Talk:Proto-Greek language

Last sentence of the first paragraph is a paradox and contradiction
86.93.208.34 (talk) 21:39, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

A very old story
This text was constructed by the Indian scholar S.K. Sen, and it is supposed to be a proto-Sanskrit text based on old Indic *PIE roots. I (sort of) translated it hastily into Ancient Greek, taking a liberty or two (i.e. using ρηξ, a Latin-derived Byzantine neologism, because the probably pre-Greek βασιλεύς has supplanted the IE-derived equivalent). Please feel free to contribute, especially in the items I have question-marked:

To, régho:n ?e ?est. So nputlós ?e ?est. So régho:n súxnum éwelt. Kwo kwe re:ks eeto. Kwos apaids eeto. Kwos reeks huion gwoleto. Πο(τέ), ρηξ ήτο. Ος άπαις(?) ήτο. Ο ρήξ υιόν εβούλετο. Once, there was a king. He was childless. The king wanted a son.

So tósyo gHeutérm prksket: “Súxnus moi gnxyeto:m!” Ος τούτου χυτήρα ηρώτα (?): "Υιός μοι γένοιτο!" He asked his priest: “May a son be born to me!”

So gHeuté:r tom réghonm ?e wewkWet: “Ihgeswo deiwóm Wérunom”. Ο χυτήρ τωι ρήγαι είπε: "Ίκεσο θεόν Ουρανόν" The priest said to the king: “Pray to the god Varuna”.

So régho:n deiwóm Werunom xúpo-sesore nu deiwóm ihgeto. Ο ρήξ θεόν Ουρανόν υφεώρα(?) νυν θέον ίκετο. The king approached the god Varuna to pray now to the god.

“KludHí moi, pxtér Wérune!” "Κλύθι μοι, Πάτερ Ουρανέ!" “Hear me, father Varuna!”

Deiwós Wérunos diwósyo ?e ni-gWext. Θεός Ουρανός κατά δίος ήκε. The god Varuna came down from heaven.

“KWid wélsi?” “Wélmi súxnum.” "Τι βούλεσαι?" "Βούλομαι υιόν" “What do you want?” “I want a son.”

“Tod ?éstu,” wéwkWet louqós deiwós Wérunos. "Τούτο έστω," είπε λευκός θεός Ουρανός. “Let this be so,” said the bright god Varuna.

Reghnós pótnix súxnum gégone. Ρηγός πότνια υιόν γέγονε. The king’s lady bore a son.

IMHO this is about 50% intelligible by any Greek and almost fully intelligible to an educated Greek Chronographos 8 July 2005 15:00 (UTC)


 * very nice! now do it in Proto-Greek (mainly inserting the labiovelars and the spirants). The king could be the wanaks (in Sanskrit, the vanij). dab (&#5839;) 8 July 2005 15:13 (UTC)
 * Hey, Mr. Lazy Boy, am I to do everything around here? :-P Chronographos 8 July 2005 15:18 (UTC)

Hey, what do you know, I can read ancient Greek (of course, the translations help). Decius 8 July 2005 15:17 (UTC)


 * I am not at all sure about nputlos, húpo-sesore and prcscet. I may have also mixed up some Datives and Accusatives.  The rest was pretty darn straightforward - including χυτήρα

= (libation) pourer = priest. Chronographos 8 July 2005 15:24 (UTC)

According to my references, ancient Greek boulomai (boule) is from PIE *gwel, 'to throw, reach', while the PIE equivalent is from PIE *wel, 'to wish, will'. Different roots, but equivalent form and meaning. Decius 8 July 2005 15:45 (UTC)


 * I think to reach fits just fine, "What to reach?" still makes sense, despite being gramatically incorrect. -- HawkeyE 06:25, July 19, 2005 (UTC)
 * the point is that the words are supposed to be cognates, which in this case they are not. dab (&#5839;) 07:26, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
 * True. I'm afraid this will have to stand as license poetique.  Chronographos 10:14, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

According to the Wikipedia article on "Uranus": 'Identification of the name Uranous with Indian Varuna is widely rejected. The most probably etymology is from Proto-Greek *vorsanos, from a PIE root *vers "to moisten".' Although I don't know what you gain by comparing rex, a Latin word introduced into Greek thousands of years after its split from what would become Sanskrit, and réecs, the translation is striking and well done. As others say below, Do it in Proto-Greek! --Nick G

rex ρηξ, raja (coming from common root (?) --E  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.4.157.115 (talk) 15:16, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

the really tricky bit, ignored by Sen, is to get the various particles right; there is no way there was any PIE, or Proto-Greek, text without various sentence-initial particles, and their particularity really makes for the "feel" of the language. Would there be sentence initial nu in Proto-Greek? Would there already be the ubiquitous de? ''nu regont e'eto. hos de npawidos e'eto''? dab (&#5839;) 07:09, 2 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I wrote the first sentence in proto-greek. Notice also that βούλεσαι is not greek but is probably close to proto-greek: *gwoolesai>*βούλεσαι>*βούλεhαι>*βούλεαι>βούληι    -which is the attested form--66.183.163.115 04:37, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

New text
I agree with you, dab, it's not well done at all. Of course I see the point in including it, if it's the only such reconstruction by an known scholar. Still I'd dare say you'd do a better job reconstructing it yourself. Chronographos 10:30, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * of course, but it would need to be a published reconstruction, I suppose; in any case, the point of including it is to show the evolution of our understanding of Proto-Greek. Schwyzer couldn't have done any better in 1939. dab (&#5839;) 10:39, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Good point. Chronographos 10:43, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Athenaioi we would have to reconstruct as Astanwasyoi, but even that is weird, since the Proto-Greeks would not have had any Luwian loanwords (not to mention the paradoxon of addressing Proto-Greeks who have not even set foot on the Greek peninsula as Athenians :) -- maybe we should something Homeric to project back, rather. OR, I know -- since I have just been picking on Nixer over at Talk:Proto-Indo-European_language for inserting his own (re)constructions without explanation. dab (&#5839;) 11:07, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Where did you read that Athana was a Luwian loan? I was under the impression that it was a non-PIE substrate loan.  Chronographos 13:25, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * we cannot be certain, of course, but see the etymology at Athena. I would not be surprised, incidentially, if Luwian had a strong influence, at least, on late Eteocretan. dab (&#5839;) 13:58, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Not very convincing. Sounds even less plausible than the "N'eith" etymology in Bernal's "Black Athena". Chronographos 14:34, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I was wondering about that Luwian etymology myself: how strong is this Luwian etymology, what is the evidence for it, etc. From what I know, classical Athena was not associated with the sun in any notable manner (as the Luwian etymology would have it). Pre-classical, I would need to see the evidence. ---Decius 14:17, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * There is no evidence, it's etymology by lack of evidence: She was around since the Mycenaean times at least, she has no known equivalent in IE theology (i.e. wise warrior virgin daughter of Dyeus Piter), no apparent IE etymology, therefore she must have been a loan (by a process of elimination) Chronographos 14:34, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

you could help me out with the Afrocentrists over at Talk:Ancient Egypt, 'graphe :) Anyway, if it's not in Melchert, I have my doubts the astanu etymology has any basis at all; we should probably remove it. But how about astaniya "to cast spells" -> *astana "witch"? The owl gives her away, there is more of a connection to Lilitu than to Sowilo I guess... damn, OR again :)dab (&#5839;) 14:47, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Afrocentrists? Oh, noooooo, you poor thing .... :-P Chronographos 14:50, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * just don't repeat the "Decius" mistake and blunder over there mockingly; I think he is rather sensitive, and we are just beginning to get along :P dab (&#5839;) 15:03, 25 August 2005 (UTC)


 * In the case of Talk:Pelasgians, it was no blunder. From the way the etymology is phrased in Athena, I suspect the information was taken from this site which is not a good site to take etymologies from. ---[[User:Decius|Decius] 15:08, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

interesting page; unfortunately, he translates simple A-ta-no-dju-wa-ja "divine Athena" as "sun goddess", and afaics there is no real evidence for the "Sun" connection. I was referring to Xg's mistake of losing your favour, in his early days on WP, btw, not your own behaviour vs. assorted crackpots on Pelasgians :) dab (&#5839;) 15:26, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't the German annotations (oder, bzw. Sing.) in Schwyzer be translated to English? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.162.5.165 (talk) 05:54, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

trees
Enkyklios, with changing treyes to trees, you seem to claim that invervocalic y was already lost in Proto-Greek, while so far we have stated it was lost between Proto-Greek and Mycenaean. Is this a statement you wanted to make, and, are you sure? dab (&#5839;) 16:40, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * No, I am not sure. As a matter of fact we only know that it was lost somewhere between Proto-Indo-European and Mycenaean. The question is if Proto-Greek is more archaic than all Greek dialects in this respect. It may be, but we simply cannot know. I prefer to reconstruct Proto-Greek as the probable common denominator for all Greek dialects. A compromise would be a parenthesis: . Enkyklios 14:21, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

sample
Enkyklios, I am glad for the update, but we need an explanation of the notation; in particular, what is ç? Maybe do a table of phonemes further up under "phonology"? dab (&#5839;) 09:54, 15 February 2006 (UTC)


 * As a matter of fact ç is explained in the note beyond the text as a voiceless approximant. I know that this notation is not standard in the handbooks of IE and Greek lignuistics, but is perfect IPA. Enkyklios 14:27, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

The Archanthropus case
The following paragraph inserted by 195.35.105.38 has been deleted:
 * Petralona Archanthropus’ Skull
 * The first proof of native intelligent human presence in Greece came with the discovery of Petralona Archanthropus’ Skull, in Chalcidice in 1960. The skull has been dated to be at least 70,000 years old, by two German scientists: the anthropologist E. Breitinger and the palaeontologist O. Sickenberg. Extensive research on the issue has been done by the anthropologist Dr. Aris Poulianos of Moscow University, who claims this discovery obsoletes the Indo-European theory. 40th anniversary since the discovery of Petralona Archanthropes' Skull Interview with A. Poulianos

The palaeanthopological evidence has no relevance for the discussion of Proto-Greek and does not belong here. Whatever credentials Poulianos may have as an anthropologist, he is certainly not an expert on historical linguistics, as it is obvious from his comments in the interview. Even if we were ready to accept his hypothesis of a genetic continuity from palaeolithicum until the present time (most anthropologists aren't), it does not necessarily follow that there was a linguistic continuity as well. We don't know what language that poor Archanthropus fellow spoke. Unless Poulianos can detect a fossilised Proto-Greek paradigm somewhere in the skull, the remains cannot possibly prove that the Greek language is authochthonous rather than a later import from the northeast or the east. Enkyklios 12:54, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I think the presence of a skull means merely that human populations came and went, maybe with the opportunity of mixing.  As you seem to be suggesting, Greek is a fairly new language, arising independently, all by itself, without having been influenced by other peoples in the area, whether by mixing or by accident?  216.99.201.33 (talk) 19:17, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Approximants in proto-Greek
Shouldn't the reconstruction of ὅτι be ʍokwid instead of çokwid? Isn't [ç] a fricative? Someone could argue that *sy would sound more like a [ɕ]. Is there a character for describing unvoiced [j]? --Kupirijo 16:20, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Translation issue
I suppose from the names you people use to sign in, you must be greek like me right? (if not the rest is pointless). Any way, the greek section of this page is nothing comparing to the english. I do speak english fluently but i can't cope with an english text full of difficult linguistic terms. Is there a chance someone with the appropriate knowledge on the subject enrich the greek page?

Examples would be useful in the "phonology" section
Many sound-changes are listed in the phonology section. It would be really useful to see at least one example of each change, especially as it isn't clear to non-specialists (like me) exactly what each change consists of. For example, does "Aspiration of /s/ -> /h/ intervocalically" mean that VSV -> VHV or VSV -> VSHV, or what?

The discussion of sus "sow" and dasus "dense" is unclear to me. Are sus and dasus the same in PIE and PG? If so, state this. If not, give the form of each word in each language. Cheers. Grover cleveland (talk) 02:18, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Phomeme Chart
Wow, thanks guys! But could we get a phoneme chart for vowels and consonants like all other language>phonology articles have, even the reconstructed ones? Please keep the historical linguistics rules, though.

35.8.248.47 (talk) 15:13, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Types of Stress in Proto-Greek
How many kinds of stress were there in Proto-Greek?

Is there any evidence for the existence of tonal stress, pitch stress, or syllabic stress in Proto-Greek?

The main article could be improved if an entire paragraph were spent on the rise of stress in Greek, and the functions of grave, circumflex, and acute stress in the language. 216.99.219.35 (talk) 16:43, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Sound changes between Proto-Greek and Mycenaean
If these changes are "complete in Mycenaean", it really should be explained why they are not reconstructed to have occurred by PG, then. (As is currently done for the *sm > (m)m change.) -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 14:04, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Is Proto Greek only Indoeuropean?
Beekes treats Proto-Greek as Indoeuropean and considers non-Indoeuropean words as "pre-Greek". This is a prejudice in my opinion and is an obstacle in understanding the Greek language. The Greek language of classical times had both Indoeuropean and non-Indoeueropean words in it. Although the majority of the words were of Indoeuropean derivation, Greek placenames are often not Indoeuropean, at least for the islands and South Greece. Also some Homeric Greek personal names were according to Beekes non-Indoeuropean (he calls them "pre-Greek", which is an oxymoron). Apart from "Achilles" and "Odysseus", one could add among a host of others several deities such as "Nereus" and the "Nereids", related to the word neron, a non-IE-derived word for water. Moreover, I am not aware that there is research on whether the original Greeks (Γραικοί) of Epirus were pure Indoeuropeans, if so at all. In other words, is the word Greek itself an IE word? Which of the two branches of the ancestor languages should be "proto-Greek"? Why should an article on Proto-Greek refer only to the Indoeuropean branch?Skamnelis (talk) 21:43, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Even though there were a few borrowed words and placenames in Proto-Greek, that doesn't make it non-Indo-European or only partially Indo-European. The vast majority of Proto-Greek was Indo-European.  We don't "cross-classify" languages because of a bit of influence from other languages.  Greek is genetically an Indo-European language, pure and simple.  Placenames especially don't count when it comes to identifying the language family of a language.  --Taivo (talk) 22:50, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
 * @Skamnelis: You could be wrong about nēron (νηρόν), as it's actually meaning "fresh, young" (spring water, νηρόν ὕδωρ - nēron hudōr), from adjective νηρός, νεαρός (nēros, nearos), "new, young",  from νέος (neos), "new, fresh, young", Mycenaean Greek ne-wa (in Linear B), PIE *néwos. A Macedonian (talk) 06:01, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
 * @Taivo: I understand your argument and I am not a specialist but we are defining the word Greek as Indoeuropean, which I am not convinced we know it is. Perhaps it is the wrong word to describe the IE language we are referring to. The word Hellenes may be IE but is the word Greek IE? Moreover, were the Athenians, Corinthians, Thebans, Rhodians, Parians, Naxians, Cretans, Thassians, Lesbians, Ithacans, etc not Greeks, if the words denoting their cities and tribes, their alphabets, etc, are almost certainly non-IE? Among the non-IE words are some very basic words, possibly including anthropos (ΑΝΘΡΩΠΟΣ), phos (ΦΩΣ), neron (ΝΕΡΟΝ), hodos (hΟΔΟΣ), nesos (ΝΗΣΟΣ), basileus (ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ), chronos (ΧΡΟΝΟΣ), horos (hΟΡΟΣ) and choros (ΧΩΡΟΣ). Beekes would add ΘΑΛΑΣΣΑ, ΓΑΙΑ, ΩΚΕΑΝΟΣ. These words are important words in the language. They are among the most primitive.Skamnelis (talk) 06:49, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

This doesn't make sense. A language is not its vocabulary, it has a grammar. The name "Greek" has nothing to do with it, it is the English word for the language. The fact that the word "Greek" has Greek origins doesn't make English a partially Greek language. There is also no such thing as an "IE city", an "IE alphabet", etc. You keep confusing languages with things that are not languages. --dab (𒁳) 07:30, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you are right. I understand that the Greek grammar and indeed the language is treated as IE. But if perhaps the Greeks (Γραικοί), cohabitants of pre-Mycenean and Mycenean Greece, were as a people originally non-IE and spoke originally a non-IE language but later assimilated the grammar and other aspects of the language of Indoeuropeans ("Mycenean", Dorian, Ionian) who arrived at a later time, then we would conclude that the Greeks (Γραικοί) did not speak Greek, not even Proto-Greek, but the newcomers who might have not been Greeks not only spoke Greek but their ancestors who had probably never met the Greeks even spoke Proto-Greek. Apart from the paradox of such a thing, if this were the case, we are also airbrushing a phenomenon similar to the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea adopting English as their common language and it would be an obstacle in understanding how the Greek language became what it became, with all those words that are not IE and the possible influences on the pronunciation, grammar, etc. Since you mentioned grammar, it seems second declension female nouns with an -os ending and male third declension personal names with an -eus ending may have been non-IE. If so, is their declension IE or non-IE?Skamnelis (talk) 18:46, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

"The Proto-Greek language is the assumed last common ancestor of all known varieties of Greek" i.e. a supposed daughter language of PIE. That Greek borrowed a lot of words or that its subsequent speakers were 99% not descendants of PIE-speakers (if we assume a steppe rather than neolithic scenario) didn't change its genetic relationship with PIE though it might have had an impact on its grammar. Yes, to a degree, these are convenient constructs. You should also stop confusing the NAME "Greek" with the LANGUAGE "Greek". The name "Hellenes" was unknown to "Homer", as Thucydides admits, the dialects still existed. 87.202.25.217 (talk) 18:54, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I am not confusing the language with the people, I simply made a proposal that what we mean by Greek is old convention that stems from a lack of appreciation of who the Greeks were. Coupled with a linear thinking about how the Greek language developed, this has led us to an oxymoron that the Greeks (Γραικοί) may have not been Greek speakers. I was proposing that Proto-Greek should make reference to more than one progenitor of Greek - or at least make some caveat. If it is a convention, there should be a caveat that this convention does not mean that languages develop unaffected by other languages they meet along the way. Incidentally, Homer actually knew of the Hellenes, there are several passages e.g.
 * "Those again who held Pelasgic Argos, Alos, Alope, and Trachis;
 * and those of Phthia and Hellas the land of fair women, who were
 * called Myrmidons, Hellenes, and Achaeans; these had fifty ships,
 * over which Achilles was in command."
 * Homer, Iliad Book II
 * N.B. Italicised capital nouns are almost certainly non-IE.Skamnelis (talk) 23:54, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Skamnelis, your idea that the people who spoke a non-IE language are somehow "the same" people as the the people partially or even mostly descended for them who spoke an IE language centuries later is an instance of ethnic essentialism. It's a fallacy. You are not your ancestors. --dab (𒁳) 19:09, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I am not sure where I implied that. I was saying there is an oversimplified thinking about how the Greek language developed, in a linear fashion from a single ancestor, unaffected by other languages. This way of thinking would make us conclude that the original Greeks (Γραικοί), if they were not IE speakers, they would have not spoken Greek. I drew no other arguments.Skamnelis (talk) 23:54, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The Greek language most certainly derives from Proto-Indo-European in a linear fashion. It is axiomatic in linguistics that languages are influenced by other languages, but that doesn't change their direct linear descent.  The only languages with non-linear descent are pidgins and creoles, but Greek is certainly not one of these.  You are making a mountain out of a molehill just because you discovered a few words that are not descended from Proto-Indo-European.  --Taivo (talk) 01:11, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Perhaps Beekes has a number for the percentage of the words in Classical Greek that are non-IE. Perhaps it is negligible but it may not be. It is probably less negligible than one might have thought 10 years ago. Anyway, you are the greater experts, I enjoyed the discussion, I bow out. I imagine my kind of Proto-Greeks not only filled the land with their words, and many myths with their heroes, but gave the Greek language most of its uniqueness. Unfortunately, they are not here to protest with me. Skamnelis (talk) 05:18, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I meant "Hellenes" to describe all Greeks as opposed to the Thessalian Hellenes, I should have clarified, I'm sorry. The same is true of the "Graikoi" (and the case of the Graikoi is even more confused and hard to untangle). In the end, who cares what the original "Graikoi" were or what they spoke? The names "Hellenes" and "Greeks" became certainly attached to the Greek-speaking community at a later date (yes, I know of Aristotle's mention of Graikoi), we don't care about the original people who bore those names in this case, where we are discussing the proto-Greek LANGUAGE, why should we? If the "Graikoi" were originally non-Greek-speaking, would that change anything? There's no doubt that Greek has an important pre-Greek substrate but the modern Greek dialects also have Venetian and Ottoman Turkish loanwords and Latin suffixes and are still the descendants of Koine Greek. 87.202.25.217 (talk) 02:23, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I was precisely wondering what the original Greeks (Γραικοί) were and what they spoke. They must have spoken Greek, or perhaps Proto-Greek, one would naively assume. I had been trying to work out what might be the correct search term to search for information on their language. I was especially intrigued by the fact that the word Greek itself is probably non I.E. If the language of the original Greeks (Γραικοί) should not be covered in this section, where should one search for it? There is still, four years later, nothing relevant under Greek language or ancient Greek or any other related article. Skamnelis (talk) 08:14, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

A good comparison might be with modern Greek dialects. Pontic, Tsakonian and Griko all come from Koine Greek but diverge because of local greek substrates (Ionic, Doric and Doric respectively), lack of contact with each other, and contact with different languages. Just imagine that the Indo-european daughter languages are these Greek dialects, their respective substrates (and other factors) had an important impact but they are still Indo-european. 85.73.208.102 (talk) 18:56, 16 November 2010 (UTC)


 * "Who the original Greeks were" is a non-sensical question. No one work up one morning and said, "I'm Greek today.  I was something different yesterday."  The Hellenic branch of Indo-Europeans evolved over time from the horse tamers of the Ukrainian steppe into the olive growers of the Greek peninsula.  It's not always possible to identify what form, between unrecorded early Proto-Indo-European or late Proto-Indo-European or Proto-Greco-Phrygian or Proto-Hellenic, their unrecorded language took.  Your question is one of unknowable fancy, not of scientific verifiability or certainty.  --Taivo (talk) 13:05, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
 * By original Greeks, I am referring to the tribe of the Greeks (Γραικοί/Graeci) mentioned by Aristotle in Meteorologica and also on the Parian Chronicle, prior to the generalisation of the use of that name to all those tribes that participated in the Olympic Amphictyony. Homer, for example, does not call those who campaigned together against Troy as Greeks or Hellenes. These are names of individual tribes. So did those original Greeks, the first to be referred to under that name, speak Greek? A reference would suffice to guide myself and other readers. If, on the other hand, some expert who has considered the language of the Mycenean period has proposed that the language of the Greeks (that distinct ancient tribe) cannot be known, a reference would be helpful. It would be odd, indeed, if we cannot know whether the Greeks spoke Greek. Skamnelis (talk) 11:43, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Alexikoua's map
None of the links of the sources say anything about Proto-Greek being spoken in Albania, but Alexikoua added the region in his map. So after checking page 56 of Georgiev it seems that it was spoken in coastal areas i.e not all of southern Albania, so if he adds Georgiev back he should exclude those areas. Georgiev says "up to Aulon", which means that Aulon is the northermost area.-- — ZjarriRrethues — talk 12:34, 3 May 2011 (UTC)


 * The source is clear on this issue: it says "up to Aulon" excactly what the map shows. It doesn't include areas north of Aulon/Vlore. What we should consider is that this is a reconstruction by Georgiev, based on linguistic criteria: especially on toponyms: I have also included the Pindus and Ceraunian mountains regions per his definition of the Proto-Greek area [] Alexikoua (talk) 00:07, 4 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Nevertheless I've moved the borders south at some parts, although the northernmost part of Pindus remains that way outside the area.Alexikoua (talk) 06:56, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Source for Modern Proto-Greek Reconstruction?
The source/meaning/purpose of the "Modern" column in the Proto-Greek Reconstruction chart is mysterious to me. What is the source? Dmoerner (talk) 22:32, 17 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Late reply to this, but I've actually gone ahead and removed the whole section. Since the original Schwyzer reconstruction appears to be heavily outdated, while the "modern" one seems to be a self-made one devised by a Wikipedian, and thus WP:OR (though no doubt quite competent and knowledgeable ), there isn't really much benefit in having either of them. (Plus, the whole idea of taking "famous lines from classical literature" and projecting them back into the language of a much earlier time period is dubious in itself. It's a bit as if you wanted to demonstrate what Middle English was like, and did that by taking lines from, say, Beatles songs, "translated" back into the forms of Chaucer). Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:29, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Development of the accent
According to the article, the accentual restrictions of later Greek, and the circumflex accent, are all later developments that did not occur in Proto-Greek. But the article doesn't say much about the developments that did happen. Or did nothing at all change between PIE and PG? CodeCat (talk) 15:09, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Proto-Greek, the Greco-Armenian connection etc.
Although my time is quite limited (lots of real life obligations)and I cannot comment in extenso, the Greco-Armenian connection put forward in the early 1920' or 1930's (really can't check it out and sincerely don't remember right now exactly when or by whom this was proposed; was it Pedersen?) has been seriously assailed some 2 decades now and is no longer considered as plausible as it used to be (to say the least). When it comes to the notorious phylogenetic trees, Proto-Greek has also been proposed as a sibling or ancestor of almost all of Paul Kretschmer's so called Balkan Sprachbund languages including the hottly debated but still spurious Ancient Macedonian, as well as Phrygian, Dacian, Thracian, Illyrian and whatnot. Such seductively attractive hypotheses are mighty interesting but alas they do not belong in this article given the current poor state of attestation of all these extinct and largely epigraphically unattested languages (barring the Phrygian language all others are mostly known only indirectly through dubious onomastica, anthroponymy & toponymy). So, let's keep it simple for the time being. Everyone interested in the vagarities of these languages can easily check the relevant links. I will come back with more precise and up to date literature to resolve any doubts in due time. The Greco-Armenian hypothesis needs a lot of refurbishing to start with. Thanks everybody in advance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Giorgos Tzimas (talk • contribs) 23:03, 19 November 2014‎

You know, 3000 BC is pretty close to late PIE anyway, and nobody disputes Greek and Armenian both grew out of that. Afaik, "Greco-Armenian" as a hypothesis is doing quite well, but it isn't really that exciting, because it boils down to some degree of "prolongued contact" over a couple of centuries after whatever cutoff you prefer to set on "late PIE". The idea here is, of course, that Armenian is substantially derived from Phrygian. Otherwise, as you say, we have really nothing to go on for the "Armenian" side of the equation. Armenian was exposed to some rather weird substrate and/or superstrate influence, but its core it may very well derive from Phrygian. Of course, the topic belongs on Greco-Armenian, and this page should only briefly mention the point. It should also not place undue weight on a random paper from 2003 doing some things with Swadesh lists. This was interesting as a "proof of concept" back in 2003, but it hardly replaces 200 years of philologists' research. --dab (𒁳) 19:32, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

I had almost forgotten my last visit here and to be frank I have no serious objections to what you are saying. Back in 2014, When I wrote my comment the contents of the article were quite different. The text gave a false but rather strong impression of certainty re the issues at hand. The importance and the significance of the Greco-Armenian hypothesis was at the time overstated, to say the least, and there was no discussion about the problems surrounding it. Any further or detailed contextualisation of this particular topic should indeed go to Greco-Armenian, but I do insist that there is nowadays much less to flesh out from this connection than what was believed back in the '30s, while the once overemphasized connection is now much more nuanced in the literature. Phrygian and its tentative relation with Ancient Macedonian deserve more attention if the Greco-Armenian connection is to make any sense to the reader. At any rate, the article, as it stands now, is much much better. (Ironically, I feel that the proposed relationship between Proto-Greek, Ancient Macedonian, Phrygian etc. has now been watered down more than was necessary). Be that as it may, I do believe that this, as well as many other similar articles, need some toning down on linguistic jargon if they are to be of any use to lay readers; specialists can always resort to relevant literature. Kind Regards.--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 20:56, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

yes, I realize your comment was more than a year old. Thanks for replying. The current article caught my attention for claiming "divergent views" of scholars regarding the age of Proto-Greek. I do not think this is the case. "Late 3rd millennium" seems a pretty solid consensus. The Greco-Armenian thing, well, it is what it is. It's interesting enough, but not really in the scope of this article. Macedonian and Phrygian are, it would seem, practically sister languages of Greek, but not enough is known about them to prove or disprove this to sceptics. --dab (𒁳) 06:46, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

It is I who should thank you for bringing this article to a better shape, I was planning to do it myself, but I was (and still am) caught up with other obligations... Ancient Macedonian (I prefer this term just for precision purposes -- no nationalist axe to grind here) and Phrygian would be a higly welcome addition in general. I do hope that future discoveries will improve their level of attestation in the linguistic record and if per chance such discoveries occur I am pretty sure that they will give an incredibly interesting impetus in the now almost stagnant studies -- not to mention the insight to the already extremely intriguing Proto-Greek and the milieu out of which it emerged. Of course the final centuries of the 3rd millenium as a starting pooint represent more than a mere consensus. I consider all other (defunct) theories utterly fringe. On a side note, some of the issues raised by the fellow editor underneath re phonology are quite valid and deserve more attention. Phonology is not my strong suit, despite my partial background on comparative linguistics, and I have precious little time to tackle the issues on my own. Any contributions would be extremely welcome. I have only the general introduction by Beeks here with me and and it is unfortunately too general for such a discussion. At any rate,thanks again!--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 13:44, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Moving description of Post-Proto-Greek changes
Some post-Proto-Greek sound changes are discussed here. They should be moved to either, , or , depending on when they occurred. And eventually, though this is a more involved project, they should be described briefly in History of Greek, along with the sound changes of all other periods of Greek.

Also, does anyone know sources for the sound changes between the time of Mycenaean and Ancient Greek described in this article? I need some to add to Ancient Greek phonology, and to allow me to describe them in more detail. — Eru·tuon 20:30, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

"Should be seen" in the context of an ancient "Balkan sprachbund"?
Ever since the first draft of this article in 2005, by Dbachmann, there has been a sentence saying that "The evolution of Proto-Greek should be considered with the background of an early Palaeo-Balkan sprachbund that makes it difficult to delineate exact boundaries between individual languages". This sentence remained virtually unchanged but without a reference for a decade, until a footnote was added earlier this year, to (though misattributed to the editors, Bammesberger & Vennemann). The addition of this ref was done by an apparent sock of banned agenda editor User:Deucalionite. Unfortunately I haven't got access to the Renfrew paper at the moment (beyond some Google snippets).

I see the following issues here:
 * 1) There is an unfortunate tone of POV-ish editorializing in the original sentence (why would we want to be promoting somebody's opinion that something "should be seen" in a certain way?). Obviously this is fixable, but in order to fix it I'd need more context information about the paper in question.
 * 2) Does the reference actually support the entirety of our sentence within its context? I can confirm that Renfrew is using the concept of a "sprachbund". According to the snippet quoted in the footnote, "The fragmentation of the Balkan Proto-Indo-European Sprachbund of phase II around 3000 BC led gradually in the succeeding centuries to the much clearer definition of the languages of the constituent sub-regions"). So there was supposedly some sprachbund in "phase II" (when was that? Which other languages' ancestors were part of it? What other "phases" where there?), and it was disintegrating as Greek formed. Is Renfrew actually making the connection with Armenian that is made in the next sentence in our article?
 * 3) How representative is this Renfrew paper of the state of the art? It is well known that Renfrew's view of early Indo-European dispersal in Europe is not exactly uncontroversial, and the positing of prehistoric "sprachbünde" of this kind appears to be, to say the least, rather unconventional and probably quite speculative (seriously, how could we possibly know how and at what times various subvarieties of emerging IE were in the specific sociolinguistic situation allowing the formation of a sprachbund?). I cannot find anything online that points to any serious scholarly echo on this paper, be it positive or negative, and nobody else in the literature appears to have used the concept of "sprachbund" in this context so far.

Any views on what should be done about this passage? Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:38, 23 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Funny, although I have browsed through this article many a time in the past, this never caught my eye before. I tried to find Renfrew's article myself, but no luck so far. At any rate, the sentence sounds indeed somewhat "POV-ish" and it is probably superfluous. I should note that at least in recent years there has been no spectacular finding or new insight on the subject of the Palaeo-Balkan Sprachbund (for that I'm pretty sure) and I really can't see how the attestation of these languages or the progress of their reconstruction and vicissitudes are going to experience any serious breakthrough in the immediate future. Having said that, I can't imagine which new conclusion or discovery could sanction this particular sentence. With regard to Renfrew: Although his theory has been seriously assailed by well known linguists, it is still alive (mainly his critique of the invasion model), while parts of it have re-entered the discussion in archaeological circles (a handful of still unpublished contributions in conferences). But even this is mainly due to the recent discoveries in Anatolia - Hodder's excavations in Çatalhöyük and Schmidt's research in Göbekli Tepe are cases in point. Göbekli Tepe's latest a-ceramic phases seem to confirm some of Renfrew's predictions on the antiquity and Anatolian origin of farming and the development of the first complex sedentary societies. The Anatolian dates bode well with Renfrew's dispersal theory (although he himself has partly disavowed his own model of demic diffusion and the slow "wave of advance" especially for northern and western Europe), but other than that the linguistic hurdles remain largely intact. Perhaps Renfrew's article is an effort to counter Malory's hypothesis of a 4th milenium "balkan dark age" collapse but even that would be largely based on archaeological rather than linguistic criteria. All in all, I think that the sentence should simply go without much ado.Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 21:19, 26 November 2016 (UTC)


 * The phrasing "should be seen" is certainly inappropriate.
 * The most recent reputable proposal of Sprachbund phenomena in Indo-European seems to be Andrew Garrett, "A New Model of Indo-European Subgrouping and Dispersal", Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (2000), pp. 146-156, "even the formation of 'Greek' itself may have been [a] secondary Sprachbund phenomen[on]". But he is not talking about a Paleo-Balkan sprachbund, but rather of the notion that the lines between the "branches" of Indo-European may not originate with a tree-like splitting (Stammbaum) but rather with convergence.
 * Interestingly, a published Indo-European grammar uses precisely the same words as our article, and seems to post-date it: Carlos Quiles, Fernando López-Menchero, A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, 3rd ed., 2012, p. 112 (first edition, 2007)—did the book plagiarize the article, or is there some common source? --Macrakis (talk) 00:07, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Hmm, Quiles and López do explicitly mention Wikipedia as a source (p. 111) and then claim that it is "impossible to trace back each [quotation] to its origin". Really?! Am I the only one who finds this shocking? --Macrakis (talk) 00:20, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Heh, I've long stopped finding Quiles and Lopez shocking ;-) That "book" has been floating around as a source of pseudo-citations on Wikipedia for years. It's a self-published thing by some amateurs promoting their pet project of reviving "Modern(!) Indo-European" as a constructed lingua franca. They've been pilfering from Wikipedia all over the place. (But to be fair, maybe by "impossible to trace back", they meant it's impossible to give credit to each individual Wikipedia author for their contribution they might have cited; you might say they have a point about that). Thanks for digging the Garrett paper out. While not exactly supporting our sentence as it stood, it does seem to make a similar point (that suggestion about Proto-Greek arising not through a neat "cutoff" at a genetic tree node but through local convergence processes in the context of a larger IE dialect continuum). Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:48, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Oh, by the way, since we're now all gathered together here, there's another thing that just struck me as a possible problem: in one passage that unfortunately slipped through from an old edit by a Deucalionite sock, there's the sentence that "Russell Gray and Quentin Atkinson […] have arrived at a somewhat earlier estimate, around 5000 BC for Greco-Armenian split and the emergence of Greek as a separate linguistic lineage around 4000 BC". This is cited to a 2003 paper. The same footnote then contains a source quotation from a second, 2006 paper by the same authors, which says: "the language tree shows the formation of separate Tocharian, Greek, and then Armenian lineages, all before 6000 BP, with all of the remaining language families formed by 4000 BP". Does this quottion strike you as remarkably at odds with the puported summary in the article? If the 2006 paper speaks of of "separate Tocharian, Greek, and then Armenian" lineages, doesn't that entail a rejection of the very notion of a common "Greco-Armenian" split-off? Does somebody have access to the 2003 paper to check if it at least supports what's being claimed in the article? Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:40, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * There is nothing about a 4000 BC date for the emergence of Greek in neither the 2003 correspondence to Nature magazine nor the 2006 contribution to the volume edited by Renfrew. Their findings seem to corroborate a much older pedigree for the PIE that agrees largely with the Anatolian hypothesis rather than the conventional one. But their jargon had always been to much for me to make any meaningful assessment on the validity of their results and methodology. I'll send the relevant files shortly to both of you, so we can stay in the same page as we go through editing (the Renfrew file is in DjVu format). Have to go now, but I'll be back as soon as possible. Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 13:12, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Supposed Proto-Greek in 1200 BC
The extraordinary claim that 'Proto-Greek' was spoken in 1200 BC is unacceptable provided that we have already written records of a latter Greek dialect (Mycenaean Greek) in the period 1500-1200 B.C.. Edits such as this one [] need to be avoided.Alexikoua (talk) 09:17, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I wonder why Drews has been falsified since he clearly states that a dialectal split has occurred centuries before 1200 BCE....Alexikoua (talk) 09:53, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Edits that remove what bibliography discusses and reintroduces very old, discarded ideas with false edit summaries should be avoided. You removed Drews (1994), Demand (2012) and Mallory (2003) in order to reintroduce the same POV that doesn't at all reflect what bibliography discusses:


 * Drews (1994) writes (p.14):  This publication by Princeton sums where the debate stands. Definitions of proto-Greek and whether Mycenaean was a truly differentiated dialect cause this issue, there's no "extraordinary claim" in a theory that places the appearance of proto-Greek exactly at the time period it first appeared in written record in Greece. It's one of the theories that are being discussed - the main one as bibliography shows places Proto-Greek in the middle Bronze Age. A Neolithic hypothesis like the ones you've been pushing both here and at Molossians is not being discussed in contemporary bibliography.
 * writes:
 * I'm not going to full quote the entire page, but he explains why IE languages couldn't have been in the Balkans in the Neolithic.
 * This is what bibliography discusses. Removing that and replacing the consensus that exists for many years with very old theories (Marija Gimbutas wrote in the 1950s/60s about Pan-Illyrian theories) is doing a huge disservice to readers who might not be aware of relevant bibliography by presenting ideas which are not reflective of where we stand. It truly harms the integrity of the project to have Georgiev's abandoned theories about Illyrians, Thracians and Greeks in the Neolithic Balkans presented to readers as mainstream ideas.  you seem to be the last person who was involved in this article in a comprehensive way, could you please take a look here? --Maleschreiber (talk) 12:02, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Comment While we're at it: the statement "The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants, who spoke the predecessor of Mycenaean Greek, entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Bronze Age" conflates linguistics and deductions from archaelogical findings. The unity of Proto-Greek ended with the diversification into distinct dialects. The correlation of this diversification with certain migrations is speculatory, since its process is unattested; only the result is documented. Such speculative statements do not belong in the lead, especially if there no matching in-depth discussion in the rest of the article. –Austronesier (talk) 12:42, 19 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment: Maleschreiber still needs to explain why Proto-Greek survived until 1200 BC (as placed in infobox). I might have some concerns about the productive nature of such edits.Alexikoua (talk) 12:46, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * But I think this conflation is the very source of the dispute here. If Mycenean Greek is indeed held by some scholars (but then please tell us, ) to be an attested state of Proto-Greek, we should exactly cite that, before proceeding to talk about migrations and archaelogical evidence. –Austronesier (talk) 13:22, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed, there's also the problem of how exactly the speakers of Proto-Greek were "Hellenic mgirants", a much later concept, at a time when identities were at an early proto- state and only developed with the later merging with pre-IE substrata.

Alexikoua here's the part of the Drews (1994) which I tried to address with -1200 BCE. I don't mind a change to -Late Helladic, but what you removed and then replaced it with : is *not* what bibliography has being discussing for the past 30-40 years. Bibliography is very certain that the possible earliest date when proto-IE speakers reached this area is c. 2100 BCE while the more conventional approach/consensus places it at the Middle Bronze Age, c.1900 BCE. But a "3200 BC" date is even before the conventional possible date in which the single Proto-Indo-European language began to diversify (around 2500-2800 BCE) and is not something that modern bibliography discusses as a possibility.--Maleschreiber (talk) 13:40, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Austronesier, a paper representative of the theory to which Drews (1994) refers to as the lower limit in his overview is Andrew Selkirk's Lefkandi: a city of refuge in Dark Ages between Mycenaean and Classical Greece, Current Archaeology 7 (1967-68), . But I don't mind at all a -Late Helladic as the lower limit, the main problem of the article is that it puts forward an idea that doesn't exist in modern bibliography about IE-speakers (of languages which would become the Paleo-Balkan group) in 3200 BCE in Greece. They weren't even in the Balkans and Proto-IE probably hadn't even diversified at that point in the context of the current models of reconstruction & consensus about them.--Maleschreiber (talk) 14:14, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Maleschreiber, thank you for clearing this up, maybe we should add some words in the main text about the different interpretations of Mycenaean Greek as either representative or descendant of Proto-Greek, which IMO is a only matter of nomenclatura for the question of the entry of the Greeks into the Greek peninsula + neighboring islands.
 * But yes, the back-dating is a much more serious issue. Pushing back the date for Proto-Greek beyond the mainstream date range for the diversifciation of Proto-IE is clearly a fringe view. –Austronesier (talk) 15:13, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The majority of modern sources point that the arrival of Proto-Greek speakers in central/southern Greek occurred in the Early Helladic (not Late Helladic in the Late Helladic we had already written records of Mycenaean Greek...) [] [] (c. 2200 BC). This stays in agreement with Georgiev&Hammond&Borza that Proto-Greek speakers were present in north-western Greece (and parts of s. Albania) before the Bronze Age migrations. On the other hand a 1600-1200 BC scenario is completely unhistorical (Late Helladic) since we have written records that confirm the dialectal split.Alexikoua (talk) 19:56, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * We can place the -1200 BC as Late Helladic and explain the nomenclature and theories which place 1200 BC as a lower limit. Now, what bibliography is discussing has been put forward, so I will not explain again how fringe it is to claim that Greek or any IE language was in the Balkans in the Neolithic (3200 BC!) - that much has been confirmed. I want to raise an issue about what you've linked and how it doesn't support your theory. Whittaker (2014) writes  - this is not "in agreement with Georgiev" at all, nor are in agreement with Georgiev Parpola and Carpelan (2005) who write that  The interval between the Early Helladic II and III is placed between 2200-2100 BC so it's within the upper limit of the consensus today, but it's definitely *not* "in agreement with Georgiev" and ideas about 3200 like the ones you've written in the article. Thank you for the sources - but they highlight the opposite of what you're putting forward.  your thoughts?--Maleschreiber (talk) 20:37, 19 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Saying that Mycenaean was Proto-Greek means that it was ancestral to all other varieties of Greek, but it isn't: "...Mycenaean show innovations that are found only in some Greek dialects [so] it cannot be viewed as Proto-Greek; it is just an early dialect...". --Macrakis (talk) 21:43, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Late Helladic IB-II is good description as an end date because it includes all plausible theories per Drews (1994). I have read Garrett (2000), it's an interesting contribution to the extensive discussion about the innovations which led to the diversification of Proto-Greek. The large problem of the article is elsewhere.  What is your opinion about it? Based on bibliography and also the implications from Garrett (2000) about Proto-Greek and the other proto- variants of Paleo-Balkan languages would you consider Georgiev's ideas about Greek (3200 BCE)/Thracian (in the early Neolithic!)/Illyrian in the Balkans at such an early period plausible, thus worthy of equal mention in the article?. --Maleschreiber (talk) 22:28, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I haven't read Georgiev but 1) it is 40 years old; 2) it tries to extrapolate 2000 years before our earliest records of Greek, which a) is a long time b) isn't consistent with other models of Indo-European differentiation. But I am no specialist, and haven't done anything like a systematic literature review. --Macrakis (talk) 22:51, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Comment thank you for your contributions to this discussion ; as you may note that this dispute is linked to the analogous dispute on Talk:Molossians where it would be (emphatically) great to have fresh and well-informed input on whether discussion of Proto-Greek being locally present in the late Neolithic per Georgiev's views is relevant to the page, and if the use of Vladimir Georgiev is appropriate. Cheers all! --Calthinus (talk) 23:20, 19 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Claiming that in Late Helladic (1500-1200 BC) there still was a Proto-Greek language is the most extreme FRINGE in the field of Greek linguistics. @Calthinus: Either take Georgiev to RSN or stop recycling the same weak accusations against him.Alexikoua (talk) 06:40, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Nobody has said that the identification of Mycenaean Greek as Proto-Greek is the mainstream position. Like, I haven't systematically surveyed the lit about it, but I'm quite sure it's a minority view. I think that also won't object to this, provided we have enough sources to inlcude such a qualification in the article. The fun part is: this question has zero impact to the question of which archaeological strata can be safely assigned to Greek speakers; it's just about "proto" vs. "early". On the other hand, dating Proto-Greek (or anything called xxx-Greek) back to an age when Proto-IE hasn't even split up into distinct branches (according to mainstream models of IE diversification) is utter fringe.  Your thoughts? –Austronesier (talk) 07:35, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree entirely with this^.--Calthinus (talk) 08:17, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Obviously this kind or fringe comes from older research (pre-1950s) before the decipherment of Linear B. On the other hand base on archaeological data an Early Helladic date of Proto-Greek is the majority view based on modern scholarship. Alexikoua (talk) 08:55, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Obviously not, because the (minority, fringe or whatever) view about Mycenaean Greek as Proto-Greek presupposes the decipherment of Linear B. has provided one citation for this position (old, but post-Ventris). Btw, pots don't talk. –Austronesier (talk) 09:05, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The "minority view" as the source mentions is based on two 1960s works. Nevertheless Ventris decipherment received finally full approval after some years of further research. No wonder Drews (1994) suggests that there is no substantiated support for this minority view in later scholarship (claiming that's not even worth to deal with this view).Alexikoua (talk) 09:30, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * This discussion is moot. Both identification (= minority, fringe or whatever) or non-identification (= mainstream) of Mycenaean Greek with Proto-Greek rest on the existence of a Mycenaean Greek corpus, which was only available with the decipherment of Linear B. The idea that Mycenaean Greek represents Proto-Greek is certainly not widely supported, but for other reasons than you bring forward. –Austronesier (talk) 09:42, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Fully agreed, . I mostly quoted Salkirk (1968) as a historical reference about the theories which Drews (1994) gives an overview of. My main problem here all along was the ridiculous fringe about the early date. I'll make some changes in the article to reflect the progress of our discussion, but further changes are welcome .--Maleschreiber (talk) 09:43, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * perhaps of interest -- Greek linguistics is now moving away from the idea of an "undifferentiated Proto-Greek" (dialectally)l, ,the headline in Giannakis et al 2018 being it's an "an unconceivable theory" -- see Jose Luis Garcia Ramon in Giannakis, Crespo and Filos 2018, pp85-86. This is not to say that the view that Mycenaean was equivalent to Proto-Greek is valid, but it is of note that the simple one-to-many branching family tree model is now being reconsidered from the view of dialects that increasingly diverged, like "Common Germanic" for W Germanic langs, etc. Ramon goes on to term it instead Common Greek which . Could be of (non-controversial) use to the page but would of course need to be considered in light of other views? --Calthinus (talk) 20:26, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I think that I've been summoned to comment on the breakup of PIE, in which case any attempts to date "Proto-Greek", especially Proto-Greek in the Balkans, at 3000 BCE is nonsense based on current Proto-Indo-European scholarship and the archeology of the Yamnaya culture. 2500 BCE for the separation of Greek from PIE is much more likely (see Anthony 2007, for example).  I can't speak to the archeology of the Balkans, but at 3000 BCE, PIE (minus Anatolian and Tocharian and perhaps Germanic) was still a fairly solid group in the Pontic-Caspian steppe.  Any theory that places "Proto-Greek" in the Balkans at that time can be considered fringe.  There was a period when the Anatolian origin model of Renfrew had its devotees, but the archeological evidence is now strong for the Pontic-Caspian steppe origin and most Indo-Europeanists are in that camp now (Ringe, Mallory, Anthony, Fortson, etc.).  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 11:13, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * @Maleschreiber: Can you please point where Drews mentions the term "Proto-Greek" in the quote you provided. For future reference "the arrival of Greek populations in Greece" is something different from the era that proto-Greek was spoken. Your 2100 BC change needs citation.Alexikoua (talk) 11:46, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * @Taivo: your claim lacks citation. There were already groups of Indo-European populations that time in northern-central Balkans. At least there a considerable part i modern scholarship.Alexikoua (talk) 12:15, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * No, there weren't @Alexikoua, unless by "north-central Balkans" you mean Moldova and trans-Danubian Romania. David W. Anthony, 2007, The Horse, the Wheel and Language; Don Ringe, Tandy Warnow, & Ann Taylor, 2002, "Indo-European and computational cladistics and the position of Tocharian", The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia; Benjamin W. Fortson IV, 2010, Indo-European Language and Culture, 2nd edition; J.P. Mallory & D.Q. Adams, 2006, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World; NOVA "The First Horse Warriors", 2019; David W. Anthony & Don Ringe, 2015, "The Indo-European Homeland from Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives," Annual Review of Linguistics, etc.  That's the current thinking from Indo-European specialists.  Your sources are probably older and reflect the Renfrew Anatolian homeland model that has been discredited.  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 12:38, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * This dispute may hinge on what you mean by "Proto-Greek". It's a vague and rather ill-defined term, especially when you are considering a language branch that has had very little branching over time.  I'm using the term in my comment above in quotation marks to reflect that vagueness and talking about when the Hellenic branch separated from Proto-Indo-European.  That's not always what is meant by "Proto-X", especially when a family like Germanic has sufficient branching to place a Proto-Germanic at a particular place and time.  But since Hellenic (the proper term for the branch) has had little branching you can play loosey goosey with the term and pretty much place it about wherever you'd like.  But to the specific claim that there were "Proto-Greek" speakers in the Balkans at 3000 BCE, that's pretty much impossible since there was no Hellenic branch in PIE on the Pontic-Caspian steppe yet at that time according to current scholarship.  If you're relying on 40-year-old sources, then you need to update your scholarship.  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 12:58, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * despite all that we have discussed Alexikoua first removed 2500 BCE as the diversification date for PIE because it was "OR"- even though we have used bibliography in the talkpage about exactly that phenomenon, so he had knowledge of it and could add it. Then, he reintroduced the content about Neolithic Greece in a "light mode" by changing to  I added the The Horse, the Wheel and Language in the article and I think that the WP:WEASEL wording in order to support in the article a theory which every editor in the discussion has rejected as fringe should stop. --Maleschreiber (talk) 13:50, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * @Maleshcreiber: I can't understand why you removed E. Borza without explanation. Care to explain? I can assume that you don't like the theory he proposes about a migration from nw Greece (just like Hammond and Georgiev). As for you wp:OR accusation about this [] I assume you forgot to add an apology about not providing the necessary inline citation. Alexikoua (talk) 15:07, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I explained it just after I made the edit and we have all discussed the use Georgiev and his 3200 BCE theory about NW Greece - Hammond doesn't say the same at all, there's a time gap between them, thus to put them in the same basket is SYNTH. When a consensus which is based on bibliography emerges, it's best to accept the outcome instead of making editorial changes to still include your ideas in the article and then accusing all those who have put forward proper bibliography that they "don't like it". Anthony (2010) proposes an entirely different route and the article's bibliography right now makes any inclusion of what you're proposing impossible. You would have to remove 2500 as a diversification date for PIE - just like you already did once. You would also have to remove the geographical context in which Pre-Greek emerged. What you have tried to put forward so far doesn't "fit" with anything modern bibliography has to say about Proto-Greek.--Maleschreiber (talk) 15:28, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There is also another interesting piece of info which can not be considered 'older research', and stays in agreement with the rest of the scholarship: Religion and Society in Middle Bronze Age Greece, Helène Whittaker, Helène Whittaker von Hofsten, Cambridge University Press, 2014: Well, I assume that Prehistory isn't so clear in evidence but obviously the above information isn't fringe and stays in agreement with mainstream bibliography (Borza among them).Alexikoua (talk) 15:35, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * And then she continues by presenting other such fringe theories like his argument places great faith in the historical validity of the information about the pre-Greek population known as Pelasgians in the ancient literary sourceslos who . Then she closes her overview with the remark . She's saying that it is fringe, not mainstream. It's really, really disruptive when someone half quotes material in order to make a point and then when other editors try to verify it, they find the exact opposite. could you take a look too when you have enough free time? Despite the full quote Alexikoua made this edit  I think that it requires admin oversight. Editors can't abuse bibliography so blatantly.--Maleschreiber (talk) 15:57, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It appears you are confused in terms of chronology: 3,200 BC marks the beginning of the Bronze Age. As such 3,200 theory "presents a possibility" per RS above: "It is hardly likely that archaeological evidence can resolve the problem of when the first speakers of proto-Greek established themselves on the Greek mainland. Any time around or after the beginning of the third millennium B.C. would be a possible date from the point of most Indo-Europeanists, which means that if we are looking for a confluence of archaeological and linguistic evidence, the beginning of the Bronze Age also presents itself a possibility."Alexikoua (talk) 16:05, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The source above meets wp:RS and states that this approach presents a possibility, not to mention that its not older research. Hammond, Borza, Georgiev are also in close agreement with this, so I wouldn't label something that presents a possibility by an RS as fringe.Alexikoua (talk) 16:12, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * "No, it wouldn't and Whittaker rejects what you're putting forward as the full quote highlights. The many reasons why this could never have happened are also explained in all other sources in the article. You're coming back to the same argument despite the fact that everyone has explained to you how and why it's totally out of the mainstream. --Maleschreiber (talk) 16:22, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed, what he did with Whittaker was textbook WP:CHERRY. And that's not remotely acceptable. --Calthinus (talk) 16:40, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * And Alexikoua's notion of "most Indo-Eurpeanists" is questionable. "Most Indo-Europeanists" date the separate of the Hellenic branch from Proto-Indo-European in the MIDDLE of the third millennium BCE, NOT at the beginning.  That would definitely preclude their appearance in the Balkans any time before the end of the third millennium BCE.  Renfrew's Anatolian Homeland hypothesis, upon which the early Greek entry into the Balkans is based, is crumbling in modern Indo-European studies.  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 17:00, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

2100-1200 BCE is much more likely than mid 3rd millennium BCE. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk!  18:05, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * @Maleshreiber: "The many reasons why this could never have happened are also explained in all other sources in the article.", what do you mean? I'm sorry it's not a case "my sources outweigh yours". To conclude: there are top-graded RS and quite modern and clearly declare that this is a possibility. If that's possible for a Cambridge University Publication (a modern one) there is no reason for us to claim that this is fringe. As I've said, this is a possibility and backed by serious RS.Alexikoua (talk) 18:17, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * In simple words this part "his argument places great faith in the historical validity of the information about the pre-Greek population known as Pelasgians in the ancient literary sources" is about Cosmopoulos and it's irrelevant to Coleman. If this edit summary isn't wrong [] then it can be easily concluded that it equals disruption.Alexikoua (talk) 18:32, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Curious, this quote says ... yet this does not say explicitly that those ancestors themselves spoke Greek when they . Or is this not the full quote? --Calthinus (talk) 20:15, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Curious about your blind revert (with wrong edit summary that referred to a different author) the full quote reads:  Should I also quote Coleman directly from An Archaeological Scenario for the &quot;Coming of the Greeks&quot; ca. 3200 B.C. or doesn't the title makes sense?.Alexikoua (talk) 20:31, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * To be honest, I have no idea what you are trying to say here. --Calthinus (talk) 20:42, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Panagiotis Filos (2014) on the matter -- 2nd millenium BCE:. Available here:. This is from the Brill Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics III, and obviously Filos is a leading authority. I can't find even a nod to these theories Proto-Greek existing in the area in the fourth century BCE are not even mentioned, Georgiev or otherwise. Aside from this, this a great source for expanding the page if anyone here wants to be productive :)! It has much information Proto-Greek itself. --Calthinus (talk) 20:37, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Regarding specific dates: So, essentially, the current version.--Calthinus (talk) 20:50, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I assume that you finally accept the 3,200 (beginning of the Bronze Age) as possibility, since you don't refute the scholarship I've provided. or not?Alexikoua (talk) 21:02, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Nothing of the sort. Coleman refers to the "ancestors of the Greek speaking peoples". This says nothing about Proto-Greek itself. In fact language shift is viewed as likely in parts of Greece, such as Lesvos -- see Rene Holot in Giannakis, Crespo and Filos 2018, here's a quote So Coleman's quote about "the ancestors of the Greek-speaking peoples" is too vague at best for us to say that that applies to the dating of Proto-Greek, which appears to consistently be given the sources Filos summarized (while omitting entirely any other possibility): 2200/2000-1700 BCE. --Calthinus (talk) 21:08, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * @Calthinus: It's really not cool to finally... admit that you blindly removed sources without even reading them. So, Coleman you recenetly removed (with a wrong edit summary) here concludes: Coleman, John E. (2000). "An Archaeological Scenario for the "Coming of the Greeks" ca. 3200 B.C." The Journal of Indo-European Studies. 28. . You asked about Coleman so that's the answer.Alexikoua (talk) 21:21, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Also fact is that this theory is accepted as a possible theory by third part wp:RS.Alexikoua (talk) 21:25, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay, great, thank you for the quote... which still assigns a date to a population movement, not when a language was spoken. Different things. Indeed even if these groups spoke dialects ancestral to Proto-Greek, that is not the same as speaking Proto-Greek, any more than saying Italians speak Latin. --Calthinus (talk) 21:27, 20 August 2020 (UTC) On second examination I can see how 'Proto-Greeks' can be interpreted as "speakers of Proto-Greek" but this is not clear; you could put this in the text as a (minority?) view but, no, I'd rather it not be in the infobox as it rather contradicts the established view as seen in Filos and elsewhere: 2200/2000-1700 BCE.--Calthinus (talk) 21:44, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * (ec) User:Alexikoua continues to misunderstand the issue. At one time there was a movement, based on Renfrew's Anatolian Origin theory, to assign early dates to the Hellenic branch of PIE showing up in the Balkans.  Notice that the most recent source that Alexikoua uses is something by Coleman from 2000.  Renfrew's theory has been generally discredited, especially with regard to the non-Anatolian part of Indo-European (which includes the Hellenic branch).  Indo-Europeanists are solidly behind the Pontic-Caspian steppe, the Yamnaya culture specifically, as the origin of a more recent dispersal of Indo-European language families.  Notice that all of my sources postdate the most recent of Alexikoua's sources.  Wikipedia can list old theories as long as they are labelled "old" and not included in the infobox.  Since the current consensus, based on archeology, linguistics, and cladistics, puts the ancestors of the Hellenic branch separating from the main body of Proto-Indo-European speakers on the Pontic-Caspian steppe no earlier than the second quarter of the third millennium BCE, then trying to place the Hellenic branch in the Balkans in the early fourth millennium BCE is impossible.  That's just the way it is.  Alexikoua, as I said earlier, you need to update your scholarship.  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 21:47, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yet another scholarly opinion (among several which accept the 3,200 as a possibility) John C. Didier, “In and Outside the Square,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 192, vol. 1 (September, 2009) :

That's a huge bibliography that accepts this possibility (Coleman, Katona, Georgiev etc). wp:IDHT is very disruptive in this case.Alexikoua (talk) 22:05, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * John E. Coleman is an archaeologist and his analysis is done on entirely archaeological grounds, so he cannot opine on when a proto-language was spoken. Despite Austronesier explaining this already, I must reiterate: you cannot simply equate archaeological finds about material cultures with the language spoken by those cultures (sometimes archaeologists work together with linguists to reconcile their findings, but this WP:SYNTHESIS is definitively not our job!). This page is not Proto-Greek people or Population history of Greece, it is Proto-Greek language. Katona is from 2000  -- see 's explanation of the issues there -- however upon inspection it becomes clear that the "Proto-Greeks" as defined by Katona are not a linguistically defined group but merely "populations later to be called Greeks" (i.e. they may have been speaking dialects that had not yet entered the stage of Proto-Greek, or something else entirely!... meaning, out of scope); Georgiev, we've been around the moon and back. And the recent sources in linguistics seem quite clear on the point of when the Proto-Greek language was spoken -- and when the population who ended up speaking it arrived is not that, because Proto-Greek is pegged to a certain time as part of its reconstruction, not based on archaeodemographics. --Calthinus (talk) 23:13, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * @Calthinus: You are obvious kidding me by rendering useless several credible authors (however it's good you finally took a look on Coleman). There is indeed 'archaeological evidence' about the presence of Proto-Greek and 'all' scholars agree on this. I can't understand your point which falls completely into stubborn wp:IDHT. By the way there is no source that refutes Coleman and Katona. This possibiliy deserves a place in wikipedia as in scholarship.Alexikoua (talk) 23:36, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Moreover, as I see you are selectively using those sources mentioned in this list here: which fit your personal POV. I see at least 4 authors that dissagree with your point (Katona (2000), Coleman (2000), Hammond, Gimbutas).Alexikoua (talk) 23:40, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * User:Alexikoua you obviously don't understand a word of what User:Calthinus wrote. Sadly, your comment shows that you don't understand:  "There is indeed 'archaeological evidence' about the presence of Proto-Greek".  Do you realize that "Proto-Greek" is a language?  Do you realize that there are no written records or audio recordings of this language?  So there can, by definition, be no archeological evidence for Proto-Greek.  That's a stupid comment on your part and simply wrong.  Linguistic evidence is all that matters when it comes to dating Proto-Greek.  How can archeology be used to supplement the linguistic evidence?  First, ignore everyone who is only using archeological evidence.  Period.  Without reading any of your sources, I can be fairly certain that none of them use linguistic evidence first.  I'm a historical linguist and the sources I am quoting are the most authoritative in the field of Indo-European linguistics, not archeologists unless they are working overtly with reliable linguists.  Second, the linguistic evidence comes first.  Archeological evidence is only relevant if it verifies reconstructed linguistic facts.  Take horse domestication and the ox-driven wheeled cart, for example.  How do we know that they are relevant in a discussion of Proto-Indo-European?  Because we can reconstruct horse terms, wagon terms, wheel terms, and ox terms in Proto-Indo-European.  Then we find that cluster of items in the archeological record.  Not the other way round.  So all of your archeological references are irrelevant.  Third, all of your references predate mine so they are not based on the best and most recent linguistic research which linguists (the only people who matter in a discussion of language) now agree is the case for the separation of the Hellenic language branch from the Proto-Indo-European language.  That date is in the middle of the third millennium BCE, not the fourth like your outdated sources claim.  It's a simple issue.  We go with the current state of the science of linguistics in dating the split of the Hellenic branch from PIE.  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 00:34, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Fully agreed - Alexikoua has lumped together different fringe models because the Anatolian hypothesis is not fully compatible with Georgiev. Georgiev places proto-Greek in NW Greece at least in 3200 BC and before that and  It's all fringe but what he implies is that only his "Thracians" are fully compatible with the Anatolian hypothesis, while proto-Greeks were a "later" Neolithic northern addition. The Anatolian hypothesis, however, places proto-Greeks as a migratory group that came from the east. In modern research, it's incompatible with every we know, thus fringe. Anthony (2010 - 2007 really, but I've cited the 2010 edition) explains (p.51, p.369) that pre-Greek as PIE dialect from which proto-Greek developed was geographically close pre-Indo-Iranian in the eastern borders of southeastern Europe (the western borders of the Yamnaya culture) and as Anthony (2015) further explains: .  the same fringe exists at Greeks at an even worse state. Georgiev poses as a "moderate" and a 4.000 BCE hypothesis as an "earlier estimate" is given for the "emergence of Greek as a separate linguistic lineage".--Maleschreiber (talk) 04:32, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Allow me to explain that this comment above is at least of non-productive nature and without any reasonable explanation: John E. Coleman is an archaeologist and his analysis is done on entirely archaeological grounds, so he cannot opine on when a proto-language was spoken.. Obviously when archaeological data confirms the presence of a specific community that spoke a specific language then this information is relevant to the article of this language: i.e. Proto-Greek. I assume you have run out of real arguments and attempt to promote that "only linguists are allowed here". Unfortunately Coleman is among the theories that scholarship takes seriously in account.Alexikoua (talk) 05:07, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
 * "Obviously when archaeological data confirms the presence of a specific community that spoke a specific language" illustrates perfectly the simple fact that you confuse cultural community, that has a particular cultural inventory that is observable in the archeological record, with linguistic community, that has no archeological record to hold and observe. A linguistic community is only observable by linguistic methodology based on cladistic dating and very careful analysis of reconstructed protolanguages and their interrelationship with other protolanguages.  You cannot dig up a linguistic community.  You confuse language and culture over and over and over again.  Just because an archeologist tells you that this was a "Greek" culture, you assume that they have made a linguistic statement.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  They have made a cultural statement that may or may not match the linguistic reality.  Yes, it's the job of linguists to make linguistic determinations.  And the leading contemporary voices in the spread of the Indo-European languages state categorically that the Hellenic branch of Indo-European did not split from the Yamnaya center on the Pontic-Caspian steppe until the middle of the third millennium BCE.  Does that make Coleman's "Greek" population "Greek speakers"?  No.  They may have been cultural ancestors to Greeks, but they weren't linguistic ancestors just because Coleman uses a label that is ambiguously cultural and linguistic.  And remember that Coleman's date of publication is 2000, before the linguistic dates were gaining widespread acceptance in the linguistic community.  The date of Anthony and Ringe's definitive publication on the dating of the break up of Proto-Indo-European that we've been citing here is 2015, 15 years after Coleman's publication.  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 08:17, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I can't explain the reason you are displaying a quite stubborn refusal towards specific wp:RS. Lets sum up your question:  Does that make Coleman's "Greek" population "Greek speakers"? Based on the bibliography I've presented yes. There is fresh new scholarship that confirms this: Religion and Society in Middle Bronze Age Greece, Helène Whittaker, Cambridge University Press, 2014: . And yes a information about a population that speaks Proto-Greek fits in this article. Alexikoua (talk) 09:18, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, Whittaker (2014) starts with a long paragraph where she gives an overview of several fringe theories and concludes that paragraph with You put forward the same paragraph before and I replied to you with the same conclusion which you conveniently refuse to quote. Alexikoua the next time you do something like that I will report you for repeatedly putting forward half quotes in order to extract from bibliography something that its authors never argued for. Thank you.--Maleschreiber (talk) 11:18, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Exactly that's about those Hypotheses that wish to place the spread of the IE languages in the Mesolithic or the Neolithic, however Coleman states about the beginning of the Bronze Age. Conclusion: Coleman is not fringe. And as Whittaker (2014) declares: it's a possibility.Alexikoua (talk) 11:26, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
 * No, don't interpret the sources for us, it's not how wikipedia functions. Do we have to explain again why 3200 BCE is a fringe date? More than enough bibliography has been quoted. We're at the WP:DTS phase now. --Maleschreiber (talk) 11:33, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I interpret nothing, it is you that stated that Mesolithic or the Neolithic would certainly seem to explode the idea that specifically IE... and yes I don't object that. However the the beginning of the Bronze Age (3,200 BC) is not part of this FRINGE and is a posibility, according to this specific source.Alexikoua (talk) 20:45, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
 * We are going around in circles. Let's try to clarify some things. First: Coleman being "fringe" is a strawman argument; what three editors (at least?) have told you is that linguistics is an autonomous field and archaeologists are not DUE for linguistics when linguists don't continue to support their claims. You also remain unaware of what exactly proto-language such as Proto-Greek is. It is not the whatever the earliest stage of an ethnic group spoke. It is the reconstructed common ancestor, reconstructed relying mainly on methods in linguistics (the comparative method, etc, cases of "internal reconstruction" are typically called Pre- although we do have "Proto-Basque") -- not archaeology, not history, not genetics, not whatever -- and its date is specifically the time before the different variants branched off. This date does not necessarily equal the date of the origin of whatever ethnic group spoke this language, so if "the speakers of proto-Greek" entered Greece even in 10,000 BCE that is not the date for Proto-Greek, but its ancestor, because, again, Proto-Greek like all proto-languages is dated to when the reconstructed common ancestor is spoken. (that is, if we accept the whole monogenetic purity "we're all from the same blood since the times of yore" narrative which...... yeah.). So discussion of "Proto-Greeks" says nada about the Proto-Greek language unless specified. Discussion of when the speakers of Proto-Greek still does not say anything about when Proto-Greek was spoken, because, again Proto-Greek specifically refers to the ancestor before the split and the speakers could have established themselves in the area, and from the perspective of this page, which is the page about the reconstructed proto-language dated as I explained, it is irrelevant. Hopefully that clears things up. With regards to what goes in the infobox, WP:FALSEBALANCE applies: the theories other than those in the range of 2200-1700 BCE are so irrelevant in current publications actually in linguistics that they are not even mentioned in the major authoritative sources on Proto-Greek reconstruction, like that of Filos which I presented. They can be -- and are already -- mentioned briefly in the body.--Calthinus (talk) 02:07, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
 * An analogy: let's imagine all dialects of English died except American English and the southern English dialects that are largely the base of standard British English. Their "proto-language", call it "Proto-Americo-British", were it reconstructed, would be something akin to Early Modern English or mayyyyyybe Middle English (let's just ignore the fact that American English actually arose from a mixture of British dialects and pretend it was almost exclusively those same southern English dialects, to make our lives simple). The future speakers of Middle English may have come to England a millennium before "Proto-Americo-British" was spoken, at which point they proceed to impose elite dominance and effect language shift on the possibly 80% of native Celtic population in southeast England they ruled over per different analyses. As the Martian aliens we are doing this analysis, we might call these invaders who brought their language with them from Germany and Denmark the "Proto-Americo-British people". But the language they spoke at the time they came from Saxony and Denmark (Jutland) was not yet "Proto-Americo-British" (and furthermore, if we are actually talking about the ancestors of the population as a whole... they really came earlier, and did not even speak the ancestor of "Proto-Americo-British"). We might be able to reconstruct it not through the comparative method, but through internal reconstruction, but such a project given that there are only two tiny and irrelevant Americo-British dialects called Vermont Yankee and Suburbian Londonese left in the world (i.e. we would know less about the proto-language we are doing internal reconstruction for a pre-proto language from), that might be difficult; nevertheless if that language were internally reconstructed, it would not be "Proto-Americo-British", it would be "Pre-Proto-Americo-British". Likewise, Pre-Proto-Greek is not this topic. Hopefully this helps. --Calthinus (talk) 02:35, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
 * At this point, it's clear that User:Alexikoua doesn't understand linguistics and is refusing to learn from or even listen to those of us who do. I think it's safe to say that we can completely ignore his/her further posts on this matter per WP:DTS.  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 03:47, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I apologize for the abuse of your time despite the fact that 6 months have passed since the discussion about Georgiev. Alexikoua is trying to put forward again that Georgiev's theory about Proto-Greek in the Neolithic is not abandoned And they're changing other sources in the article in order to make Georgiev's theory look more plausible. He changed Katona (2000) - which discusses Sakellariou who places the Proto-Greek migrations out of Ukraine in 2300 BCE - to imply that Georgiev who places Proto-Greek in late Neolithic Greece discusses a similar subject. I can't think of any clearer way of explaining to this editor what you explained six months ago about any theory which places any IE language in the Balkans before the split of PIE. --Maleschreiber (talk) 16:37, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Georgiev supports the idea that Proto-Greek was spoken in 3,200 BCE: Alexikoua knows what Georgiev has written. He has supported his theory the the beginning of the Bronze Age (3,200 BC) is not part of this FRINGE and is a posibility. and he has tried to add it in all possible variants:Those Proto-Greek communities that descended to central-southern Greece during the late 3rd- early 2nd mil. BC were previously located in the northwestern part of the country. Now, he's trying to evade that crucial part of Georgiev's theory in order to avoid it being characterized as abandoned. Thus, he's claiming that the 3rd millenium BC ended in 2001BC not 2500BC as such Anthony does not contradict this view as an argument that allows him to remove that Georgiev's theory is abandoned. In my book, this is WP:GAMING of the use of bibliography and a really bad way to build any citizen science environment.  pinging the last admin who produced admin oversight.--Maleschreiber (talk) 17:07, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * @Maleschreiber: It appears you are again putting words in my mouth. In fact I added that this is a just an older minority view []. This kind of behaviour i.e. trying to recruit those editors that might support your edit warring pattern is not productive.Alexikoua (talk) 17:34, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * indeed, and what a pain. Looking at the diff comparison [] there also seems to be some referential confusion introduced as well, with the insertion of the text which is apparently cited to Georgiev. "She" must refer to Katona, but Georgiev wrote 19 years earlier, so how could he possibly be a citation for her view being ... But this leads to the question -- why the focus on whether Georgiev's pet theories are valid in the first place? Obviously, Georgiev's theories are not accepted anywhere in the mainstream (ironically the Thracomania attributing Pelasgians as "Thracians" he evinced has been documented as formed in the context of historical Bulgarian territorial disputes with Greece) as they fly in the face of the overwhelming consensus in Indo-European studies and elsewhere, but this page is getting bogged down in this crap and that's not useful. One way to fix this is to remove the picture of Georgiev's Proto-Greek theory, which is UNDUE anyways. I see there was some fighting in the caption over whether the view is abandoned -- since it isn't mainstream, why is it the only picture we have on the article in the first place though? --Calthinus (talk) 17:43, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * By the way c. 3rd millenium BC falls entirely in Bronze Age while 2200 BC is still 3rd mil. BC. Katuna defines rouphly the same region (+southwest Illyria) Alexikoua (talk) 17:53, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Georgiev falls entirely into the realm of WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE in terms of whether or not he even needs to be mentioned in this article. Mentioning minority viewpoints which were never mainstream to begin with and have been thoroughly debunked is neither necessary nor desirable in Wikipedia articles. This is a common tactice in Wikipedia editing.  Go quiet about a view against consensus, then several months later try to slip stealthily back in and hope that no one is looking.  It's perfectly acceptable to alert other editors who have previously been involved to participate in the same discussion that was had before. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 18:29, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * @Taivo: It appears you have some unexplained objections about Katona (2000) nevertheless I fail why you massively removed large parts of this work. Care to explain?Alexikoua (talk) 18:37, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * @Alexikoua, surely you understand that when you have interlaced potentially constructive comments with your same old edits, it becomes impossible to distinguish the potentially productive from the anti-consensus edits and the whole thing must be removed. If you were to abandon your continued push to include Georgiev's fringe views in the article and focus entirely on potentially constructive edits then you might find us more willing to examine your contributions in a positive light.  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 18:51, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * @Taivo: I suggest you calm down, avoid wp:NPA violations, take a deep breah and avoid blind reverting as you admited. Nevertheless here [] I'm clearly stating that this is an older theory.Alexikoua (talk) 18:57, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * @Alexikoua, that so-called "blind edit" was precisely what Future Perfect had to do earlier because of your continued efforts at inserting content against consensus, so you need to put your outrage in the drawer. Stop pushing your POV and you'll find your fellow editors far more accepting of your positive contributions (because we can actually SEE them).  BTW, this edit appears to be productive without POV clutter.  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 19:02, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks I appreciate that.Alexikoua (talk) 19:16, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Editing Talk
, could you please be more careful in your edits on Talk? You have inserted garbage text into other editors'  comments in Talk on a couple of occasions:
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Proto-Greek_language&diff=974035063&oldid=974033356
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Proto-Greek_language&diff=prev&oldid=974011260

Please clean those up and be more careful in the future. --Macrakis (talk) 20:01, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for noticing that, I was surprised when I find out that my comments had been altered.--Maleschreiber (talk) 02:57, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Edits
I've had to take the article back to the last version before the latest edits, because much older and newer bibliography, abandoned theories and the current consensus were mixed up as equally plausible and the idea that IE languages were spoken around 3,200 BCE in the Balkans was reintroduced.--Maleschreiber (talk) 02:14, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
 * You need to be more precise why you consider those edits by B.Bronson and Demetrious as nonsense. As I see you removed several reliable sources on the subject that discuss the subject and are quite recent ones. [] Alexikoua (talk) 06:25, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
 * There is also something completely wrong in this edit [] though the removal conserns Early Helladic III, the editor in question explains his removal as there was no IE language spoken in Early Helladic.... I. I assume a sencere apology of the said editor is needed here.Alexikoua (talk) 06:37, 19 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Agreed and thank you for your help Alexikoua (at least somebody here recognizes and respects good-faith edit contributions). Blue Branson (talk) 07:49, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

I've blocked User:Blue Branson as another rather obvious sock of banned User:Deucalionite, and will revert the article to the version before he began messing it up. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:04, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
 * thank you.--Maleschreiber (talk) 20:47, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Pre-Greek substrate had the same problem. I see no issue with providing alternative views, but they shouldn't be portrayed as the academic consensus. Alcaios (talk) 23:39, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * As I said on Blue Branson's talk page: "Dating the coming of Proto-Greek to the late 4th millennium BC is simply improbable from a linguistic point of view. This would imply that Proto-Greek had been 'separated' from other non-Balkan IE languages for at least 2,000 years (!) before the earliest attestation of a Greek dialect (Mycenaean), whereas comparison with the contemporary Vedic Sanskrit language shows that it cannot be the case." Alcaios (talk) 00:46, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Changes
(Posting by banned user removed.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:29, 3 May 2021 (UTC))


 * Please sign your posts by typing two dashes and four tildes following it. I guess you're a beginner at Wikipedia.  You should read WP:CONSENSUS before making any aspersions about its use in Wikipedia.  We cite sources in Wikipedia, whether you like it or not.  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 01:37, 3 May 2021 (UTC)


 * (Posting by banned user removed.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:29, 3 May 2021 (UTC))

Good stuff
It is good stuff my dude. Change my mind. Konami Vortex
 * Since you're probably another manifestation of a banned user, I'll let Future Perfect perform his admin magic on you. But in the faint chance that you're not a banned user sockpuppet, it's not our job to convince you to remove your questionable edit that is not based on consensus, it's YOUR job to convince us that your edit really is "good stuff" (which is doubtful at best).  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 18:17, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Ancient Macedonian
Hello. Regarding the last rv (diff), just noticed that was added back in the 28th of February by 95.42.25.28 (diff), and its reasoning was. Yet in the said article, it is clear that there is a modern consensus of Ancient Macedonian being classified as either a dialect of Ancient Greek or a distinct Hellenic language that was closely related to Ancient Greek. In either case, a descendant of proto-Greek (also known as proto-Hellenic). Thus i believe that the "according to some views" should either be changed to "according to most views" or be entirely removed and remain like it was prior of the 28th of February; something which better compliments the respective Ancient Macedonian language article. Demetrios1993 (talk) 20:01, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe that it is more a matter of terminology. Some linguists consider a Hellenic family, which then split into a Greek and a Macedonian branch. If Proto-Greek is considered only the ancestor of the former (with the ancestor of both being termed Proto-Hellenic), then it's not the ancestor of Ancient Macedonian. But there are also those who consider Greek and Hellenic synonyms, and include Macedonian in the definition. So perhaps the sentence could be reworded to show that it's not so much about how linguists treat Macedonian, but more which term they use for which point in the tree. Rua (mew) 20:32, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Actually just noticed that it was in a parenthesis pertaining to Ancient Greek dialects; totally forgot about it. Thus an elaboration was justified, but it could be presented more accurately. What i propose to better compliment the respective article is . In terms of the terminology, there appears to be inter-article consistency. For example, look at the Hellenic languages, which presents Greek and ancient Macedonian (if not a dialect of the former; hence the ? in the infobox) as its members, and proto-Greek as their proto-language. The lede of this article also includes "Proto-Hellenic" as an alternative title, pertaining to this broader grouping. Demetrios1993 (talk) 20:52, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
 * That's better wording, Demetrios1993. However, replace the semi-colon after "ancient Macedonian" with an m-dash.  The semi-colon indicates a break after "Macedonian", not a clarification.  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 18:19, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Robert Drews on the coming of the greeks
The quote of R.D. is not correct: "Robert Drews (1994) dates it to c. 1900 BCE." In the quoted p. 14, R.D. is not describing his own position, but Blegen's. 2804:4EC:1258:B000:91EF:925E:6FE2:1421 (talk) 04:36, 12 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Fixed. Demetrios1993 (talk) 00:24, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

clemente et al.
"Nothing in that article deals with the linguistic dating of Proto-Greek." - Future Perfect at Sunrise


 * paper discusses people *and* language. no sense marginalizing geneticists when the page cites 'linguistic dates' from historians and archeologists.


 * "The article is NOT about linguistic dating. It mentions that its dates are similar to linguistic dates, but that is not a DISCUSSION of linguistid dating" - TaivoLinguist


 * stop screaming please. 1st, 'discussion of linguistic dating' is arbitrary because the paper is relevant, verifiable and reputable. 2nd, the page keeps 'historical dating' and 'archeological dating' that the arbitrary 'discussion of linguistic dating' criterion would discount. 3rd, no sense excluding genetic science just because it's not *your* science.


 * "Non-linguistic evidence is circumstantial evidence. Don't force your way and get consensus in the talk page first." - Austronesier


 * 1st, direct proof of proto-greek has not been discovered so both linguistic reconstructions and non-linguistic evidence are circumstantial by default. 2nd, the paper, reputable and verifiable for this encyclopedia, is relevant to scientific discussions on proto-greek. 3rd, if the clemente et al. paper is excluded, then why are west (historian), drews (historian) and blegen (archeologist) kept?

2605:AD80:0:186F:1C29:70:98D6:BF80 (talk) 00:44, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

A source is only reliable for the topic of the research. It is not reliable for tangential, passing mention of other things. This source is NOT a reliable linguistic source, it is only reliable for DNA. You need a reliable linguistic source that mentions the information that you want to change. DNA research is not reliable dating for linguistic assertions because, need I say it, language is not genetic. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 06:50, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Possible vandalism?
In section Post-Proto-Greek changes, a hyperlink named Aeolic redirects to Lesbian instead.

Is this a technical issue or an actual case of vandalism? Tewuzij (talk) 10:02, 17 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Not really vandalism, just a misplaced link. "Lesbian" Greek (i.e. the dialect of Lesbos) was the primary representation of the "Aeolic" dialects. If this were to be linked, it should be to either Aeolic Greek or Lesbian Greek (which is a valid redirect to the other). But in this case it will be best to remove the link altogether, since it's redundant anyway. Thanks for spotting the mistake. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:09, 17 July 2024 (UTC)