Hellenic languages

Hellenic is the branch of the Indo-European language family whose principal member is Greek.^[2] In most classifications, Hellenic consists of Greek alone,^[3][4] but some linguists use the term Hellenic to refer to a group consisting of Greek proper and other varieties thought to be related but different enough to be separate languages, either among ancient neighboring languages^[5] or among modern varieties of Greek.^[6]

Hellenic
Greek
Geographic distribution	Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Anatolia and the Black Sea region
Linguistic classification	Indo-European Graeco-Phrygian?[1] Hellenic
Proto-language	Proto-Greek
Subdivisions	Greek Ancient Macedonian? †
Language codes
ISO 639-5	grk
ISO 639-3	–
Linguasphere	56= (phylozone)
Glottolog	gree1276

Greek and ancient Macedonian

While the bulk of surviving public and private inscriptions found in ancient Macedonia were written in Attic Greek (and later in Koine Greek),^[7][8] fragmentary documentation of a vernacular local variety comes from onomastic evidence, ancient glossaries and recent epigraphic discoveries in the Greek region of Macedonia, such as the Pella curse tablet.^[9][10][11] This local variety is usually classified by scholars as a dialect of Northwest Doric Greek,^{[note 1]} and occasionally as an Aeolic Greek dialect^{[note 2]} or a distinct sister language of Greek;^{[note 3]} due to the latter classification, a family under the name "Hellenic" has been suggested to group together Greek proper and the ancient Macedonian language.^[5][23]

Modern Hellenic languages

In addition, some linguists use the term "Hellenic" to refer to modern Greek in a narrow sense together with certain other, divergent modern varieties deemed separate languages on the basis of a lack of mutual intelligibility.^[24] Separate language status is most often posited for Tsakonian,^[24] which is thought to be uniquely a descendant of Doric rather than Attic Greek, followed by Pontic and Cappadocian Greek of Anatolia.^[25] The Griko or Italiot varieties of southern Italy are also not readily intelligible to speakers of standard Greek.^[26] Separate status is sometimes also argued for Cypriot, though this is not as easily justified.^[27] In contrast, Yevanic (Jewish Greek) is mutually intelligible with standard Greek but is sometimes considered a separate language for ethnic and cultural reasons.^[27] Greek linguistics traditionally treats all of these as dialects of a single language.^[3][28][29]

Classification

Hellenic constitutes a branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient languages that might have been most closely related to it, ancient Macedonian^[30][31] (either an ancient Greek dialect or a separate Hellenic language) and Phrygian,^[32] are not documented well enough to permit detailed comparison. Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian^[33] (see also Graeco-Armenian) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan).^[34][35]

Language tree

The following tree is based on the work of Lucien van Beek:^[36]

• (?) Graeco-Phrygian
  • Hellenic
    • South Greek
      • Achaean
        • Mycenaean
        • Arcadocypriot
      • Attic–Ionic
        • Attic
        • Western Ionic
        • Central Ionic
        • Eastern Ionic
    • North Greek
      • Aeolic^[37]
        • Boeotian (it also has West Greek features; precursor was possibly a bridge dialect between Aeolic and West Greek)
        • Lesbian (it also has at least one archaic South Greek innovation; precursor was possibly a bridge dialect between Aeolic and South Greek)
        • Thessalian
      • West Greek
        • Doric
        • Northwest Greek
      • (?) Ancient Macedonian (either an ancient Greek dialect – possibly Northwest Greek – or a separate Hellenic language)^[38]
  • Phrygian

See also

• Ancient Greek dialects
• Varieties of Modern Greek

Notes

1. Pioneered by Friedrich Wilhelm Sturz (1808),^[12] and subsequently supported by Olivier Masson (1996),^[13] Michael Meier-Brügger (2003),^[14] Johannes Engels (2010),^[15] J. Méndez Dosuna (2012),^[16] Joachim Matzinger (2016),^[17] Emilio Crespo (2017),^[10] Claude Brixhe (2018)^[18] and M. B. Hatzopoulos (2020).^[12]
2. Suggested by August Fick (1874),^[13] Otto Hoffmann (1906),^[13] N. G. L. Hammond (1997)^[19] and Ian Worthington (2012).^[20]
3. Suggested by Georgiev (1966),^[21] Joseph (2001)^[5] and Hamp (2013).^[22]