Talk:Ancient Macedonian language

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New sections at bottom, please.

Archived talk: archive1, archive2, /archive3 -- these archives contain a lot of discussions. Make sure to look at them before you start building arguments that the ancient Macedonian tongue was an ancient Greek dialect or a "Hellenic" language. Make sure also to have a look at the archives before making claims that Ancient Macedonian was a Slavonic language.

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Contents 1 Family tree again 1.1 ... and again 2 Hi 3 the katadesmos 4 A. Garrett

[edit] Family tree again

Re. Ninio's edit of the family tree in the infobox:

• fam2= Ancient Greek; possibly Greek dialect
• fam3= Paleo-Balkan languages; possibly Proto-Greek

This seems to imply that: "Proto-Greek" is a sub-unit of "Paleo-Balkan languages", and that "Paleo-Balkan languages" is in turn a sub-unit of "Greek dialects", and that "Greek dialects" is a sub-unit of "Ancient Greek".

This is pretty absurd and certainly not what Ninio meant.

1. As dab pointed out, "Greek dialects" is not a classificatory unit in a family tree at all; if something is a Greek dialect, then its next higher taxonomic unit that should appear in the tree is "Proto-Greek", per definitionem.
2. Putting "Paleo-Balkan languages" below Ancient Greek in the classification makes no sense at all.
3. Also, this version of the tree presents "Ancient Greek" as uncontroversial, which it is not.
4. I can understand if Ninio has objections against including "P-B" at all in the tree, there is indeed something OR-ish about it. "P-B" isn't a genetic taxonomic unit anyway, if at all it's an areal unit.

Leaving out "P-B" really leaves us with "Indo-European" as the only secure family information; plus:

• fam2 = unknown, possibly Greek

Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:58, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ... and again

That "possibly Greek" in the Infobox doesn't make any sense. Why not just leave it as Indo-European (all further discussion will be in the body of the article)?--Barbatus 17:32, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Because it implies that Macedonian was an independent branch of the Indo-European family, which is a minority view. ·ΚέκρωΨ· 17:41, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, in this case something like "Paleo-Balkan or Proto-Greek" would be better, otherwise it implies that Ancient Greek was an independent branch of the family, no?--Barbatus 17:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Greek was and is an independent branch of the family. Proto-Greek is merely the theoretical ancestor of all the ancient Greek dialects, and refers to a much earlier period than would be appropriate for Macedonian. Palaeo-Balkan meanwhile is not a proven language family at all, more a geographical denomination. ·ΚέκρωΨ· 18:45, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I've just removed "Ancient" from the infobox. The language family that contains all forms of Greek, ancient and modern, is simply called Greek after all. ·ΚέκρωΨ· 18:58, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Merci, --Barbatus 20:03, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hi

Hi there, I'm a student of Ancient History at KCL and this article confuses me a little bit, it seems to put forward the proposition that there is currently a widescale scholarly debate occurring as to whether Macedonian was a Greek language or not, or even more absurdly, whether it was a Slavic language! As far as I am aware, there is no such debate, practically every primary and secondary source I have read refers to the Macedonians as speaking a dialect of Greek. I refer to secondary sources as well because if there was such as debate as so many users claim, then surely it would transcend the Republic of Skopje and encompass respected institutions such as Oxford and their professors as well, but it simply doesn't.

Take it from someone who studies Ancient History, call it disputed, but to claim there is an academic dispute other than from Skopjean 'Academia' is patently false, practically every scholar of note considers it to be a Greek dialect.

The article does not claim that Ancient Macedonian was even possibly Slavic. It offers 3 conjectures: dialect of Greek, a language closely related to Greek (sister language), an independent IE language in contact with Greek. The article also indicates that the first is believed by the largest number of scholars, and the third by the fewest. If you go into the article, you will find references for all of this. If there are problems with the references, please fix them or bring them here for discussion. Jd2718 19:57, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll repeat, my impression of what is academic mainstream is different from yours. See /archive3#Checked sources. The result of that survey was: Practically every linguistic reference work, except Greek authors, considers the issue to be undecided and undecidable. It's true that there isn't a lively ongoing debate right now, but that's owing to just this lack of data, for all I can see. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:05, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

indeed, there is no "lively debate" at all. We are just laying out the status quo, that is, the three possibilities mentioned. The issue is static, and unless some spectacular (non-forgery) inscription turns up, it is bound to remain so indefinitely. dab (𒁳) 09:11, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think anybody seriously puts forward the idea than Ancient Macedonian would have been Slavic, I've never encountered such an idea. It's true that some scholars in the Republic of Macedonia try to stress the difference between Ancient Macedonian and Greek, just like some scholars in Greece try to claim a definite link between Ancient Macedonian and Greek. Both these opposing efforts are more politic than scientific. Most serious and non-biased scholar will agree that we simply do not know enough about Ancient Macedonian to be sure. What we do know for sure is that Greek was a language used by the Ancient Macedonians, but we cannot say for what reason. Perhaps because it was their own language, or a dialect of the same language? Or perhaps because they spoke a different language but used Greek because of its importance at that time, just as we are using English now even though many of us speak language not closely related to English. The article, to be NPOV, should make it clear that the only consesus there is on this matter is a consensus of us not knowing enough. JdeJ 22:47, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] the katadesmos

The Pella curse bit is phrased most misleadingly. The tablet is in Doric/NW Greek. This proves the presence of Greek speakers in Macedon in the 3rd c. BC. The tablet is ostensibly not in XMK, so what does it tell us about XMK, beyond the theoretical possibility that XMK was influenced by Doric/NW Greek from at least the 3rd c.? (We know that it was influenced most severely by Attic from at least the 4th c., so what is new?) The Pella tablet is a red herring. dab (𒁳) 09:08, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

You're wrong dab. The language of the tablet has been considered as the actual, uninfluenced "ancient Macedonian language" itself, and not just a Doric dialect that was spoken along with it. To quote from Olivier Masson:

“Yet in contrast with earlier views which made of it [Macedonian] an Aeolic dialect, we must by now think of a link with North-West Greek. This view is supported by the recent discovery at Pella of a curse tablet which may well be the first ‘Macedonian’ text attested..."

It all comes down to the fact that everything some people take for granted about a "Macedonian language" are nothing but assumptions. Miskin 09:21, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. No one has ever provided an adequate explanation as to why the Macedonians would choose to speak an aberrant form of Doric as a second or "foreign" language, if we accept the theory that the language of the katadesmos was not XMK. ·ΚέκρωΨ· 10:01, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Plus that "3rd BC" bit is misleading. All academic sources printed or otherwise date it in between the middle to early 4th century BC: Voutiras, Dubois, Brixhe, Panayotoy, Masson, Hall, Hunter, O'Neil and others that I can’t remember right now; I do have the references back at home though. There is also at least one source (Hammond quoted by Borza, I think) that describe it as late 5th century; but it was probably based on an early draft report. The only "exception" is the web entry of Radcliffe which most likely is a mix-up of dates i.e. 380 – 360 BC or something became "3rd century BC" by mistake. The tablet, is most definitely dated, so far, by scholars as 4th century BC. Ninio 13:26, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Now I’ve brushed up the Hammond-Borza case again; in his paperback edition (1992) Borza included Hammond in the Appendix (see google books). In his earlier edition (1990) Borza did not consider the Pella tablet and Hammond "pointed" that out to him. As it seems Hammond was aware of the finding at least since 1990-91... Ninio 14:00, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Since everybody agrees that there's no consensus leaning towards the "separate language" view, then how come this article is still called "ancient Macedonian language" and not simply "ancient Macedonian" or something equivalent? Pseudo-neutral editors like Decius/Alexander 007 who had chosen to use Borza as their primary source (a scholar who admits his views are not mainstream) are not around anymore (except maybe ocasionally as anon vandals), so maybe we can reconsider a less contradictory name for the article. Miskin 20:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

First, as with most other language pages, we need the disambiguation in order to clarify the page deals with the language and not the ethnicity, culture or whatnot. Second, in real life and in the serious literature (as opposed to Wikipedia jargon), the term "language" as used here does not entail "separate language". So the problem doesn't exist. Third, all the English-speaking literature that deals with the issue talks of the "ancient Macedonian language" or "language of the Ancient Macedonians", even those authors who tend towards the view that this language was in fact a Greek dialect. Because, as I just said, this is simply not a contradiction, as you seem to assume. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:16, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A. Garrett

Part of the 'Paleobalkan' section reads:

"In 1999, A. Garrett 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."

Maybe you should consider to revise this bit. Garrett's paper is treating Macedonian as an outlier of Greek using also a Greek 'dialectological' approach. - Kim (26/3/07, 20:30) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.240.229.65 (talk) 19:31, 26 March 2007 (UTC).

I wrote that summary. To the best of my understanding, it is correct. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:09, 27 March 2007 (UTC)