Ancient Macedonian Language

Ancient Macedonian Language

Ancient Macedonian was the language of the ancient Macedonians. It was spoken in the kingdom of Macedon during the 1st millennium BC and it belongs to the Indo-European group of languages. It gradually fell out of use during the 4th century BC, marginalized by Koine Greek, the lingua franca of the Hellenistic period.

The volume of the surviving public and private inscriptions indicate that there was no other written language in ancient Macedonia but Greek, and recent epigraphic discoveries suggest that ancient Macedonian was a variety of the Northwestern Greek dialects.