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Ancient Macedonian language

Ancient Macedonian was either an ancient Greek dialect—part of Northwest or Aeolic Greek—or a Hellenic language spoken by the ancient Macedonians during the 1st millennium BC. Spoken originally in the kingdom of Macedon, it gradually fell out of use during the 4th century BC, marginalized by the Macedonian aristocracy's use of Attic Greek, the 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.

While the bulk of surviving public and private inscriptions found in ancient Macedonia were written in Attic Greek (and later in Koine Greek), 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 curse tablets from Pella and Pydna.

Classification

Scholars have variously proposed that ancient Macedonian was a dialect of Greek, a sister language or an independent Indo-European language, and the disputes have sometimes had modern nationalistic overtones. Research has also considered the extent of influence from Thessalian Aeolic Greek and non-Greek substrata or adstrata, such as Phrygian, Illyrian, and Thracian. There has been some recent scholarly agreement, often expressed as cautious or tentative, that ancient Macedonian is a dialect of the Northwest Greek group. A minority of scholars continues to view the language as a separate Indo-European language related to Greek. Suggested classifications include:

Among those who support that ancient Macedonian was a Greek dialect, Angelos Boufalis suggests that "several features can be established as local and most of them seem indeed to be shared with the NW Doric and/or the Thessalian dialect", and also that "rather than a monolithic dialect throughout, different local or regional idioms may have had been spoken in this extensive geographical area". Sowa suggests that "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". Hammond suggests that in the region of Upper Macedonia, the tribes of Elimiotes, Orestes, Lyncestae, and Pelagones, were all Epirotic tribes speaking the Northwest Greek dialect.

Properties

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 (/bÊ°, dÊ°, gÊ°/) of Proto-Indo-European sometimes appear as voiced stops /b, d, g/, (written ), whereas they were generally unvoiced as /pÊ°, tÊ°, kÊ°/ () elsewhere in most Greek.

  • Macedonian dánοs ('death', from PIE 'to leave'), compared to Attic
  • Macedonian abroûtes or abroûwes, compared to Attic for 'eyebrows'
  • Macedonian Bereníkē, compared to Attic , 'bearing victory' (Personal name)
  • Macedonian adraia ('bright weather'), compared to Attic , from PIE
  • Macedonian báskioi ('fasces'), compared to Attic 'leather sack', from PIE
  • According to Herodotus 7.73 (), the Macedonians claimed that the Phryges were called Bryges before they migrated from Thrace to Anatolia (around 8th–7th century BC).
  • According to Plutarch, Moralia Macedonians use 'b' instead of 'ph', while Delphians use 'b' in the place of 'p'.
  • Macedonian mágeiros ('butcher') was a loan from Doric into Attic. Vittore Pisani has suggested an ultimately Macedonian origin for the word, which could then be cognate to ('knife', < PIE , 'to fight')

Macedonian shared with Thessalian, Elean, and Epirote, an "oddity" of cases where voiced stops (, written ) appear to correspond to Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirates, . In most Greek, the Proto-Indo-European aspirates were devoiced to voiceless aspirates , written (though these would later become fricatives in Attic Koine around the first century AD). As with Macedonian, this phenomenon is sometimes attributed to non-Greek substrate and adstrate influence, with some linguists attributing such an influence on Epirote to Illyrian. Filos, however, notes, that the attribution of , and for specifically voiced stops is not secure. Simon Hornblower writes: "Little is known about how Macedonian Greek was spoken, except that for instance 'Philip' was pronounced 'Bilip' (...)."

If gotán ('pig') is related to the Proto-Hellenic noun , and hence to the PIE noun ('cattle'), this would indicate that the labiovelars were either intact, or merged with the velars, unlike the usual Greek treatment (Attic ). Such deviations, however, are not unknown in Greek dialects; compare Laconian Doric (the dialect of Sparta) for common Greek , as well as Doric and Ionic for common Greek . A number of examples suggest that voiced velar stops were devoiced, especially word-initially: kánadoi, 'jaws' (< PIE ); , 'molars' (< PIE ); within words: arkón (Attic ); the Macedonian toponym , from the Pierian name Akesamenos (if Akesa- is cognate to Greek , , "to astonish"; cf. the Thracian name ). In Aristophanes' The Birds, the form ('red head', the name of a bird, perhaps the goldfinch or redpoll) is found, showing a Macedonian-style voiced stop in place of a standard Greek unvoiced aspirate: versus ('head').

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 (), with tau () replacing a digamma. 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.

Emilio Crespo, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Madrid, concludes that: "the inscriptions from Aigeai, the ancient capital of the Macedonian kingdom, and from the other regions (Pieria, Beroia and Eordaia) that formed the core of the ancient Temenid kingdom show occasional instances... in which appear instead of or of , respectively", while "similar examples are also attested in northern Thessaly". Emilio Crespo 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.

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 dialect of the Argead Macedonians, and the Thracian and Phrygian adstrata. Claude Brixhe espoused the hypothesis "of a sporadic secondary voicing of unvoiced consonants within the history of Greek", in agreement with Hatzopoulos.

A. Panayotou summarizes some features generally identified through ancient texts and epigraphy:

Phonology

  • Occasional development of voiced aspirates (*b<sup>h</sup>, *d<sup>h</sup>, *g<sup>h</sup>) into voiced stops (b, d, g) (e.g. Βερενίκα, Attic Φερενίκη)
  • Retention of <nowiki>*</nowiki>/aː/ (e.g. Μαχάτας), also present in Epirotic
  • [aː] as a result of contraction between [aː] and [ɔː]
  • Apocope of short vowels in prepositions in synthesis (, Attic )
  • Syncope (hyphairesis) and diphthongization are used to avoid hiatus (e.g. , Attic ; compare with Epirotic , Doric ).
  • Occasional retention of the pronunciation [u] of /u(ː)/ in local cult epithets or nicknames ( = )
  • Raising of /ɔː/ to /uː/ in proximity to nasal (e.g. , Attic )
  • Simplification of the sequence /ign/ to /iːn/ (γίνομαι, Attic )
  • Loss of aspiration of the consonant cluster /st<sup>h</sup>/ (> /st/) (, Attic )

Morphology

Ancient Macedonian morphology is shared with ancient Epirus, including some of the oldest inscriptions from Dodona. The morphology of the first declension nouns with an -ας ending is also shared with Thessalian (e.g. Epitaph for Pyrrhiadas, Kierion).

  • First-declension masculine and feminine in -ας and -α respectively (e.g. , )
  • First-declension masculine genitive singular in -α (e.g. )
  • First-declension genitive plural in -ᾶν
  • First person personal pronoun dative singular
  • Temporal conjunction
  • Possibly, a non-sigmatic nominative masculine singular in the first declension (, Attic )

Onomastics

Anthroponymy

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:

  • Epichoric (local) Greek names that either differ from the phonology of the introduced Attic or that remained almost confined to Macedonians throughout antiquity
  • Panhellenic (common) Greek names
  • Identifiable non-Greek (Thracian and Illyrian) names
  • Names without a clear Greek etymology that can't however be ascribed to any identifiable non-Greek linguistic group.

Common in the creation of ethnics is the use of -έστης, -εστός especially when derived from sigmatic nouns ( but also ).

Per Engels, the above material supports that Macedonian anthroponymy was predominantly Greek in character.

Toponymy

The toponyms of Macedonia proper are generally Greek, though some of them show a particular phonology and a few others are non-Greek.

Calendar

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. Most of them combine a Macedonian dialectal form with a clear Greek etymology (e.g from Zeus; from Heracles Peritas ("Guardian") ; from Xanthos, "the blond" (probably a reference to Heracles); from Artemis etc.) with the possible exception of one, which is attested in other Greek calendars as well. 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.

Epigraphy

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.

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. The legends in all currently discovered coins are also in Greek. 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.

Hesychius' glossary

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. However, some words are not easily identifiable as Greek and reveal, for example, voiced stops where Greek shows voiceless aspirates.

marked words which have been corrupted.

Other sources

Proposed

A number of Hesychius words are listed orphan; some of them have been proposed as Macedonian.

Macedonian in Classical sources

In his comedy The Macedonians, the 5th century BC Athenian poet Strattis has a character speak in a non-Attic dialect, but little has survived.

In his history Ab urbe condita Livy (59 BC – 14 AD) has a Macedonian ambassador in the late 3rd century BC argue that Aetolians, Acarnanians and Macedonians were "men of the same language".

In his Histories of Alexander the Great, Quintus Curtius Rufus (1st century AD) relates an argument between Alexander and Philotas, an accused man, as to whether Philotas should address those assembled in a "foreign tongue" () or his "native idiom" ().

In his History of the Diadochi, Arrian () says that in 321 BC the Greek general Eumenes sent a man who spoke Macedonian to convince the opposing Macedonian troops that their position was hopeless.

In his Life of Antony, Plutarch (c. AD 40 – 120s) presents Cleopatra (70/69 – 30 BC) as speaking many foreign languages, in contrast with her royal predecessors, some of whom had even ceased to "Macedonise" (, ).

Contributions to Koine Greek

As a consequence of the Macedonians' role in the formation of the Koine, Macedonian contributed considerable elements, unsurprisingly including some military terminology (, 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 ( in the genitive; the Attic form that fell into disuse would be ). There were changes in verb conjugation such as in the Imperative 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. The term "Macedonian" ended up meaning the Koine Greek in classical sources.

See also

Notes

References

Inline

General

Further reading

  • Chadwick, John, The Prehistory of the Greek Language. Cambridge, 1963.
  • Crossland, R. A., "The Language of the Macedonians", Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 3, part 1, Cambridge 1982.
  • Hammond, Nicholas G.L., "Literary Evidence for Macedonian Speech", Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Vol.&nbsp;43, No.&nbsp;2. (1994), pp.&nbsp;131–142.
  • Hatzopoulos, M. B. "Le Macédonien: Nouvelles données et théories nouvelles", Ancient Macedonia, Sixth International Symposium, vol. 1. Institute for Balkan Studies, 1999.
  • . "Position of the Ancient Macedonian Language and the Name of the Contemporary Makedonski". In: Studia Minora Facultatis Philosophicae Universitatis Brunensis (Brown University), E36 (1991). pp.&nbsp;129–140.
  • Katičić, Radoslav. Ancient Languages of the Balkans. The Hague—Paris: Mouton, 1976.
  • Neroznak, V. Paleo-Balkan languages. Moscow, 1978.
  • Rhomiopoulou, Katerina. An Outline of Macedonian History and Art. Greek Ministry of Culture and Science, 1980.

External links