Ancient Macedonian language

Ancient Macedonian was either an ancient Greek dialect—part of Northwest or Aeolic Greek—or a Hellenic language spoken by the ancient Macedonians during the 1st millennium BC. Spoken originally in the kingdom of Macedon, it gradually fell out of use during the 4th century BC, marginalized by the Macedonian aristocracy's use of Attic Greek, the dialect that became the basis of Koine Greek, the lingua franca of the Hellenistic period. It became extinct during either the Hellenistic or Roman imperial period, and was entirely replaced by Koine Greek.

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 Macedonian variety comes from onomastic evidence, ancient glossaries, and recent epigraphic discoveries in the Greek region of Macedonia, such as the curse tablets from Pella and Pydna.

Scholars have variously proposed that ancient Macedonian was a dialect of Greek, a sister language or an independent Indo-European language, and the disputes have sometimes had modern nationalistic overtones. Research has also considered the extent of influence from Thessalian Aeolic Greek and non-Greek substrata or adstrata, such as Phrygian, Illyrian, and Thracian. There has been some recent scholarly agreement, often expressed as cautious or tentative, that ancient Macedonian is a dialect of the Northwest Greek group. A minority of scholars continues to view the language as a separate Indo-European language related to Greek. Suggested classifications include:

Among those who support that ancient Macedonian was a Greek dialect, Angelos Boufalis suggests that "several features can be established as local and most of them seem indeed to be shared with the NW Doric and/or the Thessalian dialect", and also that "rather than a monolithic dialect throughout, different local or regional idioms may have had been spoken in this extensive geographical area". Sowa suggests that "it seems also possible that the inhabitants of the Lower Macedonia spoke an Aeolic dialect, and those from Upper Macedonia a north-western Greek dialect". Hammond suggests that in the region of Upper Macedonia, the tribes of Elimiotes, Orestes, Lyncestae, and Pelagones, were all Epirotic tribes speaking the Northwest Greek dialect.

Because of the fragmentary sources of Ancient Macedonian, only a little is understood about the special features of the language. A notable sound-law is that the voiced aspirates (/bʰ, dʰ, gʰ/) of Proto-Indo-European sometimes appear as voiced stops /b, d, g/, (written β, δ, γ), whereas they were generally unvoiced as /pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/ (φ, θ, χ) elsewhere in most Greek.

Macedonian shared with Thessalian, Elean, and Epirote, an "oddity" of cases where voiced stops (/b d g/, written ⟨β ð ɣ⟩) appear to correspond to Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirates, /bʰ dʰ ɡʰ/. In most Greek, the Proto-Indo-European aspirates were devoiced to voiceless aspirates /pʰ tʰ kʰ/, written ⟨ɸ θ χ⟩ (though these would later become fricatives in Attic Koine around the first century AD). As with Macedonian, this phenomenon is sometimes attributed to non-Greek substrate and adstrate influence, with some linguists attributing such an influence on Epirote to Illyrian. Filos, however, notes, that the attribution of ⟨β⟩, ⟨ð⟩ and ⟨ɣ⟩ for specifically voiced stops is not secure. Simon Hornblower writes: "Little is known about how Macedonian Greek was spoken, except that for instance 'Philip' was pronounced 'Bilip' (...)."

If γοτάν gotán ('pig') is related to the Proto-Hellenic noun *gʷous, and hence to the PIE noun *gʷṓws ('cattle'), this would indicate that the labiovelars were either intact, or merged with the velars, unlike the usual Greek treatment (Attic βοῦς boûs). Such deviations, however, are not unknown in Greek dialects; compare Laconian Doric (the dialect of Sparta) γλεπ- glep- for common Greek βλεπ- blep-, as well as Doric γλάχων gláchōn and Ionic γλήχων glēchōn for common Greek βλήχων blēchōn. A number of examples suggest that voiced velar stops were devoiced, especially word-initially: κάναδοι kánadoi, 'jaws' (< PIE *genu-); κόμβους kómbous, 'molars' (< PIE *gombh-); within words: ἀρκόν arkón (Attic ἀργός argós); the Macedonian toponym Akesamenai, from the Pierian name Akesamenos (if Akesa- is cognate to Greek agassomai, agamai, "to astonish"; cf. the Thracian name Agassamenos). In Aristophanes' The Birds, the form κεβλήπυρις keblēpyris ('red head', the name of a bird, perhaps the goldfinch or redpoll) is found, showing a Macedonian-style voiced stop in place of a standard Greek unvoiced aspirate: κεβ(α)λή keb(a)lē versus κεφαλή kephalē ('head').

A number of the Macedonian words, particularly in Hesychius of Alexandria's lexicon, are disputed (i.e., some do not consider them actual Macedonian words) and some may have been corrupted in the transmission. Thus abroutes may be read as abrouwes (αβρουϝες), with tau (Τ) replacing a digamma. If so, this word would perhaps be encompassable within a Greek dialect; however, others (e.g. A. Meillet) see the dental as authentic and think that this specific word would perhaps belong to an Indo-European language different from Greek.^{[citation needed]}