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
|
| Proto-language | Proto-Greek |
| Subdivisions |
|
| ISO 639-5 | grk |
| 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]
Language tree
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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]