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Ancient Macedonian language

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This article is about the Ancient Macedonian language. For the modern Slavic language, see Macedonian language.

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The Ancient Macedonian language was the tongue of the Ancient Macedonians. It was spoken in Macedon during the 1st millennium BC, and is believed to have survived until early in the Common Era, possibly as late as the 5th century AD. It is believed to have been spoken predominantly in the inland regions away from the coast. It is as yet undetermined whether the language was a separate yet sibling language which was most closely related to Greek, a dialect of Greek or an independent Indo-European language not especially close to Greek.

Our knowledge of the language is very limited because there are no surviving texts that are indisputably written in the language, though a body of authentic Macedonian words has been assembled from ancient sources, mainly from coin inscriptions, and from the 5th century lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria, amounting to about 700 words and proper names. Most of these are confidently identifiable as Greek, but some of them are not easily reconciled with standard Greek phonology.

The Pella katadesmos, a Doric Greek text found in Pella in 1986, dated to between the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, has been forwarded as an argument that Doric Greek was spoken by the general populace of Macedon in that time. Others contend that Doric Greek was a second language or a second dialect spoken in ancient Macedon.

Properties

Only little about the language can be said from the few words that survive. A notable sound-law is that PIE voiced aspirates appear as voiced stops, written Template:Polytonic, Template:Polytonic, Template:Polytonic in contrast to all known Greek dialects, which have unvoiced them to Template:Polytonic, Template:Polytonic, Template:Polytonic.

The same treatment is known from other Paleo-Balkan languages, e.g. Phrygian bekos ('bread'), Illyrian bagaron ('warm'), but Attic Template:Polytonic phōgō ('roast'), all from PIE *bheh3g-. Since these languages are all known via the Greek alphabet, which has no signs for voiced aspirates, it is unclear whether de-aspiration had really taken place, or whether β, γ, δ were just picked as the closest matches to express voiced aspirates.

If Template:Polytonic gotán ('pig') is related to *gwou ('cattle'), this would indicate that the labiovelars were either intact, or merged with the velars, unlike the usual Greek treatment (Attic Template:Polytonic boûs). Such deviations, however, are not unknown in Greek dialects; compare Doric (Spartan) Template:Polytonic glep- for common Greek Template:Polytonic blep-, as well as Doric Template:Polytonic gláchōn and Ionic Template:Polytonic glēchōn for common Greek Template:Polytonic blēchōn (Albrecht von Blumenthal 1930:21).

A number of examples suggest that voiced velar stops were devoiced, especially word-initially: Template:Polytonic kánadoi, 'jaws' (<PIE *genu-); Template:Polytonic kómbous, 'molars' (<PIE *gombh-); within words: Template:Polytonic arkón (Attic Template:Polytonic argós); the Macedonian toponym Akesamenai, from the Pierian name Akesamenos (if Akesa- is cognate to Greek agassomai, agamai, "to astonish"; cf. the Thracian name Agassamenos).

In Aristophanes' The Birds, the form Template:Polytonic keblēpyris ('red-cap bird') is found, showing a Macedonian-style voiced stop in place of a standard Greek unvoiced aspirate: Template:Polytonic(Template:Polytonic)Template:Polytonic keb(a)lē versus Template:Polytonic kephalē ('head').

Classification

Due to the fragmentary attestation widely diverging interpretations are possible. The suggested historical interpretations of Macedonian include (Mallory and Adams (1997), p. 361):

  • a Greek dialect mixed with Illyrian languages or the Thracian language, suggested by Kretschmer (1896) and E. Schwyzer (1959)
  • a Greek dialect with a non-Indo-European substratal influence, suggested by M .Sakellariou (1983)
  • an Illyrian dialect mixed with Greek (suggested by K. O. Müller (1825) and by G. Bonfante 1987)
  • an independent Indo-European language close to Greek, Thracian and Phrygian languages, suggested by I. I. Russu (1938) and A. Meillet (1965)

The discussion is closely related to the reconstruction of the Proto-Greek language.

Graeco-Macedonian Group

Some linguists consider that the Macedonian tongue was a sibling language to all the Ancient Greek dialects, and not simply a Greek dialect. If this view is correct, then Macedonian and Greek would be the two subbranches of a group within Indo-European, forming a Graeco-Macedonian group, sometimes also referred to as Hellenic group. This terminology may lead to misunderstandings, since the "Hellenic branch of Indo-European" is also used synonymously with the Greek branch (which contains all ancient and modern Greek dialects) in a narrower sense ( Linguist List being a proponent of this theory.)

A number of the Macedonian words, particularly in Hesychius' lexicon, are disputed (i.e., some do not consider them actual Macedonian words) and some may have been corrupted in the transmission. Thus abroutes, may be read as abrouTemplate:Polytonices (αβρουϝες) , with tau (t) replacing a ]. If so, this word would perhaps be encompassable within a Greek dialect; however, others (notably, Antoine Meillet) see the dental as authentic and think that the word belongs to an Indo-European language different from Greek.

Ancient Greek dialect

Another school of thought maintains that Macedonian was a Greek dialect. Those who favour a purely Greek nature of Macedonian as a northern Greek dialect are numerous and include early scholars like Franz Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens (1843) and O. Hoffmann (1906). A recent proponent of this school was Professor Olivier Masson, who in his article on the ancient Macedonian language in the third edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (1996) tentatively suggested that Macedonian was related to North-Western Greek dialects:

In our view the Greek character of most names is obvious and it is difficult to think of a Hellenization due to wholesale borrowing The small minority of names which do not look Greek may be due to a substratum or adstatum influences (as elsewhere in Greece).Macedonian may then be seen as a Greek dialect, characterized by its marginal position and by local pronunciations. Yet in contrast with earlier views which made of it an Aeolic dialect we must by now think of a link with North-West Greek We must wait for new discoveries, but we may tentatively conclude that Macedonian is a dialect related to North-West Greek.

The slender evidence is open to different interpretations, and no definitive answer is yet possible to the question of whether ancient Macedonian was in fact a Greek dialect. It is plausible that Macedonian was not an ancient Greek dialect on a par with Attic or Ionic, hence the designation that is sometimes used, calling it a "deviant Greek dialect."

Independent Palaeo-Balkan language

Some linguists consider that the Macedonian tongue was not only a separate language, but that it pertained to a different Indo-European branch rather than to a Hellenic (or Graeco-Macedonian) branch, and they propose that it was not especially close to Greek. They reject the strong Greek correspondances found in Macedonian and prefer to treat it as an Indo-European language of the Balkans, located geographically between Illyrian in the west and Thracian in the east.

Some hypothesize that linguistically Macedonian was between Illyrian and Thracian, a kind of intermediary language linking the two. A Thraco-Illyrian language group is highly disputed due to a lack of strong evidence (see Thraco-Illyrian), and a Thracian-Illyrian-(ancient) Macedonian genetic continuum is very speculative, although a Sprachbund in the area is considered probable.

The ancient Macedonian lexical stock reveals some words that do not have cognates in Greek, but do have in other Indo-European languages. There are also some words that do not have cognates in any other language, and may be of pre-Indo-European origin.

Classical sources

See main article Ancient Macedonians.

There are some classical references that have led a number of scholars to believe that some ancient Greeks viewed the ancient Macedonians as a non-Hellenic tribe, though other scholars maintain that the Macedonians were a Hellenic tribe. Among the references that may indicate that Macedonian was a Greek dialect, there is the dialogue between an Athenian and a Macedonian in an extant fragment of the 5th century BC comedy 'Macedonians' by the Athenian poet Strattis, where the Macedonian speech is presented as a form of Greek.

Adoption of the Attic dialect

As southern Greek influence increased, Macedonians increasingly began to adopt the Attic dialect (in koine form) as their tongue, and over the centuries, Ancient Macedonian fell out of favor and became relegated to the remote inland areas. Eventually, Attic Greek supplanted it entirely, and Ancient Macedonian became extinct during the first few centuries of the Common Era. Exactly when its final traces disappeared is unknown and perhaps impossible to determine, since the tongue may at the end have survived only among a few individuals (compare the similar fate of the Gaulish language).

Sample glossary

See also

References

  • H. Ahrens De Graecae linguae dialectis, Goettingen, 1843.
  • Albrecht von Blumenthal, Hesychstudien, Stuttgart, 1930.
  • Edmonds, J.M. The Fragments of Attic Comedy, "Strattis, Passage 28". Leiden: Brill, 1957.
  • Fasmer, M. The Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language. Moscow, 1986.
  • S. Hornblower, A. Spawforth (Editors), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, revised 3rd ed., New York/London, Oxford University Press, 2003.
  • O. Hoffmann Die Makedonen. Ihre Sprache und ihr Volkstum, Goettingen 1906
  • Brian Joseph (1999), Ancient Greek in: J. Garry, C. Rubino, A. Faber, R. French (editors), Facts About the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages: Past and Present, New York/Dublin, H. W. Wilson Press, 2001
  • Katcic, Ancient Languages of the Balkans, The Hague, Mouton (1976).
  • J. P. Mallory, D. Q. Adams (edd.) Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture, 1997.
  • Olivier Masson, Sur la Notation Occasionnelle du Digamma Grec par d'Autres Consonnes et la Glose Macédonienne Abroutes, Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, t. XC, 1995, p. 231-239.
  • Neroznak, V. Paleo-Balkan languages, Moscow, 1978.
  • Pokorny, Julius, Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern, 1959.
  • Rhomiopoulou, Katerina. An Outline of Macedonian History and Art. Greek Ministry of Culture and Science, 1980.

Further reading

  • G. Babiniotis Ancient Macedonian: The Place of Macedonian among the Greek Dialects in : A. M. Tamis (ed.), Macedonian Hellenism, Melbourne 1990, pp. 241-250
  • C. Brixhe, A. Panayotou, Le Macédonien in: Langues indo-européennes, ed. Bader, Paris, 1994, 205–220.
  • J. Chadwick The Prehistory of the Greek Language, Cambridge 1963

External links

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