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| Ancient Macedonian | |
|---|---|
| Region | Macedon |
| Ethnicity | Ancient Macedonians |
| Era | 1st millennium BC |
Indo-European
| |
Early form | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | xmk |
| Glottolog | anci1249 |
Ancient Macedonian was the native language spoken by the ancient Macedonians during the 1st millennium BC. It was either an ancient Greek dialect part of Northwest Greek or Aeolic Greek, or a distinct Indo-European language, which was either closely related to Greek (i.e. a Hellenic language) or not. It gradually fell out of use during the 4th century BC, marginalized by the use of Attic Greek by the Macedonian aristocracy, the Ancient Greek dialect that became the basis of Koine Greek, the lingua franca of the Hellenistic period. [5] It became extinct during either the Hellenistic or Roman imperial period, and was entirely replaced by Koine Greek. [6]
While the bulk of surviving public and private inscriptions found in ancient Macedonia were written in Attic Greek (and later in Koine Greek), [7] [8] fragmentary documentation of a vernacular local Macedonian variety comes from onomastic evidence, ancient glossaries, and recent epigraphic discoveries in the Greek region of Macedonia, such as the Pella curse tablet. [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]
Ancient Macedonian is usually classified by scholars as a dialect of Northwest Doric Greek, and occasionally as an Aeolic Greek dialect or a distinct Paleo-Balkan Indo-European language, either closely related to Greek or not. Due to the fragmentary attestation of this dialect or language, various interpretations are possible. [1] [14] Suggested classifications of ancient Macedonian include: [15] [16] [1] [17]
Because of the fragmentary sources of Ancient Macedonian, only a little is understood about the special features of the language. A notable sound-law is that the voiced aspirates (/bʰ, dʰ, gʰ/) of Proto-Indo-European sometimes appear as voiced stops /b, d, g/, (written β, δ, γ), whereas they were generally unvoiced as /pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/ (φ, θ, χ) elsewhere in Ancient Greek. [42]
Macedonian shared with Thessalian, Elean, and Epirote, an "oddity" of cases where voiced stops (/bdg/, written ⟨β ð ɣ⟩) appear to correspond to Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirates, [45] /bʰdʰɡʰ/. In most Greek, the Proto-Indo-European aspirates were devoiced to voiceless aspirates /pʰtʰkʰ/, [46] written ⟨ɸ θ χ⟩ (though these would later become fricatives in Attic Koine around the first century AD [47] ). As with Macedonian, this phenomenon is sometimes attributed to non-Greek substrate and adstrate influence, [45] with some linguists attributing such an influence on Epirote to Illyrian. [48] [45] Filos, however, notes, that the attribution of ⟨β⟩, ⟨ð⟩ and ⟨ɣ⟩ for specifically voiced stops is not secure. [45] Hatzopoulos supports the hypothesis of a (North-)'Achaean' substratum extending as far north as the head of the Thermaic Gulf, which had a continuous relation, in prehistoric times, both in Thessaly and Macedonia, with the Northwest Greek-speaking populations living on the other side of the Pindus mountain range, and contacts became cohabitation when the Argead Macedonians completed their wandering from Orestis to Lower Macedonia in the 7th c. BC. According to this hypothesis, Hatzopoulos concludes that the Ancient Macedonian dialect of the historical period, attested in inscriptions such as Pella curse tablet, is a sort of koine resulting from the interaction and the influences of various elements, the most important of which are the North-Achaean substratum, the Northwest Greek idiom of the Argead Macedonians, and the Thracian and Phrygian adstrata. [49]
If γοτάνgotán ('pig') is related to the Proto-Hellenic noun *gʷous , and hence to the PIE noun *gʷṓws ('cattle'), this would indicate that the labiovelars were either intact, or merged with the velars, unlike the usual Greek treatment (Attic βοῦςboûs). Such deviations, however, are not unknown in Greek dialects; compare Laconian Doric (the dialect of Sparta) γλεπ-glep- for common Greek βλεπ-blep-, as well as Doric γλάχωνgláchōn and Ionic γλήχωνglēchōn for common Greek βλήχων blēchōn . [50]
A number of examples suggest that voiced velar stops were devoiced, especially word-initially: κάναδοιkánadoi, 'jaws' (< PIE *genu-); κόμβουςkómbous, 'molars' (< PIE *gombh-); within words: ἀρκόνarkón (Attic ἀργόςargós); 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 κεβλήπυριςkeblēpyris ('red head', the name of a bird, perhaps the goldfinch or redpoll) is found, [51] showing a Macedonian-style voiced stop in place of a standard Greek unvoiced aspirate: κεβ(α)λήkeb(a)lē versus κεφαλήkephalē ('head'). Emilio Crespo, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Madrid, wrote that "the voicing of voiceless stops and the development of aspirates into voiced fricatives turns out to be the outcome of an internal development of Macedonian as a dialect of Greek" without excluding "the presence of interference from other languages or of any linguistic substrate or adstrate", as also argued by M. Hatzopoulos. [52]
A number of the Macedonian words, particularly in Hesychius of Alexandria's 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. [53] If so, this word would perhaps be encompassable within a Greek dialect; however, others (e.g. A. Meillet) see the dental as authentic and think that this specific word would perhaps belong to an Indo-European language different from Greek.[ citation needed ]
A. Panayotou summarizes some features generally identified through ancient texts and epigraphy: [54]
Ancient Macedonian morphology is shared with ancient Epirus, including some of the oldest inscriptions from Dodona. [56] The morphology of the first declension nouns with an -ας ending is also shared with Thessalian (e.g. Epitaph for Pyrrhiadas, Kierion [57] ).
M. Hatzopoulos and Johannes Engels summarize the Macedonian anthroponymy (that is names borne by people from Macedonia before the expansion beyond the Axios or people undoubtedly hailing from this area after the expansion) as follows: [58] [59]
Common in the creation of ethnics is the use of -έστης, -εστός especially when derived from sigmatic nouns (ὄρος > Ὀρέστης but also Δῖον > Διασταί). [54]
Per Engels, the above material supports that Macedonian anthroponymy was predominantly Greek in character. [59]
The toponyms of Macedonia proper are generally Greek, though some of them show a particular phonology and a few others are non-Greek.
The Macedonian calendar's origins go back to Greek prehistory. The names of the Macedonian months, just like most of the names of Greek months, are derived from feasts and related celebrations in honor of the Greek gods. [60] Most of them combine a Macedonian dialectal form with a clear Greek etymology (e.g Δῐός from Zeus; Περίτιος from Heracles Peritas ("Guardian") ; Ξανδικός/Ξανθικός from Xanthos, "the blond" (probably a reference to Heracles); Άρτεμίσιος from Artemis etc.) with the possible exception of one, which is attested in other Greek calendars as well. [60] According to Martin P. Nilsson, the Macedonian calendar is formed like a regular Greek one and the names of the months attest the Greek nationality of the Macedonians. [60]
Macedonian onomastics: the earliest epigraphical documents attesting substantial numbers of Macedonian proper names are the second Athenian alliance decree with Perdiccas II (~417–413 BC), the decree of Kalindoia (~335–300 BC) and seven curse tablets of the 4th century BC bearing mostly names. [61] [62]
About 99% of the roughly 6,300 inscriptions discovered by archaeologists within the confines of ancient Macedonia were written in the Greek language, using the Greek alphabet. [64] The legends in all currently discovered coins also in Greek. [64] The Pella curse tablet, a text written in a distinct Doric Greek dialect, found in 1986 and dated to between mid to early 4th century BC, has been forwarded as an argument that ancient Macedonian was a dialect of North-Western Greek, part of the Doric dialect group. [65] [9]
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A body of idiomatic words has been assembled from ancient sources, mainly from coin inscriptions, and from the 5th century lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria, amounting to about 150 words and 200 proper names, though the number of considered words sometimes differs from scholar to scholar. The majority of these words can be confidently assigned to Greek albeit some words would appear to reflect a dialectal form of Greek. There are, however, a number of words that are not easily identifiable as Greek and reveal, for example, voiced stops where Greek shows voiceless aspirates. [14]
⟨†⟩ marked words which have been corrupted.
A number of Hesychius words are listed orphan; some of them have been proposed as Macedonian [88]
Among the references that have been discussed as possibly bearing some witness to the linguistic situation in Macedonia, there is a sentence from a fragmentary dialogue, apparently between an Athenian and a Macedonian, in an extant fragment of the 5th century BC comedy 'Macedonians' by the Athenian poet Strattis (fr. 28), where a stranger is portrayed as speaking in a rural Greek dialect. His language contains expressions such as ὕμμες ὡττικοί for ὑμεὶς ἀττικοί "you Athenians", ὕμμες being also attested in Homer, Sappho (Lesbian) and Theocritus (Doric), while ὡττικοί appears only in "funny country bumpkin" contexts of Attic comedy. [89]
Another text that has been quoted as evidence is a passage from Livy (lived 59 BC-14 AD) in his Ab urbe condita (31.29). Describing political negotiations between Macedonians and Aetolians in the late 3rd century BC, Livy has a Macedonian ambassador argue that Aetolians, Acarnanians and Macedonians were "men of the same language". [90] This has been interpreted as referring to a shared North-West Greek speech (as opposed to Attic Koiné). [91] In another passage, Livy states that an announcement was translated from Latin to Greek for Macedonians to understand. [92]
Quintus Curtius Rufus, Philotas's trial [93] and the statement that the Greek-speaking Branchidae had common language with the Macedonians. [94]
Over time, "Macedonian" (μακεδονικός), when referring to language (and related expressions such as μακεδονίζειν; to speak in the Macedonian fashion) acquired the meaning of Koine Greek. [95]
As a consequence of the Macedonians' role in the formation of the Koine, Macedonian contributed considerable elements, unsurprisingly including some military terminology (διμοιρίτης, ταξίαρχος, ὑπασπισταί, etc.). Among the many contributions were the general use of the first declension grammar for male and female nouns with an -as ending, attested in the genitive of Macedonian coinage from the early 4th century BC of Amyntas III (ΑΜΥΝΤΑ in the genitive; the Attic form that fell into disuse would be ΑΜΥΝΤΟΥ). There were changes in verb conjugation such as in the Imperative δέξα attested in Macedonian sling stones found in Asiatic battlefields, that became adopted in place of the Attic forms. Koine Greek established a spirantisation of beta, gamma and delta, which has been attributed to the Macedonian influence. [96]
Family: Ancient Greek is generally taken to be the only representative (though note the existence of different dialects) of the Greek or Hellenic branch of Indo-European. There is some dispute as to whether Ancient Macedonian (the native language of Philip and Alexander), if it has any special affinity to Greek at all, is a dialect within Greek (...) or a sibling language to all of the known Ancient Greek dialects. If the latter view is correct, then Macedonian and Greek would be the two subbranches of a group within Indo-European which could more properly be called Hellenic. Related Languages: As noted above, Ancient Macedonian might be the language most closely related to Greek, perhaps even a dialect of Greek. The slender evidence is open to different interpretations, so that no definitive answer is really possible; but most likely, Ancient Macedonian was not simply an Ancient Greek dialect on a par with Attic or Aeolic (...).
One can only speculate that that [Ancient Macedonian] dialect declined with the rise in use of standard koinē Greek. The main language of formal discourse and official communication became Greek by the fourth century [BC]. Whether the dialect(s) were eventually replaced by standard Greek, or were preserved as part of a two–tiered system of speech—one for official use, the other idiomatic for traditional ceremonies, rituals, or rough soldiers' talk—is problematic and requires more evidence and further study.
However, with respect to the discussion in this chapter it seems to be quite clear that (a) ancient Macedonian at some date during the Hellenistic or Roman imperial era was completely replaced by koine Greek and died out, and (b) that ancient Macedonian has no relationship with modern Macedonian which together with Bulgarian belongs to the eastern branch of southern Slavonic languages.
Many surviving public and private inscriptions indicate that in the Macedonian kingdom there was no dominant written language but standard Attic and later on koine Greek.
On all levels (phonological, grammatical and lexical) common structural features of Macedonian and Doric lead us to classify Macedonian within the Doric, especially the Northwestern group of Doric dialects.
Nowadays, ancient Macedonian is treated as one of the dialects of Greek, originally of Aeolic provenance, with strong influences from the north-western dialects as well as from the non-Greek languages of the northern Balkans. The inscription from Pella published by Dubois in 1995, considered to be the first native epigraphic monument of Macedonian, seems to confirm such an assumption (cf. the use of characteristic Dorisms, e.g. the preservation of the long /a:/, οποκα 'as soon as' with an optative and τελος in the meaning of γάμος 'marriage'). Unfortunately, owing to the lack of other epigraphical or literary evidence, we are left with glosses as our chief testimony of the vernacular speech of the region. This group of c. 150 lexemes comprises forms which are obviously Greek (of Attic origin), Macedonian hapax legomena, and forms which 'have Greek cognates, but differ from them in their phonemic shape to an extent which goes far beyond the limits of dialectal variation in ancient Greek' (Katičić (1976) 111). It seems, however, that many of these Macedonian features can be explained also within the frames of Greek dialectology; in particular, there are interesting links between Macedonian and Thessalian vocabulary (García Ramón (2004) 236 n. 2, 242, 253; Sowa (2006) 118).
Such an assumption would certainly agree with certain current views on the status of Ancient Macedonian, according to which it should be interpreted as a Greek dialect of Northwest provenance which absorbed non-Greek elements (Brixhe/Panayotou 1994, 205–220), or perhaps of an Aeolic provenance, with strong influences from the northwestern dialectal area as well as from the non-Greek languages of the Northern Balkans (e.g. Peters 2000, 383) – an assumption which seems to be supported by the analysis of the material yielded by ancient literary sources. Cf. also the claims of classical historians such as Hammond, that "the Macedonians from Lower Macedonian spoke an Aeolic dialect, those from Upper Macedonia a "north-western" Greek dialect" (Hammond 1994, 131–134).
In recent scholarship, however, especially in dialectology of the Ancient Greek, the Macedonian has been interpreted as one of the dialects of Greek (a sort of para-Greek), originally of an Aeolic provenance, with strong influences from the north-western dialectal area as well as from the non-Greek languages of the Northern Balkans. It seems also possible that the inhabitants of the Lower Macedonia spoke an Aeolic dialect, and those from Upper Macedonia a north-western Greek dialect. The inscription from Pella published in 1995, which is the single epichoric monument of Macedonian, seems to verify positively such an assumption, cf. the use of characteristic Dorisms, along with some 'local' features.
Much more faithful is the inference by A. Meillett, who says that Greek is not closer to ancient Macedonian than to any other Indo-European language. Pokomy is right when in classifying the IE languages he places ancient Macedonian together with Phrygian, Thracian and Dacian. A paleo-Balkanic linguistic league, similar to the contemporary one, very likely existed in ancient times too.
The morphonological analysis of this very limited linguistic material has led to the conclusion that the language of the ancient Macedonians was different from the Ancient Greek dialects.
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