Hellenic languages

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Hellenic
Greek
Geographic
distribution		 Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Anatolia and the Black Sea region
Linguistic classification Indo-European
Proto-language Proto-Greek
Subdivisions
ISO 639-5 grk
Linguasphere 56= (phylozone)
Glottolog gree1276

Hellenic is the branch of the Indo-European language family whose principal member is Greek. [2] In most classifications, Hellenic consists of Greek alone, [3] [4] but some linguists use the term Hellenic to refer to a group consisting of Greek proper and other varieties thought to be related but different enough to be separate languages, either among ancient neighboring languages [5] or among modern varieties of Greek. [6]

Contents

Greek and ancient Macedonian

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 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] This local variety is usually classified by scholars as a dialect of Northwest Doric Greek, [note 1] and occasionally as an Aeolic Greek dialect [note 2] or a distinct sister language of Greek; [note 3] due to the latter classification, a family under the name "Hellenic" has been suggested to group together Greek proper and the ancient Macedonian language. [5] [23]

Modern Hellenic languages

In addition, some linguists use the term "Hellenic" to refer to modern Greek in a narrow sense together with certain other, divergent modern varieties deemed separate languages on the basis of a lack of mutual intelligibility. [24] Separate language status is most often posited for Tsakonian, [24] which is thought to be uniquely a descendant of Doric rather than Attic Greek, followed by Pontic and Cappadocian Greek of Anatolia. [25] The Griko or Italiot varieties of southern Italy are also not readily intelligible to speakers of standard Greek. [26] Separate status is sometimes also argued for Cypriot, though this is not as easily justified. [27] In contrast, Yevanic (Jewish Greek) is mutually intelligible with standard Greek but is sometimes considered a separate language for ethnic and cultural reasons. [27] Greek linguistics traditionally treats all of these as dialects of a single language. [3] [28] [29]

Language tree

Hellenic 
 Greek 
  Ionic–Attic  

Standard Modern Greek

Yevanic (critically endangered)

Cypriot Greek

Cappadocian Greek (critically endangered)

Pontic (endangered)

Crimean Greek (Mariupolitan; endangered)

Romano-Greek (a mixed language)

(Doric-influenced; critically endangered)

Aeolic †

Arcadocypriot † (related to Mycenaean?)

Pamphylian †

Mycenaean †

  Doric  

Tsakonian (Doric-influenced Koine?; critically endangered)

(?) Ancient Macedonian †

Classification

Hellenic constitutes a branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient languages that might have been most closely related to it, ancient Macedonian [30] [31] (either an ancient Greek dialect or a separate Hellenic language) and Phrygian, [32] are not documented well enough to permit detailed comparison. Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian [33] (see also Graeco-Armenian) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan). [34] [35]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Pioneered by Friedrich Wilhelm Sturz (1808), [12] and subsequently supported by Olivier Masson (1996), [13] Michael Meier-Brügger (2003), [14] Johannes Engels (2010), [15] J. Méndez Dosuna (2012), [16] Joachim Matzinger (2016), [17] Emilio Crespo (2017), [10] Claude Brixhe (2018) [18] and M. B. Hatzopoulos (2020). [12]
  2. ↑ Suggested by August Fick (1874), [13] Otto Hoffmann (1906), [13] N. G. L. Hammond (1997) [19] and Ian Worthington (2012). [20]
  3. ↑ Suggested by Georgiev (1966), [21] Joseph (2001) [5] and Hamp (2013). [22]

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greek language</span> Indo-European language

Greek is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent branch of it, native to Greece, Cyprus, Italy, southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, Caucasus, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet, which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doric Greek</span> Ancient Greek dialect

Doric or Dorian, also known as West Greek, was a group of Ancient Greek dialects; its varieties are divided into the Doric proper and Northwest Doric subgroups. Doric was spoken in a vast area, including northern Greece, most of the Peloponnese, the southern Aegean, as well as the colonies of some of those regions in Cyrene, Magna Graecia, the Black Sea, the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic Sea. It was also spoken in the Greek sanctuaries of Dodona, Delphi, and Olympia, as well as at the four Panhellenic festivals; the Isthmian, Nemean, Pythian, and Olympic Games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ancient Greek</span> Forms of Greek used from around the 16th century BC to the 4th century BC

Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek, Dark Ages, the Archaic or Epic period, and the Classical period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aeolic Greek</span> Set of Ancient Greek dialects

In linguistics, Aeolic Greek, also known as Aeolian, Lesbian or Lesbic dialect, is the set of dialects of Ancient Greek spoken mainly in Boeotia; in Thessaly; in the Aegean island of Lesbos; and in the Greek colonies of Aeolis in Anatolia and adjoining islands.

The Thracian language is an extinct and poorly attested language, spoken in ancient times in Southeast Europe by the Thracians. The linguistic affinities of the Thracian language are poorly understood, but it is generally agreed that it was an Indo-European language.

The Phrygian language was the Indo-European language of the Phrygians, spoken in Anatolia, during classical antiquity.

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages.

Greek is an Indo-European language, the sole surviving descendant of the Hellenic sub-family. Although it split off from other Indo-European languages around the 3rd millennium BCE, it is first attested in the Bronze Age as Mycenaean Greek. During the Archaic and Classical eras, Greek speakers wrote numerous texts in a variety of dialects known collectively as Ancient Greek. In the Hellenistic era, these dialects underwent dialect levelling to form Koine Greek which was used as a lingua franca throughout the eastern Roman Empire, and later grew into Medieval Greek. For much of the period of Modern Greek, the language existed in a situation of diglossia, where speakers would switch between informal varieties known as Dimotiki and a formal one known as Katharevousa. Present-day Modern Standard Greek is largely an outgrowth of Dimotiki, with some features retained from Katharevousa.

Ancient Macedonian was the language of the ancient Macedonians which was either a dialect of Ancient Greek or a separate Hellenic language. It was spoken in the kingdom of Macedonia during the 1st millennium BC and belonged to the Indo-European language family. 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. It became extinct during either the Hellenistic or Roman imperial period, and was entirely replaced by Koine Greek.

The Paleo-Balkan languages are a geographical grouping of various Indo-European languages that were spoken in the Balkans and surrounding areas in ancient times. In antiquity, Dacian, Greek, Illyrian, Messapic, Paeonian, Phrygian and Thracian were the Paleo-Balkan languages which were attested in literature. They may have included other unattested languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Proto-Greek language</span> Last common ancestor of all varieties of Greek

The Proto-Greek language is the Indo-European language which was the last common ancestor of all varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean Greek, the subsequent ancient Greek dialects and, ultimately, Koine, Byzantine and Modern Greek. Proto-Greek speakers entered Greece sometime between 2200 and 1900 BC, with the diversification into a southern and a northern group beginning by approximately 1700 BC.

The Pella curse tablet is a text written in a distinct Doric Greek idiom, found in Pella, the ancient capital of Macedon, in 1986. Ιt contains a curse or magic spell inscribed on a lead scroll, dated to the first half of the 4th century BC. It is held in the Archaeological Museum of Pella. It was published in the Hellenic Dialectology Journal in 1993. The Pella curse tablet exhibits some of the typical Northwest Greek features, as well as a cluster of unique Doric features that do not appear in other subdialects of this family. It represents the same or a very similar vernacular dialect that is also attested in the other Doric inscriptions from Macedonia. This indicates that a Doric Greek dialect was not imported, but proper to Macedon. As a result, the Pella curse tablet has been forwarded as an argument that the Ancient Macedonian language was a dialect of Northwest Greek, and one of the Doric dialects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ancient Greek dialects</span> Varieties of Ancient Greek in classical antiquity

Ancient Greek in classical antiquity, before the development of the common Koine Greek of the Hellenistic period, was divided into several varieties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ancient Macedonians</span> Ancient Greek ethnic group

The Macedonians were an ancient tribe that lived on the alluvial plain around the rivers Haliacmon and lower Axios in the northeastern part of mainland Greece. Essentially an ancient Greek people, they gradually expanded from their homeland along the Haliacmon valley on the northern edge of the Greek world, absorbing or driving out neighbouring non-Greek tribes, primarily Thracian and Illyrian. They spoke Ancient Macedonian, which is usually classified by scholars as a dialect of Northwest Doric Greek, and occasionally as a distinct sister language of Greek or an Aeolic Greek dialect. However, the prestige language of the region during the Classical era was Attic Greek, replaced by Koine Greek during the Hellenistic era. Their religious beliefs mirrored those of other Greeks, following the main deities of the Greek pantheon, although the Macedonians continued Archaic burial practices that had ceased in other parts of Greece after the 6th century BC. Aside from the monarchy, the core of Macedonian society was its nobility. Similar to the aristocracy of neighboring Thessaly, their wealth was largely built on herding horses and cattle.

Graeco-Armenian is the hypothetical common ancestor of Greek and Armenian branches that postdates Proto-Indo-European language. Its status is somewhat similar to that of the Italo-Celtic grouping: each is widely considered plausible without being accepted as established communis opinio. The hypothetical Proto-Graeco-Armenian stage would need to date to the 3rd millennium BC and would be only barely different from either late Proto-Indo-European or Graeco-Armeno-Aryan.

The linguistic classification of the ancient Thracian language has long been a matter of contention and uncertainty, and there are widely varying hypotheses regarding its position among other Paleo-Balkan languages. It is not contested, however, that the Thracian languages were Indo-European languages which had acquired satem characteristics by the time they are attested.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Proto-Armenian language</span> Reconstructed language

Proto-Armenian is the earlier, unattested stage of the Armenian language which has been reconstructed by linguists. As Armenian is the only known language of its branch of the Indo-European languages, the comparative method cannot be used to reconstruct its earlier stages. Instead, a combination of internal and external reconstruction, by reconstructions of Proto-Indo-European and other branches, has allowed linguists to piece together the earlier history of Armenian.

Graeco-Phrygian is a proposed subgroup of the Indo-European language family which comprises the Hellenic and Phrygian languages.

The Epirote dialect is a variety of Northwest Doric that was spoken in the ancient Greek state of Epirus during the Classical Era. It outlived most other Greek dialects that were replaced by the Attic-based Koine, surviving until the first or second century CE, in part due to the existence of a separate Northwest Doric koine.

References

  1. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Graeco-Phrygian". Glottolog 3.0 . Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. ↑ In other contexts, "Hellenic" and "Greek" are generally synonyms.
  3. 1 2 Browning (1983), Medieval and Modern Greek, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  4. ↑ Joseph, Brian D. and Irene Philippaki-Warburton (1987): Modern Greek. London: Routledge, p. 1.
  5. 1 2 3 Joseph, Brian D. (2001). "Ancient Greek". In Garry, Jane; Rubino, Carl; Bodomo, Adams B.; Faber, Alice; French, Robert (eds.). Facts about the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past and Present. H. W. Wilson Company. p. 256. ISBN   9780824209704.
  6. ↑ David Dalby. The Linguasphere Register of the World's Languages and Speech Communities (1999/2000, Linguasphere Press). Pp. 449-450.
  7. ↑ Joseph Roisman; Ian Worthington (7 July 2011). A Companion to Ancient Macedonia. John Wiley & Sons. p. 94. ISBN   978-1-4443-5163-7. 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.
  8. ↑ Lewis, D. M.; Boardman, John (2000). The Cambridge ancient history, 3rd edition, Volume VI. Cambridge University Press. p. 730. ISBN   978-0-521-23348-4.
  9. ↑ Sarah B. Pomeroy, Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan, Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture, Oxford University Press, 2008, p.289
  10. 1 2 Crespo, Emilio (2017). "The Softening of Obstruent Consonants in the Macedonian Dialect". In Giannakis, Georgios K.; Crespo, Emilio; Filos, Panagiotis (eds.). Studies in Ancient Greek Dialects: From Central Greece to the Black Sea. Walter de Gruyter. p. 329. ISBN   978-3-11-053081-0.
  11. ↑ Hornblower, Simon (2002). "Macedon, Thessaly and Boiotia". The Greek World, 479-323 BC (Third ed.). Routledge. p. 90. ISBN   0-415-16326-9.
  12. 1 2 Hatzopoulos, Miltiades B. (2020). "The speech of the ancient Macedonians". Ancient Macedonia. De Gruyter. pp. 64, 77. ISBN   978-3-11-071876-8.
  13. 1 2 3 Masson, Olivier (2003). "[Ancient] Macedonian language". In Hornblower, Simon; Spawforth, Antony (eds.). The Oxford Classical Dictionary (revised 3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 905–906. ISBN   978-0-19-860641-3.
  14. ↑ Michael Meier-Brügger, Indo-European linguistics, Walter de Gruyter, 2003, p.28,on Google books
  15. ↑ Roisman, Worthington, 2010, "A Companion to Ancient Macedonia", Chapter 5: Johannes Engels, "Macedonians and Greeks", p. 95
  16. ↑ Dosuna, J. Méndez (2012). "Ancient Macedonian as a Greek dialect: A critical survey on recent work (Greek, English, French, German text)". In Giannakis, Georgios K. (ed.). Ancient Macedonia: Language, History, Culture. Centre for Greek Language. p. 145. ISBN   978-960-7779-52-6.
  17. ↑ Matzinger, Joachim (2016). Die Altbalkanischen Sprachen (PDF) (Speech) (in German). Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
  18. ↑ Brixhe, Claude (2018). "Macedonian". In Klein, Jared; Joseph, Brian; Fritz, Matthias (eds.). Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Vol. 3. De Gruyter. pp. 1862–1867. ISBN   978-3-11-054243-1.
  19. ↑ Hammond, N.G.L (1997). Collected Studies: Further studies on various topics. A.M. Hakkert. p. 79.
  20. ↑ Worthington, Ian (2012). Alexander the Great: A Reader. Routledge. p. 71. ISBN   978-1-136-64003-2.
  21. ↑ Vladimir Georgiev, "The Genesis of the Balkan Peoples", The Slavonic and East European Review44:103:285-297 (July 1966)
  22. ↑ Eric Hamp & Douglas Adams (2013) "The Expansion of the Indo-European Languages", Sino-Platonic Papers, vol 239.
  23. ↑ "Ancient Macedonian". MultiTree: A Digital Library of Language Relationships. Archived from the original on November 22, 2013.
  24. 1 2 Salminen, Tapani (2007). "Europe and North Asia". In Moseley, Christopher (ed.). Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages. London: Routledge. pp. 211–284.
  25. ↑ Ethnologue: Family tree for Greek.
  26. ↑ N. Nicholas (1999), The Story of Pu: The Grammaticalisation in Space and Time of a Modern Greek Complementiser. PhD Dissertation, University of Melbourne. p. 482f. (PDF)
  27. 1 2 Joseph, Brian; Tserdanelis, Georgios (2003). "Modern Greek". In Roelcke, Thorsten (ed.). Variationstypologie: Ein sprachtypologisches Handbuch der europäischen Sprachen. Berlin: de Gruyter. p. 836.
  28. ↑ G. Horrocks (1997), Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers. London: Longman.
  29. ↑ P. Trudgill (2002), Ausbau Sociolinguistics and Identity in Greece, in: P. Trudgill, Sociolinguistic Variation and Change, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
  30. ↑ Roger D. Woodard. "Introduction", The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages, ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–18), pp. 12–14.
  31. ↑ Benjamin W. Fortson. Indo-European Language and Culture. Blackwell, 2004, p. 405.
  32. ↑ Johannes Friedrich. Extinct Languages. Philosophical Library, 1957, pp. 146–147.
    Claude Brixhe. "Phrygian," The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages, ed. Roger D. Woodard, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 777–788), p. 780.
    Benjamin W. Fortson. Indo-European Language and Culture. Blackwell, 2004, p. 403.
  33. ↑ James Clackson. Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 11–12.
  34. ↑ Benjamin W. Fortson. Indo-European Language and Culture. Blackwell, 2004, p. 181.
  35. ↑ Henry M. Hoenigswald, "Greek," The Indo-European Languages, ed. Anna Giacalone Ramat and Paolo Ramat (Routledge, 1998 pp. 228–260), p. 228.
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