What languages were spoken in ancient Macedonia?

Answer 1

Correct answer: A north western Doric dialect of Greek.

Livy wrote, "…The Aetolians, the Acarnanians, the Macedonians, men of the same speech, are united or disunited by trivial causes that arise from time to time …" (Livy, History of Rome, b. XXXI par. XXIX).

On another occasion Livy writes "…[General Paulus] took his official seat surrounded by the whole crowd of Macedonians … his announcement was translated into Greek and repeated by Gnaeus Octavius the praetor…". The Romans clearly saw the Macedonians as Greek speaking people.

Alexander gave an order that the inscriptions which were in a foreign language were to be explained in Greek, so that they would be comprehensible to his troops: - (Plutarch's Alexander, 69, 2)

and he also ordered that the troop of Persians "should learn the Greek language and be trained to use Macedonian weapons" - (Plutarch's Alexander, 47,6)

***The notion that the Macedonians needed translators is an entry found in livius . org that claims that "Eumenes needed a translator to address the soldiers of the Macedonian phalanx".

At that time, Greeks spoke more than 200 Hellenic dialects or languages, as the ancient Greeks used to call them. Some of the well-known dialects were Ionic, Attic, Doric, Aeolic, Cypriot, Arcadic, Aetolic, Acarnanic, Macedonian and Locric.

Nowhere in ancient sources can it be found that Eumenes needed a translator to communicate with Macedonians. Eumenes sent a Macedonian to speak to them in the Macedonian dialect, in order to win their confidence. In (Plut. Eumenes XVII.2-VIII.1) Eumenes has absolutely no problem to communicate with Macedonians. Or in (Eum. XIV.5) Macedonians greeted Eumenes μακεδονιστι τη φωνή. Therefore there was no problem of communication between Eumenes and Macedonians.

The text that alludes to Eumenes requiring a 'special interpreter' has been misinterpreted and is out of context.

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It was a dialect - Macedonian - which was so far removed that when Alexander gave orders, the Macedonians had to have a special interpreter.

Answer 2

They had their own Macedonian language, however the upper class spoke Greek. When Alexander was giving orders to a mixed army, he gave them in Greek, and there were interpreters to translate for the Macedonian soldiers.

Macedonians spoke Greek.

• The evidence of the language of the Macedonians has been reviewed and discussed by Kalleris and Hammond, Griffith and many others, all contending that it was a dialect of Greek ~ Cambridge -Ancient Histories

From all the multilingual inscriptions found, none contained the "phantom Macedonian language" that some claim needed interpreters. Extensive excavations in Macedonia in hundreds of sites, private cemeteries, religious temples have not uncovered any other language than Greek and in fact, they established the fact that the Macedonian dialect was a North-West Greek dialect.

• The Macedonians were Greeks. Their language was Greek, to judge by their personal names and by the names of the months of the months of the calendar; Macedonian ambassadors could appear before the Athenian assembly without needing interpreters.

George Cawkwell Emeritus Fellow university of Oxford

• "That the Macedonians and their kings did in fact speak a dialect of Greek and bore Greek names may be regarded nowadays as certain." ~ R. Malcolm Errington, 'A History of Macedonia' - University of California Press, pg 3
• "As members of the Greek race and speakers of the Greek language, the Macedonians shared in the ability to initiate ideas and create political forms." ~ N.G.L. Hammond "The Miracle that was Macedonia" pg. 206.

Note:

Recently, Aleksandar Donski, a propagandist of the Former Yugoslav Republic north of historical Macedonia published an article headlined as "Ancient Macedonians Used Translators To Communicate With Hellenes". This was a totally fraudulent and unfounded claim spreading distorted and mendacious disinformation.

Livy wrote, "…The Aetolians, the Acarnanians, the Macedonians, men of the same speech, are united or disunited by trivial causes that arise from time to time …" (Livy, History of Rome, b. XXXI par. XXIX). The Aetolians and Acarnanians were definitely Hellenic tribes. On another occasion Livy writes "…[General Paulus] took his official seat surrounded by the whole crowd of Macedonians … his announcement was translated into Greek and repeated by Gnaeus Octavius the praetor…". If the crowd of Macedonians were not Greek speaking, why then did the Romans need to translate Paulus' speech into Greek? (Livy, History of Rome, b. XLV, para XXIX).

Answer

A distant offshoot of Greek. When Alexander the great gave orders to his mixed army, the Macedonians had to have an interpreter to translate for them.

Answer

No written evidence - other than a few isolated words - has survived in the form of documents in the Macedonian language, so the answer is: we don't know for certain. We do know that common Macedonian soldiers in Alexander's day did often not understand "Attic" Greek, the language of Athens and the Greek that is used by most famous writers like Homer, Xenophon, Herodotus and Aristotle.

Historians believe that Macedonian was a so-called "Indo-European" language, a sort of dialect of "Doric" Greek, the language spoken in the north of Greece, mixed with influences from other northern regions like Illyria.

Macedonia's upper class however did understand and speak Attic Greek and that language gradually took over from the original Macedonian language.
All the inscriptions found in Macedonia suggest that the Macedonians spoke a north west dialect of the Greek language (Locrian, Aetolian, Phocidian, Epirote). This view was further confirmed with the discovery of the Pella curse tablet from the 4th c BC.

However it is informative that Alexander the Great's battle orders to his troops had to have a translator for the Macedonian soldiers for the dialectal differences.

Note:

In a scene from the Attic comedy "Macedonians", by the 5th-century writer Strattis, an Athenian asks ή σφύραινα δ' έ'στι τίς;('sled-fish, what do you mean?), and a Macedonian replies "κέστραν μεν ΰμμες ώττικοΐ κικλήσκετε" ('wha ye Attics ca' a hammer-fush, ma freen'). In order to appreciate the value of the Macedonian's reply, we must not forget that, as is clear from many passages in Aristophanes, the Attic comedians made their non-Greeks speak broken Greek with an admixture of bar­barian words (some of them imaginary), while Lacedaemo­nians, Megarians, Boiotians and other Greeks spoke in their own dialects (albeit with a number of inaccuracies). The Macedonian's reply is in good Greek with dialect (ΰμ­μες, σφύραινα) and archaizing (κικλήσκετε) elements.

Answer 3

If you meant the Republic of Macedonia, click here.
If you meant Macedonia, Greece click here.

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The ancient kingdom of Macedonia spoke:

1. Ancient Macedonian*
   
2. Attic Greek
   
3. Koine Greek
   

*Ancient Macedonian was either a dialect of Greek or a closely related language, but it was not a written language. Educated people in Ancient Macedonia spoke and wrote in Attic Greek.