Template talk:Ancient Greek dialects

Discussion of map and legend
DO NOT TRUST THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.21.176.108 (talk) 21:41, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Macedon (the Chalcidice) is shown as "Ionic". Is this correct? Shouldn't it be Attic? And why is Lesbian Greek shown as Attic? Shouldn't it be Aeolic? Is this really what's in the source? --dab (𒁳) 09:42, 14 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Lesbos is clearly shown as Aeolic, I guess you must be looking at the wrong island (perhaps Lemnos?) As for Chalcidice, yes, the source map has Ionic there. Personally I have no idea what's correct in this case, I'm just blindly following the model.
 * Update: According to our Chalcidice article, it was colonised between the 8th and 6th centuries BC, by settlers first from Euboea, then in a second wave from Andros, so yes, that would point to Ionic.
 * About the status of Macedonian (which you removed from the legend again), let me just explain the status in the source. Woodard is not mentioning XMK in the context of his main "Greek dialects" chapter at all, and shows it as outside the Greek language area in the map that accompanies that chapter. He does however have a short section on XMK in his general introduction, "Language in ancient Europe", in a row with some other fragmentary languages such as Ligurian and Illyrian (p. 9-11 in the book I was quoting). That section gives the state of the art as based on the known treatments in Katicic (1976) and Brixhe/Panayotou (1994), and ends up with a skeptical-agnostic assessment ("it remains unclear if Greek was the native language of the Macedonians [̇…] if such sets [i.e. kebalá/κεφαλή et cetera] are rightly analyzed as cognates, the Macedonian language departs conspicuously from Greek […]"). Nothing new here for those of us already familiar with the literature, of course. I just thought, since he does treat it and doesn't explicitly reject it, it wouldn't be a huge distortion of his source to have the entry in the legend. But I won't insist on it.


 * By the way, you also specified the time frame to "4th century" again, implying somewhere that you'd consider the earlier version "5th century". Which specific difference would that be based on? I'm quite ignorant of the details of settlement history here, just curious, what's more -4th-centuryish about this map than about the other? Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:15, 14 September 2008 (UTC)


 * re the century, we can say classical period too. I conclude this must be the 4th century because the Chalcidice is "already" Atticized, but then it isn't so much atticized as "Ionicized", so I'm confused by that.
 * re Woodward's treatment of XMK, Woodard is not mentioning XMK in the context of his main "Greek dialects" chapter at all ... He does however have a short section on XMK in his general introduction. This is perfectly sensible, and we should do the same. "Wikipedia does not treat XMK in its Greek dialects template, but it does have a dedicated Ancient Macedonian language article where it gives some skeptical-agnostic assessments". XMK belongs treated with other fragmentary languages of the region, not with the standard Greek dialects. Our WP:RS do that, so we do the same, it's as simple as that. --dab (𒁳) 10:33, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, fine with me, guess that's a sensible way of looking at it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:36, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * About Ionian Chalcidice, see my addition above, that may actually well be compatible with 6th-5th centuries. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:38, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Btw, I appreciate that you have made the "MACEDONIAN" label in the colour of "NW Greek". That's fair enough, I suppose, hinting at the agnostic assessment that XMK has been connected to NW Greek by "some authors". dab (𒁳) 10:36, 14 September 2008 (UTC)


 * doh, Lemnos, sorry. So why is Lemnos Attic? That sounds very 4th-centurish to me. ok, Lemnos was conquered by Miltiades the Younger and thus came under Attic influence at an early time. I guess that's why it is painted Attic. In reality, of course, much of Lemnos would have remained non-Greek / "Pelasgian" until the Hellenistic period.   But ok, there was an Attic colony, so this justifies the coloring. --dab (𒁳) 10:39, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Re Chalcidice, I see. So the Ionic, non-Attic situation is actually the pre-Atticization situation, pointing to the 5th century. I was wrong then, the map is indeed intended to show the situation in the 5th century. I suggest we just stick to "classical" though. --dab (𒁳) 10:46, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Macedonia (what else)
for further discussion of the Ancient Macedonian language, please go to Talk:Ancient Macedonian language. --dab (𒁳) 20:20, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. So why do we have this disputed map? Dr.K. (talk) 20:21, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * evidence that it is? As in, academic reviews of Woodward saying he went wrong? Always happy to see citations of credible sources keep the discussion on track and avoid random filibustering. dab (𒁳) 20:24, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The evidence is provided by common logic. There are many experts who disagree with Woodard. Ergo disputed. Anyway I don't think your tone is academic. Your objectivity comes into question as soon as you classify enquiries such as mine as random filibustering. If you have a beef of any kind I don't think you should be participating in discussions needing calm and reasoned discourse. Dr.K. (talk) 20:35, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * There are virtually no international experts who disagree with Woodard on this. Everybody agrees the status of XMK is unknown. Virtually nobody claims to be sure it was not Greek, and virtually nobody (some Greek scholars excepted) claims to be sure it was. There is a solid academic consensus on this issue. And in practice, there is also a solid international consensus that the issue is so peripheral and unimportant and speculation about it is so futile that it just doesn't enter the big picture of what a general survey of the Greek dialects can and should do. That's the state of the art, and that's what this map represents, along with every other comparable map I've ever seen. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:47, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

(Unindent) Thanks Future. I agree with you. However based on the discussion above it appears that the map illustrates Macedonia as an exclusively non-Greek region instead of as you stated "unknown status". If that's the case why not just show it as "status unknown" rather than "not_Greek" as it is at present. Thanks. Dr.K. (talk) 21:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * What cartographic means would we have for it? We can't shade the region, because we have no cartographic model of its extent, so we are left with the label. I already did the compromise solution of using a different colour for it (a shade of brown resembling that of Doric/NW). The Doric Greek article (the only one among the dialect articles that discusses XMK) also has a corresponding entry in the legend. That's about all there is to it, and this already goes beyond what our reliable sources do. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:23, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Using a font in a different color does not provide the necessary result. As for "reliable sources" I do not understand what makes you keep insisting there are none (or few). You have already stated that you do not want to hear of more sources, I do not have a problem with that, but continuously stating that "this already goes beyond what our reliable sources do" is really a personal opinion and far from the truth. You know very well that most historians and linguists who have occupied themselves with the subject, have drawn the conclusion, that although there is not much evidence to support a clearly undebatable proposition, the ancient Macedonians most probably (some just probably) spoke a Greek dialect be it Aeolic, Doric or Doric-Aeolic.

As for your geographical problem... choose a timeframe at last and then things will be much easier. Macedonia Proper and Upper Macedonia would do the trick in most timeframes. Do you think that the other cartographical extents are acurate? Of course they are not but it does not matter for they are close to reality.

GK1973 (talk) 10:59, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * GK1973, tell us again why you keep going on about ancient Macedonia on this page? Look, I know Greeks popularly have a bee in their bonnet about Macedonia. It makes them look silly to the rest of the world. There is no need to needlessly re-affirm this impression, people have been rolling their eyes at this all over Europe for what, 17 years now. --dab (𒁳) 13:33, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Dab, no map of ancient Greek dialects can be complete without stating Macedonia at least as a possible/probable Greek speaking territory. Now tell me why is it so important to you to conclusively exclude Macedonians from the Greek speaking peoples? I know that people from FYROM want to bury any information pointing at the Greekness of the Macedonians. Yes, people have their eyes over this issue much longer than that and Wikipedia (along with the vast majority of historians and linguists worldwide) also supports the probability you wish to conveniently not mention in the map. I am as convinced of the fact that the ancient Macedonians spoke Greek as you are that they did not. Our difference is that I wish to clearly state that they probably spoke a Greek dialect and after all this is what we do here... offering a linguistic distribution of the ancient Greek dialects.

GK1973 (talk) 13:52, 17 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The great irony of it all is that nobody would object to including Macedonian in some form or other were it not for modern politics. But the "eye-rollers" of Europe, in reality a pair of Germans who happen to have read a bit more than your average Joe, have a point to prove against "Greek nationalists". · ΚΕΚΡΩΨ · 14:10, 17 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, and GK1973, would you mind indenting your comments so we know who's replying to whom? Cheers. · ΚΕΚΡΩΨ · 14:16, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Western group
We only have a single article on that, Doric Greek. Already the distinction Doric vs. NW Greek is tenuous. Adding "Achaean" as another separate dialect is rather stretching things imho. The three links all point to the same article in any case. --dab (𒁳) 13:14, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I have a hard time finding anything about "Achaean Greek". Probably there is next to no material. I find it grouped agnostically with the "Western group". Nobody really seems to know more about it. Woodward probably just gave it its own colour to be on the safe side, not because anything positive can be said about it. --dab (𒁳) 14:00, 17 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Isn't it strange that we're so quick to jump on Woodard's bandwagon in this case, yet so careful to ignore the multitude of authors who classify Macedonian as Greek? · ΚΕΚΡΩΨ · 14:17, 17 September 2008 (UTC)