Template talk:Ancient Greek dialects

Discussion of map and legend

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)

....we keep on debating on the obvious... Wikipedia, as is commonly accepted by historians worldwide, is clear on the matter that the ancient Macedonians spoke a language if not Greek then a "close cousin" to it. I unfortunately have not read the work of Woodward (I will in the near future) but I have read many historians' works who on their part claim that Ancient Macedonian was indeed a Greek dialect and others who claim that it was a protohellenic language as seems to be attested by Herodot himself. Now, dear Dbachman, I never said that in this map we should present ancient Macedonian as a Greek dialect (although I truly believe it was and, as I hope you yourself are, am not some internet dabbler) but that it should also be obvious that it possibly/probably IS a Greek dialect. By presenting it as a clearly non-hellenic language we distort history, reality and Wikipedia's own view on the matter. So, Macedonian, SHOULD be shown on this map in a way that CLEARLY points to that point of view. It might be with a color of its own or/and with a legend CLEARLY stating this probability. Not doing that would be a clearly nationalistic act with the sole purpose to depict Macedonians as clearly non-Greeks. As for my comment on changing the date of the map back to the 7th century BC, this, according to my opinion, should be done to avoid further mixup on this matter, since the vast majority of archaeological evidence we have on the Greekness of the speech of the Macedonians comes from the 5th century and onwards, while Greek colonization had already taken place, so that the rest of the map can look OK. Thus, it is easier to accept that Macedonians did not speak Greek before this time, as is also proposed by some historians but were later hellenized. I could propose stating that it is a Greek dialect and have a legend pinpointing to the possibility that it wasn't, as should be more proper, but even that I do not do...

This "Macedonia was never Greek" fairytale has to stop here. We try to find ways to inaggressively present all sides of the story and then somebody comes along to accuse anyone who does not side with the "Macedonia was never Greek" story as nationalists... FPaS, please, do what you yourself proposed and let us stop this POVed argument. And of course the map by Woodward has changed a lot from the original (unless this is another map of his?), so I guess that now we should add "based on.." and do our bests to improve on it at least where clear historical data can be found.

GK1973 (talk) 09:42, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Sigh. Repeated for the millionth-and-sixth time. No, we are not going to present Macedonians as either Greeks or non-Greeks. We are, however, presenting ancient Macedonian as not part of the topic area of mainstream ancient Greek dialectology. Which is a fact, like it or not, period. It's just the state of the art in this discipline.

As for how close the map is to its original: I don't see your point. We say "after...", you want "based on..."; what's the difference? The original map differs from ours only in superficial details at this point. It's in black and white with hatching instead of colours; it extends to southern Italy (which I've split out into a separate map); it has fewer cities and ancient region names marked, instead it has the names of the modern states included (guess what, it says "Macedonia" where you wouldn't like to see it); it lacks the legend for "Illyrian" (don't know why); and it has "Macedonian" printed diagonally over a somewhat larger area; but crucially in the same font as "Thracian" and "Lydian". Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:02, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

"after" means copy, "based" means worked on...

As for the other part, "like it or not", Macedonia will be presented as a disputed linguistic area or NOT at all. You cannot present it as a NON GREEK speaking region and then say that "we are not going to present Macedonians as either Greeks or non-Greeks". Who are you trying to kid here? The map was to start with disputed and reported as false for some reasons. NOT dealing with the reasons do not do the job here. So, it is either a disputed area or not. For me it is not, for you it surely is not but for wikipedia it is. So, again, "for the millionth-and-sixth time", make it look so or this will just go on...

I really do not understand your problem... Is it that you want various "contradictory" linguistic maps to appear in the article? It is as easy to produce another "linguistic map" and perplex things more by keeping both.. Is this what we are after?

If so just state it and stop trying to sound neutral..

GK1973 (talk) 13:34, 15 September 2008 (UTC)