Talk:Hellenic languages

Subdivisions

I think that is not correct to connect directly the Proto-Greek language with the Greek. Between theese they have to be the dialects that was spoken at the area at the Bronze Age and the dialects of the next ages: Cycladic Greek, Minoan, Mycenean Greek, Trojan(?), Doric, Ionic, Aeolian, Arcadian, Macedonian, Thracian(?). Those are the subdivisions of Proto-Greek and then we reach at the Greek language.

Geographic distribution

Greek is also widely spoken in southern Albania in the villages and cities in which the Greek National Minority is living 2A02:587:1813:D800:E8F3:2A0C:B94E:979A (talk) 16:27, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Recent addition

I still object to the recent addition of text copied over from other articles to the section on Ancient Macedonian (in the current version, "So far, the surviving public and private inscriptions found in the area of ancient Macedonia indicate that the only written language was Greek.") That sentence, in this or similar forms, has been added to a number of other articles before, and while technically correct, it is still misleading and ultimately off-topic. No doubt, its appeal to some editors lies in the fact that it (deliberately or accidentally) invites an oversimplified misreading and misunderstanding: "the only language was Greek", in other words: it insinuates to the naive reader that Ancient Macedonian was Greek. But of course the sentence doesn't actually say that at all. What it says is that "the only written language was Greek" – but whatever that Greek was, that written form of Greek is not what "Ancient Macedonian" refers to. Ancient Macedonian is the language that was not written, and precisely because it was not written, we don't know what it was. So, a sentence along those lines – framed somewhat differently – might have a legitimate place in explaining why we don't know what Ancient Macedonian was, but it tells us nothing about what Ancient Macedonian actually was. In fact, it doesn't speak about Ancient Macedonian at all. As such, it's off-topic here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:45, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Agree. If the section was about "Greek in Ancient Macedonia", the sentence would be perfect. But here, under "Greek and Ancient Macedonian", I read it and think: "So?" Either tell the whole story how this might eventually be related to the topic of this article (in its current shape, it isn't), or remove it. –Austronesier (talk) 21:22, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Personally i don't object to its removal; i tried to fix the contribution of User:Piccco, but i also understand the raised concerns. As a sidenote, Ellis (2000) continued with something that relates, but wasn't included. Here it is:

The increasing volume of surviving public and private inscriptions makes it quite clear that there was no written language but Greek. There may be room for argument over spoken forms, or at least over local survivals of earlier occupancy, but it is hard to imagine what kind of authority might sustain that. There is no evidence for a different 'Macedonian' language that cannot be as easily explained in terms of dialect or accent.

I believe this is relevant to what is being discussed in the section, but it might also be argued that its inclusion is problematic per WP:WEIGHT. However, from what i have read, nowadays Macedonian is viewed either as a dialect of Ancient Greek or a sister language of Greek. Demetrios1993 (talk) 16:59, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

I forgot about this discussion. Again, personally i have no problem with the removal of the recent addition. If it was to remain, it would certainly have to be contextualized per the aforementioned quote, and include an in-text attribution. For example:

So far, the surviving public and private inscriptions found in the area of ancient Macedonia indicate that the only written language was Greek; according to John R. Ellis, this indicates that "[t]here is no evidence for a different 'Macedonian' language that cannot be as easily explained in terms of dialect or accent."

But personally i don't like that we single out the view of one scholar, especially when this is meant to be a small and general summary of a much-debated topic. Ideally, it should be removed altogether, and instead be replaced with a summary, similar to the second paragraph of the lede in Ancient Macedonian language; rephrased recently by Austronesier and myself. Demetrios1993 (talk) 17:33, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Tsakonian seperate language

Tsakonian is a seperate language to greek but this page implies there's only one Hellenic language left 79.77.67.121 (talk) 13:26, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Tsakonian is a variety of Modern Greek; please, don't confuse Greek with Standard Modern Greek. Same goes to the user who made this good faith edit. Demetrios1993 (talk) 16:02, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

It is not the same, it is like saying spanish is a modern variant of romanian, yet they evolved from different dialects of latin.

To treat greek as the sole successor to greek with no other language is proposterously absurd,

i'd say the situation is like scots and english, Swedish and Danish, or Czech and Slovak of the same origin, but not the same language. they haven't had the same ancestor since 800 BC roughly, when is the cut off point? Aonadh nan Gaidheal (talk) 14:27, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

There are two issues here. First, the term "Greek", for better or worse, unavoidably refers to both Ancient Greek including all its dialects, and to Modern Greek including all its dialects. That makes the situation necessarily different – in terminology if not in substance – from that of the Latin/Romance or Germanic analogies you mustered. In the first sense, "Greek" obviously encompasses ancient Doric just as much as it encompasses ancient Attic and other dialects; hence, in terms of linguistic cladistics, there's no conceivable way how it could not encompass the modern descendant of Doric also. Second, in the sense of "Greek" as referring to Modern Greek, the issue of whether Tsakonian is synchronically a distinct language is not a cut-and-dry one. If you read the literature, you'll see that the vast majority of it still refers to Tsakonian as a dialect of Greek. Some authors, such as leading expert Brian D. Joseph, will make the point that one could, on criteria of mutual intelligibility, decide to treat Tsakonian as distinct, but then go on to state explicitly that this is conventionally not done [1], and continue to use this customary terminology themselves throughout their work. The terminological decision to actually treat Tsakonian as a sister to "Greek" proper is still a minority practice in the literature, if for no other reason than that there's no easy and commonly accepted way of defining what that "Greek proper" actually is in terms of cladistics.

Now please stop edit-warring – you have now tried to push your changes through 4 times, knowing perfectly well that they were being opposed by others. That's not how we operate on this project. Please respect Wikipedia policy and establish consensus before you enforce such changes. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:35, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

languages with no concept of partially intelligable languages e.g english speakers or greek or armenian speakers have no concept of partially intelligable languages, so are quick to assume languages are dialects, what constitutes a language is blurred buy mutual intelligability should be a huge thing, for example, it would be ridiculous to call french a dialect of latin nowadays due to its lack of mutual intelligability. Aonadh nan Gaidheal (talk) 16:43, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, but what you just wrote is unintelligible gibberish. Please try again. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:47, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Wiki project

This article appears to be part of 'Wiki Project Romania', but I am somewhat confused as to whether this Wiki project is indeed relevant for this article. Maybe I'm missing something? Piccco (talk) 19:15, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

I do not have much experience with WikiProjects, but the aforementioned project should probably be removed, since the page is not relevant to its scope (defined here); see Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide § General principles. Demetrios1993 (talk) 22:18, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the responce. Yeah, other than Cyprus, I don't see how the WikiProject of any other country could be relevant here. Piccco (talk) 20:46, 15 February 2025 (UTC)