) here [[5]]. He seems to suggest that the Koine of Macedonia seems to suggest a Doric substrate (page 1863), while also thinking there may have been (at least) two divergent Hellenic language varieties in the area (1864). I'm definitely less versed in Hellenic linguistics than you guys, so I figured I'd check before adding something. Cheers! --Calthinus (talk) 15:45, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Note the very last sentence of the section that you cited: "The debate remains open". Bruxhe's analysis fits within the already described option of "Ancient Macedonian was a Doric dialect". Adding the reference to Bruxhe's chapter along with the other references in that option would be appropriate, but it's not really a new idea. The evidence for Ancient Macedonian is so sparse that no matter how sophisticated the argument, the matter will probably never be resolved without additional, unambiguous evidence in the form of primary data. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 18:29, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

There is a present-day language closely related to Modern Greek. It's called Tsakonian. Even though it's no longer mutually intelligible with Greek it's still Greek, meaning it's a different variation of Modern Greek. According to the logic some of you employ to (attempt to) prove that ancient Macedonian was a different language from ancient Greek, Tsakonian and (standard) Modern Greek both descend from a common non-Greek proto-language when in fact Tsakonian is derived from a previous stage of the Greek language, it's a former Greek dialect turned language (similar to Afrikaans vs. Dutch). There is no shred of evidence to prove that ancient Macedonian and ancient Greek had been in the same relationship as proto-Baltic and proto-Slavic (or as the modern Baltic languages and the modern Slavic ones) whereas the there is plenty of evidence to support the claim that ancient Macedonian was an ancient Greek dialect or dialect turned language. The fact that ancient Macedonian was only written using Greek alphabet, it's similarities to other ancient Greek dialects and the existence of Tsakonian as a second Modern Greek language all point to the fact that ancient Macedonian was indeed Greek. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2F07:93FF:FFFF:0:0:6460:416D (talk) 06:55, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

If Tsakonian and Modern Greek are mutually unintelligible, then they are different languages. Common ancestry means they are related languages, but separate languages nonetheless. Your argumentation is irrelevant to this article. Reliable sources differ as to whether the ancient Macedonian vernacular was a Greek dialect or a closely related language (like Tsakonian). The article is based on reliable sources, not on your demands and original research that ignores many reliable sources. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 07:41, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

You are wrong. Tsakonian is derived from Greek, just like Afrikaans is derived from Dutch. Tsakonian is a Greek language. For your information there are 2 Norwegian languages, 2 standards, 2 codified Norwegian languages (nynorsk and bokmal. If there are 2 different Nowegian languages who are you to say that Tsakonian isn't the 2nd Modern Greek language? There are 2 Modern Greek languages and there were 2 Ancient Greek languages in ancient times: Macedonian Greek and the other ancient Greek dialects. The fact that Nynorsk and Bokmal are mutually intelligible whereas Tsakonian and regular Modern Greek are not is irrelevant. Both Norwegian languages are mutually intelligible with Danish and that doesn't make Danish a Norwegian dialect, nor vice versa. Moreover mutual intelligibility is no criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects. There are many German or Italian dialects who are not mutually intelligible with standard German/Italian and/or other dialects of the respective languages. That doesn't make them separate languages. Stop reverting my changes in the main article on Ancient Macedonian language. You have no argument for a truly scientific debate. There is no shred of evidence that the relationship between ancient Macedonian and ancient Greek was of the Baltic-Slavic type even though you keep pushing this idea citing the Bulgarian linguist Vladimir Georgiev and few other marginals. For your information Bulgarian historians and linguists have always claimed that Greek Macedonia should be part of Bulgaria. This means Georgiev was biased against Greece. You claim, per Georgiev, that ancient Macedonian has never been Greek, that it hadn't derived from an early form of ancient Greek (meaning Archaic Greek) just like ancient common Baltic (with modern descendants Latvian and Lithuanian) has never been Slavic and ancient common Slavic (with modern descendants Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Bulgarian and so on) has never been Baltic. The fact that modern Baltic languages are most similar with modern Slavic languages out of all the other Indo-European languages is indeed no proof that the common Baltic language has ever a dialect of common Slavic. Their similarity is due to geographical vicinity. However that is not the case with ancient Macedonian. The fact that ancient Macedonians conquered the (other) Greeks and despite being the conquerors ended up renouncing their ancient Macedonian 'language' in favor of Greek (koine Greek), which was the language of the conquered ones is an argument that they considered Ancient Macedonian as a divergent dialect of Ancient Greek and wanted to speak just like the other Greeks, in order to make themselves understood more easily by them. Again: there is no evidence whatsoever to prove that ancient Macedonian and ancient Greek had been in the same relationship as proto-Baltic and proto-Slavic, whereas the there is plenty of evidence to support the claim that ancient Macedonian was an ancient Greek dialect or dialect turned language. Besides the aforementioned voluntary, self-imposed relinquishing of their own 'language' on the part of ancient Macedonians in favor of Greek there are other proofs too: the fact that ancient Macedonian was only written using Greek alphabet and the existence of Tsakonian as a second Modern Greek language all point to the fact that ancient Macedonian was indeed Greek. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2F07:92FF:FFFF:0:0:6460:6B36 (talk) 20:36, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

You really don't know what you're talking about from a linguistic perspective. Nynorsk and Bokmal are not different languages, they are two WRITTEN and DIALECT standards for the single Norwegian language, completely mutually intelligible. That is not relevant to the Greek/Tsakonian situation. Greek and Tsakonian are two different languages and are not mutually intelligible. They share a common ancestor--Ancient Greek (although written Ancient Greek is primarily Attic and Tsakonian is Doric). Tsakonian is not Modern Greek. We can precisely locate Tsakonian within the Hellenic group of languages because we still have speakers and abundant written materials. Ancient Macedonian is an entirely different situation. Everything about Ancient Macedonian is guesswork because there is not very much actual evidence--certainly not enough to make a definitive judgement. You obviously think that Georgiev is the only linguist who opposes automatically lumping Ancient Macedonian as a Greek dialect, but you are absolutely wrong. Read the actual article and you'll note that there are many others who also oppose calling Ancient Macedonian "Greek" because they don't think it was Greek. They say it was closely related, so Ancient Greek and Ancient Macedonian share a common ancestor in their view, but it was not mutually intelligible to Ancient Greek based on their examination of the scant existing records. You don't seem to know anything about linguistics, so it would be pointless to go over the linguistic reasons why this is one valid point of view. You just seem to be parroting some nationalistic point-of-view that you read in a popular Greek science magazine or newspaper article. Your comments about Baltic and Slavic are unscientific drivel at best. The simple fact is that there are good linguists who want to lump Ancient Macedonian as a Greek dialect and there are good linguists who want to treat Ancient Macedonian as a separate language, but closely related to Ancient Greek. Both points of view have evidence, but the scant amount of actual Ancient Macedonian available means that the answer to the question will never be resolved without a time machine or additional archeological discoveries of actual Ancient Macedonian writing. But since the Ancient Macedonians, at least since the reign of Philip, only wrote Attic Greek and not Ancient Macedonian, that seems unlikely. The article as written is the result of much work among interested and knowledgeable editors and reflects the uncertainty that surrounds Ancient Macedonian. It will continue to do so whether or not you are happy about it. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 20:54, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

There are 2 Norwegian languages. Both are totally mutually intelligible with Danish and nearly totally mutually intelligible with Swedish. According to your logic either Danish is a Norwegian dialect (regardless of whether a Nynorsk or Bokmal dialect) or vice versa. Mutual intelligibility is no criterion for distinguishing between languages and dialects. If that were the case Slovak would be considered a Czech dialect, Belarusian a Ukrainian dialect and so on. You seem to fail to understand that there can be 2 or more different languages for the same ethnicity. Not only are there 2 different Norwegian languages, there are also 2 different Sorbian ones (Upper and Lower Sorbian). There are also 2-3 distinct French languages: standard French and Occitan (and also Franco-Provencal also known as Arpitan). Even though there is an Occitan language there is no Occitan ethnicity or nation. Also the fact that there are some historical sources which seem to suggest that Ancient Macedonian didn't consider themselves to be Greeks is totally irrelevant. Not only are there historical sources to the opposite but also there are analogue situations that can function as counter-arguments to the claim that ancient Macedonians were no Greeks: Austrians and Luxembourg people don't consider themselves to be Germans nowadays but they did so in the past. Dutch people nowadays don't consider themselves to be German even though they did so in the past. The English word 'Dutch' itself comes from the Dutch word Duits that only means German nowadays (corresponding to the German Deutsche). In English language 'Pennsylvania Dutch' and 'Pennsylvania German(s)' can be used interchangeably. Afrikaaners don't consider themselves to be Dutch anymore but they did so in the past. Also explain to me why my comparison with the Balto-Slavic languages is not correct. Ancient Macedonians were Greeks who spoke a diverging Greek dialect. Even though they conquered the other Greeks they ended up speaking Greek and abandoning their 'Ancient Macedonian language' in favor of koine Greek. That is the only explanation why they were not able to impose their so-called language unto the defeated and conquered Greeks and actually allowed their defeated 'enemies' to impose their language unto them. There is no other instance of a conquering nation ending up losing its own language in favor of the conquered nation's language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2F07:94FF:FFFF:0:0:6460:4084 (talk) 01:10, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

First, you seem to be totally ignorant of linguistic science and are simply making stuff fit your narrative whether it does or not. The very vocabulary you use to describe the relationship between the Baltic languages and the Slavic languages and the written standards for the Norwegian language shows that your understanding of historical linguistics is minimal at best. Your examples, even if you actually understood what you were writing, however, are completely irrelevant for this page. So I'm going to ignore your unscientific rants going forward. You don't seem to understand the science of linguistics so there's no point to trying to educate you since it doesn't fit within your nationalism. You continue to ignore the fact that the evidence for Ancient Macedonians being "Greek" (even though you don't know what that term actually refers to) is ambiguous and can be interpreted by scientists that they were either related to Greeks, but not quite Greeks and spoke a different language, or they were divergent Greeks speaking a dialect of Ancient Greek. There are legitimate and highly-respected scientists on BOTH SIDES of the issue. Live with it. All your ranting won't change that simple and incontrovertible fact no matter how much you want them to be Greek in all things. You're wrong to claim that there is only one possible answer to the question. The article reflects both points of view fairly and is the result of much discussion over the course of years. It's not going to change just because you stomp your feet and shout. But now I'm going to obey the advice of DNFTT. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 03:35, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

off-topic rants and personal attacks by IP

This guy claims to be a linguist but has never heard of the 2 Norwegian/Sorbian/French languages. Also Belarusian means White Russian. There are 2 Russian lanugages: Russian and Byelorussian/Belarusian. Also he claims I don't understand the meaning of the word 'Greek' but he is promoting the stupid theory that both Ancient Macedonian and Ancient Greek were derived from a common proto-language (that would be for Ancient Greek and 'Ancient Macedonian' what the common Balto-Slavic proto-language was for both common Slavic and common Baltic) that he (and the other authors of this wikipage who agree with him) calls 'Hellenic', when it is a known fact that 'Hellenic' and 'Greek' mean the same thing in English. Ethnic Greeks tend to avoid using the word 'Greek' when speaking/writing in English and only use 'Hellenic'. Other people only use 'Greek'. According to them the Indo-European language 'Hellenic' split into Greek (sic) and Ancient Macedonian. Also according to them Ancient Macedonian was not Greek, therefore was not Hellenic either!!! Proto-Balto-Slavic (or common Balto-Slavic) language is a language from which both Proto-Slavic and Proto-Baltic were derived. Unlike other Indo-European languages (Proto-Germanic/Common Germanic, Proto-Celtic/Common Celtic and so on) Proto-Slavic and Proto-Baltic continued to be dialects of the same language and they only became stand-alone languages much after the of 'birth' of Proto-Germanic and Proto-Celtic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2F07:92FF:FFFF:0:0:6460:7304 (talk) 15:18, 17 August 2020 (UTC) As for the vocabulary: wikipedia says Proto-Germanic is a synonym for Common Germanic: 'Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.' Also Proto-Celtic is a synonym for Common Celtic: 'The Proto-Celtic language, also called Common Celtic, is the partially reconstructed proto-language of all the known Celtic languages.' Therefore the terms used by me Common Baltic, Common Slavic and Common Balto-Slavic are correct and they mean Proto-Baltic, Proto-Slavic and Proto-Balto-Slavic. As for Common Slavic not being a synonym for Proto-Slavic this is debatable: some use 'Common Slavic' as a synonym for 'Proto-Slavic' and subdivide it into Early and Late Common/Proto Slavic. Others use Proto-Slavic for 'Early Common Slavic' and 'Common Slavic' for 'Late Common Slavic'. Therefore my usage of Common Slavic as a synonym for Proto-Slavic is not incorrect. This is what wikipedia page for Proto-Slavic says: 'Proto-Slavic is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all the Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium B.C. through the 6th century A.D.[1] [...] Rapid development of Slavic speech occurred during the Proto-Slavic period, coinciding with the massive expansion of the Slavic-speaking area. Dialectal differentiation occurred early on during this period, but overall linguistic unity and mutual intelligibility continued for several centuries, into the 10th century or later. [...] This makes it inconvenient to maintain the traditional definition of a proto-language as the latest reconstructable common ancestor of a language group, with no dialectal differentiation. [...] Instead, Slavicists typically handle the entire period of dialectally-differentiated linguistic unity as Common Slavic.' [...] 'There is no scholarly consensus concerning either the number of stages involved in the development of the language (its periodization) or the terms used to describe them.' Seems that Taivo is an Estonian name. Given that Estonian is related to Finnish, I suppose it could be a Finnish name too, although I'm not sure. If he/she indeed is an ethnical Estonian (born and educated in Estonia) and a linguist I'm afraid he/she is making Estonian teachers/professors and Estonians in general ashamed of themselves. He supposedly is a linguist but has never heard of the existence of 2 standalone language bearing the same name: Sorbian (Upper and Lower), Norwegian (Bokmal and Nynorsk) and so on. BTW the name 'Sorbian' is etymologically related to Serbian, meaning there are actually 3 Sorbian languages. Also the names Russian, Belarusian and Rusyn are all etymologically related. Rusyn is a minor Slavic language. There is no country with Rusyn as national/official language. Belarusian/Byelorussian/Belorussian means White Russian. In German language Belarus is called 'Weissrussland' which translates to White Russia. 'Russland' is Russia and 'weiss' is white. 'Weissrussisch' (Belarusian language) translates as White Russian ('Russisch' = Russian language). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2F07:91FF:FFFF:0:0:6460:5D44 (talk) 23:12, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

So, in other words, you don't know anything at all about linguistics except what you read in Wikipedia. LOL. What a laugh. I've got a PhD in the topic and you're trying to push your ability to read Wikipedia. Keep it up, troll, I'm going to keep ignoring you. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 23:53, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Why is it so important to prove that the Ancient Macedonian language was a North Greek dialect or a separate language? Wikipedia must include all possibilities (with reliable sources). Jestmoon(talk) 12:55, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Changes to the lede

I have made some changes to lede with the main objective of emphasizing the meagre attestation of Ancient Macedonian, and also in order to put the epigraphic situation into the right perspective. I am not very committed to the last sentence. Something like "This local variety is usually classified by scholars as a variety of North Western Ancient Greek, or occasionally as a distinct sister language of Ancient Greek" would be just as fine for me. –Austronesier (talk) 11:44, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree with your changes and your suggestion for the last sentence of the lede, as it would better reflect the "Classification" section. Demetrios1993 (talk) 01:27, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Removal of view from the "Classification" section

I removed the following view:

A Greek dialect with a non-Indo-European substratal influence, suggested by M. Sakellariou (1983) and M. Hatzopoulos (2011).

Sakellariou (1983) lacks WP:Verifiability, and even if this is indeed his actual view, it predates recent epigraphic discoveries such as the Pella curse tablet; thus, the guideline of WP:AGE MATTERS applies here. Furthermore, Hatzopoulos (2011) actually states the following on page 44 (which was referenced):

In the last thirty years the discovery, systematic collection and publication of a large number of inscriptions, sometimes of an early date, has made possible to study in perspective proper names and technical terms that preserve phonetic and morphological features, as well as their divergences from the norms of the koine. Very recently a couple of longer texts entirely written in the local idiom have come to light and been published . They leave no doubt that Macedonian was a Greek dialect presenting affinities partly with the dialects attested in the inscriptions of Thessaly and partly with those known from documents discovered in north-western Greece. Moreover its phonology seems to have been influenced to a limited extent by the languages of the conquered peoples, in which the distinction between voiced and unvoiced consonants tended to be blurred.

So, a more accurate summary would be something like the following:

A Greek dialect related to those of Thessaly and northwestern Greece, but with its phonology having been "influenced to a limited extent by the languages of the conquered peoples"; suggested by Hatzopoulos (2011).

However, Hatzopoulos (2020) – which is a more recent publication – is also cited among the scholars who support the Northwest Doric classification, and on page 77 he mentions the following:

His [Brixhe's] present views, to most of which I gladly adhere, are the following: the conquering Argead Macedonians, who spoke a North-Western Greek dialect, upon their descent from Mount Pindos down to the plains, met Achaean Greeks intermingled with non-Greek speakers.

I believe the above statement corresponds better to the "Northwest Doric" classification than to an independent one; despite the seeming implication of a substrate (Achaean Greek and non-Greek). But if anyone disagrees, it can be reinstated and rephrased per the aforementioned proposed summary.

References

Demetrios1993 (talk) 02:29, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Article not corresponding with the references

The whole article is not corresponding with the references. It's like living in parallel reality. The majority of references saying that was either a language related with Illyrian or Thracian, or with Doric and Aeolic. All sources saying that Macedonian were barbaric people (which actually means foreign speaking) and they spoke a language that was unintelligible to Greeks. I would like to change the first paragraph that is more objective

Ancient Macedonian, was the language of the ancient Macedonians. There is a debate within the scientific community about the origin of ancient Macedonian language and distinction should be made between the era before Alexander the Great and after, and also between the language that was used in every day life and the language that was used in administration. Regarding the language spoken in everyday life, before Alexander the Great, there are different opinions raging from a barbarian language that was more closely related to Thracian and Illyrian, to an Aeolic or Dorian Greek dialect. After the conquests of Alexander the Great, Attic Greek was adopted and Macedonian gradually fell out. Regarding the language used in court, Perdiccas II of Macedon(r. c. 448 BC to c. 413 BC) made Attic Greek the language used for administration purposes that later became the basis of Koine Greek, the lingua franca of the Hellenistic period.HelenHIL (talk) 11:05, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

@HelenHIL: Could you please point out which of the sources given in the section "Classificaion" (currently note 10–24) are claiming that the language was related to Illyrian or Thracian, and which (according to you: all?) are claiming that their language was unintelligible to Greeks. T*U (talk) 11:39, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

note [4 ]https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xnQABAAAQBAJ&pg=PP31&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false page 93

note [12] https://archive.org/details/AncientMacedonia/page/n121/mode/2up?view=theater p94

note [17] https://archive.org/details/EncyclopediaOfIndoEuropeanCulture/page/n389/mode/2up p361

also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsqyzECK7xs 6:11 to 6:45 and 15:25 to 16:42

https://digital.nls.uk/encyclopaedia-britannica/archive/193470564#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=427&xywh=3087%2C70%2C2009%2C1489 from line 11 (this edition is before politics got involved) HelenHIL (talk) 13:05, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Let's see here. The first source makes no claim regarding language, the second source (Engels, with which I am very familiar) does not support the edits propsed by HelenHIL (in fact it goes against them suggesting that the majority of ancient Macedonian vocabulary is of Greek origin), the third source is a generalist tertiary source, the fourth is a youtube video, and the fifth is a very old version of Encyclopedia Britannica. In general, the edits proposed by HelenHIL reflect an outdated perspective from the early to mid-20th century, whereas in modern scholarship, particularly 21st century scholarship, the consensus seems to have moved in the direction that AM was either a NW Greek dialect or a sibling language to Greek (e.g. Joseph 2001, Engels 2010, J. Méndez Dosuna 2012, Matzinger 2016, Crespo 2017, Brixhe 2018, Hatzopoulos 2020). Khirurg (talk) 14:32, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Khirurg is at the moment in investigation for being sockmaster with sockpuppet demetrius1993. Please have this in mind. HelenHIL (talk) 14:54, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Please be aware the HelenHiL is currently blocked due to personal attacks to fellow wikipedians and 3rr. If this behavioural pattern of incivility persists, I will report as well. We are here to build an encyclopedia, not demonstrate our social and personal issues. Best Othon I (talk) 07:29, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

@HelenHIL: So the majority of references saying that was either a language related with Illyrian or Thracian, or with Doric and Aeolic boils down to some sources mentioning that there are different theories, and All sources saying that [...] they spoke a language that was unintelligible to Greek turns out to be not only inaccurate, but completely false. How about learning how wiki works before wasting everybody's time? --T*U (talk) 14:49, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

1) I made a mistake on my first link. The correct one is this https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=614pd07OtfQC&pg=PA94&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false p92-96.

2) Thank you for acknowledging that the sources say that there are different theories and the article must reflect these opinions.

3) Khirurg, Othon and Demetrios1993 are Greek and as you understand their position cannot be objective so please have this in mind. There is fighting between Greece and North Macedonia about the ancient Macedonian history which in reality both of them have little to claim. To understand check this video from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsqyzECK7xs 12:43 to 16:42. It's a lecture from the Great Courses company which is very reputable and can be used as reference.

4)"All sources saying that [...] they spoke a language that was unintelligible to Greek turns out to be not only inaccurate, but completely false" I think there is a misinterpretation here. I gave you 3 links with articles that say that their language could have been Illyrian or Thracian. That all sources say that Macedonian was unintelligible doesn't apply to these references. I thought this was common knowledge but it seems it's not. Let me illustrate:

a) Curtius Rufus VI 11.4 says that a Macedonian general named Bolon was accusing Philotas that although born Macedonian was was not ashamed to speak to his soldiers through an interpreter.

https://archive.org/details/quintuscurtius0002unse/page/98/mode/2up

b) Alexander the Great had a drunken brawl with one of his officers Clitus and because he didn't want the Greeks to understand spoke in Macedonian language. (I cannot find the original source but check the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsqyzECK7xs from 6:20. I will find the original source and post it later)

There are other sources also mentioning Macedonian language

5)There are many instances where Macedonians are mentioned or implied as non Greeks. Herodotus says that Thessalians were the first Greeks to be invaded by Persians (Thessaly is after Macedonia)

Herodotus VII 130

https://archive.org/details/herodotus0000hero_z4o0/page/432/mode/2up

Isocrates says that Phillip's ancestors were Greeks that left Greece and became kings in Macedonia because they know that Greeks are not accustomed to submit to the rule of one man

Isocrates To Phillip

107-108

https://archive.org/details/isocrates0001isoc/page/310/mode/2up

6) Did you know that Macedonians with the exception of the Royal family were not allowed to compete in the Olympics before the era of Alexander the Great?

I think is very appropriate to revert to this article https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ancient_Macedonian_language&oldid=754534948 . Was very objective. HelenHIL (talk) 17:09, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

@HelenHIL: The article is fine. The references you tried to include (diff) were actually removed on 10 May 2021 by User:Kwamikagami (diff1, diff2, diff3); per WP:OLDSOURCES. Furthermore, Sakellariou (1983) was removed some weeks ago due to lack of WP:Verifiability, and even if it was an accurate summary of his view, it would fall under WP:OLDSOURCES as well; as explained in the previous thread. In the past, there were indeed a number of hypotheses regarding the classification of Ancient Macedonian, but nowadays, it is viewed either as a dialect of Ancient Greek, or a distinct sister language of Greek. Furthermore, we also have to adhere to WP:UNDUE, since most of the modern scholars who are cited, support the former view. Last, just because you initiated an SPI, it doesn't give you the right to go around different articles and cast the allegation that i am a sockpuppet; the CU will prove that i have nothing to do with Khirurg. Demetrios1993 (talk) 15:15, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

User:HelenHIL asked that I take a look over here, probably since I've advocated for the non-Greek nature of Ancient Macedonian in previous discussions. Many of you will remember that we worked very hard a couple of years ago to come to the consensus wording of "a divergent Greek dialect or a closely-related Hellenic language" (that's not the exact wording in the article right now, but the semantics are the same). I see no reason to change that wording since HelenHIL's references are not the most recent and since many scholars do, indeed, include Ancient Macedonian as an Ancient Greek dialect and almost all those that don't still include it clearly in Hellenic. The arguments have narrowed down to the classic debate within linguistics as a whole (that is unresolvable because there are no clear lines, only gray areas), "Are these speech forms two languages or divergent dialects of one language?" I see no reason to change the consensus wording as it currently exists in the article. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 01:08, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Hellenic or Doric

An anon IP is edit warring over whether Ancient Macedonian was "Hellenic (?)" or "Doric (with no question)". The scholarly literature seems pretty clear and doesn't appear to have changed since the last time we argued this. Unless the anon IP who is edit warring has a more up-to-date reference, the text should remain what the consensus has been for the last several years. --Taivo (talk) 14:39, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

AFAIK the latest paper on the dialect opinion (Crespo 2012), suggests an independend Macedonian dialect. That is to say non Doric. Fkitselis (talk) 19:50, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Although the Macedonians claimed to be Doric during the reign of Philip, their language is closer related to Ionian. Rancid Boar (talk) 01:22, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

There's no such thing as Paleo-Balkan[ic]

@Khirurg Take a look into this article: Paleo-Balkanic languages. And where is it discussed that Ancient Macedonian has been influenced by Illyrian and Thracian "anyways"? AlexBachmann (talk) 23:30, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

It's just a catch-all geographic term. There are no ancestral relationships between these languages, they are just grouped together in this fashion for convenience. The presence of Illyrian and Thracian anthroponyms is already mentioned in the article btw. Khirurg (talk) 23:41, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

So it shouldn't be included because it's a catch-all geographic term even though Brixhe 2017, Philipp Strazny 2013 and Olga M. Tomic 2006 (and those are just from the article) described it so? I don't think these scholars use this term for convenience.

Any attempts to exclude a reliable source will fail. AlexBachmann (talk) 23:46, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

What worries me more: the language of the Macedonians is indeed briefly mentioned in p. 730 of The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. 6. But there is no mention of a Thracian-Illyrian influence. Can you provide us with a relevant quote? –Austronesier (talk) 23:48, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Found another source: [1] Look at the bottom [35] AlexBachmann (talk) 23:54, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

That's not viewable online, but first of all, the author, Engels, is not a linguist, and second, all I see in my copy is Most of the vocabulary seems to be regular Greek, but other words show separate, non-Greek roots and are borrowed from common Indo-European roots, or from Thracian and Illyrian. In other words, something completely different from what you are claiming. A few borrowings is not "influence", all languages borrow from neighboring languages. Btw, ctrl+F searches on google witg "Macedonian influenced by Illyrian" is not how to build a neutral encyclopedia, but rather a textbook case of POV editing. Khirurg (talk) 02:26, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

It is viewable online for me. Again, any attempts to exclude a RS will fail. The author of the book sources his claim with various sources, including “The language of the Macedonians, The Cambridge Ancient History”. We’re trying to find a convenient quote and if you continue describing a statement supported by the Cambridge as POV, we’ll see where that goes. We’ve been already been through this. AlexBachmann (talk) 11:42, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I’m hearing no objection from Austronesier. AlexBachmann (talk) 11:44, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I am still waiting the quote from the Cambridge source. As of now, I consider it {{failed verification}}. –Austronesier (talk) 12:52, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

To be more specific: in the copy of The Ancient Cambridge History that is available to me, there is a chapter by J.R.Ellis entitled "Macedon and north-west Greece" (pp. 723–759). Indeed, the language of the Macedonians is mentioned on p. 730 in footnote 4 (and this is fact the only mention in the whole chapter): The evidence for the language of the Macedonians has been reviewed and discussed recently by Kalleris 1954,1976(0 54) and Hammond and Griffith 1979(0 50)43—54, both contending that it was a dialect of Greek, a view now opposed by Badian 1982(0 12). The increasing volume of surviving public and private inscriptions makes it quite clear that there was no written language but Greek. There may be room for argument over spoken forms, or at least over local survivals of earlier occupancy, but it is hard to imagine what kind of authority might sustain that. There is no evidence for a different 'Macedonian' language that cannot be as easily explained in terms of dialect or accent. Which is very much at odds with the text that is claimed to be supported by this source in these edits[6][7]. –Austronesier (talk) 21:16, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Have you checked the source that I've provided yet? It's above. AlexBachmann (talk) 22:23, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I have. I won't insists about my impression of having been played for a fool with "Vol. 6, p. 730" when it's now "Vol. 3.1, pp. 834–849". Let's move on. But alas, R.A. Crossland's chapter "Linguistic Problems of the Balkan Area in Late Prehistoric and Early Classical Periods" (section: "The language of the Macedonians") does not talk about Thracian and Illyrian influences in Macedonian, either. Here's a courtesy link to the chapter. He only writes "The change puts Macedonian closer to Illyrian and Thracian in phonology than to Greek, but does not mean that Macedonian was a dialect of either language" when talking about the well-known issue of the continuation of IE voiced aspirates as plain voiced stops rather than as voiceless aspirates. But he does not ascribe this to "Thracian and Illyrian influences". –Austronesier (talk) 09:07, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

As for "Paleo-Balkanic languages", we have to keep in mind that different authors my refer to different things. In the past, it was mostly used as a catch-all catergory for all ancient IE languages that are not Greek nor belong to one the established major branches, and also to include the unattested ancestor of Albanian. Nowadays, some IE-ists use for a well-defined subgroup that includes Albanian (or Albanian–Messapic), Graeco-Phrygian and probably some other fragmentarily attested ancient IE languages of the Balkan area. There is general consensus that Macedonian was Greek-affiliated, the major difference being about whether the distance between Macedonian and attested ancient Greek varieties still lies in the range of a dialect or beyond. (In many ways a moot discussion, as mentioned by TaivoLinguist in an earlier discussion.) So yes, Macedonian would be somehow nested in Graeco-Phrygian and thus also on a higher level in "Paleo-Balkanic". But I do not agree with throwing in "Paleo-Balkanic" as a defining property of Macedonian in the lede without scrutinizing what the sources actually want to say. –Austronesier (talk) 09:20, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Since I was mentioned here, I'll throw in my two cents. Austronesier is quite right and I agree with him on this issue. Random, almost out-of-context, and vague quotes that happen to include the words "Illyrian" etc. in them are not proof or even support for some connection between Ancient Macedonian and Illyrian. I also find it humorous that "Cambridge" is cited as a source as if a university press has some academic authority separate from the writers who actually create the content. "Cambridge" Press' sole involvement in academic content is whether or not it will make them money or not. In a much more reliable linguistic source for Macedonian (not just a source on general "ancient history"), and also from that seemingly ultimate authority "Cambridge", is Roger D. Woodward's section of the Introduction to The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages (2004) that is specifically dedicated to "Macedonian" (pp. 12-14). In that section is not one single, solitary reference to "Illyrian" or "Thracian" other than to say that "Macedonian" was sandwiched between them. Woodward mentions (quoting Katičić 1976) that there are three kinds of words in the extant Macedonian vocabulary: 1) Words that are borrowed from Greek, 2) words that have no Greek counterparts and are unknown in origin, and 3) words that are cognate to Greek words, but not borrowed from Greek. That third group is described as "[words that] have evolved historically from words occurring in a common parent language, either Proto-Indo-European or, alternatively, some later, intermediate Balkan Indo-European language" (pg 14). This is hardly justification for talking about some "Paleo-Balkanic" entity. Including Macedonian in that supposed thing is a violation of both WP:OR and WP:UNDUE based on what "Cambridge" has to say about it in a volume specifically on ancient languages. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 14:21, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Obviously a Greek dialect was used and presumably also spoken in Macedonia in the classical period, but many of the peculiar words cited as Macedonian do not look like Greek dialect words at all, even when they look like cognates of Greek words, so it's more likely (or it appears) that we're looking at two different languages: Macedonian Greek and a Balkan IE language which we might as well call "Macedonian", though the exact nature of its affiliation with Greek, Phrygian and other Balkan IE languages is undetermined. It's possible that, especially by the classical period, this other language was more like an adstrate or even substrate and in the process of disappearing (or perhaps a formerly separate non-Greek IE language that became progressively Grecified), but it cannot be identified with any other known Balkan IE language either. (The little material that exists makes me suspect it might not even belong to Graeco-Phrygian.) Ultimately, our ability to draw a firm conclusion here is impeded by the limited attestation of both the source of the peculiar Macedonian words and of Balkan IE languages in general, and by the possibly strong interference between the apparent Balkan IE language and the local Greek dialect.

However, this does not mean that the issue is moot: we're talking about traces of a language here that, just like Thracian, or Phrygian for that matter, cannot remotely be construed as a Greek dialect, even if it might be relatively closely related to Greek. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:46, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

(For the fun of occasionally violating WP:NOTFORUM:) What about the apparent instance of Grassmann's law in κεβαλή then? This indicates that φ > β must have occurred at a pretty late stage. –Austronesier (talk) 14:07, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Distortion of sources

Just saw this [8] outrageously distorting edit.

For the record: The LinguistList tree shows a structure that looks like this [9]:

Hellenic
|_ Greek
|_ Macedonian

further expanded to:

Hellenic
|_ Greek
   |_ Greek, Ancient
   |_ Mycenean Greek
   |_ Attic
   |_ Doric
|_ Macedonian
   |_ Ancient Macedonian

So, the only correct way to describe this is indeed: "Hellenic" as a subfamily uniting Macedonian and "Greek proper". "Macedonian and the other Greek dialects" is a patent falsification of what this tree means.

The same is true for the wording of the B. Joseph quote that's referenced in the same context: "Macedonian and Greek would be the two subbranches of a group within Indo-European which could more properly be called Hellenic." [10] The sole point of this statement is to describe a model where XMK was not "another Greek dialect". Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:52, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

blah blah blah. you are distorting the sources mr hero. it's called Hellenic. for a reason. deal with it. --150.140.231.61 (talk) 01:33, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

What's the difference between Hellenic and Greek??? They mean the same thing. Greek Macedon (talk) 16:04, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

In common usage, maybe, but in linguistics “Hellenic” refers to the surmised ancestral family to which the “Greek” dialects belong. Compare the use of “Germanic” (the family that includes English, e.g.) to that of “German” (the language of modern Germany, Austria &c.), likewise “Italic” vs “Italian”, “Iranian” vs “Persian”, “Turkic“ vs “Turkish”, and so on.—Odysseus1479 23:17, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Hellenic was only recently used to describe Greek dialects, as in the past they were referred to as "Greek dialects" and Hellenic was a word used to describe Greek culture and influence. Make no mistake, Hellenic refers to Greek alone, the two are synonymous in linguistics and the use of "Hellenic" as opposed to Greek is part of this protracted campaign to slowly separate Macedonian history from Greek history.

"Germanic" refers to the collection of several, separate languages, and within the "German" language you have several dialects "Frisian, Luxembourgish" etc. What is interesting is, some German speakers of certain dialects within the German language are unintelligible to one another, and unintelligible to speakers of standard German, yet they are all the same language.

Even more interesting was it is believed by most linguistic scholars, Macedonian was a vulgar form of Doric Greek and was somewhat intelligible by speakers of other Greek dialects. Ed 01:12, 9 September 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chronograph 1985 (talk • contribs)