Quote Originally Posted by Ayce
AFAIK he had to learn Greek when he was 9 years old
When you say "Greek" you probably mean "Attic Greek" that is the dialect of the Athenians; we don't know much about the Macedonian language to be sure whether it was another Greek dialect or just a language very closely related to Greek; the 200 or so words of Macedonian we have from lexicographers are very similar to Greek ones and one could say Macedonian is a Greek dialect, but then again with a language we pretty much know nothing about, it is a moot point.

The only reason I would find to say that Macedonian was probably a Greek dialect, is the personal names like "Philippos", "Alexandros', "Krateros" etc which are of Greek etymology, that is they mean something in Greek, and furthermore they are not loan names from other (?) Greeks, they are regional names, just as there are names only the Athenians or only the Spartans would use, and so on.

The "did the Macedons think they were Greek/Hellenic" question seems almost unanswerable today as the ancient sources seem quite confused about it themselves.
It is more like, the ancient sources are not definitive; we have probably no way of knowing what "working class" Macedonians thought of themselves regarding their national (?) identity (or indeed if such a question would even be meaningful to them), but we have enough evidence that their ruling caste at least thought of themselves as Greeks from long before Alexander the Great, for whatever reason that might have been. The one example I can remember of now is Alexander (the first, I think), at the time of the (first?) Persian invasion, warning the Greeks about the Persian's movements, because, though he was a vassal of the King of Kings, he felt he had a duty to his Greek brethren.