Macedonian Vs Ancient Macedonian

On June 12, 2018, after 27 years of talks, Greece and Macedonia have reached a deal on the name of this last country, which now will change its name to North Macedonia. Greece had objected to the name Macedonia, fearing that it may bring issues between the country and the northern region of Greece that has the same name.

Perhaps the most famous Macedonian was the king Alexander III of Macedon, also known in many places as Alexander the Great. But not many people know that the language spoken by this Macedonian sovereign is not related with the Macedonian language.

According to omniglot  Macedonian is a South Slavic language spoken by approx 3 million people. Is the official language of the Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia (FYROM), a country located in the Balkans in Southeast Europe. It was part of the former Yugoslavia until 1991. It is a candidate for joining the European Union.

The Macedonian language has a high degree of mutual intelligibility with Bulgarian, and in lesser degree is close to Serbian. It is mainly written using the Cyrillic alphabet, although it can be represented using Latin script. Macedonian and Bulgarian are the only Slavic languages that do not have cases.

It is known that the first Slavic settlements in the region took place between the fifth and sixth century CE.  

The Language spoken in the Macedonia of King Alexander is known as Ancient Macedonian. Most of the sources suggest that it was an Indo-European language, but the links with modern Macedonian finish here. Some sources suggest that it was a Hellenic language that either was closely related with Greek or a dialect of ancient Greek. There are sources that suggest the idea that this language was an Illyrian language or a language related with Phrygian and Thracian languages. In an article written by Petar Ilievsky, there is a list of references supporting each theory. In proel they have Ancient Macedonian as an unclassified language. The problem is that we only know a couple of terms in Macedonian and there is not a single sentence known in this language, so we can indeed speak about a language that we cannot classify based on what we know about it. It is interesting to note that most of the ancient inscriptions found in Macedonian territory were written in ancient Greek, which was the language of prestige.

Most of the words known were borrowed from Greek. But there are some words that cannot be traced to any known language. Most of the words that we know in Ancient Macedonian have come tour times through a 5th-century lexicon created by Hesychius of Alexandria, a famous Greek grammarian who compiled the most important Greek Lexicon from the antiquity.

Here we have 2 languages with the same name but that may be barely related through the Indo-European family. We add the word “ancient” to differentiate them. In Greek, the modern Macedonian language is known as “Slavic Macedonian”  

In the following table, we have a small list of terms from Ancient Macedonian, and the same words in the Macedonian language.

Ancient Macedonian	Greek	Modern Macedonian	English	Comments
ἀγέρδα (agérda)	αχλáδι	Круша (Kruša)	Pear
ἀδή (adé)	αιθέρας	Небо (nebo)	Sky	Related to “Ether”
Δάνος (dános)	θáνατος	Смрт (smrt)	Death
Κεβαλή (kebalé)	κεφαλή	Глава (glava)	Head	Related to “Cephalus”
Βασιλεúς (basileus)	βασιλιáς	Крал (kral)	King
δώραξ  (dórax)	θώρακας	Долап (dolap)	Chest	Related to “Thorax”
δρáμις  (drámis)	ψωμí	Леб (leb)	Bread	Similar to “dramix” in Athamanian*

Words in Macedonian were searched in dictionaries of Macedonian found in lexilogos. The words used here in Greek are in Modern Greek. The words in ancient Macedonian are taken from the article of Petar Ilievsky but they are also shown in Wikipedia. I want to highlight that this table is not a proof that ancient Macedonian is or is not related with Greek.  

A piece of land in the Balkans, 2 people who claim that this land is/was their home, 2 languages barely related to each other, and a neighbouring nation who feels the effect of this identity problem, this is what is going on between 2 modern countries, Greece and Macedonia.  

A last-minute review of the news in regards to this issue has shown me that this situation is still far from being settled. The beginning of the world cup Russia 2018 has done nothing but take away prominence to this topic. A topic where some languages might be part of the problem.

*Athamanian was a language spoken by the tribe of the Athamanians who lived in South Eastern Epirus and west Thessaly. Read more in wikivisually.