Hellenic is the branch of the
Indo-European language family
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...
whose principal member is
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
. In most classifications, Hellenic consists of Greek alone,
[Browning (1983), ''Medieval and Modern Greek'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.][Joseph, Brian D. and Irene Philippaki-Warburton (1987): ''Modern Greek''. London: Routledge, p. 1.] 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
or among modern varieties of Greek.
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
Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...
),
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
The Pella curse tablet is a text written in a distinct Doric Greek idiom, found in Pella, the ancient capital of Macedon, in 1986. Ιt contains a curse or magic spell ( grc, κατάδεσμος, '' katadesmos'') inscribed on a lead scroll, dated t ...
.
This local variety is usually classified by scholars as a dialect of
Northwest Doric Greek, and occasionally as an
Aeolic Greek dialect or a distinct
sister language
In historical linguistics, sister languages are cognate languages; that is, languages that descend from a common ancestral language, their so-called proto-language. Every language in a language family that descends from the same language as the oth ...
of
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
; due to the latter classification, a family under the name "Hellenic" has been suggested to group together Greek proper and the
ancient Macedonian language.
Modern Hellenic languages
In addition, some linguists use the term "Hellenic" to refer to
modern Greek
Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...
in a narrow sense together with certain other, divergent modern varieties deemed separate languages on the basis of a lack of
mutual intelligibility
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...
.
Separate language status is most often posited for
Tsakonian,
which is thought to be uniquely a descendant of
Doric rather than
Attic Greek, followed by
Pontic
Pontic, from the Greek ''pontos'' (, ), or "sea", may refer to:
The Black Sea Places
* The Pontic colonies, on its northern shores
* Pontus (region), a region on its southern shores
* The Pontic–Caspian steppe, steppelands stretching from no ...
and
Cappadocian Greek
Cappadocian Greek ( cpg, Καππαδοκικά, Καππαδοκική Διάλεκτος), also known as Cappadocian or Asia Minor Greek, is a dialect of modern Greek heavily influenced by Turkish, originally spoken in Cappadocia (modern-day ...
of Anatolia. The
Griko
Griko, sometimes spelled Grico, is the dialect of Italiot Greek spoken by Griko people in Salento (province of Lecce) and (also called Grecanic) in Calabria. Some Greek linguists consider it to be a Modern Greek dialect and often call it ( el, ...
or Italiot varieties of southern Italy are also not readily intelligible to speakers of standard Greek. Separate status is sometimes also argued for
Cypriot
Cypriot (in older sources often "Cypriote") refers to someone or something of, from, or related to the country of Cyprus.
* Cypriot people, or of Cypriot descent; this includes:
**Armenian Cypriots
**Greek Cypriots
**Maronite Cypriots
**Turkish C ...
, though this is not as easily justified.
In contrast,
Yevanic
Yevanic, also known as Judaeo-Greek, Romaniyot, Romaniote, and Yevanitika, is a Greek dialect formerly used by the Romaniotes and by the Constantinopolitan Karaites (in whose case the language is called Karaitika or Karaeo-Greek). The Romaniote ...
(Jewish Greek) is mutually intelligible with standard Greek but is sometimes considered a separate language for ethnic and cultural reasons.
Greek linguistics traditionally treats all of these as dialects of a single language.
Language tree
Classification
Hellenic constitutes a branch of the
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...
. The ancient languages that might have been most closely related to it,
ancient Macedonian, (either an ancient Greek dialect or a separate Hellenic language) and
Phrygian, 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
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
(see also
Graeco-Armenian
Graeco-Armenian (or Helleno-Armenian) is the hypothetical common ancestor of Greek and Armenian that postdates Proto-Indo-European. Its status is somewhat similar to that of the Italo-Celtic grouping: each is widely considered plausible without b ...
) and
Indo-Iranian languages
The Indo-Iranian languages (also Indo-Iranic languages or Aryan languages) constitute the largest and southeasternmost extant branch of the Indo-European language family (with over 400 languages), predominantly spoken in the geographical subre ...
(see
Graeco-Aryan
Graeco-Aryan, or Graeco-Armeno-Aryan, is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family that would be the ancestor of Greek, Armenian, and the Indo-Iranian languages.
The Graeco-Armeno-Aryan group supposedly branched off from the parent ...
).
[Henry M. Hoenigswald, "Greek," ''The Indo-European Languages'', ed. Anna Giacalone Ramat and Paolo Ramat (Routledge, 1998 pp. 228-260), p. 228.]
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