Where did the Greek language arrive from? Who were its carriers most similar to today?

[Sakis]

There is no proof of a connection between Greek and Armenian,nor that the Greek language originated out of Greece.

Graeco-Armenian is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Greek and Armenian languages which postdates the Proto-Indo-European language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeco-Armenian

[Scholarios]

There is no proof of a connection between Greek and Armenian,nor that the Greek language originated out of Greece.

Graeco-Armenian is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Greek and Armenian languages which postdates the Proto-Indo-European language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeco-Armenian

Indo-European is also hypothetical. But it has stronger evidence. We simply don't have Older attested forms of Armenian to compare. But I seriously doubt Armenian's origin is as a branch of Indo-Iranian. It seems much more likely as a debased Indo-European language IMHO .

[Arch Hades]

Isnt Armenian more related to Greek than to any other major Indo-European language?

[Sakis]

Isnt Armenian more related to Greek than to any other major Indo-European language?

There is no relation between greek and armenian,they are a branch of their own.

[Arch Hades]

I know they are their own distinct branches but in the same sense that Celtic and Italic are related, and Baltic and Slavic are related, isn't Greek and Armenian suggested to be related? Greek shares greater more recent linguistic ancestry with Armenian than other major Indo-European langauges of today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeco-Armenian

[Prisoner Of Ice]

This seems like an obvious/stupid question but I am curious. We know that the Greek language came from the north, and moved south in the Balkans into what is now Greece, and its carriers Hellenized the native population of Greece and thus the people became "Greek".

I am not sure even that is really known. Dorians seem to have come from the north (including alexander) and had a different but still greek language (what's the difference, I don't know) but the mycenaeans wrote in an undeciphered tongue and we don't know how similar it was to greek.

Hittites were indo-european, too, but we can't tell from writing if things are actually the same or not.

So really we don't know, and probably can't ever know.

[Arch Hades]

I am not sure even that is really known. Dorians seem to have come from the north (including alexander) and had a different but still greek language (what's the difference, I don't know) but the mycenaeans wrote in an undeciphered tongue and we don't know how similar it was to greek.

Hittites were indo-european, too, but we can't tell from writing if things are actually the same or not.

So really we don't know, and probably can't ever know.

The Dorians came from Epirus, Northwestern Greece.

And the Mycenaeans spoke a Greek language, their language has been deciphered [John Chadwick], it was Greek.

[Scholarios]

I am not sure even that is really known. Dorians seem to have come from the north (including alexander) and had a different but still greek language (what's the difference, I don't know) but the mycenaeans wrote in an undeciphered tongue and we don't know how similar it was to greek.

Hittites were indo-european, too, but we can't tell from writing if things are actually the same or not.

So really we don't know, and probably can't ever know.

We know the Myceneans language was Greek and their script Linear B has been deciphered. It is the language of the Minoans that is a mystery and undeciphered.

[Arch Hades]

My bet is the Minoans spoke an Indo-European language related to Anatolian.

[Prisoner Of Ice]

The Dorians came from Epirus, Northwestern Greece.

According to...?

And the Mycenaeans spoke a Greek language, their language has been deciphered [John Chadwick], it was Greek.

And again. Lots of dead languages have been claimed to have been deciphered but you can't tell for sure off of small samples and this is not accepted. It's also impossible to tell whether it is greek for that matter. It's impossible to even tell if hittite and greek are the same. You can tell they are indo-european at best, even if you can decipher them. If they were exactly the same they would not use a different alphabet!