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Ancient Macedonian language

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This article is about the language used in antiquity. For the modern, unrelated, Slavic language, see Macedonian language and for its ancestor, see Old Church Slavonic.

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 disappeared some time before the start of the Common Era. 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.

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 text written in a distinct Doric Greek idiom, found in Pella in 1986, dated to between the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, has been forwarded as an argument that the ancient Macedonian language was a dialect of North-Western Greek (O. Masson). Others contend that Doric Greek was a second or third dialect spoken in ancient Macedon.

The Pella katadesmos: from [Prof. Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, Bryn Mawr College]
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The Pella katadesmos: from [Prof. Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, Bryn Mawr College]

Contents

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 β, γ, δ in contrast to all known Greek dialects, which have unvoiced them to φ, χ, θ.

The same treatment is known from other Paleo-Balkan languages, e.g. Phrygian bekos ('bread'), Illyrian bagaron ('warm'), but Attic φώγω 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, δ, γ were just picked as the closest matches to express voiced aspirates.

If γοτάν 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 βοῦς boûs). Such deviations, however, are not unknown in Greek dialects; compare Doric (Spartan) γλεπ- glep- for common Greek βλεπ- blep-, as well as Doric γλάχων gláchōn and Ionic γλήχων glēchōn for common Greek βλήχων blēchōn.Albrecht von Blumenthal, Hesychstudien, Stuttgart, 1930, 21.

A number of examples suggest that voiced velar stops were devoiced, especially word-initially: κάναδοι kánadoi, 'jaws' (*genu-); κόμβους kómbous, 'molars' (*gombh-); within words: ἀρκόν arkón (Attic ἀργός 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 κεβλήπυρις keblēpyris ('red-cap bird') is [found], showing a Macedonian-style voiced stop in place of a standard Greek unvoiced aspirate: κεβ(α)λή keb(a)lē versus κεφαλή kephalē ('head').

Classification

Due to the fragmentary attestation widely diverging interpretations are possible. The suggested historical interpretations of Macedonian include:J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams (eds.), Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture, 1997, 361., O. Masson, in: S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (eds), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, revised 3rd ed., New York/London, Oxford University Press, 2003, 905-6., H. Ahrens, De Graecae linguae dialectis, Göttingen, 1843; O. Hoffmann, Die Makedonen. Ihre Sprache und ihr Volkstum, Göttingen 1906., N.G.L. Hammond, The Macedonian State. Origins, Institutions and History, Oxford, 1989. 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 abrouwes (αβρουϝες), with tau (Τ) replacing a digamma ({{polytonic.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, 90 (1995) 231-239. 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 Ahrens and Hoffmann. H. Ahrens, De Graecae linguae dialectis, Göttingen, 1843; O. Hoffmann, Die Makedonen. Ihre Sprache und ihr Volkstum, Göttingen 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 tentatively suggested that Macedonian was related to North-Western Greek dialects:O. Masson, in: S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (eds), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, revised 3rd ed., New York/London, Oxford University Press, 2003, 905-6.
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.
As to Macedonian β, δ, γ = Greek φ, θ, χ, Claude BrixheClaude Brixhe, "Un «nouveau» champ de la dialectologie grecque: le macédonien", in: A. C. Cassio (ed.), Katà diálekton. Atti del III Colloquio Internazionale di Dialettologia Greca (A.I.O.N., XIX), Napoli 1996, 35-71. suggests that it is a later development: The letters do not designate voiced stops, i.e. [b, d, g], but voiced fricatives, i.e. [β, δ, γ], due to a devoicing of the voiceless fricatives [φ, θ, x] (= Classical Attic [ph, th, kh]).

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.

Somee.g. E. Schwyzer, Griechische Grammatik, Munich 1939, vol. 1, 69-71. 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. Recently, A. Garrett (1999) has surmised that Macedonian may at an early stage have been part of a dialect continuum which spanned the ancestor dialects of all south-western Indo-European languages (including Greek), but that it then remained peripheral to later areal processes of convergence which produced Greek proper. He argues that under this perspective sound-change isoglosses such as the deaspiration of voiced stops may be of limited diagnostic value, while ultimately the question of whether Macedonian belongs or does not belong to a genetic union with Greek is moot.Andrew Garrett (1999): "A new model of Indo-European subgrouping and dispersal". In: Chang, S. S, Liaw, L. and Ruppenhofer, J, Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, February 12-15, Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society, 146-56, 1999. [Online paper (PDF)]

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. The late historian Quintus Curtius suggests that the Macedonian language was not intelligble to the average speaking person (Hist. Alex. 6.11.4): "He (sc. Philotas) found the country people of Phrygia and Paphlagonia ridiculous, and he was not ashamed, though born in Macedonia, to have an interpreter with him when listening to people speaking his own language." However, this testimony is not conclusive.E. Kapetanopoulos, "Alexander’s patrius sermo in the Philotas affair", The ancient world 30 (1999) 117-128.

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

Further reading

External links

 

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