Was ancient Macedonian Greek?

[Γέλως]

The only people today objecting to the idea that ancient Macedonians were Greek, are some insignificant and pseudohistory-inclining Balkan shepherds: Fyromians, Albanians and whatnot. The universally accepted truth is that ancient Macedonians were Greek, and so was their language.

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[riverman]

The only people today objecting to the idea that ancient Macedonians were Greek, are some insignificant and pseudohistory-inclining Balkan shepherds: Fyromians, Albanians and whatnot. The universally accepted truth is that ancient Macedonians were Greek, and so was their language.

[YOUTUBE]kBoO5qHmYuw[/YOUTUBE]

Well, that's not the information I'm getting from my Greek history books, but this is the linguistics section, so in that sense, yes, seems like Macedonian is(was) a northern Greek dialect.

[Crn Volk]

something non-partisan;

http://indoeuro.bizland.com/tree/balk/macedonian.html

[Yaroslav]

Nah. It was Albanian, Ushatari. Isn't that wanted you wanted to hear?
Everything in ancient Balkans was Albanians... :

[Arthur Scharrenhans]

It's actually a very interesting question for philologists, but it should have nothing to do with modern-day Balkan nationalism (which is a quite boring spectacle for those who are not involved).

My understanding is that the 'Macedonian' spoken in Classical times was indeed a Greek dialect (of the Doric/Northwestern family) but with substrate influence from some non-Hellenic (but probably Indo-European) language, resulting in a distinct 'look' from other Greek dialects (other marginal dialects with strong substrate influence, such as Pamphylian for example, could be very idiosyncratic, too).

[Romanion]

Greek nationalists like to claim that the native language of the Macedonians was Greek. But it seems like they were originally non-Greeks who later got assimilated.


It is also commonly known that Greek language was used as Lingua Franca during this time and was used by royalties and in formal discourse while the people spoke Macedonian.

A better question would be "are today's Greeks related to Greeks"? Seeing how most of them got assimilated in the Macedonian colonies and slaughtered or enslaved during the Roman conquest of Grecia. I highly doubt it. Today's Greeks are revival-style Greeks with no real link to the Greeks that constituted of Aristotle, Socrates and other intelligent philosophers. The Greeks are a dead race. The only thing that's alive is their language although Turkish-influenced (lessened during "purification process" when Greek Orthodoxs got their independence).

Oh look, wanna be Illyrian and a Slavo-Macedonian and their obsession with Greeks, you guys are getting boring.

[Papastratosels26]

Greece was lingua france in wide area, not only this.
Yet, there were artifacts found with their own native language, and the names of the non-Greeks, were .. non-Greek, as well as the toponymes.
Prove me that the same happens with Macedonia.

What you basically trying to say is that Macedonians that :
- Were named ONLY with Greek names
- Were naming their places ONLY with Greek names
- All of their artifacts were ONLY in Greek language
- Spread GREEK culture
- Considered themselves Greek
- Participated in Olympic Games
- Followed Greek customs and Gods
- Shared same arts and symbols with the rest of Greeks

They weren't Greek ?

👍 👍 Nice one.

[SharpFork]

About identity:

In 330 BCE Macedonians were not Greek, no Greek would live willingly under the tyranny of a king, even if the kings themselves are Hellenes(Argeads)

By 100 BCE or so the distinction between Macedonians and other Greeks faded away virtually completely, be it in Greece or in the Asian territories.

About linguistics:

Macedonian seems to be some divergent but still Hellenic language, I don't buy the idea that Macedonian originates from some Doric migration from the south but at the same time Macedonians don't seem nearly as distinguished from Greeks as some people would claim, especially when you remove the socio-political aspect that lead to the distinction existing to begin with, Greeks even viewed peoples such as Epirotes and Aetolians as somewhat outsiders.

[Turkophagos]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pella_curse_tablet


Ancient Macedonian was a form of Dorian Greek.

[Uski]

Well Balkan nationalism aside, it seems we need to make a distinction between standard modern greek and hellenic. Ill take tsakonian today, considered to be descended from doric, it is highly divergent from modern greek, yet it is part of the hellenic language family, whose main member is greek, and is also part of the greek subbranch. Its probably improbable that the Macedonians were of the same branch as the Greek proper, as for modern research, Macedonian and Phrygian were the closest to The greek languages (doric,aeolic,ionic-attic and some others)

Macedonian is most probably a Hellenic, language, however it warrants more research and info to see exactly. Aside from Greek revivalist scholars, most agree that as of now, they were not Greek,but a close relative, and their language got gradually replaced by ionic-attic, as it was the Lingua Franca of the time.

Im just putting it on the table, not alot in history is a "cold hard fact", so deal with it.