Ancient Macedonian language

[akritas]

Ancient Macedonian language (provisional ISO-DIS 639-3.5 XMK).
Subgrouping Code : Ancient Greek language or IEGreekB
Group code: Greek Language or IEGreek.


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A great thanks in Pella Katadesmos

[Ptolemy]

Some years back,a German linguist by the name Otto Hoffman wrote a book with the title "Makedonians, their language and their Ethnicity". Hoffman analyzed the paradoxical or idiomatic words (calling them languages),which past grammaticals,lexicographers and more in general everyone engaged around the Hellenic language had noted them as "worthy to be analyzed" in Makedonia.

To begin with,all those people were believing that the Makedonian language was an Hellenic dialect, and exactly this is the reason mentioning certain of its peculiarities, had they believe that the Makedonian language was alien to that Hellenic one, there was not a reason mentioning those Makedonian paradoxical and/or idiomatic "languages". According to the same Hoffman his conclusions after "supervising" other peoples work are the following:

""And now after supervising the ancient Makedonian linguistic thesaurus we are posting the decisive question,if what is adding to the Makedonian language its character,are the hellenic or the barbarian elements of it,the responce can not be of any doubts. From the 39 "languages" that according to Gustav Mayer their form was "completely alien" has been proven after this research of mine,that 10 of them are clearly Hellenic,with 4 more possibly dialectical forms of common hellenic words,so from the entire collection are remaining only 15 words appearing to be justifiable or at least suspected of anti-hellenic origins.Adding to those 15, few others which with regards their vocals could be hellenic,without till now being confirmed as such,then their number, in comparison to the number of pure hellenic ones in the Makedonian language,is so small that the GENERAL HELLENIC CHARACTER OF THE MAKEDONIAN LINGUISTIC TREASURE CAN NOT BE DOUBTED.

The important thing about the Makedonian language is the fact that the alien and foreign to the Hellenic language words in it, are limited in a very narrow circle of objects and thoughts. Prominent as groups are those of names for plants,animals,foods,drinks,wa*r and fighting items and various names of dressing items. However in the Makedonian language there is absolutely not one barbarian word having relation to the governing of the society,military or confering justice. There is the worshipping of the ancient god Savadion,same as the one for the ancient Hellenic Gods,after which the Makedonian named the months of the year.

In Hellas we had the meeting of two civilizations, from which the superior one, that Hellenic represented by the Kings and the nobles became the base for the Makedonian society. Was this Hellenic civilization a pure Makedonian one or it was imported in the country from outside? Are the Hellenic words in the Makedonian language pure Makedonians or they were accepted as loans from the Hellenic? If such loaning happened, it must have happened in very old times. The already mentioned ""languages"" are not derived from the Attick dialect or the "Common-Koinh" Hellenic one. Not only this, but they are not connected with the Attick dialect that was "imported" by Phillip and Alexander in their society and political organization. Those words are formed in an extremely ancient manner,they are to be found just in Makedonia and they are very dialectical. Such statement is especially important. If somehow we can define and connect those Macedonian "languages" with a specific hellenic dialect,then we have a solid base for their definition.

The fact that the ancient Makedonian history is guarded with distrust might be somehow justified to partial ignorance of that early Makedonian history. However once in Makedonia time arrived for the reigning of Alexander the 1st and Archelaos, the mood has been changed. There is the first connection-contact between Amyntas the 1st and Hippias an Hellene (Herodotus 5-92g) in the land of Anthemus (Herodotus 5-94).......

""Before he went,Amyntas of Macedon offered him Anthemus,and the Thessalians Iolcus..............."

Next comes the close relation of Alexander the 1st and 2nd, Macedon's and Amyntas' sons and the Hellenes. One participates in the Olympic games ( Herodotus 5-22) Amyntas' son favors the Hellenes in their wars against the Persians.(Herodotus 9-44,45).

Alexander, Amyntas' son becomes in 480 B.C honorable citizen,console and beneficiary (Herodotus 8-136) ".....secondly,becaue he was well aware that Alexander's friendship with Athens was an official relation,and was backed by deeds."".............. Perdikkas is ally and friend of the Athenians (Thukididis 1-57), "..............and Perdikkas son of Alexandros,king of Macedon,formerly an ally and friend,had been turned into an enemy.""........... Archelaos not only he maintains friendly political relations with Athens but he is also inviting Athenian poets in his court.Euripedes and Agathon spend in his court the last years of their lives, and as is the case with the SKOPIANS and the Bulgars these days and their so-called different languages, no translators were in need to translate from Greek to Makedonian.

Those Makedonian idiomatism-"languages" are proving one thing and one alone.That neither Athens or the Ionian cities brought to the Makedonians the Hellenic language,since in those dialects clearly exist the influence of the Thessalian dialect!

But in that case the Makedonian linguistic treasure should be accepted not only as a loan from the Thessalians, but an early one as well,since once in Makedonia the Athenian dialect arrived, the Thessalian one couldn't be consider as competitor.

With regards the names of the Royal House of the Argeades, Hoffman is stating: "" None of the names of the Royal House of the Argeades is of Barbarian origins,the roots of the words and their formation is HELLENIC IN EVERYTHING.Loan from the Hellenic Myth might be the name Orestes and possibly the name Menelaos""

Farther down Hoffman considers 40 names of official Makedonians found on an inscription from 423 B.C adding:

""In final analysis it is possible that the name VYRGINON KRASTWNOS is of Thracian origins,while independent remains the name DIRVE.....ALL the other names are BEAUTIFULL,CLEAR,HELLENIC CONSTRUCTIONS and only two of them NEOPTOLEMOS and MELEAGROS could have been loans from the HELLENIC MYTHOLOGY.

Hoffman considers the names of the populations of upper or Western Makedonia including the Orestians(Kastoria),Eordians(P*tolemais-Arnissa),Tymfaians(Pi*ndos-Konitsa), Elimiotians(Kozani),and Lyngestians(Florina-Monastiri. He considers and analyzes the names of the King's body-guards,of the generals,of the administrative employees,of the leaders of the Makedonian cavalry,the leaders of the name and army,and those of many other common people of the 5th and 4th and even later centuries. His conclusions?

""THE NAMES OF THE GENUINE MAKEDONIANS AND THOSE BORN OF MAKEDONIAN PARENTS ,ESPECIALLY THE NAMES OF THE ELITIC CLASS AND NOBLES,IN THEIR FORMATION AND PHONOLOGY ARE PURELY HELLENIC."


And he continues,,,
""The general Hellenic character of the Makedonians linguistic treasure can not be disputed even in case some of them might be loans from the Hellenic Mythology or from non-hellenic myths or for the better pre-hellenic myths (Teytamos-Marsyas-Seilinos....*).
The reason?Both Hellenic mythology and pre-hellenic SUCH,contributed many of their names not only in the Makedonian but as well in thegeneral hellenic vocabulary of names. Names that in their phonology and the laws governing their formations are
clearly different than those Thracians and Illyrians,and they can not even be used as "in between" those and the hellenic ones.

So.........if someone not agreeing with the Hellenism of the Makedonians,than naturally has to accept the fact that during the 6th and 5th centuries B.C,the Makedonians dropped their ......Makedonian names and they...........introduced the Hellenic ones substituting theirs!

However,if their names were their original ones and in such a way since the names are clearly hellenic and the Makedonians were of pure Hellenic origins,one MUST conclude that the hellenic linguistic treasure,was not taken as a loan from the Thessalians,but it was their own ETHNIC inheritance!

The Hellenic civilization and the Hellenic language did not migrated from Thessaly to alien nations,tribes,and races within the Makedonian lands.

[akritas]

To the question, what kind of language did the ancient Macedonians use, the answer can be given based on, what else, the existing references in ancient documents and the excavated inscriptions. What we have concluded is, that the ancient Macedonians were Hellenophon and the original dialect of the Hellenic language they used (Macedonian dialect) was very much similar to the Doric dialect (that is in accordance to Herodotus' references on the common origin of the Dorians and the Macedonians). Later on (hellenistic era) that dialect was gradually replaced by the Koini Attiki dialect, just like in all of the other Greek states. Every native Macedonian name, is Hellenic and is formed in the Hellenic way of producing words, as for example the names:

"Adista, Philista, Sostrata, Philotas, Perdikkas, Mahatas," and hundreds more

Every existing record of the Macedonian dialect (inscriptions, coins) proves that it is a Greek dialect and its style was different from the Ionian's. That alone proves that the Macedonians were not a hellenized group of people, but, they were an original Hellenic tribe. What leads us to that conclusion, is that if they where somehow hellenized, then that must have been caused by the colonies that other Greek states had on Macedonia's coasts, and which were ionian-speaking. So, if they were hellenized, as the historians of FYROM, sometimes claim (when it suits them best), then the Greek words in that "language" should have been produced by the "hellenization" and that means that they were supposed to be of the Ionian dialect, which they are not! Alos, many of the original non-Greek names and words would have remained in the later years, and would have been recorded. From the 75 names that have been recorded, only one, is of non-Greek origin (Amadokos), and which is of Thracian origin. That is very normal for a state neighboring foreign nations.

Also the Roman and Byzantine lexicographers and grammaticals used examples from the Macedonian dialect, to explain singularities of the Homeric poems, because it was closer to the Homeric dialect. Some terms, like the "hetairoi of the king", used in Macedonia for the horsemen, are found only in Homer, and had been retained only in the Macedonian dialect. The lexicographers wouldn't have used a non-Greek language to study Homer, would they?

And, of course, the strongest evidence of the Greekness of the Macedonian dialect are:

The excavated inscriptions, where you can find only Greek characters and words
The coins of Macedonia, where again you can find only Greek characters and words
The quotations of the ancient writers on the Macedonians' speech
The characteristics of the Macedonian dialect
Etoimology of some names in Macedonia

This article created in 1998. As you see the truth remain even had past 7 years!!!!

akritas

[akritas]

Characteristics of the ancient Macedonian Language

• In the Macedonian language, we have substitution of the character -H with the character -A in many cases, just like in the Doric dialect. The male and female names ending in and -H, in the Attic dialect, obey to that rule, and have the -H transformed into an -A. An example of names produced that way are:
  
  
  
  Another example of conversion of the letter -H to A, just like in the Doric dialect (but not by the same rule) is the production of the name Macedonia itself.

• In compound words, where one component is the word laos (, meaning people), the last remains the same in the produced word, while in the ionian dialect, it is converted to leos (). For example, the names:
  Archelaos (),
  Pefkolaos (),
  Laodiki ().

• A characteristic that the Koini attic dialect (and modern Greek) has inherited from the Macedonian dialect is that male words ending in , in the second clause don't end in -OY, as they do in the attic dialect, but, in -A. For example, the names Kallias, Teleftias, Pausanias

• The composer of the "Megalon Etoimologikon" marks, under the lemma Aphroditi, an observation of his predecessor Didimos. The extract mentions the relationship between the Greek phonems B (beta, pronounced as "V") and (phi, pronounced as "F"), using the Macedonian dialect as an example

[akritas]

The Ancient Cambridge History Book (Greece after the Persians Wars, ancient Hellenic language) mention as about the ancient Macedonian language:

Relative to the North-western dialect was the Macedonian with many Thracians and Illyrians elements. Sector of Dorian race, according Herodotus (7-56,8-43), the Macedonians subjugated the Thracians and the Illyrians tribes and it was natural that they adopts certain effects in their dialect from the languages of conquered peoples

Ancient Greek North Western dialect composed of from the spoken dialects that spoken in Epirus, Acarnania, Aitolia, Lochrida , Fokida and Macedonia.

[akritas]

Nicholas G. L. Hammond, a classicist, also suggested that Macedonian was a Greek dialect:

"What language did these `Macedones' speak? The name itself is Greek in root and in ethnic termination. It probably means `highlanders', and it is comparable to Greek tribal names such as `Orestai' and `Oreitai', mean­ing 'mountain-men'. A reputedly earlier variant, `Maketai', has the same root, which means `high', as in the Greek adjective makednos or the noun mekos... At the turn of the sixth century the Persians described the tribute-paying peoples of their province in Europe, and one of them was the `yauna takabara', which meant `Greeks wearing the hat'.

There were Greeks in Greek city-states here and there in the province, but they were of various origins and not distinguished by a common hat. However, the Macedonians wore a dis­tinctive hat, the kausia. We conclude that the Persians believed the Macedonians to be speakers of Greek.

Finally, in the latter part of the fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, visited Macedonia and modi­fied Hesiod's genealogy by making Macedon not a cousin, but a son of Aeolus, thus bringing Macedon and his descendants firmly into the Aeolic branch of the Greek-speaking family. Hesiod, Persia, and Hellanicus had no motive for making a false statement about the language of the Macedonians, who were then an obscure and not a powerful people. Their independent testimonies should be accepted as conclusive."

[Ptolemy]

The following are excerpts from a chapter (written by the editor) on the Macedonian Tongue taken from the book
"Macedonia: 4000 years of Greek history and civilization"
edited by Professor M. B. Sakellariou and published by EKDOTIKI ATHINON.


When i need to write something in Greek I use the following convention:
g for gamma
h for eta
j for ksi
y for upsilon
c for psi
v for omega
thus the greek alphabet becomes
abgdezhuiklmnjoprstyfxcv.


Various pointers to references are omitted.


The Macedonian Tongue (excerpts from pages 54-63)
-------------------------------------------------

The earliest Macedonian written documents contain only names. When more extensive Macedonian texts begin to appear, they are expressed in the Attic dialect. This fact furnishes one of the arguments used by those who deny that the Macedonians were Greeks and claim that the Macedonians were a people who spoke a different tongue and who became hellenized. Those who support the view that the Macedonian were Greeks counter that their kings introduced the attic dialect into the court and the administration because the local dialect was undeveloped. Attic thus became widespread among the MAcedonians as a means of expressing themselves in writing. Both these explanations are hypotheses that require proof. And the proof of either depends on other factors that will be examined below.


Despite the lack of Macedonian texts written in the local language the nature of Macedonian may be discerned from certain testimonia; from about 100 surviving Macedonian words; and from several hundred Macedonian names.


1) TESTIMONIA. There are three ancient pieces of indirect evidence of a conclusive nature:
a) in a scene from the attic comedy MACEDONIANS, by the fifth century writer Stattis, an Athenian asks "h sfyraina d' esti tis;" ('sledfish, what do you mean?') and a Macedonian replies "kestran men ymmes vttikoi iklhskete" ('wha ye Attics ca' a hammer-fush,
ma freen') .
In order to appreciate the value of the Macedonian's reply for the problem under discussion we must not forget that as is clear from many passages in Aristophanes, the attic comedians made their non-Greeks speak broken Greek with an admixture of barbarian words (some of them imaginary) while Lacedaemonians, Megarians Boiotians and other Greeks spoke their own dialects.
The Macedonian's reply is in good Greek with dialect (ymes, sfyraina) and archaizing elements (kiklhskete)

b) Alexander the Great having selected thirty thousand Persian youths, gave an order that they were to "learn Greek letters and be trained in the use of Macedonian weapons". From this it may be deduced that the MAcedonian soldiers spoke Greek: It would be pointless to teach the young Persians who were to fight alongside the Macedonians a language that the Macedonians did not understand.

c) an ambassador from Macedonia speaking to the Aitolians in 200BC says of the Macedonians, the Aitolians and the Arkanians that they spoke the same language.

The expressions "aneboa makedonisti" "makedonisti th fvnh" klp have been taken by opponents of the thesis that the Macedonians were Greeks as indicating that their language differed from Greek; the supporters of this thesis declare that these formulation indicate a Greek dialect (cf "aiolizein th fvnh", "attikizei", "attikisti", "boivtiazein","dvrizein" etc). The expressions are in fact susceptible of either interpretation and cannot therefore be used to form part of the argumentation with which either is supported. Their sense will become clear after Maceonian has been shown to be Greek, or not, from other data

[Ptolemy]

2) WORDS. Today, over a hundred Macedonian words and a few hundred Macedonian names are known from a variety of sources. Although the names presuppose words, they will be examined separately for a number of methodological reasons.

A total of one hundred and twelve words, with ninety nine different stems, are attested directly. Of these, sixty-five words, or sixty-three stems have been preserved in lexica, with forty-seven words, with thirty-six stems, survive in various ancient texts, none of which is Macedonian. All the words in the second group are Greek. The opponents of the view that the MAcedonians were Greeks refuse to take them into consideration, arguing that they were all words borrowed by the Macedonians from Greek at the time they began to use the
Attic dialect as the official language- which they ascribe to the reign of Philip II.

However:
a) The word "sfyraina" and the form "ymmes" ARE NOT attic in origin and are attributed to the Macedonians half a century before the accession of Philip.
b) the majority of these words are military and, as has already been observed it would be illogical to suppose that Philip would impose a foreign military terminology on the MAcedonians; moreover, twelve of these same words are not attested as common to all dialects and fourteen more, while being common words, have a different meaning in MAcedonian. In dealing with the Macedonian material in lexica, the opponents of the view that the MAcedonians were Greeks have made use to varying extents of the following method: they select from amongst these words the ones that cannot be shown to have a Greek derivation; they do not always inquire whether the form of some of these has changed as a result of copying errors; they suggest derivations for these words from Indo-European roots without always demonstrating adequately that their derivations are well grounded; using this kind of etymology as their point of departure they draw up rules for the conversion of Indo European vowels or consonants to "Macedonian"; finally since the same rules can be detected in words that are not attested as Macedonian in the sources, they declare that these words, notwithstanding, should be considered Macedonian.

The latest and most complete monograph on the nationality of the Macedonians devotes hundreds of pages to the study of Macedonian words and contain some perceptive critical observations and original views. it concludes that fifty-two of the sixty-five words in the lexica are Greek, while the remaining thirteen include not only genuinely non_Greek words but also ambiguous forms, copyists' errors and words used by children.

Let us assume however that ALL the Macedonian words handed down by the lexica are demonstrably non-Greek (which is not claimed even by the most extreme opponents of the theory that the Macedonians were Greeks) Even in this eventuality, it would not necessarily follow that the Macedonians didn't speak Greek, The reason is that these words are not a representative sample of the MAcedonian tongue. this would require that they had been preserved at random and from a variety of sources. Quite the reverse is true: they have all been catalogued in lexica whose purpose is the interpretation of rare words only. It follows that the Alexandrian scholars who were the first to compose lexica of this sort (the forerunners of the surviving lexica in which the words in question are preserved) found only a few dozen Macedonian words that required interpretation.

However THERE IS NO LANGUAGE OR DIALECT THAT DOES NOT HAVE A NUMBER OF WORDS OF FOREIGN ORIGIN.

[Ptolemy]

3) NAMES. In addition to the MAcedonian ethnic name, we today know the ethnic names of some of the Macedonian tribes, scores of place names in Macedonia and dozens of names of gods and heroes, the names of six festivals and twelve months and hundred of personal names covering thousand men and women.


The ethnic names of ELIMIOTAI, LYNKESTAI and ORESTAI derive from place names. The first has an undoubtedly Greek termination. Some scholars believe the -st of the second and third are an affix that is found in Illyrian names. In the name of Orestai at least the s belongs to the root (Ores-) and the t to the termination (-tai) which is Greek. Furthermore, both the Orestai and the Lynkestai were undoubtedly Greeks (see page 59).

Alexander I, other MAcedonian kings , Philip II Alexander the Great and his successors all gave Greek names to the cities they founded; Alexandre the great and some of his officers went further and translated some of the local names into Greek. Those opposed to the view that the Macedonians were Greek are not prepared to take this evidence into consideration, justifying their stance with the argument that it all post dates the introduction of attic into the court and the state administration. There is NO PROOF for this argument, however other than the claim that the Macedonians did not speak Greek and it is this claim that the argument is designed to support. The introduction of this argument into the chain of reasoning designed to demonstrate the above view thus leads to a vicious circle. In order to avoid the accusation that we are using these same toponyms as proof that the Macedonians were Greek, while the evidence for and against this view is still being discussed, we shall restrict ourselves to toponyms in areas where the expansion of the Macedonians ante-dates Philip and to those names attested before his reign. Some of these name are Greek some are non-Greek. The latter do not prove that the Macedonians were not Greeks, for the areas in question were inhabited for many millenia (from the beginning of human habitation to 2300/2200BC, and from 1900 till the eighth seventh and sixth and even the fifth centuries BC) by non-Greek peoples. We also know that place names, survieVx4z|(i\@4|@BD ethnic groups from which they derive. Further if the non Greek toponyms of western and central Macedonia are attributed to the Macedonians this has two consequences. Firstly, we have to concede that the Pelasgians, the Paiones, the Bottiaioi, the Eordoi, the Almopes, The Phrygians, the Thracians and other races left no mark on the toponyms of MAcedonia, which is improbable. Secondly the following problem arises if we exclude the possibility that the Macedonians were responsible for the Greek toponyms in western and central MAcedonia before Philip, to which GREEKS are they to be attributed? It is possible that only the names HALIAKMON and PIERIA are earlier than the Macedonian expansion. There are many more toponyms that are connected by our sources with the MAcedonian expansion or that cannot be dated to the period when the proto-Greeks occupied MAcedonia, for in this case they would exhibit a more archaic form which would have been fossilized or corrupted through the intervention of non-Greek language.


Of seventy-two names and epithets of gods and heroes fifty-six are panhellenic or Greek from a linguistic point of view, at least one is Greek with non-Greek phonetics, eleven are foreign (nine of these came from areas where non-Macedonian populations survived)a and two derive from foreign toponyms, with a Greek terminational the rest are doubtful (see page 60). The proportion of non-Greek names of gods is very small especially in view of the fact that they are attested at very late periods when the entire Greek world was feeling the influence of foreign religions.

All the names of festivals are Greek (see page 60) All the names of the months have Greek terminations and only two of them have roots that are possibly non-Greek. No comprehensive collection of the personal names has yet been made. The few collections that have been made for prosopographical purposes have not inspired any exhaustive linguistic studies or statistical evaluations. A review of the names borne by members of the royal family of the Temenids, of the dynasties of upper Macedonia, and other Macedonians before the rule of philip, reveals only very small percentages of each of the three groups. The recent discovery of large number of grave stelai at Vergina has increased
our knowledge of Macedonian personal names by adding dozens of examples. With one or two exceptions, these are Greek and a number of them date from before the accession of philip. They are all names of members of the middle classes.

Those who deny that the Macedonians were Greeks assert that they took the Greek names fro gods, heroes, festivals , months and people from the Greeks. in the first place, however there is no other example of a people neighbouring on the Greeks whose names are 95% Greek before the middle of the 4th century; many centuries later than this, a large percentage of Paionians Thracians, Mysians, Lydians, Karians, and Lycians had local names even though they had begun to feel Greek cultural influences much earlier. Furthermore, a member of the Greek-sounding names given by the MAcedonians to gods, heroes , festivals months and persons DO NOT OCCUR outside Macedonia or areas in which Macedonians had settled.

The majority of Macedonian names in all categories, are either nouns as such or adjectives or their derivatives, or a variety of compounds; they also include a number of verb-stems, prepositions and affixes. As a result, the names help us to form a picture of the vocabulary, phonetics, and rules of derivation and synthesis of the Macedonian tongue which is quantitavily richer and qualitatively superior to that derived from the hundred or so roots of words that have been handed down directly. Consequently, in attempting to trace the features of Macedonian in attempting to trace the features of Macedonian, it is necessary to go beyond the words and make use of all the date to be gleaned from the Macedonian names.

Synthesis
a) The nature of the Macedonian tongue

>From the above evidence- testimonia, words and names- it is clear that

Macedonian was not a separate language but a Greek dialect.


b) The relationship of MAcedonian to other Greek dialects.

The fact that there are no texts written in Macedonian prevents us from forming as good an idea of this dialect and its relationship to other
Greek dialects as we can for those in which even a few written documents survive. Nonetheless, the material at our disposal enables us to make a number of observations that demonstrate a relationship between Macedonian and the West Greek dialect (to which Doric and north-west Greek belong) and the Aiolic and Thessalian dialects.

[Ptolemy]

1) Macedonian and West Greek a) -dd- in place of -zz
b) nominative singular of certain compounds in -as instead of -os
c) a number of words (to those already recorded should be added the word k~alon, the existence of which in Macedonian was recently demonstrated by the name Drykalos, read on one of the stelai from Vergina; the name will have meant ' he who is of the wood of the oak" cf the Macedonian name
Peykestas: "he who is of the wood of the pine".


2) Macedonian and Aeolic
a) a -nn- from -sn- (consequently also -ll- from -sl- etc); this phonetic rule is attested in Macedonian by the toponym Kranna
(Doric: Krana, Ionic-Attic :Krhnnh)
b) nominative plural of the second person of the personal pronoun ymmes
(Ionic-Attic: ymeis , Doric: ymes)

3) Macedonian and Thessalian
v (omega) instead of ou attested in both Macedonian and thessalian

4)Macedonian and arcadian conversion of en to in

5) Macedonian, thessalian and arcadian:
Conversion of a into e under certain conditions; Macedonia se- (in Seleykos) from die- which is attested in thessalian (dia- in the other Greek dialects) Macedonian zereuron = arcadian zereuron, thessalian bereuron for barauron.

c) Non-Greek features of Macedonian

A number of features may be observed in the surviving linguistic material that are not Greek. All those who have asserted that Macedonian was a distinct language and not a dialect of Greek have represented these features as having universal application. In fact, they have relied on
selected evidence, which they have put forward as being the only genuine examples of Macedonian.
This evidence consists of:
a) Those of the Macedonian words in the ancient lexica which cannot be assigned
a Greek derivation;
b) the very few Macedonian names fro gods, heroes, festivals, months, places and people that are non-Greek at least phonetically;
c) words known from ancient lexica or other sources which are not stated to be Macedonian but which have features either identical with or similar to those of the first two groups. The evidence is selected on the bases of the following arguments: all the examples that are stated to be Macedonian but have Greek characteristics are not genuinely Macedonian but will have passed into the Macedonian language as loan-words; all the examples that are not stated to be Macedonian but display the same characteristics as Macedonian are concealed examples of the Macedonian language. these arguments however fall into the logical trap of taking as assumed that which has to be proven, namely, that
Macedonian was a separate language which was gradually influenced to a considerable degree by Greek; and that the examples in the third group are Macedonian.

The following features have been suggested as features distinguishing Macedonian from Greek, though most of them in fact suggest an affinity with Thracian and Illyrian:
1) The retention of the Indo-European s before an initial vowel (in Greek the s became h, the DASEIA)
[Note: In the following discussion the aspirates bh,dh,gh should be read as they are written and not translated into their Greek equivalents]
2) The conversion of the indo-european voiced aspirates bh , dh , gh into voiced stops b( beta) d( delta) g (gamma) (in Greek these became f (phi) u (theta) x (chi)),
3)the disimilation of the first aspirate in cases where two of these sounds occur in successive syllables
4)the conversion of b,g,d, into p,k,t,
5) the conversion of the vowel group ai into a
6) the conversion of the vowel group ay( alpha upsilon) into a
7) the dropping of the final r (rho)
8) the formation of feminines in -issa
9) the formation of ethnic names by the affix -st


Let us examine matter more closely:

1) Only three Macedonian words have s- before a vowel in their first syllable: sarissa , Sayadoi/Saydoi , Sigynh/Sibynh.
However: a) none of these has been convincingly derived from an Indo-European root
b) the third is also attested in the Greek dialect of Cyprus from as early as the third century and the second corresponds to the god's name Sabazios which spread through southern Greece at an early date;
c) Greek has many examples of the retention of Indo-European -s- before a vowel in the first syllable, occurring in words borrowed by Greek from languages spoken by populations subjected to Greek tribes. Thus: either the Macedonian examples do not prove the existence of the phenomenon in question or if they prove it they do not constitute criteria for distinguishing the Macedonian tongue from Greek; in the lattereventuality they will have derived from Pelasgians or thracians who were subjugated by the Macedonians.
The fact that Macedonian has examples in which initial s- is converted into an aspiration cannot be ignored however. This phenomenon cannot be interpreted in terms of Greek influence, for it occurs in the names Yperberetas and Yperberetaios amongst others; these are not only unknown outside Macedonia but exhibit b in the place of f. IT IS ILLOGICAL to cite these names amongst the examples in which b appears in place of the Greek f and simultaneously to ignore the fact that they represent examples of the change of the initial s to h (daseia) in accordance with a GREEK phonetic law.

2) The second phenomenos is attested in Plutarch, Eustathios of Thessalonike, and a number of lemmata in Byzantine Lexica. One of the passages in Plutarch gives the impression that the phenomenon was widespread in Macedonia. Examples are the names Bilippos, Berenikh, Balakros, Beroia etc (for Filippos, Ferenikh, Falakros, Feroia etc). On the other hand,it is to be noted that the name Filippos and Macedoniannames in general in which the first component is fil- are written more frequently with f from the beginning of the written tradition; also that f and not b occurs in : amfoter'os, arf'ys, Boykefalas, falagj, Fobos etc x (chi) and not g in : agxarmos, dimaxai, loxos, Polyperxvn Xariklhs, Xarvn; u (theta) and not d in zereuron, Uaylos, Uoyrides, Peiuvn. Those who oppose the view that elements of Macedonian were Greek argue, of course, that the version with f,u,x, represent Macedonian names transmitted in Greek texts and also name and words borrowed by the Macedonians from the Greeks. If the evidence of the Greek texts is excluded on the grounds that is untrustworthy, then exception cannot be made for those passages which attest to b,d,g, in place of f,u,x. If these latter are not excluded, and it is thus conceded that the Greek authors rendered the Macedonian pronunciation correctly by writing Bilippos etc then it is illegitimate to assert that the
version with f,u,x are errors. Furthermore, the spelling Filippos is not solely attested in non-Macedonian texts; it also occurs on coins of philip II
and on Macedonian arrows (photo included) and tiles of the same period. It would be curious if the coins issued by the Macedonian state did not accurately reflect the national pronunciation. Let us concede, however, that Philip insisted that his name be written with F since he hasestablished the attic dialect as the official language of the state: this explanation might account for the phonetic form of the royal name on the coinage but not also on arrows and tiles. The hypothesis that Macedonian names and words having f ,y,x in place of b,d,g are borrowed from Greek has properly been countered with the hypothesis that this is unacceptable in the case of words like arfys, which is otherwise unknown; agxarmon which has fallen in disuse in the rest of Greece, zereuron which was used in the isolated region of Arcadia; xarvn which in Macedonia was not used to mean "Charon" but "lion".

Two conclusions emerge:
1) the pronunciation of the ancient bh,gh,dh, as b,g,d, was not universal throughout the Macedonia, but occurred alongside the pronunciation f,x,u.
2) the pronunciation f,x,u appears in some words which could not have been borrowed by the Macedonians from a Greek people. In the light of these conclusions we must look for some other explanation of the appearance of b,g,d in Macedonia This demand can be satisfied by the following observations:
1) the same phenomenon also occurs sporadically in words and names transmitted in indisputably Greek sources
2) these words and names are thought to be loan words borrowed by the Greeks from other iNdo-European peoples that they first conquered and absorbed
3) the Macedonians too conquered the pelasgians and after them the thracians and illyrians who , like the Pelasgians had converted the bh,gh,dh, into b,g,d. Since on the one hand, the appearance in Macedonian of f,u,x deriving from indo-european bh,gh,dh, cannot be attributed to external influences and since, on the other, the conversion of the same sounds to b,g,d, occurred in Macedonian under conditions similar to those that account for it an indisputably Greek linguistic area, we are obliged to give the same interpretation to the Macedonian data 3 and
4) These two phenomena also occur in words and names found in the Greek world in general where they are regarded as vestiges of pelasgian or of pre-Greek languages generally, that have been preserved in Greek. Their occurrence in Macedonian can therefore also be attributed to pre-Macedonian substrata (both Pelasgian and Thracian).