Macedonian language in Greece

Geographical distribution.

The population of the Republic of Macedonia was 2,022,547 in 2002, with 1,644,815 speaking Macedonian as their mother tongue. Outside the Republic, there are Macedonians living in other parts of the geographical area of ​​Macedonia. There are ethnic Macedonian minority in Albania near, Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia. According to the official Albanian census of 1989, 4.697 ethnic Macedonians living in Albania.

A large number of Macedonians live outside the traditional Balkan Macedonian region, with Australia, Canada and the United States have the largest immigrant communities. According to an estimate of 1964, approximately 580,000 Macedonians living outside the republic Macedonian, almost 30% of the total population. The Macedonian spoken by communities outside the republic predates the standardization of language and considers the many dialectic though, changes in general, mutually intelligible.

The Macedonian language has the status of official language only in the Republic of Macedonia and is a recognized minority and an official language in parts of Albania (The City of Pustec), Romania and Serbia (Municipalities of Jabuka and Plandište). There are conditions for learning the Macedonian language in Romania as Macedonians are an officially recognized minority group. The language is taught in some universities in Australia, Canada, Croatia, Italy, Russia, Serbia, the United States and the United Kingdom among other countries.

Macedonian language in Greece.

The varieties spoken by the minority of Slavophone in parts of northern Greece, particularly those in the Greek provinces of West and Central Macedonia, are now usually classified as part of the Macedonian language, with those in East Macedonia being transitional towards Bulgarian. Bulgarian linguistics traditionally regards them all as part of diasystem Bulgarian along with the rest of the Macedonian. However, the codification of standard Macedonian has been in effect only in the Republic of Macedonia, and the Slavic dialects spoken in Greece are so "practically homeless", with their speakers who have little access to standard or written Macedonian.

The majority of the speakers of the language in Greece choose not to identify themselves ethnically as "Macedonians", but as ethnic Greeks (the Greek Slavophone) or dopii (locals). Therefore, the simple term "Macedonian" as a name for the Slavic language is often avoided in the context greek, and vehemently rejected by most Greeks, for whom Macedonian has very different connotations. Instead, the language is often called simply "Slavic" or "Slavomacedonian", with the "Macedonian Slavic" often used in English. Speakers themselves variously refer to their language as Makedonski, makedoniski ("Macedonian"), Slavika ("Slavic"), or Dopia entópia ("local / indigenous [language]"), balgàrtzki, bolgàrtski or bulgàrtski in Kostur region, bògartski ("Bulgarian") in Dolna thermal performance along with noses ("our") and the stariski ("old").

The exact number of speakers in Greece is difficult to ascertain, with estimates ranging between 20,000 and 250,000. Jacques Bacid currency in his 1983 book that "over 200,000 Macedonian speakers remained in Greece." Other sources put the number of speakers at 180,000, 220,000 and 250,000, while Yugoslav sources vary, some who estimated the number of "Macedonians in Greek Macedonia" to 150.000 to 200.000 to 300.000 and others. The Encyclopædia Britannica's Guide to World Player of the Compendium of both put the figure of ethnic Macedonians in Greece at 1.8% or people c.200, 000, with the mother tongue brutally corresponding with the figures. The UCLA also states that there are 200,000 Macedonian speakers in Greece. A 2008 article in the journal Eleftherotipia greek puts the estimate at 20,000.

The largest group of speakers is concentrated in Florina, Kastoria, Edessa, Giannitsa Ptolemaida and regions of Naousa. During the Greek Civil War, the codified Macedonian language was taught in 87 schools with 10,000 students in areas of northern Greece under the control of forces led by the Communists, until their defeat Army National in 1949. In recent years, there have been attempts to recognize the language as a minority language.

Classification and related languages

The Macedonian language belongs to the eastern branch subfiliale Slavic South Slavic languages of the Indo-European family of languages, and therefore it is dropped from Ancient Macedonian. Its closest relative is Bulgarian, with one that has a high degree of mutual intelligibility. Prior to their codification in 1945, Macedonian dialects were for the most part classified as Bulgarian and some linguists consider them still as such, but this view is politically controversial. The language closer and closer is Serbian-Croatian (often known by the names of its standard languages​​, Serbian, Montenegrin, Bosnian and Croatian). All the South Slavic languages​​, including Macedonian, form a continuous dialect. The group of dialect Torlakian is intermediate between Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbian-Croatian.

Along with its immediate Slavic neighbors, Macedonian also forms a constituent language of the Balkan Sprachbund, a group of languages ​​which share typological, grammatical and lexical based on geographical convergence, rather than genetic proximity. His other principal members are Romanian, Greek and Albanian, all of which belong to different genetic branches of the Indo-European family of languages ​​(Romanian is a Romance language, while the greek and albanian each include their own separate branches). The Macedonian and Bulgarian are sharply divergent from the rest of South Slavic languages​​, Serbian-Croatian and Slovenian, and in fact all other Slavic languages, in that they do not use noun cases (except for the vocative, and apart from some traces of once productive inflections still found scattered in the languages). They are also the only Slavic languages ​​with any definite article, but only three Macedonian: Article inspecificato, neighbor and distal. This latter feature is shared with Romanian, Albanian and the greek

Issues of the Macedonian language

There are two aspects of the so-called "Issues of learn Macedonian language":

1) It 'the language of Philip II and Alexander the Great?

2) It 'a separate language from the Bulgarian?

1) Some Greek authors have claimed the existence of links with the language of Philip II and Alexander of Macedonia, not only to justify the annexation of the Macedonian territory to Greece but also to demonstrate the continuity of the Greek language in the areas where there was spoken. Today, most researchers would agree that the Macedonian contemporary has no connection with the ancient Macedonian, apart from the common Indo-European ancestry.

The ancient Macedonian language was probably an Indo-European language, as different from the greek. There are theories that consider nearest all'estinto Thracian or all'illirico that were spoken respectively in the territories of Bulgaria and Albania, but have not been preserved texts. It is believed that this language was spoken by the people in the north, in the mountainous regions, while the population in the city and that of the upper classes, influenced by greek, they gradually started to lose their native language and acquired the Greek. Contacts with Chalcis Greek regions of Thessaly and were strengthened in the fifth and fourth centuries, and simultaneously kicked off the process of national assimilation. When Greece was conquered by Philip of Macedonia and occupied by his son Alexander the Great, the Macedonian officially became Greek.

2) The Macedonian is a late standardization of a Slavic dialect of the south which is very close to the south-western Bulgarian dialects. Because of this fact, the Bulgarian linguists used to treat it as a dialect of Bulgarian regional rather than a separate language. This conclusion was based on the fact that the most significant aspects of the Macedonian language (vowels reflected the lack of forms cases, items postponed, the lack of infinities, the rich and temporal modal system, etc..) Were also found in Bulgarian, while the more specific phonetic features in common with the dialects of the western part of Bulgaria, so there is no obvious change in the two sides of the Bulgarian-Macedonian border (as opposed to the Serbian-Croatian which is clearly separated from the Bulgarian by numerous dialects transition). The Macedonian language is so close to the Bulgarian citizens of both countries can understand each other without translation. Apart from the linguistic aspects, the question come strictly political considerations: both countries fear that behind the language debate there may be territorial claims.

Skopje has refused to recognize the position of Sofia, fearing that such a move could bring later the Bulgarians to claim its territories.

In 1999, an important agreement in the form of a joint declaration was promoted from deputy foreign ministers of both countries. In it, both parties agree not to make territorial claims against each other. This has removed the main interests behind the dispute of the language. Consenting to the signing of the agreements "in the official languages ​​of the two countries," (rather than "in the official language in Macedonia and in the official language of Bulgaria", as suggested Skopje), Prime Minister of Bulgaria Ivan Kostov offered a compromise that, in Indeed, he recognized the Macedonian language. On the other hand, Skopje agreed not to apply Article 49 to Bulgaria that in fact tantamount to saying that there is a Macedonian minority in Bulgaria. This political move paved the way for greater cooperation between the two countries and, lately, has put aside the "language question".

Macedonian language

The Macedonian was defined as a literary language recently, August 2, 1944, a meeting of the National Anti-Fascist Council for the Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) in the monastery of St. Prohor Pčinsky, where Macedonia formally joined the Yugoslav federation as a people independent with an official language of their own. Since then, great progress has been made in the development of a standard literary Macedonian, and in its recognition both within the country and outside as it is a different language from the Serbian by the Bulgarian. The first grammar was published by Krume Kepeski in 1946. A detailed grammar in two volumes was published by Blaze Koneski in 1952 (Volume I) and 1954 (Volume II), while the first Macedonian grammar of a foreign scholar was published by the American scholar Horace Lunt in 1952. There is abundant literature in Macedonian, in all fields, while in the field of linguistics have been published in a comprehensive dictionary of the Macedonian language and many bilingual dictionaries. A large number of works, from classical literature to contemporary, several authors have been translated into Macedonian. Today the Macedonian is used in government, public communications, in the literary works, schools, newspapers, radio and television, and is also spoken in many foreign universities. It 'recognized as a distinct language from various international authorities, such as the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Encyclopedia of Language, Cambridge.

The Macedonian literary standard is based on variations of the central western dialect, west of the river Vardar, though it stretches the Eastern dialect, east of the Vardar. Belongs to the group of South Slavic languages ​​and is one of southern Balkan languages.

 "The Macedonian language is a group of Slavic dialects located in the southern part of the Slavic linguistic territory that, until the twentieth century, stretches down to the river Detangles (Vistrizza) on the border of Thessaly in Greece. The Macedonian dialects were in close contact with the 51 currently extinct dialects of Albania and Greece, and therefore the material provided by the names in those countries is the most useful to explain some problems in phonology ancient Macedonian. We also have sufficient evidence to prove that the direct contact between the western Macedonian and Montenegrin dialects of Croatian Serbs in Albanian territory was not interrupted in the period of Ottoman rule, as is attested by the numerous innovations common in the western Macedonian and Montenegrin dialects that we take start only during the turkish "(Blaze Koneski, A Historical Phonology of the Macedonian Language, 2001, 177).