Talk:Ancient Greek dialects

Tsaconian
The claim is made that Tsaconian is the only modern greek dialect descended from Doric Greek. What about Griko spoken in southern Italy? Yannos 04:12, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Macedonian
What about the repeated listing of Ancient Macedonian in the different classification schemes according to Risch, Thumb, Porzig, Buck, and Heubeck? Can anyone confirm that all these authors actually treat Macedonian as a dialect in their classifications? I very much doubt that. If not, we'd be misquoting them rather severely, and it should be deleted from those sections. Lukas (T. 08:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
 * P.S. I now see the whole inclusion of Macedonian was only recently added by User:Asteraki. While I do agree that some mentioning of Macedonian in this article is legitimate, I have rather heavy doubts about the appropriateness of the way it's presently handled. Lukas (T. 08:30, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
 * [via edit conflict] they do not. This was a single edit by which I am reverting now. XMK is not recognized as a Greek dialect by authorities, just live with it. The verdict is that there is simply not enough information to tell, so except for Macedonian nationalist of either couleur, the question is really moot. dab (&#5839;) 08:32, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
 * we can link XMK from the see also, with the comment "classification undecided" or something. That's as far as it goes, this is not the article's scope. dab (&#5839;) 08:33, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's fine with me. If anyone finds something in the literature to the effect that if Macedonian was Greek it would belong most closely to this or that group (Northwestern or whatever), then that would certainly deserve a mentioning, right? There seems to be something in the Greek linguistic literature to that effect (Chatzidakis, Babiniotis...). Lukas (T. 08:47, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
 * well, as we have discussed ad nauseam on the XMK article, there are some people who suggest classification of XMK as Doric/NW-Greek. This is an XMK-internal debate, however. It could be mentioned here, it could be mentioned on NW Greek, but it is not part of a "notable" classification scheme of Greek dialects, it is rather an appendix to these schemes by people who are dying to see XMK classified as Greek. Such sentiments have nothing to do with linguistics. Linguistically, there are really two possibilities, (a) XMK may be subsumed under Doric/NW Greek, in which case it is subsumed in these listings, or (b) XMK is a sort of 'para-Greek', descended not from Proto-Greek but a close relative, in which case it does not fall into the scope of this article. dab (&#5839;) 09:46, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

For those that still cannot see the obvious, they have to refer to the "Pella Katadesmos" text. Written by a middle/lower class woman of basic writing skills and dated some 50-70 years prior to the times of Alexander the Great, containing a unique clearly North-western dialect, close to Epirot and Aetolian dialects, it should be alone enough to tell you as to what dialect was Macedonian. This wikipedia article is completely misleading. Macedonian dialect along with Epirot forms the basis of the Dorian dialects that actually evolved from those following the descent of Dorians (groups of Northwestern Greek tribes that invaded the south following the collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.227.158.126 (talk) 17:39, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

The sentence in the notes "It is as yet undetermined whether Macedonian was a separate yet sibling language which was most closely related to Greek, a dialect of Greek, or an independent Indo-European language not especially close to Greek." is inaccurate. It is now 2011...I would like to ask which scholar in the 30 last years has ever stated that Macedonian was "Indo-European language not especially close to Greek"? I can agree that some say it is a different language, but no modern scholar ever said it is not close at all to Greek. Also, one should make a big list of scholars, divide them by their views on the subject and also their expertise. You cannot value the same, the view of a scholar with expertise in historical linguistics with a historian whose linguistic skills are doubtful. For example Claude Brixhe is an expert in ancient languages, while Eugene Borza has no particular linguistic merit except from writing books about Macedon. Fkitselis (talk)

To concur with the previous point, particularly considering the use of a map of Greek dialects created by author Future_Perfect_at_Sunrise, I would like to ask the following question: How much more evidence of other NW Greek dialects, e.g. Epirote, do we have compared to Macedonian? If the abundant use of Greek in ancient inscriptions and coinage found in Epirus dating from the late classical era is convincing enough evidence that the area was Greek-speaking, why isn't the similar abundance of Greek inscriptions found in Macedonia enough to demonstrate the same? Is it perhaps because the current political controversy over the name of Macedonia (see|Macedonia naming dispute#"Antiquisation" policy, 2006-present) is clouding the judgment of some commentators and wikipedia editors? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.41.33.187 (talk) 20:00, 15 February 2013 (UTC)


 * AFAIK, there are officially 2 scholars that in 2012 that concluded a Macedonian dialect of Greek did exist. Whether that is THE Macedonian language linguists are looking for or not is not certain. What is certain at the moment is that a variant of Greek, was spoken in Macedon and that variant does not strictly belong to the already known Greek dialects. I am trying to pull out some material on that specific issue, but I have been short of time. I do agree with the comment above in general. The Macedonian language issue is treatened with caution that is close to parania sometimes. It should be enough to be clear on the fact that there are skeptics on the issue and maybe put a question mark on the possition of the language or dialect. Fkitselis (talk) 13:20, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Greek language article series
Could people interested in this article please have a look at a discussion I instigated at Talk:Greek language, regarding a proposed restructuring of the whole series of Greek-related language articles. Thanks! Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:28, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Prehistory and dialects
and See if you can use these somewhere.Megistias 14:17, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

What indication do we have placing Dorians above the Prespa lakes? Fkitselis (talk) 11:31, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I had a quick look to recent archaeological discoveries concerning the so called "Dorian migration". It seems there's not enough evidence of such a massive migration at the end of the Mycenaean era. There's however new evidence of a large migration of a distinct Mycenaean material culture from southern Greece to the north around the 16th century B.C. It is Karamitrou - Menteside that has made statements about this very recently and from what I know few publications are already out (J.M Hall's is very recent if I am not mistaken). It seems that our view on Dorian migrations will change completely in the following years and therefore we should have a look and make a presentation on this theory soon. I will try to make a collection of publications from the last 4-5 years and sum them up here. Fkitselis (talk) 09:37, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Doric or Koine origin for Tsakonian
The article at present reads:


 * According to some scholars, Tsakonian is the only modern Greek dialect that descends from Doric rather than the Koine. Others believe it to be the descendant of the local Doric-influenced variant of the Koine.

I am no expert, but I wonder whether this has been confused with the status of Southern Italian Greek, where there is indeed such a debate. If so, perhaps the true situation is that no one doubts that Tsakonian is descended from Doric, and that the dispute is whether it is the only dialect so descended. That is, some scholars would also include Italo-Greek as a Doric dialect, while others regard Italo-Greek as being a slightly Doricised Koine, thus leaving Tsakonian as the only true Doric dialect. There are sources for this in the article on Griko language. Does anyone actually think that Tsakonian too is a form of Koine? Any information welcome. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 12:57, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Now modified in accordance with the Browning book cited. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 16:02, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

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Greek Dialect
Greek dialect, possibly of the Northwestern group in particular,
 * The suggestion of a "Hellenic" group with two branches, in this context, represents the idea that Macedonian was not simply a dialect within Greek but a "sibling language" outside the group of Greek varieties proper as suggested by B. Joseph (2001): "Ancient Greek". In: J. Garry et al. (eds.) Facts about the World's Major Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past and Present. More, other approaches describe Macedonian as an unclassified Paleo-Balkan language. For more see: Brixhe C., Panayotou A. (1994), "Le Macédonien", in Bader, F. (ed.), Langues indo-européennes, Paris:CNRS éditions, 1994, pp 205–220.Jingiby (talk) 14:51, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Works categorized by dialect
I can't work out a way to find Ancient Greek works categorized by dialect. For instance A True Story is as far as I know written in Attic Greek, but it doesn't even mention it on the article's page. Ideally, there would be category for Works in Attic Greek, Works in Koine Greek or Works in Doric Greek etc, where you could find all the relevant works. --RaymondHatstand (talk) 14:17, 8 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Mr. Hatstand, you can't find them because they are not there. The great majority of ancient Greek literature is in Attic or koine, or more generally "east Greek" if you well; that is, not west Greek. They are the one that had the literary tradition, as opposed to the country villages. Right away I can see you are going to ask, how do we know what they are? The modern dialectology is based on inscriptions, thousands of them, more turning up every day. All the works on dialects cited abpve have sections containing sample inscriptions. I have to tell you, those works are not for beginners. This outstanding article is a good beginner article. If we go choking it up with inscriptions it will not only be long and tedious but it won't be for beginners any more. Ciao. If you are going to study the dialects you have a long road ahead. Can't waste time criticising us.Botteville (talk) 22:27, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * What an unpleasant response. I don't think a single category at the bottom of the page would 'choking it up'. Do the categories at the bottom of this page choke it up? "Can't waste time criticising us" - who do you think you are? - RaymondHatstand (talk) 20:40, 22 March 2022 (UTC)