Ancient Macedonians and their languages

[eugene]

What were the ethnic origins of ancient macedonians and their language?
Where they related to Greeks or to Thracyans and Illyrians?

[Jona Lendering]

What were the ethnic origins of ancient macedonians and their language?
Where they related to Greeks or to Thracyans and Illyrians?

The only thing we know for certain is that Northwest Greek was spoken and understood. Whether the "Macedonian" mentioned in our sources was a language or a dialect, we do not know. (The difference is that a language has a grammar of its own.) The small vocabulary of Macedonian words may be most closely related to Greek, but Phrygian has been mentioned as well, and theories about an Indo-Iranian root are not as far-fetched as they may seem. What is far-fetched is, of course, that the ancient Macedonians spoke some kind of proto-Slavonic language.

The ethnic question has little to do with language. Ethnicity is attributed by people. There are nations with three or four languages (Belgians and Swiss for example) and there are languages that are spoken by more than one nation (German for example). It is possible that, at times, language is seen as decisive for establishing ethnicity, and this has become increasingly popular since the eighteenth century, but there have been ages in which language did not matter very much.

[Phaichtos]

Well said. This is a common misunderstanding among many people that languages spoken by a given people at any particular time in some way relate to their own ethnic origins. After all, we are all speaking English on this message board, and yet I would imagine that only a fraction of us can trace our entire lineage back to the Anglo-Saxon progenitors of this language!

[Ghostmojo]

We had a fairly lengthy discussion about this recently Eugene which might interest you. It ran to five pages. You may already have seen it of course:

http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/index.p...966764e03a

If that link doesn't take you there (and it didn't for me - even though it should have) then look for this thread running to 96 posts:

It's all Greek to me (Makedonians included) ...

To be found in category: Greek Military History & Archaeology (currently page 2)