Hellenic languages

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), 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. This local variety is usually classified by scholars as a dialect of Northwest Doric Greek, and occasionally as an Aeolic Greek dialect or a distinct sister language of Greek; due to the latter classification, a family under the name Hellenic (also called Greek-Macedonian or Helleno-Macedonian) has been suggested to group together Greek proper and the ancient Macedonian language. Nonetheless, there has been some recent scholarly agreement, often expressed as cautious or tentative, that ancient Macedonian is a dialect of the Northwest Greek group.

Modern Hellenic languages

In addition, some linguists use 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. Separate language status is most often posited for Tsakonian, which is thought to be uniquely a descendant of Doric rather than Attic Greek, followed by Pontic and Cappadocian Greek of Anatolia. The Griko or Italiot varieties of southern Italy are also not readily intelligible to speakers of standard Greek. Separate status is sometimes also argued for Cypriot, though this is not as easily justified. In contrast, Yevanic (Jewish Greek) is mutually intelligible with standard Greek but is sometimes considered a separate language for ethnic and cultural reasons. Greek linguistics traditionally treats all of these as dialects of a single language.

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 (either an ancient Greek dialect or a separate Hellenic language) and Phrygian, 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 (see also Graeco-Armenian) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan).

Language tree

The following tree is based on the work of Lucien van Beek:

• (?)Graeco-Phrygian
  • Hellenic
    • South Greek
      • Achaean
        • Mycenaean
        • Arcadocypriot
      • Attic–Ionic
        • Attic
        • Western Ionic
        • Central Ionic
        • Eastern Ionic
    • North Greek
      • Aeolic
        • Boeotian (it also has West Greek features; precursor was possibly a bridge dialect between Aeolic and West Greek)
        • Lesbian (it also has at least one archaic South Greek innovation; precursor was possibly a bridge dialect between Aeolic and South Greek)
        • Thessalian
      • West Greek
        • Doric
        • Northwest Greek
      • (?)Ancient Macedonian (either an ancient Greek dialect – possibly Northwest Greek – or a separate Hellenic language)
  • Phrygian

Notes

Footnotes

References

References

1. {{Glottolog. grae1234. Graeco-Phrygian
2. In other contexts, ''Hellenic'' and ''Greek'' are generally synonyms.
3. 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. Joseph, Brian D.. (2001). "Facts about the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past and Present". [[H. W. Wilson Company]].
6. David Dalby. ''The Linguasphere Register of the World's Languages and Speech Communities'' (1999/2000, Linguasphere Press). pp. 449–450.
7. (7 July 2011). "A Companion to Ancient Macedonia". John Wiley & Sons.
8. (2000). "The Cambridge ancient history, 3rd edition, Volume VI". Cambridge University Press.
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. Crespo, Emilio. (2017). "Studies in Ancient Greek Dialects: From Central Greece to the Black Sea". Walter de Gruyter.
11. Hornblower, Simon. (2002). "The Greek World, 479–323 BC". Routledge.
12. Hatzopoulos, Miltiades B.. (2020). "Ancient Macedonia". [[De Gruyter]].
13. Masson, Olivier. (2003). "[Ancient] Macedonian language". [[Oxford University Press]].
14. Michael Meier-Brügger, ''Indo-European linguistics'', Walter de Gruyter, 2003, p.28,[https://books.google.com/books?id=49xq3UlKWckC&q=Macedonian+Doric 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 Macedonia: Language, History, Culture". Centre for Greek Language.
17. Matzinger, Joachim. (2016). "Die Altbalkanischen Sprachen". [[Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich]].
18. Brixhe, Claude. (2018). "Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics". [[De Gruyter]].
19. Hammond, N.G.L. (1997). "Collected Studies: Further studies on various topics". A.M. Hakkert.
20. Worthington, Ian. (2012). "Alexander the Great: A Reader". Routledge.
21. Vladimir Georgiev, "The Genesis of the Balkan Peoples", ''The Slavonic and East European Review'' '''44''':103:285–297 (July 1966)
22. [[Eric P. Hamp]] & [[Douglas Q. Adams]] (2013), [https://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp239_indo_european_languages.pdf "The Expansion of the Indo-European Languages"], ''Sino-Platonic Papers'', vol 239.
23. W. B. Lockwood, "A Panorama of Indo-European Languages", (1972), Hutchinson University Library London, Hellenic, Macedonian, p. 6: "It is generally held that the evidence suggests rather an aberrant form of Greek than an independent language."
24. "Ancient Macedonian".
25. Giannakis, Georgios. (2017). "Studies in Ancient Greek Dialects". De Gruyter.
26. Crespo, Emilio. (2023). "Alloglōssoi: Multilingualism and Minority Languages in Ancient Europe". [[De Gruyter]].
27. Salminen, Tapani. (2007). "Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages". Routledge.
28. [[Ethnologue]]: [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90065 Family tree for Greek].
29. 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. ([https://web.archive.org/web/20041206031419/http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/thesis/thesis9.pdf PDF])
30. (2003). "Variationstypologie: Ein sprachtypologisches Handbuch der europäischen Sprachen". de Gruyter.
31. G. Horrocks (1997), ''Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers''. London: Longman.
32. P. Trudgill (2002), Ausbau Sociolinguistics and Identity in Greece, in: P. Trudgill, ''Sociolinguistic Variation and Change'', Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
33. 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.
34. Benjamin W. Fortson. ''Indo-European Language and Culture''. Blackwell, 2004, p. 405.
35. 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.
36. James Clackson. ''Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction''. Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 11–12.
37. Benjamin W. Fortson. ''Indo-European Language and Culture''. Blackwell, 2004, p. 181.
38. Henry M. Hoenigswald, "Greek," ''The Indo-European Languages'', ed. [[Anna Giacalone Ramat]] and Paolo Ramat (Routledge, 1998 pp. 228–260), p. 228.
    [[BBC]]: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/european_languages/languages/greek.shtml Languages across Europe: Greek]