Following its adoption as the court language of Philip II of Macedon's regime, authors of ancient Macedonia wrote their works in Koine Greek, the "lingua franca" of late Classical and Hellenistic Greece. Rare textual evidence indicates that the native Macedonian language was either a dialect of Greek similar to Thessalian Greek and Northwestern Greek, or a language closely related to Greek. The vast majority of surviving inscriptions from ancient Macedonia were written in Attic Greek and its successor Koine. Attic (and later Koine) Greek was the preferred language of the Ancient Macedonian army, although it is known that Alexander the Great once shouted an emergency order in Macedonian to his royal guards during the drinking party where he killed Cleitus the Black.
Language and dialects
Macedonia (ancient kingdom)
Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Language and dialects
Koine Greek, the "lingua franca" of late Classical and Hellenistic Greece, and the native Macedonian language was either a dialect of Greek  similar to Thessalian Greek and Northwestern Greek, or a language closely related to Greek Koine Greek. Koine Greek, Attic Greek, Thessalian Greek, Northwestern Greek and other languages related to Greek. Koine Greek,
who was the king of macedonia who built an empire that stretched to india
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Alexander the Great
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where is the above ancient kingdom located?
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On the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, and later the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece.
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what is the origin of its name?
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The name Macedonia comes from the ethnonym Μακεδόνες , which itself is derived from the ancient Greek adjective μακεδνός, meaning "tall, slim", also the name of a people related to the Dorians, and possibly descriptive of Ancient Macedonians
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who was the leader here before the above mentioned king?
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The Argead king, PhilipII
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which language was spoken here?
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Following its adoption as the court language of Philip II of Macedon's regime, authors of ancient Macedonia wrote their works in Koine Greek, the "lingua franca" of late Classical and Hellenistic Greece. Rare textual evidence indicates that the native Macedonian language was either a dialect of Greek similar to Thessalian Greek and Northwestern Greek, or a language closely related to Greek. The vast majority of surviving inscriptions from ancient Macedonia were written in Attic Greek and its successor Koine. Attic (and later Koine) Greek was the preferred language of the Ancient Macedonian army, although it is known that Alexander the Great once shouted an emergency order in Macedonian to his royal guards during the drinking party where he killed Cleitus the Black.
Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Language and dialects
Macedonian became extinct in either the Hellenistic or the Roman period, and entirely replaced by Koine Greek.
Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Language and dialects
At the head of Macedonia's government was the king ("basileus"). From at least the reign of PhilipII, the king was assisted by the royal pages ("basilikoi paides"), bodyguards ("somatophylakes"), companions ("hetairoi"), friends ("philoi"), an assembly that included members of the military, and (during the Hellenistic period) magistrates. Evidence is lacking regarding the extent to which each of these groups shared authority with the king or if their existence had a basis in a formal constitutional framework. Before the reign of PhilipII, the only institution supported by textual evidence is the monarchy.
Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Division of power
For instance, Cleopatra VII Philopator, the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt, spoke Koine Greek as a first language and by her reign (51–30 BC) or some time before it the Macedonian language was no longer used. Attempts to classify Ancient Macedonian are hindered by the lack of surviving Ancient Macedonian texts; it was a mainly oral language and most archaeological inscriptions indicate that in Macedonia there was no dominant written language besides Attic and later Koine Greek. All surviving epigraphical evidence from grave markers and public inscriptions is in Greek. Classification attempts are based on a vocabulary of 150–200 words and 200 personal names assembled mainly from the 5th century lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria and a few surviving fragmentary inscriptions, coins and occasional passages in ancient sources.
Ancient Macedonians | Language
Hatzopoulos also states that the native language of the ancient Macedonians also betrays a slight phonetic influence from the languages of the original inhabitants of the region who were assimilated or expelled by the invading Macedonians. He also asserts that little is known about the languages of these original inhabitants aside from Phrygian spoken by the Bryges, who migrated to Anatolia. Hatzopoulos has suggested that the Macedonian dialect of the 4th century BC, as attested in the Pella curse tablet, was a sort of Macedonian ‘koine’ resulting from the encounter of the idiom of the ‘Aeolic’-speaking populations around Mount Olympus and the Pierian Mountains, whose phonetics had been influenced by a non-Greek (possibly Phrygian or Pelasgian) adstratum, with the Northwest Greek-speaking Argead Macedonians hailing from Argos Orestikon, who founded the kingdom of Lower Macedonia and incorporated into it the ‘Aeolic’-speaking earlier inhabitants.
Ancient Macedonians | Language
The Danubian provinces lay within a geographical area encompassing the middle and lower Danube basins, the Eastern Alps, the Dinarides, and the Balkans. Provinces in this general region include Noricum, Dacia, Dalmatia, Moesia, Thrace, Scythia, and Pannonia. The relative influence of Latin versus Greek and vice versa in this area and in the Balkans in general, is sometimes demarcated by the Jireček Line. Greek had been in use in the southern part of the Balkans since the late 4th century BC, as a result of the Macedonian conquests of Philip and Alexander. The ancient Macedonian language, perhaps a Greek dialect, may have been spoken in some parts of what is now Macedonia and northern Greece; to the north of this area, Paeonian would have been used, and to the south Epirot, both scantily attested.
Languages of the Roman Empire | Danubian provinces and Balkans
Ancient Macedonian, the language of the ancient Macedonians, either a dialect of Ancient Greek, or a separate Hellenic language, was spoken in the kingdom of Macedonia during the 1st millennium BC and belongs to the Indo-European language family. It gradually fell out of use during the 4th century BC, marginalized by the use of Attic Greek by the Macedonian aristocracy, the Ancient Greek dialect that became the basis of Koine Greek, the "lingua franca" of the Hellenistic period. The surviving public and private inscriptions found in Macedonia indicate that there was no other written language in ancient Macedonia but Ancient Greek, and recent epigraphic discoveries in the Greek region of Macedonia, such as the Pella curse tablet, suggest that ancient Macedonian might have been a variety of North Western Ancient Greek.
Ancient Macedonian language | Introduction
Other linguistic evidence suggests that although Ancient Greek was the language of literacy, the vernacular was a separate language, although closely related.
Ancient Macedonian language | Introduction
Describing political negotiations between Macedonians and Aetolians in the late 3rd century BC, Livy has a Macedonian ambassador argue that Aetolians, Acarnanians and Macedonians were "men of the same language". This has been interpreted as referring to a shared North-West Greek speech (as opposed to Attic Koiné). In another passage, Livy states that an announcement was translated from Latin to Greek for Macedonians to understand. Quintus Curtius Rufus, Philotas's trial and the statement that the Greek-speaking Branchidae had common language with the Macedonians.
Ancient Macedonian language | Macedonian in Classical sources
Instead they founded national movements of their own, promoted the literary and official use of their own spoken languages, and established the use of those languages in church. This removed yet another justification for the official use of the ancient language in the Greek state; it was clearly about to lose its old status as a common language for Orthodox worship across the Balkans. On the other hand, the political importance of demotic had increased. In this time of national awakenings, the language spoken in the home had become much more important in defining ethnicity than the old religious classifications used by the Ottomans.
Greek language question | The Bulgarian Exarchate and the Eastern Question 1870–81
The areal span of the Macedonian language that was formed with the settlement of Slavic people to the Balkans covered the historico-geographical region of Macedonia until the beginning of the 20th century. This territory includes Vardar Macedonia – the territory corresponding to today's North Macedonia – and the bordering regions that were conquered by Albania (Mala Prespa and Gollobordë), Greece (Greek Macedonia; north region of current-day Greece) and Bulgaria (Pirin Macedonia; South-West region of current-day Bulgaria) after the Balkan Wars. Macedonian is predominantly spoken in Vardar Macedonia on the territory of North Macedonia. Speakers of Macedonian dialects of Bulgarian have a Bulgarian linguistic and national sense of identity and in Greece, following the Greek Civil War, the number of speakers decreased to a negligible number due to historical events and policies.
Geographical distribution of Macedonian speakers | Geographical region of Macedonia
The origins of the ancient Macedonian language are currently debated. It is as yet undetermined whether it was a Greek dialect which was part of or closely related to the Doric and/or Aeolic dialects, a sibling language of ancient Greek forming a "Hellenic" (i.e. Greco-Macedonian) supergroup, or an Indo-European language which was a close cousin to Greek and also related to Thracian and Phrygian languages. The scientific community generally agrees that, although some sources are available (e.g. Hesychius' lexicon, Pella curse tablet) there is no decisive evidence for supporting any of these hypotheses. The surviving public and private inscriptions found in Macedonia indicate that the written language in ancient Macedonia was Ancient Greek.
Macedonia naming dispute | Macedonian (ancient)
Likewise, the term "Macedonian", while referring here to Greek dialects, also ended up meaning the Koine Greek in classical sources , whereas diverse major Ancient Greek dialects were natively spoken in the later/expanded Macedonian Kingdom, and even though the Koine dialect was mostly based on Attic Greek that was natively spoken around Athens. Notably, during of the reign of Constantine the Great, who is regarded as the first Byzantine Emperor, the Diocese of Macedonia was established, comprising principally the area that is modern Greece, with Thessalonica as its capital.
Names of the Greeks | Macedonians (Μακεδόνες)
In the Macedonian Kingdom, and later the Macedonian Empire, the body that assisted the king with running the kingdom was called the "synedrion", literally translated as "The Congress". This tradition continued to be in use in the years of Alexander the Great and its members were hereditary. Although not democratic, the members of the Synedrion, including the king were considered equal to one another and had the right of the freedom of speech.
Boule (ancient Greece) | Kingdom of Macedonia
The dialect of Prilep, in the heart of the Pelagonian plain, forms the basis for the standard Macedonian language spoken today. When the Socialist Republic of Macedonia was created in Yugoslavia in 1944 and the language nationally recognised the following year, Prilep, together with Veles, was chosen as the centre for the language because of their central position on the Macedonian map.
Prilep | Language
Although the empire fractured into multiple Hellenic regimes shortly after his death, his conquests left a lasting legacy, not least in the new Greek-speaking cities founded across Persia's western territories, heralding the Hellenistic period. In the partition of Alexander's empire among the Diadochi, Macedonia fell to the Antipatrid dynasty, which was overthrown by the Antigonid dynasty after only a few years, in 294 BC. Ancient Macedonian, whether it was a Greek dialect and more precisely a Nortwest Doric dialect as recent epigraphic discoveries such as Pella curse tablet indicate, or a separate Hellenic language, was gradually replaced by Attic Greek; the latter came in use from the times of Philip II of Macedon and later evolved into Koine Greek.
Macedonians (Greeks) | Preface: Ancient Macedonian, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman periods
After the defeat of Andriscus in 148 BC, Macedonia officially became a province of the Roman Republic in 146 BC. Hellenization of the non-Greek population was not yet complete in 146 BC, and many of the Thracian and Illyrian tribes had preserved their languages. It is also possible that the ancient Macedonian tongue was still spoken, alongside Koine, the common Greek language of the Hellenistic era. From an early period, the Roman province of Macedonia included Epirus, Thessaly, parts of Thrace and Illyria, thus making the region of Macedonia permanently lose any connection with its ancient borders, and now be the home of a greater variety of inhabitants.
Demographic history of Macedonia | Roman Macedonia
Due to the fragmentary attestation of this language or dialect, various interpretations are possible. Suggested phylogenetic classifications of Macedonian include:
Ancient Macedonian language | Classification
These confirm that a Doric Greek dialect was spoken in Macedonia, as was previously expected from the West Greek forms of names found in Macedonia. As a result, the Pella curse tablet has been forwarded as a strong argument that the Ancient Macedonian language was a dialect of North-Western Greek, part of the Doric dialects.
Pella | Language
The language of Philip II's and Alexander's court and army (which was made up of various Greek and non-Greek speaking peoples) was a version of Attic Greek, and over time this language developed into Koine, the lingua franca of the successor states.
Hellenistic period | Culture
For administrative and political purposes, Attic Greek seems to have operated as a lingua franca among the ethno-linguistically diverse communities of Macedonia and the north Aegean region, creating a diglossic linguistic area. Attic Greek was standardized as the language of the court, formal discourse and diplomacy from as early as the time of Archelaus at the end of the 5th century BC. Attic was further spread by Macedonia's conquests. Although Macedonian continued to be spoken well into Antigonid times, it became the prevalent oral dialect in Macedonia and throughout the Macedonian-ruled Hellenistic world. However, Macedonian became extinct in either the Hellenistic or the Roman period, and entirely replaced by Koine Greek.
Ancient Macedonians | Language
On the other hand, Hammond argues that they spoke Greek during and before the time of Thucydides considering that Greek language and Greek names of their inscriptions were not suddenly adopted. As for the identity of the language they spoke before Greek, it may have been neither Greek nor Illyrian. Filos argues that there were some local peculiarities among the Greek speaking tribes of Epirus. Additionally, in the northern part of the region of Epirus, contact with Illyrian increased sub-dialectal variation within North-West Doric, although he admits that concrete evidence outside of onomastics is lacking.
Chaonians | Language
In Emesa, Aramaic and Greek were commonly spoken languages and later Latin was probably commonly spoken in the city.
Emesene dynasty | Onomastics
From the few idiomatic words that survive, only a little can be said about special features of the language. A notable sound-law is that the Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirates (/bʰ, dʰ, gʰ/) sometimes appear as voiced stops /b, d, g/, (written ), whereas they are generally unvoiced as /pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/ () elsewhere in Greek. If ' "gotán" ('pig') is related to *"gou" ('cattle'), this would indicate that the labiovelars were either intact, or merged with the velars, unlike the usual Greek treatment (Attic ' "boûs"). Such deviations, however, are not unknown in Greek dialects; compare Laconian Doric (the dialect of Sparta) ' "glep-" for common Greek ' "blep-", as well as Doric ' "gláchōn" and Ionic ' "glēchōn" for common Greek "blēchōn".
Ancient Macedonian language | Properties
The language variety that was used in the area started shaping the modern Macedonian dialects. This recension is represented by the Codex Zographensis and Marianus, among others. The main linguistic features of this recension include:
Old Church Slavonic | Ohrid recension
For this reason the regions of Edonis, Sintice, Odomantis and Pieris, conquered by Philip II, were termed in Latin "Macedonia Adjecta" (Επίκτητος Μακεδονία).
Lower Macedonia | Introduction
During the reign of the Argead king PhilipII (359–336 BC), Macedonia subdued mainland Greece and the Thracian Odrysian kingdom through conquest and diplomacy. With a reformed army containing phalanxes wielding the "sarissa" pike, PhilipII defeated the old powers of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea in 338BC. PhilipII's son Alexander the Great, leading a federation of Greek states, accomplished his father's objective of commanding the whole of Greece when he destroyed Thebes after the city revolted. During Alexander's subsequent campaign of conquest, he overthrew the Achaemenid Empire and conquered territory that stretched as far as the Indus River.
Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Introduction
The reigns of Philip II and Alexander the Great witnessed the demise of Classical Greece and the birth of Hellenistic civilization, following the spread of Greek culture to the Near East during and after Alexander's conquests. Macedonians then migrated to Egypt and parts of Asia, but the intensive colonization of foreign lands sapped the available manpower in Macedonia proper, weakening the kingdom in its fight with other Hellenistic powers and contributing to its downfall and conquest by the Romans. However, the diffusion of Greek culture and language cemented by Alexander's conquests in West Asia and North Africa served as a "precondition" for the later Roman expansion into these territories and entire basis for the Byzantine Empire, according to Errington.
Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Legacy
At the head of Macedonia's government was the king ("basileus"). From at least the reign of Philip II the king was assisted by the royal pages ("basilikoi paides"), bodyguards ("somatophylakes"), companions ("hetairoi"), friends ("philoi"), an assembly that included members of the military, and magistrates during the Hellenistic period. Evidence is lacking for the extent to which each of these groups shared authority with the king or if their existence had a basis in a formal constitutional framework. Before the reign of Philip II, the only institution supported by textual evidence is the monarchy. In 1931, Friedrich Granier was the first to propose that by the time of Philip II's reign, Macedonia had a constitutional government with laws that delegated rights and customary privileges to certain groups, especially to its citizen soldiers, although the majority of evidence for the army's alleged right to appoint a new king and judge cases of treason stems from the reign of Alexander III of Macedon.
Government of Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Division of power
Among the references that have been discussed as possibly bearing some witness to the linguistic situation in Macedonia, there is a sentence from a fragmentary dialogue, apparently between an Athenian and a Macedonian, in an extant fragment of the 5th century BC comedy 'Macedonians' by the Athenian poet Strattis (fr. 28), where a stranger is portrayed as speaking in a rural Greek dialect. His language contains expressions such as for "you Athenians", being also attested in Homer, Sappho (Lesbian) and Theocritus (Doric), while appears only in "funny country bumpkin" contexts of Attic comedy. Another text that has been quoted as evidence is a passage from Livy (lived 59 BC-14 AD) in his "Ab urbe condita" (31.29).
Ancient Macedonian language | Macedonian in Classical sources
However, according to Hatzopoulos, B. Helly expanded and improved his own earlier suggestion and presented the hypothesis of a (North-)‘Achaean’ substratum extending as far north as the head of the Thermaic Gulf; in prehistoric times, both in Thessaly and Macedonia, this Achaean substratum had a continuous relation with the Northwest Greek-speaking populations living on the other side of the Pindus mountain range, and occasional contacts became cohabitation following the population movements of the 7th c. BC, when the Argead Macedonians completed their wandering from Orestis to Lower Macedonia (expelling the Phrygians from the area around the Bermion and Pierian mountains, which would become the crandle of their power).
Ancient Macedonians | Language
Illyrian was spoken in the northwest, and to the northeast Thracian and Dacian. These three languages, all Indo-European, are thought to be candidates for the ancestor of Albanian. From his exile in Tomis on the Black Sea (present-day Constanța, Romania), the Augustan poet Ovid learned Getic and Sarmatian, and noted that Greek was spoken with a markedly Getic accent. Inscriptions from Tomis in the Imperial period are generally Greek, with Thracian personal names and religious references.
Languages of the Roman Empire | Danubian provinces and Balkans
Apart from Standard Modern Greek, a number of other Greek dialects are spoken in Macedonia. This includes Pontic Greek, a language spoken originally on the shores of the Black Sea in northeastern Anatolia and the Caucasus, as well as an archaic Greek dialect indigenous to Greek Macedonia and other parts of Northern Greece known as (). This dialect is spoken by the Sarakatsani, a traditionally transhumant shepherd Greek community whose spoken tongue has undergone very little change through foreign influences. Macedonia is also home to an array of non-Greek languages. Slavic languages are the most prevalent minority languages in the region, while Aromanian, Arvanitic, Megleno-Romanian, Turkish, and Romani are also spoken.
Macedonia (Greece) | Languages and minorities
Until the modern era, Macedonian was predominantly a spoken language, with no standardized written form of the vernacular dialects. Formal written communication was usually in the Church Slavonic language or in Greek, which were the languages of liturgy, and were therefore considered the 'formal languages'. The decline of the Ottoman Empire from the mid-19th century coincided with Slavic resistance to the use of Greek in Orthodox churches and schools, and a resistance amongst Macedonian Slavs to the introduction of standard Bulgarian in Vardar Macedonia. During the period of Bulgarian National Revival many Christians from Macedonia supported the struggle for creation of Bulgarian cultural, educational and religious institutions, including Bulgarian schools that used the version of Cyrillic adopted by other Bulgarians.
Macedonian alphabet | Development of the Macedonian alphabet
According to the Macedonian view, now prevalent and official in the books in Republic of North Macedonia, Macedonian was the first official language of the Slavs, thanks to the St. Cyril and St. Methodius's introduction of Slavic literacy language through the Glagolitic script, that was based on Southern Macedonian dialect from the neighbourhood of Thessaloniki, the home of the two saints. Later on, Macedonia fell under the rule of Bulgarians, and the Byzantines regarded all Slavic Macedonians as Bulgarians. According to a minority view, supported in the Republic of North Macedonia, Tsar Samuil's realm in the early Middle Ages was allegedly the first Macedonian Slavic state.
Political views on the Macedonian language | Macedonian view
This period, whose span also included the Ottoman conquest, witnessed grammatical and linguistic changes that came to characterize Macedonian as a member of the Balkan sprachbund. This marked a dialectal differentiation of the Macedonian language in the 13th century that largely reflected Slavic and Balkan characteristics and saw the formation of dialects that are preserved in modern-day Macedonian. During the five centuries of Ottoman rule in Macedonia, loanwords from Turkish entered the Macedonian language, which by extension had an Arabo-Persian origin. While the written language remained static as a result of Turkish domination, the spoken dialects moved further apart. Only very slight traces of texts written in the Macedonian language survive from the 16th and 17th centuries.
History of the Macedonian language | Medieval
The Slavic population was viewed as Slavophone Greeks and prepared to be reeducated in Greek. Any vestiges of Bulgarian and Slavic Macedonia in Greece have been eliminated from the Balkan Wars, continuing to the present. The Greeks detested the Bulgarians (Slavs of Macedonia), considering them less than human "bears, practising systematic and inhumane methods of extermination and assimilation. The use of Bulgarian language had been prohibited, for which the persecution by the police peaked, while during the regime of Metaxas a vigorous assimilation campaign was launched. The civilians have been persecuted solely for identifying as Bulgarian with the slogans "If you want to be free, be Greek" "We shall cut your tongues to teach you to speak Greek." "become Greeks again, that being the condition of a peaceful life.""Are you Christians or Bulgarians?" "The voice of Alexander the Great calls to you from the tomb; do you not hear it?You sleep on and go on calling yourselves Bulgarians!""Wast thou born at Sofia; there are no Bulgarians in Macedonia; the whole population is Greek." T" "He who goes to live in Bulgaria," was the reply to the protests, "is Bulgarian.
Demographic history of Macedonia | Greece
They were also expected to accompany him on royal hunts for the acquisition of game meat as well as for sport.
Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Dining and cuisine
Macedonian: Malagasy: Malay:
List of official languages | M
Macedonian is applied to the present-day Greek dialect spoken by Macedonian Greeks.
Macedonia naming dispute | Macedonian dialect (modern, Greek)
The ﬁrst printed work that included written specimens of the Macedonian language was a multilingual "conversational manual", that was printed during the Ottoman era. It was published in 1793 and contained texts written by a priest in the dialect of the Ohrid region. In the Ottoman Empire, religion was the primary means of social differentiation, with Muslims forming the ruling class and non-Muslims the subordinate classes. In the period between the 14th and 18th century, the Serbian recension of Church Slavonic prevailed on the territory and elements of the vernacular language started entering the language of church literature from the 16th century.
History of the Macedonian language | Medieval
The Macedonian hereditary monarchy existed since at least the time of Archaic Greece, perhaps evolving from a tribal system, and with roots in Mycenaean Greece in view of its seemingly Homeric aristocratic attributes. Thucydides wrote that in previous ages Macedonia was divided into small tribal regions each having their own petty king, the tribes of Lower Macedonia eventually coalescing under one great king who exercised power as an overlord over the lesser kings of Upper Macedonia. The Argead dynasty lasted from the reign of Perdiccas I of Macedon until that of Alexander IV of Macedon, supplanted by the Antigonid dynasty during the Hellenistic period.
Government of Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Kingship and the royal court
Judaeo-Spanish, also known as , was historically the language of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki, although the Holocaust nearly eradicated the city's previously-vibrant Jewish community of 70,000 to a mere 3,000 individuals today.
Macedonia (Greece) | Languages and minorities
Ancient Macedonian morphology is shared with ancient Epirus, including some of the oldest inscriptions from Dodona. The morphology of the first declension nouns with an -ας ending is also shared with Thessalian (e.g. Epitaph for Pyrrhiadas, Kierion).
Ancient Macedonian language | Morphology
M. Hatzopoulos summarizes the Macedonian anthroponymy (that is names borne by people from Macedonia before the expansion beyond the Axios or people undoubtedly hailing from this area after the expansion) as follows: Common in the creation of ethnics is the use of -έστης, -εστός especially when derived from sigmatic nouns (ὄρος > Ὀρέστης but also Δῖον > Διασταί).
Ancient Macedonian language | Anthroponymy
A field study conducted in 1993 in these two regions under the auspices of the European Parliament found that of the 74 villages studied, Macedonian was spoken in various degrees of vitality in 49 villages and was the primary language in 15 villages. To a lesser extent Macedonian is also present in the regional units of Kastoria, Imathia, Kilkis, Thessaloniki, Serres, and Drama. The Greek language remains dominant in all regions, even in those where Macedonian and other minority languages are present. The total number of 'slavic speakers' in Greece is estimated to range between as low as 10,000 and as high as 300,000.
Macedonia (Greece) | Ethnic Macedonian minority and language
1.57.1-3 What language however the Pelasgians used to speak I am not able with certainty to say. But if one must pronounce judging by those that still remain of the Pelasgians who dwelt in the city of Creston above the Tyrsenians, and who were once neighbours of the race now called Dorian, dwelling then in the land which is now called Thessaliotis, and also by those that remain of the Pelasgians who settled at Plakia and Skylake in the region of the Hellespont, who before that had been settlers with the Athenians, and of the natives of the various other towns which are really Pelasgian, though they have lost the name,—if one must pronounce judging by these, the Pelasgians used to speak a Barbarian language.
Dorians | Herodotus
The question of what language was spoken in ancient Macedonia has been debated by the scholars. The discovery of the Pella curse tablet in 1986, found in Pella, the ancient capital of Macedon, has given us a text written in a distinct Doric Greek idiom. Ιt contains a curse or magic spell (Greek: κατάδεσμος, "katadesmos") inscribed on a lead scroll, dated to the first half of the 4th century BC (c. 375–350 BC). It was published in the "Hellenic Dialectology" Journal in 1993. It is one of four texts found until today that might represent a local dialectal form of ancient Greek in Macedonia, all of them identifiable as Doric.
Pella | Language
Though with a predominantly Greek clergy, the Archbishopric did not yield to the direct order of Constantinople and had autonomy in many vital domains. However, the poverty of the Christian peasantry and the lack of proper schooling in villages preserved the linguistic diversity of the Macedonian countryside. The Hellenic idea reached its peak during the Greek War of Independence (1821–1829) which received the active support of the Greek Macedonian population as part of their struggle for the resurrection of Greek statehood. According to the "Istituto Geografiko de Agostini" of Rome, in 1903 in the vilayets of Selanik and Monastir Greek was the dominant language of instruction in the region: The independence of the Greek kingdom, however, dealt a nearly fatal blow to the Hellenic idea in Macedonia.
Demographic history of Macedonia | Hellenic idea
Despite the Hellenistic invasion of Persia, Persian and local Armenian culture remained the strongest element within society and the elites. Aramaic was the language of the imperial administration, it continued to be used in official documents for centuries. Old Persian cuneiform was used in most inscriptions. Xenophon mentions that he used a Persian interpreter to converse with Armenians and in some of the Armenian villages they responded in Persian. The Greek inscriptions at Armavir indicate that the upper classes used Greek as one of their languages. Under Ervand the Last (r. ca. 210–200 B.C.), the structure of government had begun to resemble Greek institutions, and Greek was used as the language of the royal court.
Orontid dynasty | Language
During the early Sasanian period, Middle Persian along with Koine Greek and Parthian appeared in the inscriptions of the early Sasanian kings. However, by the time Narseh (r. 293–302) was ruling, Greek was no longer in use, perhaps due to the disappearance of Greek or the efforts of the anti-Hellenic Zoroastrian clergy to remove it once and for all. This was probably also because Greek was commonplace among the Romans/Byzantines, the rivals of the Sasanians. Parthian soon disappeared as an administrative language too, but was continued to be spoken and written in the eastern part of the Sasanian Empire, the homeland of the Parthians.
Sasanian Empire | Official languages
modern Pakistan). Among his first acts was the burial of his father at Aigai. The members of the League of Corinth revolted at the news of PhilipII's death, but were soon quelled by military force alongside persuasive diplomacy, electing Alexander as "hegemon" of the league to carry out the planned invasion of Achaemenid Persia. In 335 BC, Alexander fought against the Thracian tribe of the Triballi at Haemus Mons and along the Danube, forcing their surrender on Peuce Island. Shortly thereafter, the Illyrian king Cleitus of the Dardani threatened to attack Macedonia, but Alexander took the initiative and besieged the Dardani at Pelion (in modern Albania).
Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Empire
With their mining and tax revenues, the kings were responsible for funding the military, which included a navy that was established by Philip II and expanded during the Antigonid period.
Government of Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Introduction
As language is one of the elements tied in with national identity, the same disputes that are voiced over demographics are also found in linguistics. There are two main disputes about the use of the word Macedonian to describe a linguistic phenomenon, be it a language or a dialect: The origins of the Ancient Macedonian language are currently debated. At this time it is not conclusively determined whether the language/dialect was a Greek dialect related to Doric Greek or Aeolic Greek dialects among others, a sibling language of ancient Greek forming a "Hellenic" (i.e. Greco-Macedonian) supergroup, or viewed as an Indo-European language which is a close cousin to Greek (and perhaps somewhat related to Thracian or Phrygian languages).
Macedonia (terminology) | Linguistics
In 1907 he published in Athens a 350-page work of his "Contributions to the bilingualism of the Macedonians by comparing the Slavic-seeming Macedonian language with the Greek one" ("Συμβολαί εις την διγλωσσίαν των Μακεδόνων εκ συγκρίσεως της σλαυοφανούς μακεδονικής γλώσσης προς την ελληνικήν"), in order to fight against the Bulgarian and pan-Slavist propaganda in the region of Macedonia. Tsioulkas, who claimed not to speak any Slavic language, tried by distorting historical linguistics to prove that the language of the Slavic speakers in Ottoman Macedonia wasn't Bulgarian, but an Ancient Greek dialect. Tsioulkas didn't focus on phonology, syntax, or morphology, for which he only devoted 11 pages in total, but mainly on the vocabulary, where it is easy to find words with common, Indo-European, etymology with Greek, in order to show that the basic elements of the Macedonian vocabulary weren't Slavic, but originated from Greek.
Konstantinos Tsioulkas | "Contributions to the bilingualism of the Macedonians"
The companions, including the elite companion cavalry and "pezhetairoi" infantry, represented a substantially larger group than the king's bodyguards. The most trusted or highest ranking companions formed a council that served as an advisory body to the king. A small amount of evidence suggests the existence of an assembly of the army during times of war and a people's assembly during times of peace. Members of the council had the right to speak freely, and although there is no direct evidence that they voted on affairs of state, it is clear that the king was at least occasionally pressured to agree to their demands.
Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Companions, friends, councils, and assemblies
The name of the region of Macedonia (, "Makedonia") derives from the tribal name of the ancient Macedonians (, "Makedónes"). According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the "Makednoi" () were a Dorian tribe that stayed behind during the great southward migration of the Dorian Greeks (Histories 1.56.1). The word "Makednos" is cognate with the Doric Greek word "Μάκος" "Μakos" (Attic form Μήκος – "mékos"), which is Greek for "length". The ancient Macedonians took this name either because they were physically tall, or because they settled in the mountains. The latter definition would translate "Macedonian" as "Highlander". Most academics take the view that the ancient Macedonians probably spoke either a language that was a member of the North-Western Greek dialect group (related to Doric and Aeolic), or a language very closely related to Greek which would form a Graeco-Macedonian or Hellenic branch; others such as Eugene Borza reach the conclusion that there is insufficient evidence on which to base a conclusion as to whether the original language of the Macedonians was a form of Greek or not, but that the Macedonians were most likely of proto-Greek stock.
Demographic history of Macedonia | Ancient Macedonians
For many centuries, Slavic people who settled on the Balkans spoke their own dialects and used other dialects or languages to communicate with other people. The "canonical" Old Church Slavonic period of the development of Macedonian started in the 9th century and lasted until the first half of the 11th century. During this period common to all Slavic languages, Greek religious texts were translated to Old Church Slavonic (based on a dialect spoken in Thessaloniki). The Macedonian recension of Old Church Slavonic also appeared around that period in the First Bulgarian Empire and was referred to as such due to works of the Ohrid Literary School, with its seat in Ohrid, current-day North Macedonia.
History of the Macedonian language | Medieval
Greece has had varied policies toward the Macedonian language throughout its history. In 1925 the Greek government introduced the first Macedonian alphabet book, known as the , based on the Florina dialect of the language; this never entered classrooms due to opposition from Serbia and Bulgaria, as well as an outcry against it in Greece. Efforts to assimilate resulted in instances of populations rejecting their Slavic language, as in the village of Atropos in 1959, where the villagers took "the oath before God" to cease speaking the local Slavic idiom and to only speak Greek. Though the Macedonian language has survived despite efforts by Greek authorities to assimilate the population into the Greek majority, the vast number of Macedonian speakers possess a Greek national consciousness.
Macedonia (Greece) | Ethnic Macedonian minority and language
Modern Greek Language, is the main official language spoken in this village.
Examilia | History
After the Macedonian victory over a coalition led by Athens and Thebes at the 338 BC Battle of Chaeronea, Philip established the League of Corinth and was elected as its hegemon in anticipation of commanding a united Greek invasion of the Achaemenid Empire under Macedonian hegemony. However, when Philip II was assassinated by one of his bodyguards, he was succeeded by his son Alexander III, better known as Alexander the Great (), who invaded Achaemenid Egypt and Asia and toppled the rule of Darius III, who was forced to flee into Bactria (in what is now Afghanistan) where he was killed by one of his kinsmen, Bessus.
History of Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Introduction
By 500 BCE, the ancient kingdom of Macedon was centered somewhere between the southern slopes of Lower Olympus and the lowest reach of the Haliakmon River. Since 512/511 BCE, the kingdom of Macedonia was subject to the Persians, but after the battle of Plataia it regained its independence. Under Philip II and Alexander the Great, the kingdom of Macedonia forcefully expanded, placing the whole of the region of Macedonia under their rule. Alexander's conquests produced a lasting extension of Hellenistic culture and thought across the ancient Near East, but his empire broke up on his death. His generals divided the empire between them, founding their own states and dynasties.
Macedonia (region) | Ancient Macedonia (500 to 146 BCE)
The territory of the present-day state of North Macedonia came under the direct rule of Serbia (and later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), and was sometimes termed "southern Serbia", and, together with a large portion of today's southern Serbia, it belonged officially to the newly formed Vardar Banovina (district). An intense program of Serbianization was implemented during the 1920s and 1930s when Belgrade enforced a Serbian cultural assimilation process on the region. Between the world wars in Serbia, the dialects of Macedonia were treated as a Serbian dialects (UCLA Language Material Sources, ). Only the literary Serbian language was taught, it was the language of government, education, media, and public life; even so local literature was tolerated as a local dialectal folkloristic form.
History of the Macedonians (ethnic group) | Macedonia under Serbia
There was also pressure on Aromanians to become linguistically dissimilated from the 18th century, when dissimilation efforts were encouraged by the Greek missionary Cosmas of Aetolia (1714–1779) who taught that Aromanians should speak Greek because as he said "it's the language of our Church" and established over 100 Greek schools in northern and western Greece. The offensive of the clergy against the use of Aromanian was by no means limited to religious issues but was a tool devised in order to convince the non-Greek speakers to abandon what they regarded as a "worthless" idiom and adopt the superior Greek speech: "There we are Metsovian brothers, together with those who are fooling themselves with this sordid and vile Aromanian language...
Demographic history of Macedonia | Greek propaganda
Bulgarian and Macedonian Slavs wanted to create their own Church and schools, which would use a common modern Macedono-Bulgarian literary standard. The national elites active at that time used mainly ethnolinguistic principles to differentiate between Slavic-Bulgarian and Greek groups. Initially, every ethnographic subgroup in the Macedonian-Bulgarian linguistic area wrote in its own local dialect and choosing a "base dialect" for the new standard was not an issue. During the period between 1840 and 1870, there was a struggle to define a dialectal base of the vernacular used, with two different literary centers arising - one in current-day northeastern Bulgaria and one in current-day southwestern North Macedonia.
History of the Macedonian language | Modern era
The toponyms of Macedonia proper are generally Greek, though some of them show a particular phonology and a few others are non-Greek.
Ancient Macedonian language | Toponymy
A number of examples suggest that voiced velar stops were devoiced, especially word-initially: ' "kánadoi", 'jaws' (< PIE "*genu-"); ' "kómbous", 'molars' (< PIE "*gombh-"); within words: ' "arkón" (Attic ' "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").
Ancient Macedonian language | Properties
These measures were even extended to Australian and Canadian citizens. Despite this, there have been sporadic periods of free entry, most of which have only ever lasted a few days. Despite the removal of official recognition to those identifying as ethnic Macedonians after the end of the Greek Civil War, a 1954 letter from the Prefect of Florina, K. Tousildis, reported that people were still affirming that the language they spoke was Macedonian in forms relating to personal documents, birth and marriage registries, etc.
Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia | Post-war period
Examples include the 17th century traveller Evliya Çelebi in his "Seyahatname: Book of Travels" to the Ottoman census of Hilmi Pasha in 1904 and later. However, they also remarked that the language spoken in Macedonia had somewhat of a distinctive character — often described as a "Western Bulgarian dialect" as other Bulgarian dialects in modern western Bulgaria. Evidence also exists that certain Macedonian Slavs, particularly those in the northern regions, considered themselves as Serbs, on the other hand the intention to join Greece predominated in southern Macedonia where it was supported by substantial part of the Slavic-speaking population too. Although references are made referring to Slavs in Macedonia being identified as Bulgarians, some scholars suggest that ethnicity in medieval times was more fluid than what we see it to be today, an understanding derived from nineteenth century nationalistic ideals of a homogeneous nation-state.
History of North Macedonia | Ottoman period
It is unclear whether or not the Achaemenid Persian kings influenced PhilipII's practice of polygamy, although his predecessor AmyntasIII had three sons with a possible second wife Gygaea: Archelaus, Arrhidaeus, and Menelaus. PhilipII had Archelaus put to death in 359BC, while PhilipII's other two half brothers fled to Olynthos, serving as a "casus belli" for the Olynthian War (349–348BC) against the Chalcidian League.
Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Rise of Macedon
"On Macedonian Matters" was written in the South Slavic dialect spoken in central Bitola-Prilep. This dialect was proposed by Misirkov as the basis for the future language, and, as Misirkov says, a dialect which is most different from all other neighboring languages (as the eastern dialect was too close to Bulgarian and the northern one too close to Serbian). Misirkov calls this language Macedonian.
Demographic history of Macedonia | Ethnic Macedonian propaganda
Following the loss in the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 479 BC, the Persians eventually withdrew from their European territories, including from what is today North Macedonia. In 336 BC Philip II of Macedon fully annexed Upper Macedonia, including its northern part and southern Paeonia, which both now lie within North Macedonia. Philip's son Alexander the Great conquered most of the remainder of the region, incorporating it in his empire, with exclusion of Dardania. The Romans included most of the Republic in their province of Macedonia, but the northernmost parts (Dardania) lay in Moesia; by the time of Diocletian, they had been subdivided, and the Republic was split between Macedonia Salutaris and Moesia prima.
History of North Macedonia | Ancient period
Macedonia (; , '), also called Macedon (), was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, and later the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. The kingdom was founded and initially ruled by the royal Argead dynasty, which was followed by the Antipatrid and Antigonid dynasties. Home to the ancient Macedonians, the earliest kingdom was centered on the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula, and bordered by Epirus to the west, Paeonia to the north, Thrace to the east and Thessaly to the south. Before the 4th century BC, Macedonia was a small kingdom outside of the area dominated by the great city-states of Athens, Sparta and Thebes, and briefly subordinate to Achaemenid Persia.
Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Introduction
Armenian was the common language that spoken by the people of Sophene. However, Imperial Aramaic (with a fairly strong admixture of Persian terms), was used in governmental and court proceedings, which was rooted in Achaemenid practices from Armenia.
Kingdom of Sophene | Language
Spoken Macedonian () is the spoken variety of the standard Macedonian language. Spoken Macedonian can also refer to the spoken, colloquial register of a local dialect. This code is typical of the speech of the Macedonian diaspora, especially of the descendants of those who went abroad prior to the codification of the standard language in the 1940s, ethnic Macedonians in the wider region of Macedonia, and rural areas of North Macedonia. Spoken Macedonian is more inclusive of foreign elements that have become obsolete in the written standard.
Spoken Macedonian | Introduction
Brian D. Joseph acknowledges the closeness of Macedonian to Greek (even contemplating to group them into a "Hellenic branch" of Indo-European), but retains that "[t]he slender evidence is open to different interpretations, so that no definitive answer is really possible". Johannes Engels has pointed to the Pella curse tablet, written in Doric Greek: "This has been judged to be the most important ancient testimony to substantiate that Macedonian was a north-western Greek and mainly a Doric dialect". Hatzopoulos has suggested that the Macedonian dialect of the 4th century BC, as attested in the Pella curse tablet, was a sort of Macedonian ‘koine’ resulting from the encounter of the idiom of the ‘Aeolic’-speaking populations around Mount Olympus and the Pierian Mountains, whose phonetics had been influenced by a non-Greek (possibly Phrygian or Pelasgian) adstratum, with the Northwest Greek-speaking Argead Macedonians hailing from Argos Orestikon, who founded the kingdom of Lower Macedonia and incorporated into it the ‘Aeolic’-speaking earlier inhabitants.
Doric Greek | Ancient Macedonian
Following the loss in the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 479 BC, the Persians eventually withdrew from their European territories, including from what is today North Macedonia. Philip II of Macedon absorbed the regions of Upper Macedonia (Lynkestis and Pelagonia) and the southern part of Paeonia (Deuriopus) into the kingdom of Macedon in 356 BC. Philip's son Alexander the Great conquered the remainder of the region and incorporated it in his empire, reaching as far north as Scupi, but the city and the surrounding area remained part of Dardania.
North Macedonia | Early history
The elite "hypaspistai" infantry, composed of handpicked men from the ranks of the "pezhetairoi", were formed during the reign of PhilipII and saw continued use during the reign of Alexander the Great. PhilipII was also responsible for the establishment of the royal bodyguards ("somatophylakes"). For his lighter missile troops, Philip II employed mercenary Cretan archers as well as Thracian, Paeonian, and Illyrian javelin throwers, slingers, and archers. He hired engineers such as Polyidus of Thessaly and Diades of Pella, who were capable of building state of the art siege engines and artillery that fired large bolts. Following the acquisition of the lucrative mines at Krinides (renamed Philippi), the royal treasury could afford to field a permanent, professional standing army.
Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Philip II and Alexander the Great
However, while Alexander's conquests are of major historical importance as having launched the Hellenistic Age, Macedon as a state had no significant territorial gains due to them. Alexander's kingdom fell apart after his death in 323 BC; several of his Successors attempted to form a kingdom for themselves in Macedonia; the kingdom formed by Antigonus Gonatas contained all the land Philip II had started with and controlled much of what is now modern Greece; it lasted until the Romans divided it into four republics in 168 BC.
Macedonia (terminology) | Ancient Macedonia
The controversy over whether the Macedonians were originally Greek or not is caused mainly by contradictory ancient accounts, but also due to the peculiar features of a few Macedonian words, though most words are consistent with Greek (see "Ancient Macedonian language"). Some scholars view the Pella katadesmos, written in a form of Doric Greek, as the first discovered Macedonian text. The vast majority of Macedonian names on inscriptions and coinage are Greek and conform to the Doric Greek dialect morphology. In any case, the Macedonians are universally considered as Hellenes after the reign of Alexander the Great. Before the reign of Alexander I, father of Perdiccas II, the ancient Macedonians lived mostly on lands adjacent to the Haliakmon, in the far south of the modern Greek province of Macedonia.
Demographic history of Macedonia | Ancient Macedonians
After the 16th century, many Sarakatsani arrived in the area from Epirus. During 17th and 18th centuries, Vlachs came also in the area, from Western Macedonia, removed because of Turkish/Albanian loots. It is remarkable that in the villages Evzoni and Korona, people used to speak a Romance dialect, called Megleno-Romanian. There are such speakers even nowadays. Researcher Maria Papageorgiou claims that a lot of plays of ancient Greek tragic poets, not preserved nowadays, were kept verbally, in this dialect, as tales.
Polykastro | Ottoman times
Before Philip II was assassinated in the summer of 336 BC, relations with his son Alexander had degenerated to the point where he excluded him entirely from his planned invasion of Asia, choosing instead for him to act as regent of Greece and deputy "hegemon" of the League of Corinth. This, alongside his mother Olympias' apparent concern over Philip II bearing another potential heir with his new wife Cleopatra Eurydice, have led scholars to wrangle over the idea of her and Alexander's possible roles in Philip's murder. Nonetheless, Alexander III () was immediately proclaimed king by an assembly of the army and leading aristocrats, chief among them being Antipater and Parmenion.
History of Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Empire
It was proposed also Macedonian literary language to be codified. The question was also examined of establishing a Macedonian Church under the Ohrid Archbishopric. The aim of this Memorandum was that the Macedonians should be recognized as a separate nation and that Macedonia should be granted full autonomy within the Ottoman Empire. During this time he also examined the medieval period in Macedonia and his works contributed to the understanding of the 14th-century local ruler Krali Marko.
Krste Misirkov | Misirkov in the Russian Empire
At the same time, in a "political master-stroke", the local language - which was until then held to be a western Bulgarian dialect - was unilaterally christened "Macedonian" and became one of Yugoslavia's official languages. Greece similarly rejects the former name "Republic of Macedonia", seeing it as an implicit territorial claim on the whole of the region. Books have been published in Greece which purport to expose the alleged artificial character of the Macedonian language.
Political views on the Macedonian language | Greek view
Members of the council had the right to speak their minds freely, and although there is no evidence that they voted on affairs of state or that the king was even obligated to implement their ideas, it is clear that he was at least occasionally pressured to do so. The assembly was apparently given the right to judge cases of high treason and assign punishments for them, such as when Alexander III acted as prosecutor in the trial and ultimate conviction of three alleged conspirators in the plot to assassinate Philip II (while many others were acquitted). However, there is perhaps insufficient evidence to allow a conclusion that councils and assemblies were regularly upheld, constitutionally grounded, or that their decisions were always heeded by the king.
Government of Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Companions, friends, councils, and assemblies
As evidenced by the Alexander Sarcophagus, troops serving Alexander the Great were also armored in the hoplite fashion. However, Errington argues that breastplates were not worn by the phalanx pikemen of either Philip II or Philip V's reign periods (during which sufficient evidence exists). Instead, he claims that breastplates were only worn by military officers, while pikemen wore the "kotthybos" stomach bands along with their helmets and greaves, wielding a dagger as a secondary weapon along with their shields. The elite "hypaspistai" infantry, composed of handpicked men from the ranks of the "pezhetairoi" and perhaps synonymous with earlier "doryphoroi", were formed during the reign of Philip II and saw continued use during the reign of Alexander the Great.
Government of Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Philip II and Alexander the Great
Aegae or Aigai (), also Aegeae or Aigeai (Αἰγέαι) was the original capital of the Macedonians, an ancient kingdom in Emathia in northern Greece. The city was also the burial-place of the Macedonian kings, the dynasty which sprang from the Temenid Perdiccas. It was built on a commanding and picturesque site near the modern town of Vergina. The seat of government was afterwards transferred to the marshes of Pella, which lay in the plain beneath the ridge through which the Lydias forces its way to the sea. But the old capital always remained the "hearth" (ἑστία, Diod. Excerpt. p. 563) of the Macedonian kingdom and the burial place for their kings.
Aegae (Macedonia) | Introduction
The earliest known government of ancient Macedonia was that of its monarchy, lasting until 167BC when it was abolished by the Romans. The Macedonian hereditary monarchy existed since at least the time of Archaic Greece, with Homeric aristocratic roots in Mycenaean Greece. Thucydides wrote that in previous ages, Macedonia was divided into small tribal regions, each having its own petty king, the tribes of Lower Macedonia eventually coalescing under one great king who exercised power as an overlord over the lesser kings of Upper Macedonia. The direct line of father-to-son succession was broken after the assassination of Orestes of Macedon in 396BC (allegedly by his regent and successor Aeropus II of Macedon), clouding the issue of whether primogeniture was the established custom or if there was a constitutional right for an assembly of the army or of the people to choose another king.
Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Kingship and the royal court
During the five centuries of Ottoman rule, from the 15th to the 20th century, the vernacular spoken in the territory of current-day North Macedonia witnessed grammatical and linguistic changes that came to characterize Macedonian as a member of the Balkan sprachbund. This period saw the introduction of many Turkish loanwords into the language. The latter half of the 18th century saw the rise of modern literary Macedonian through the written use of Macedonian dialects referred to as "Bulgarian" by writers. The first half of the 19th century saw the rise of nationalism among the South Slavic people in the Ottoman Empire.
Macedonian language | History
N. G. L. Hammond, based on the passage of Hellanicus, as well on the Thessalian Magnes being brother of Macedon, suggested that the Macedonian language is an Aeolic Greek dialect. Jonathan M. Hall compares Magnes and Macedon to other excluded tribes from direct lineage to Hellen and later Olympic participants, such as Aetolians, Acarnanians and Arcadians. On the contrary, Eugene N. Borza gives no significance on this mythological figure for any historical conclusions.
Makedon (mythology) | Son of Aeolus
Furthermore, some other languages and dialects were spoken in the two regions. In the Sasanian territories in the Caucasus, numerous languages were spoken including Old Georgian, various Kartvelian languages (notably in Lazica), Middle Persian, Old Armenian, Caucasian Albanian, Scythian, Koine Greek, and others. In Khuzestan, several languages were spoken; Persian in the north and east, while Eastern Middle Aramaic was spoken in the rest of the place. Furthermore, late Neo-Elamite may also spoken in the province but there are no references explicitly naming the language. In Meshan, the Arameans, along with settled Arabs (known as Mesenian Arabs), and the nomadic Arabs, formed the Semitic population of the province along with Nabataean and Palmyrene merchants.
Sasanian Empire | Regional languages
The kingdom of Macedonia was an ancient state in what is now the Macedonian region of northern Greece, founded in the mid-7th century BC during the period of Archaic Greece and lasting until the mid-2nd century BC. Led first by the Argead dynasty of kings, Macedonia became a vassal state of the Achaemenid Empire of ancient Persia during the reigns of Amyntas I of Macedon () and his son Alexander I of Macedon (). The period of Achaemenid Macedonia came to an end in roughly 479 BC with the ultimate Greek victory against the second Persian invasion of Greece led by Xerxes I and the withdrawal of Persian forces from the European mainland.
History of Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Introduction
The region that today forms the country of North Macedonia has been inhabited since Paleolithic times. It occupies most of the ancient kingdom of Paionia and part of the territory of what was in antiquity Upper Macedonia (which coincides with some parts of today's southern Republic of North Macedonia), the region which became part of the kingdom of Macedon in the early 4th century BC. It was settled by the Paionians and Dardani, peoples of mixed Thraco-Illyrian origin. The Paionians founded several princedoms which coalesced into a kingdom centred in the central and upper reaches of the Vardar and Struma rivers until they were finally conquered by Philip II, father of Alexander the Great, in 358 BC.
History of the Macedonians (ethnic group) | Ancient period
In 336 BC, whilst the invasion of Persia was in its very early stage, Philip was assassinated in Aegae by the captain of his bodyguard, Pausanias, whilst attending the wedding of his daughter by Olympias, Cleopatra, to Olympias's brother (and Cleopatra's uncle) Alexander I of Epirus. Philip's son Alexander III by Olympias was proclaimed king by the Macedonian army and by the Macedonian noblemen.
Expansion of Macedonia under Philip II | War with Persia and death of Philip (336 BC)
The main language spoken in Oshroene was Aramaic.
Harran | Seleucid period
During the 2000s linguists Klaus Steinke and Xhelal Ylli seeking to corroborate villages cited in past literature as being Slavic speaking carried out fieldwork in villages of the area. In Herebel only 6 Orthodox Slavic speaking families made up of 3 larger households of around 20 individuals each remain. In Kërçisht i Epërm the village contains 200 inhabitants and 45 households, of which 6 are Orthodox families with a total of 17 individuals. On the eve of the collapse of communism in 1991, Kërçisht i Epërm had 110 households with 27 belonging to the Orthodox community. Use of the Macedonian language in Kërçisht i Epërm is limited and facing extinction, due to usage being confined to the family.
Macedonians in Albania | Fusha e Shehërit (Dolno Pole)
Northern dialects Western Dialects: Eastern and Southern dialects
Dialects of Macedonian | Dialects
Attic Greek, a form of the Greek language, eventually supplanted the ancient Macedonian entirely in Macedonia from the 5th Century BC, and it became extinct during the first few centuries AD. Attic Greek evolved into Koine Greek, then into Byzantine Greek and later into modern Greek.
Macedonia naming dispute | Macedonian (ancient)
The direct line of father-to-son succession was broken after the assassination of Orestes of Macedon in 396 BC (allegedly by his regent and successor Aeropus II of Macedon), clouding the issue of whether primogeniture was the established custom or if there was a constitutional right for an assembly of the army or of the people to choose another king. It is also unclear whether certain male offspring were considered more legitimate than others, since Archelaus I of Macedon was the son of Perdiccas II of Macedon and a slave woman, although Archelaus succeeded the throne after murdering his father's designated heir apparent and son from another mother.
Government of Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Kingship and the royal court
Little is known about the kingdom before the reign of AlexanderI's father Amyntas I of Macedon () during the Archaic period. The kingdom of Macedonia was situated along the Haliacmon and Axius rivers in Lower Macedonia, north of Mount Olympus. Historian Robert Malcolm Errington suggests that one of the earliest Argead kings established Aigai (modern Vergina) as their capital in the mid-7th centuryBC. Before the 4th centuryBC, the kingdom covered a region corresponding roughly to the western and central parts of the region of Macedonia in modern Greece. It gradually expanded into the region of Upper Macedonia, inhabited by the Greek Lyncestae and Elimiotae tribes, and into regions of Emathia, Eordaia, Bottiaea, Mygdonia, Crestonia, and Almopia, which were inhabited by various peoples such as Thracians and Phrygians.
Macedonia (ancient kingdom) | Early history and legend