Ancient Macedon

Language and dialects

Following its adoption as the court language of Philip II of Macedon's regime, authors of ancient Macedonia wrote their works in Koine Greek, the lingua franca of late Classical and Hellenistic Greece. Rare textual evidence indicates that the native Macedonian language was either a dialect of Greek similar to Thessalian Greek and Northwest Greek, or a language closely related to Greek. The Pella curse tablet has been forwarded as an argument that Ancient Macedonian was a variety of Northwest Greek. The vast majority of surviving inscriptions from ancient Macedonia were written in Attic Greek and its successor Koine Greek. Attic (and later Koine) Greek was the preferred language of the Ancient Macedonian army, although it is known that Alexander the Great once shouted an emergency order in Macedonian to his royal guards during the drinking party where he killed Cleitus the Black. Macedonian became extinct in either the Hellenistic or the Roman period, and entirely replaced by Koine Greek.