The Ancient Macedonian Language according to

Modern Sources

(2) The Language of Ancient Macedonians according to modern

Linguists and Historians

* P.A.Brunt.
”The relics of the Macedonian language, such as the names of
places and persons, both human and divine {..} show that it
was basically Greek with an admixture of [probably] Illyrian.

* Martin, Thomas R (1996) “Ancient Greece From Prehistoric to

Hellenistic Times” pg. 188.
“Macedonians had their own language related to Greek, but the
members that dominated Macedonian society routinely learned
to speak Greek because they thought of themselves and indeed all
Macedonians as Greek by blood.”

* Hammond & Griffith “A History of Macedonia 550-336 BC” Vol II

“Macedonian was not a non-Greek language but a dialect of the
Greek language in which Alexander spoke for a special purpose;
and in the case of his order the vocabulary, as well as the
pronunciation, was probably particular to this dialect. On
a later occasion the Macedonian”

* Hammond (1992) “The Miracle that was Macedonia” pg. 206.

“As members of the Greek race and speakers of the Greek language,
the Macedonians shared in the ability to initiate ideas and
create political forms.”

* O.Masson (1996) “The Oxford Classical Dictionary 3rd ed. Macedonia,

Language” pgs 905-906
Masson states:
”Yet in contrast with earlier views which made of it an
Aeolic dialect [O. Hoffmann compared Thessalian] we must by
now think of a link with North west Greek [Locrian, Aetolian,
Phocidian, Epirote]. This view is supported by the recent
discovery at Pella of a curse tablet [4th c BC] which may
well be the first ‘Macedonian’ text attested [provisional
publication by E. Voutyras; cf. the Bulletin Epigraphique
in Rev.Et.Grec.1994no.413]; the text includes an adverb “opoka”
which is not Thessalian.
 We must wait for new discoveries, but we may tentatively
conclude that Macedonian is a dialect related to North-West
Greek.”

* Toynbee, A.J
“King Philip II’s momentous decision to make, not the native
Macedonian variety of North-East Greek, but Attic the
official language of the kingdom of Macedon which, in the
next generation, had generated the Greek successor states of
the Persian Empire.”

* R. Malcolm Errington, ‘A History of Macedonia’

University of California Press, February 1993, pg 3

“That the Macedonians and their kings did in fact speak a dialect of Greek and
bore Greek names may be regarded nowadays as certain.”

PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

* Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great Page 30.

he was still in a world of Greek gods and sacrifices, of Greek plays and Greek
language,though the natives might speak Greek with a northern accent which
hardened ‘ch’ into ‘g’,’th’ into ‘d’ and pronounced King Philip as Bilip“.

* Richard Billows, “Antigonus the One-Eyed”, pages 18-20

 I think it highly likely that they were, for three reasons: the overwhelming majority
of personal names known to have been used by Macedonians were good Greek
names; the names of the months in the Macedonian calendar were basically Greek
in form

* Andrew Robert Burn, “A Traveller’s History of Greece” , 1984, Italian edition

of 1991 by Arnoldo Mondatori Editore S.p.A. , Milano, page 359 [*]

Macedonia , extended along the fertile land of lower Axios , was a region of robust
agricolturs and of nobles devoted in equitation , that spoke a Rough Greek Dialect ,
incomprehensible to the Athenians and for that defined “barbarian” “.

* Graham Shipley ,The Greek World After Alexander, 323-30 Bc By , Page 111

Despite ancient and modern controversies it seems clear that the Macedonians as
a whole were Greek-speakers. While the elite naturally communicated with other
elites in standard, probably Attic, the ordinary Macedonians appear to have
spoken a dialect of Greek, albeit with load-words from Illyrian and thracian
which gave ammunition to their denigrators.

* Eric Carlton (1992) Occupation: The Policies and Practices of Military

Conquerors Page 55

The Macedonian language has not survived in any extant text, but their personal and
place names, and the names of their gods strongly suggest a Greek dialect.

* Alan Fildes , Alexander the Great, son of the gods, page12

Although the Macedonians spoke a Greek dialect, worshipped Greek gods and
traced their nation’s origins from Olympian gods, their customes and northern
Doric accent were markedly different from those of the people of the rest of Greece,
who saw the Macedonia as a largely insignificant, backward monarchy

* John Anthony Crame, A Geographical and Historical Description of Ancient

Greece: With a Map, and a Plan of Athens, Page 165

Judging from their historical nomenclature, and the few words that have been
preserved to us, we may evidently trace a Greek foundation in their language,
whatever idiomatic differences might exist between it and the more cultivated
dialects of southern Greece.

* Charles Gates, Ancient Cities” page 259

Philip II came to power in Macedonia in 359 BC. Althought speaking a dialect of

Greek, the Macedonians lay on the fringes of Greek culture and had contributed little
to Greek political, socio-economic and artistic

* L.S. Stavrianos, “The Balkans since 1453″, Page 19

Their language closely resembled the classical Greek from which it differed no
more than one English dialect from another

* John V.A. Fine (1983) ‘The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History’ Harvard
University Press, pgs 605-608

The Macedonian language has not survived in any written text, but the names of
individuals, places, gods, months, and the like suggest strongly that the language
was a Greek dialect. Macedonian institutions, both secular and religious, had
marked Hellenic characteristics and legends identify or link the people with the
Dorians.

* F. Munzer, German linguist, “Die Politische Vernichtung des Griechentums”,

Leipzig 1925, p. 4

The problem of the nationality of the Macedonians has been studied a great deal.
Otto Hoffman with linguistics as his starting point solved it correctly and decisively
when he accepted that the Macedonians were Greeks

* Sylvain Auroux, French linguist, “History of the Language Sciences: I.

Approaches to Gender II. Manifestations”, p.439

“Before the times of the national unity installed by the Macedonians around the
middle of the 4th century BC, Greece was composed of many regions or city
states[...] That they [Dorians] were related to the North-West Dialects (of Phocis,
Locris, Aetolia, Acarnania and Epirus) was not perceived clearly by the ancients. “

* Otto Hoffmann, “Makedonians, their language and their Ethnicity“.

From the 39 “languages” that according to Gustav Mayer their form was
“completely alien” has been proven after this research of mine,that 10 of them
are clearly Hellenic,with 4 more possibly dialectical forms of common hellenic
words,so from the entire collection are remaining only 15 words appearing to be
justifiable or at least suspected of anti-hellenic origins.Adding to those 15, few
others which with regards their vocals could be hellenic,without till now being
confirmed as such,then their number, in comparison to the number of pure
hellenic ones in the Makedonian language,is so small that the general Hellenic
character of the Macedonian linguistic treasure can not be doubted.(..)THE
NAMES OF THE GENUINE MAKEDONIANS AND THOSE BORN OF
MAKEDONIAN PARENTS ,ESPECIALLY THE NAMES OF THE ELITIC
CLASS AND NOBLES,IN THEIR FORMATION AND PHONOLOGY ARE
PURELY HELLENIC.”(…)The general Hellenic character of the Makedonians
linguistic treasure can not be disputed even in case some of them might be loans
from the Hellenic Mythology or from non-hellenic myths or for the better pre-
hellenic myths (Teytamos-Marsyas-Seilinos….*).

* J.R. Hamilton, “Alexander the Great”, London, 1973

That the Macedonians were of Greek stock seems certain. The claim
made by the Argead dynasty to be of Argive descent may be no more
than a generally accepted myth, but Macedonian proper names, such as
Ptolemaios or Philippos, are good Greek names, and the names of the
Macedonian months, although differed from those of Athens or Sparta,
were also Greek. The language spoken by the Macedonians, which
Greeks of the classical period found intelligible, appears to have been
a primitive north-west Greek dialect, much influenced by the languages of the
neighboring barbarians.”

* Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, The Outline of History, Glimpses of World History

The language they spoke was among the oldest forms of Greek, and it had
affinities with the Aeolian, Arcado-Cypriot and Mycenean dialects.

* N. G. L. Hammond,”The Macedonian State: The Origins, Institution and

History,” Calrendon Press, Oxford,
1989, pp. 413.pp. 12-14:”

4. The language of the Macedonians. What language did these ‘Macedones’ speak?
The name itself is Greek in root and in ethnic termination. It probably means
‘highlanders,’ and it is comparable to Greek tribal names such as ‘Orestai’ amd
‘Oreitai,’ meaning ‘mountain-men.’ A reputedly earlier variant, ‘Maketai,’ has the
same root, which means ‘high,’
as in the Greek adjective ‘makednos’ or the noun mekos.’
The genealogy of eponymous ancestors which Hesiod recorded (p. 3 above) has a
bearing on the question of Greek
speech. First, Hesiod made Macedon a brother of Magnes; as we know from
inscriptions that the Magnetes spoke the Aeolic dialect of the Greek language, we
have a predisposition to suppose that the Macedones spoke the Aeolic dialect.
Secondly, Hesiod made Macedon and Magnes first cousins of Hellen’s three sons —
Dorus, Xouthus, and Aeolus — who
were the founders of three dialects of Greek speech, namely Doric, Ionic, and Aeolic.
Hesiod would not have recored this relationship, unless he had believed, probably in
the seventh century, that the Macedones were a Greek-speaking people. The next
evidence comes from Persia. At the turn of the sixth century the Persians described
the tribute-paying peoples of their province in Europe, and one of them was the
‘yauna takabara,’ which meant the ‘Greeks wearing the hat.’ [27] There were Greeks
in Greek city-states here and there in the province, but they were of various origins
and not distinguished by a common hat, the ‘kausia.’
We conclude that the Persians believed the Macedonians to be speakers of Greek.
Finally, in the latter part of the fifth
century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, visited Macedonia and modified Hesiod’s
genealogy by bringing Macedon and his descendants firmly into the
AeolicMacedonian branch of the Greek-speaking family.
[28] Hesiod, Persia, Hellanicus had no motive for making a false statement about the
language of the Macedonians,
who were then an obscure and not a powerful people.
Their independent testimonies should be accepted as conclusive. That, however, is not
the opinion of most scholars.
They disregard or fail to assess the evidence which I have cited, [29] and they turn
instead to Macedonian words and names, or/and to literary references. Philologists
have studied words which have been cited as Macedonian in ancient lexica and
glossaries, and they have come to no certain conclusion; for some of the words are
clearly Greek, and some are clearly not Greek. That is not surprising; for as the
territory of the Macedonians expanded, they overlaid and lived with peoples who
spoke Illyrian, Paeonian, Thracian and Phrygian, and they certainly borrowed words
from them which excited the authors of lexica and glossaries. The philological studies
result in a verdict, in my opinion, of ‘non liquet.’ [30] The toponyms of the
Macedonian homeland are the most significant. Nearly all of them are Greek: Pieria,
Lebaea, Heracleum, Dium, Petra, Leibethra, Aegae, Aegydium, Acesae, Acesamenae;
the rivers Helicon, Aeson, Leucus, Baphyras, Sardon, Elpe’u’s, Mitys; lake Ascuris
and the region Lapathus.
The mountain names Olympus and Titarium may be pre-Greek; Edessa, the earlier
name for the place where Aegae was founded, and its river Ascordus were Phrygian.
[31] The deities worshipped by the Macedones and the names
which they gave to the months were predominantly Greek, and there is no doubt that
these were not borrowings.
To Greek literary writers before the Hellenistic period the Macedonians were
‘barbarians.’ The term referred to their way of life and their institutions, which were
those of the ‘ethne’ and not of the city-state, and it did not refer to their speech. We
can see this in the case of Epirus. There Thucydides called the tribes ‘barbarians.’ But
inscriptions found in Epirus have shown conclusively that the Epirote tribes in
Thucydides’ lifetime were speaking Greek
and used names which were Greek. [32] In the following century ‘barbarian’ was only
one of the abusive
terms applied by Demosthenes to Philip of Macedon and his people.[33] In passages
which refer to the Macedonian soldiers of Alexander the Great and the early
successors there are mentions of a Macedonian dialect, such as was likely to have
been spoken in the original Macedonianhomeland. On one occassion Alexander
‘called out to his guardsmen in Macedonian (’Makedonisti’), as this [viz. the use of
'Macedonian'] was a signal (’symbolon’) that
there was a serious riot.’ Normally Alexander and his soldiers spoke standard Greek,
the ‘koine,’ and that was what the Persians who were to fight alongside the
Macedonians were taught. So the order ‘in Macedonian was unique, in that all other
orders were in the ‘koine.’ [34] it is satisfactorily explained as an order in broad
dialect, just as in the Highland Regiment a special order for a particular purpose could
be given in broad Scots by a Scottish officer who usually spoke the King’s
English.The use of this dialect among themselves was a characteristic of the
Macedonian soldiers (rather that the officers) of the King’s Army. This point is made
clear in the report — not in itself dependable — of the trial of
a Macedonianofficer before an Assembly of Macedonians, in which the officer
(Philotas) was mocked for not speaking in dialect. [35] In 321 when a non-
Macedonian general, Eumenes, wanted to make contact with a hostile group of
Macedonian infantrymen, he sent a Macedonian to speak to them in the
Macedonian dialect,
in order to win their confidence. Subsequently, when they and the other Macdonian
soldiers were serving with Eumenes, they expresed their affection for him by hailing
him in the Macedonian dialect (’Makedonisti’). [36] He was to be one of themselves.
As Curtius observed, ‘not a man among the Macedonians could bear to part with a jot
of his ancestral customs.’ The use of this dialect was one way in which the
Macedonians expressed their apartness from the
world of the Greek city-states. [27] See J. M. Balcer in ‘Historia’ 37 (1988) 7.[28]
FGrH 4 F 74 [29] Most recently E. Badian in Barr-Sharrar 33-51 disregards the
evidence as set out in e.g. HM 2.39-54, when it goes against his view that the
Macedonians (whom he does not define) spoke a language other than Greek. [30] The
matter is dicussed at some length in HM 2. 39-54 with reference especially to O.
Hoffmann, ‘Die Makedonen, ihre Sprache und ihre volkstun’ (Goettingen, 1906) and
J. Kalleris, Les Anciens Macedoniens I (Athens, 1954); see also Kalleris II and R. A.
Crossland in the CAH 3.1.843ff. [31] For Edessa see HM 1.165 and for the Phrygians
in Macedonia 407-14. Olympus occurs as a Phrygian personal name. [32] See
Hammond, ‘Epirus’ 419ff. and 525ff.
[33] As Badian, loc. cit. 42, rightly observes: ‘this, of course, is simple abuse.’[34]
Plu. ‘Alex.’51.6[35] Curtius 6.8.34-6.
[36] PSI XII 2(1951) no. 1284, Plu. Eun.14.11. Badian, loc. cit. 41 and 50 n.66,
discusses the former and not the latter, which hardly bears out his theory that
Eumenes ‘could not directly communicate with Macedoniansoldiers,’ and presumably
they with him. Badian says in his note that he is not concerned with the argument as
to whether Macedonian was a ‘dialect’ or ‘a language.’ Such an argument seems to
me to be at the heart of the matter. We have a
similar problem in regard to Epirus, where some had thought the language of the
people was Illyrian. In Plu.’Pyrrh.’1.3 reference was made to ‘the local ‘phone,”
which to me means ‘dialect’ of Greek; it is so in this instance because Plutarch is
saying that Achilles was called ‘in the local ‘phone’ Aspestos.’ The word ‘Aspestos’
elsewhere was peculiar to Greek epic, but it survived in Epirus in normal speech. It is
of course a Greek and not an Illyrian word. See Hammond, ‘Epirus’ 525ff., for the
Greek being the language of central Epirus in the fifth century B.C. ”

* Malcolm Errington, “A History of Macedonia”, California University Press,

1990.

“The Molossians were the strongest and, decisive for Macedonia, most
easterly of the three most important Epeirot tribes, which, like Macedonia
but unlike the Thesprotians and the Chaonians, still retained their
monarchy. They were Greeks, spoke a similar dialect to that of Macedonia,
suffered just as much from the depredations of the Illyrians and were in
principle the natural partners of the Macedonian king who wished to tackle
the Illyrian problem at its roots.”

* J.M. Roberts, “A Short History of the World”, Oxford University Press, New
York, 1993

The Macedonians spoke Greek and attended Hellenic festivals; their kings claimed
to be descented from Greek families- from Achilles, the great Achaean hero of the
Iliad, no less.”

* NGL Hammond, “Philip of Macedon”, Gerald Duckword & Ltd, London, 1994
“As subjects of the king the Upper Macedonians were henceforth on the same footing
as the original Macedonians, in that they could qualify for service in the King’s
Forces and thereby obtain the elite citizenship. At one bound the territory, the
population and wealth of the kingdom were doubled. Moreover since the great
majority of the new subjects were speakers of the West Greek dialect, the
enlarged army was Greek-speaking throughout.”

* David Sacks, “A Dictionary of the Ancient Greek World.”, Oxford, 1995

Macedon was inhabited by various peoples of Dorian-Greek, Illyrian, and Thracian

descent, who spoke a Greek dialect and worshipped Greek gods…Unification and
modernization came gradually, at the hands of kings of Dorian descent.”

* Robert Morkot, “The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece”, Penguin

Publ., 1996

Certainly the Thracians and the Illyrians were non-Greek speakers, but in the
northwest, the peoples of Molossis {Epirot province}, Orestis and Lynkestis spoke
West Greek. It is also accepted that the Macedonians spoke a dialect of Greek
and although they absorbed other groups into their territory, they were essentially
Greeks.”

http://history-of-macedonia.com/wordpress/2009/10/10/ancient-macedonian-language-
modern-sources/

Copyright @ 2006-2009. history-of-macedonia.com All rights deserved