Nicholas Andriotis
Professor of Linguistics at the University of Thessaloniki.
""The Federative Republic Of Skopje And Its Language.""
Second Edition
Athens 1966
Copyright for fair use
Pages 11 to 18.
Translation where is needed by LYNGOS.
Overall care by LYNGOS.

Chapter II
THE ORIGINS OF THE SLAVS OF THE STATE OF SKOPJE.

Page 11.

During the Hellenistic age, the Roman era and the early centuries of the Byzantine period, the Balkan peninsula was inhabited by pure Greeks and
by hellenised Thracio-Illyrians. Until the 7th century A. D. the boundaries of the Greek-speaking world in the Balkans extended, in the north, to the mouth of the river Genysos on the Adriatic Sea, south of Skopje, and from Serdica (Sofia) along the Aemos range to the Black Sea. North of that line, the predominant language during antiquity was Thracio-Illyrian; late in the Roman era and during the early years of the Byzantine empire Latin was widely used. The Slavs who had lived in Eastern Poland and White Russia in the past, began to move southwards, half-way through the 6th century A. D. At first they followed other barbarian invaders, the Avars in particular, as mercenanes, returning each time with their booty to their bases north of the Danube. In the beginning of the 7th century (3), at a time when domestic troubles weakened the defenses at the northern frontier of the Byzantine State, they made their earliest settlement between the Danube and the Aemos range. From then onwards, Slavic invasions were carried on intermittently and Slavic penetrations of the northern parts of the Balkan peninsula continued either in the form of war-like invasions and the capture of Greeks when the Byzantine armies were fighting on other fronts, or by the peaceful settlement of Slavic peasants and shepherds when those invaders submitted to Byzantine rule.

The Slavic language began thus to spread very gradually to northern Macedonia. It was brought to that area, a) by the Slavic peasants and
slaves whom the Byzantine landlords introduced for the purpose of cultivating their fields, b) by Greek prisoners of the Bulgarians who bought themselves out of captivity and returned home after having learnt the Slavic language, and c) by the Greeks of Macedonia who came into contact with Slavophones and learnt (page 12) their simple language with relative ease, whilst those were unable to master Greek, a considerably more difficult language.
However, Greek remained the predominant language in Macedonia during the Middle Ages, because the urban population of the countrv remained Greek.
It was during the years of the Turkish rule that the Slavic population grew, as a result of the practice which the Turkish landlords had
inherited from their Byzantine predecessors, of bringing in Slavic serfs to cultivate their estates. This gradual Slavisation during the
Byzantine and Turkish periods, however, was limited to northern Macedonia. It did not extend southwards to those areas which now form part of the Greek territory. There the Hellenic element, centered around Thessaloniki which had never been exposed to Slavic penetration, was
so strong both during the Middle Ages and in the period of Turkish rule that the few Slavs who penetrated from time to time, could not resist
assimilation.(4)
The Slavs of the newly founded State of Skopje have never - except for a very brief period under the Bulgar Czar Samuel - been able to attain
independent statehood. Through the centuries, they have been governed by the Byzantines, the Bulgarians, the Serbs and the Turks. In recent
years, the State of Skopje constituted a province of Serbia which Bulgaria claimed and continued even after it had been proclaimed a
federative state of Yugoslavia in l944, to claim as her own, as part, in fact, of the Macedonia of Pirin which remains a province of Bulgaria.


CHAPTER III


WHAT IS THE <<MACEDONIAN LANGUAGE>>

The language spoken by the majority of the people of the State of Skopje which they have quite arbitrarily called <<Macedonian>>, is a Slavic
dialect so closely resembling Bulgarian and Serbian, that according to linguistic principles it can hardly be considered an independent language at a par with the other two. The only detinite boundaries of this Slavic dialect are set by the Greek language. They broadly coincide with the Yugoslav-Greek frontier except for a small enclave which that dialect forms on Greek territory in the mountainous regions north of Kastoria. In the West, that Slavic dialect borders on the Albanian language, but, in this case, the linguistic frontier does not coincide with the national Albanian-Yugoslavian border; for the State of Skopje counts among its inhabitants, 164,000 Albanian-speaking people.

The linguistic frontier on the Serb and Bulgarian sides are lost in the fluidity of equally divided linguistic groups on either side and are
impossible to determine. The so-called «Macedonian» dialect is, in fact, an intermediate stage between Bulgarian and Serb. As one moves towards Bulgaria, the Serb elements grow rarer while the Bulgarian elements multiply and vicc versa. For that reason, just as the Skopje region was the apple of discord between the politicians of Bulgaria and Servia, so its language has become an object of dispute. Serbian linguists stress its affinities with the Serb language; Bulgarians emphasize its similarities with Bulgarian. Both are anxious to prove that it is reallv an extension of their respective languages.

Viewed objectively, the situation appears as follows.


1. Differences in relation to the ancient Slav language.
The phonetic differences of the dialect spoken in the State of Skopje in relation to the ancient Slav language are as follows:

1. It has changed the vowel known as «big ger~ (Z) into O, e.g. SZN into SON. (This change has taken place in Russian, but not in Bulgarian - with the exception, in the latter, of some endings which show this change.)
2. It has changed the vowel known as «small ger» (b) into e. (The same change has taken place in Russian and, in some cases, in Bulgarian.)
3. It has changed the nasal vowel ( no font for this one L.), ( =on) into a. (The same change has taken place in some central idioms of the Bulgarian language.)
4. It has inserted an -a- in a number of consonantal complexes, e.g. --dobar --instead of --dobr--. (The same development can be observed in Serbo-Croat.)
5. It has altered the consonantal complexes -tj- and --Kt-- into K before the vowels --e-- and --i--. (A similar alteration has taken place in Serbo-Croat.)
6. It has changed the consonactal complex --dj-- into -- g.--
(Page 14)
7. It has changed the vowel form --l --into ol, e.g. --told--instead of --tlt--.(The same change has taken place in Russian.)
8. It has changed the initial vowel (L. no font available) (=je) into --ja--. A similar change has taken place in certain Serbo-Croat' idioms and in Czechoslovak.)
9. It has changed the consonantal complex --*cr-- into cr, e.g. *crn
= black) - crn-- (The same change may be observed in Serbo-Croat.)

2. Similarities with the Serb language

The Slavic dialect spoken in the State of Skopje shows the following similarities with the Serb language:

1. Both change the ancient Slavic --ty-- into *c whilst Bulgarian changes it into --*st-- e.g. the ancient Slavic --svesta = sister) has become sveca, as in Serb, whilst in Bulgarian it is svest. The ancient slavic --(nost =night) has become --noc-- as in Serb, whilst in Bulgarian it has retained its original form --nost-- etc.

2. It has changed the ancient Slavic form -- zd-- into -g- and --dj-- (in Serb, only into --dj--), whilst Bulgarian has retained the form --zd-- e.g. the ancient Slavic and modern Bulgarian word --mezdu= between) has become --rnedju-- in the dialect spoken in the State of Skopje, as in Serb.


3. It retains the accent on the antepenult. E.g. Vode'nisa (= Watermill), vodenitsar (= Miller) - plural vodenitsari with an article, vodenitsa-ta, Sinovi (Sons) with the article Sinovi-te whilst in Bulgarian the accent is freely placed.(5)


4. It changes the gerundial ending -ki- into ( -ci-, whilst in Bulgarian, the sante ending is --ste--.

5. It uses thc same form of auxiliary verb --ke-- for the formation of the future as in Serb, whereas in Bulgarian the form --ste-- is employed.

6. It uses the same relative --on-- as the Serb language.

7. It uses the same indicative pronoun for proximate objects --ou-- as employed in Serb.

8. The system of possessive pronouns in the third person corresponds to the Serb not the Bulgarian equivalent.

On those similarities with the Serb language, the Serb linguists Belic and Iv. Ivanovic base their claim that the dialect Spoken in (page 15) the State of Skopje is an ancient branch of the Serb language which
subsequently was slightly influenced by the Bulgarian language.

3. Common features with the Bulgarian language.

Apart, however, from the features which the dialect spoken in the State of Skopje possesses in common with Serb, there are other more numerous, and more important characteristics which that dialect shares with
Bulgarian and which are unknown in Serb. These are as follows:

1. The reduction of case endings of nouns to three only, the Nominative, the Dative and the Accusative which further tend to be effectively limited to one. The Serb language, by contrast, has preserved 7 different case endings.

2. The use of prefixes for the formation of the comparative and the superlative degrees, e.g. rano (= early), po-rano (earlier). In Serb, by contrast, suffixes are used for that purpose, e.g. ran-ije.

3. The obsolescence of the infinitive, still used in Serb.

4. The transformation of the indicative pronoun masc. -ot-, fem.- ta-, neut. -to- into an article which follows the nouns as e.g. in angelot (the angel) zena-ta (the woman), selo-to (the village), plural angelite,
zeni-te, sela-ta and the use of a triple article, e.g. maz-ot (= man), maz-ou (the man here), rnaz-on (= the man there). The last two --ou-- and --on-- characterise the Skopje dialect only. ( The appended article is common in Albanian, Rumanian, the Scandinavian languages and Armenian.)

5. The accent of words is dynamic, as in Bulgarian, whilst in Serb it is musical.

6. As in Bulgarian, an identical ending -i- was retained for both masculine and feminine plurals, whereas in Serb the ending -e>-e was generally adopted in feminine nouns.

7. The third person plural ends in -at-. This is also the case in Bulgarian but not in Serb where it ends in -u.

8. It uses the interrogative pronoun Koj = which) instead of --Kto ( = who). However, the same substitution is found in several other Balkan languages including Modern Greek.

9. Like Bulgarian, it uses the form -ni- for the pronoun " we"

10. It uses the aggregative ending -mina- which is also used in Bulgarian.

11. It contains a large number, probably thousands, of Greek words.

This is also true of Bulgarian but not of Serb which has very few.

Syntax does not throw much light on the relation of the Skopje dialect with either the Bulgarian or the Serb languages. Common forms can be found very widely in the languages spoken by the peoples of the Balkan
peninsula which makes them a suitable subject for a comparative study of Balkan languages, but also makes it impossible to opine with any certainty about their derivations.

4. Peculiarities of the dialect spoken in the State of Skopje.

The features of that dialect which are absent both from the Serb and from the Bulgarian languages are as follows:

1. that dialect alone forms the first person singular of all verbs with the termination -am-.

2. the use of a composite verb form using the auxiliary verb --imam (= I have)-- with the neuter of the past participle, e.g.-- imam videno (= I have it seen)-- meaning "I have seen it". (6)

CHAPTER IV

SOME CONCLUSIONS ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE SKOPJE DIALECT WITH THE SERB AND BULGARIAN LANGUAGES

From what has been said, it follows that the Slavic dialect spoken in the state of Skopje has fewer, mainly phonetic similarities with Serb and more, mainly morphological affinities with the Bulgarian language.
The appended article should be especially mentioned in this connection.

Where does it belong then? It is certainly not part of the Serb language. But neither can it be completely identified with Bulgarian. It is, according to A. Vaillant, a dialect whose genealogy makes it part of the "BuIgaro-Macedonian" group, a group which must be distinguished from the "Serbo-Croatian" linguistic group. Its origins can be traced to the Slavic dialect spoken in Northern Macedonia during the 9th and 10th centuries, into which Methodius and Cyrillus (page 17) translated the Holy Script. Its affinities with Serb are neither genealogical nor
indeed very old. They are due to the impact brought to bear upon it much later by the Serb language at the tirne when the Dusan conquests brought Macedonia within Serbian territory. The country was then administered by local Serb rulers and by clergymen of the Patriarchate of Pec and not only did the State use Serb as the official language but the Church also introduced the Serb-like form of ecclesiastical Slavonic.(7) This Serb linguistic impact was continued during the years of Turkish occupation when Serb, together with Greek and Turkish, was one of the three official languages in the Turkish administrative district of Northern Macedonia. But for this late impact, the similarities between Bulgarian and the Skopje dialect would have been greater and the
differences smaller than they are today. The view that the Skopje dialect belongs to the Bulgaro-Macedonian group and not to the Serbo-Croat group is summed up in A. Meillet, M. Cohen "Les Langues du Monde" p. 66, in the following words: "En Macedoine la majorite' des parlers est nettement de type bulgare avec forte erbisation."


This is also the view of Horace Lunt who prefers to give it the name "Eastern Balkan Slavic" (8) rather than Bulgaro--Macedonian. The difference between a Slavic Macedonian dialect and literary Bulgarian is much smaller than that which, according toV. Pisani ( IL Macedonico, Paedeia 12, 1957, p. 25O ) separates the Emilian dialects from written Italian. Those who maintain that the idiom in question belongs to the Serb tongue are much farther from objective truth than those who join A. Valliant and H. Lunt in supporting the view that this idiom should rather be classed with the Bulgarian language. There are adepts, however, of the theory that neither its few-mainly phonetic - common features with Serb nor those more numerous morphological features which it shares with Bulgarian, are sufficient to destroy the separate identity of the Skopje dialect which prevents it
from being confused with either of these two languages and enforces the view that it constitutes a distinct and separate Slav language.
This theory is propounded by Jagic, Golubinski, Triniegorski, Pavloski, Page18 Draganof, Brajisford. The controversy is summarised by Van Vijk in his book "Les langues Slaves, de I' unite' a Ia pluralite"(Paris 1937), p.
119-126.

Any judgment on the merits of that theory must depend, necessarily, on an objective definition of what constitutes a separate language. And such a definition can only be based on the science of linguistics which
admits of no political considerations. If the separate identity of a linguistic form as a language -as distinct from a dialect or idiom-must depend, as compared with related linguistic forms, on differences perhaps not so great as those which distinguish e.g. Greek from other sister Indo-European languages -e.g. Latin or Germanic- but at least differences as substantial as those which exist between particularly related languages, as French and Italian for instance, or German and Swedish, or Russian and Bulgarian, then the linguistic idiom spoken in
Skopje cannot possibly be called a language on its own right. Only if for political expediency, in order to provide a basis for an autonomous State, the science of linguistics were to be revised and new definitions
of the term "language" devised, so that the latter could be taken to mean much smaller and insignificant differences between related linguistic forms, only then could the Slav idiom of the State of Skopje
be called a language. In that case, however, a radical re-drawving of the world's linguistic map would be necessary and each of the known languages would have to be subdivided into several others. Modern Greek,
for instance, whose regional differences sometimes exceed in importance those which separate the Skopje dialect from Bulgarian, but which nonetheless is still considered by all linguists as a single language, would have to be divided into several "languages": the Tsakonic, the lower Italian, the Pontiac, the Cappadocian etc.


The adepts of the separate identity of the Skopje dialect either overestimate exceedingly its insignificant particular features, and underestimate its significant affinities with the Bulgarian language (which enable anyone who knows the latter to understand the former without any difficulty) or do something far worse:

They pretend to speak in the name of science in order to cover up political ambitions.
Notes: (3). D. Zakynthinos: The Slavs in Greece, page 27.
(4).K.I. Amantos: Contribution to the medieval history and ethnology of Makedonia ( Athens 1920),
St. Kyriakidis: The Makedonian Hellenism and the newer. (Athens 1926)
St. Kyriakidis: Bulgarians and Slavs in the Greek history ( Thessaloniki 1946).

(5).St.Mladenov: Geschichte der bulgarischen Sprache ( Berlin-Leipzig para.195, pp.394 ff.).

Page 43.

Historical Conclusions from the impact of Greek on the Slavic Language.
----------------------------------
The considerable number of words which came into Balkan Slavic from Greek, through direct etlinologiedl contact, a narrow sample of which has been given above, is of major interest to the student of the
national origins of our northern neighbours. For in addition to historical evidence in regard to the Slavic expancion in Greek territories, the Greek linguistic influence shows conclusively that when the Slavs
began to inade the Balkan peninsula, they found it inhabited by a people who spoke only Greek, and not, as Slav historians maintain, Thraco-Illyrian. If the opposite were true, the Balkan Slav dialects would have been full not of Greek, but of Thracio-Illyrian words, which the Thacio-Illyrians, undergoing a gradual process of Slavization, would have carried along, though the stage of bilingualism which is common

Page 44

in such cases, to their new language. But where are those Thracio-Illyrian words? quite simply, they do not exist. Apart from the Latin language, the mother of contemporary Vlach which is spoken in some areas, and Albanian which is common in the north-western parts of the peninsula, the Slavs did not meet in the Balkans any other language but Greek. Thracio-Illyrian had disappeared a long time before their arrival, during the Hellenistic and the Roman eras. Only the Vissoi, a small Thracian tribe in the Rhodopi region, retained their Thracian language down to the 7th centurv A.D. It was hellenised however, before the Slavs could come into contact with it.

CHAPTER VII


IMPACT OF OTHER LANGUAGES ON THE DIALECT OF THE STATE OF SKOPJE
------------------------------------------
Next to Greek, the most powerful foreign influence on the dialect of the State of Skopje was Turkish. This is explained by the fact that throughout the period of Ottoman rule, Turkish was the official language in the Balkans for administrative purposes especially. The Turkish
linguistic influence was stronger in the towns from where it extended to the villages and consists, primarily, in Turkish words taken up by the
Slavophone population and in certain grammatical forms which influenced the Slavic vernacular. (12 a). Smaller but still considerable is the Albanian influence. That influence is explained by the fact that the Western part of the State of Skopje is inhabited by a compact Albanophone minority of 164.000 which Albania claims as her own. Where the two languages meet as in Kosovo and Metohija, Albano-Slavic bilingualism prevails. Ivan Popovic who recently made a study of this subject, quite arbitrarily considers the bilingual minority as Slavs who learnt Albanian and the Slavic elements of the Albanian dialect of the State of Skopje as the legacy of ancient Slavs who adopted the Albanian language (12b). In fact the opposite is true, since, as is well known, the Albanians who are the direct descendants of the ancient Illyrians, lived in that region long before the Slavs and occupied a much larger geographical area.
---------------------------------------------------------
12a See G. Hazai: Remarques sur les rapports des langues slaves des Balkans avec Ie turc--osmanli, Studia Slavica, Akad. Hung. 7 (1961) pp. 97 ff.

12b. See Ivan Poporic: Albanoslavica- Sudostforsehungen 15 (1956) p.
515.

CHAPTER VIII

A HISTORY OF THE LINGUISTIC IDIOM OF THE STATE OF SKOPJE ------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------
There can be little doubt that the mediaeval form of the dialect of the State of Skopje was closely related to that into which the Thessalonian
Greek missionaries Cyrill and Methodius translated parts of the Bible during the 9th century A.D. This view is both logically correct and historically proven, while there is not a shred of evidence in support of the theory put forward by some Slav linguists, that the language of that translation is a Slavic dialect spoken in the city of Thessaloniki. For it is more than certain that, during the Byzantine era, the capital of Greek Macedonia remained purely Greek. Its success in repelling invaders ensured that up to that time it was never inhabited either by
Slavs, or even by Slavophone elements which might have developed a dialect. But who could ever prevail on the dreamers of Slav expansion to the Aegean Sea to abandon this cherished fallacy?

To the north of Thessaloniki there surely were during the 9th centurv Slav agricultural settlements whose dialect Cyril and Methodius may well
have used. It is plausible to argue that this was related to the dialect of northern Macedonia closely enough to be regarded as the precursor of
the modern dialect of the State of Skopje. The disciples of Cyril and Methodius, Klemes of Ochris, Nahum and their other Slav Successors, continued the work of their masters, with the result that the hitherto obscure, unpolished and undeveloped dialect of Macedonian Slavs, gradually rose to the eminence of a cultured ecelesiastical language, formed and enriched on the model of the Greek.

This later spread to the whole of the Slavic world as the language of the Church and, subsequently, as the literary, written language of the Slavs, before the emergence of local Slavic vernaculars. Some eighty manuscripts containing Slav ecclesiastical texts of the l2th to the 14th century survive to this day. They are written in that language which is now regarded as the mother of the current Slavic dialects of Northern Macedonia, and therefore, of the new literary "language" cultivated in Skopje. Prominent among those manuscripts are the Apostle of Ochris, the Gospel of Dobromir, the Gospel od Pope John and the Triod of Vitolji which belong to the 12th century; the Apostle


Page 46
of Vraneste, the Hymn Book of Bologna and the Admonitions of Leskovo which belong to the 13th century. The publication of those texts as
important historical documents, is one of the principal tasks which the "Macedonian Language Institute" in Skopje has undertaken.
It was for this purpose that the Stari Textovi Series ( Ancient Texts) was founded.
When during the 14th century, the whole of Macedonia was subjected by the Turks, the use and cultivation of the Macedonian form of the Slavonian language gradually became extint. It was never revived for in 1557, Mehmet Sokolovic, a Grand Vizir of Slavic origin, consented to his
brother's, the Serb Patriarchate of Pec with juristiction over the entire Slavophone part of Northern Macedonia. Then, not only these Slavic manuscripts but also the texts which began to be primed in Venice and circulated in the Patriarchate's district throughout the 16th and 17th centuries were written in a Serb form of ecclesiastical Slavic, belonging to the so-called Resava School. Though some sporadic elements of Macedonian dialects are preserved especially in popular literature, (e.g. Damaskenos) these works do not any longer belong to the he historical texts of M acedonian Slavic.

When subsequently Russia became a major political power, and began to manifest interest in the Slavs of the Balkan peninsula, the whole-sale importation of ecclesiastical books written in the Russian form of the Slavonic language, resulted in the Serb form of the written language being replaced by the Russian, which prevailed among northern Macedonian Slavs down to the end of the 19th century.

The Slavo-Greek glossary to which reference has been made above (p.17) is of major interest for the history of this dialect. Written by a Greek of Macedonia, in Greek characters, it contained 301 Slav words and phraces that were current in the region of Kastoria. It was first published from a Vatican code by C.Giannelli and A. Vaillant under the title "Un Lexique Macedonien du XVIe Siecle" in the series of the "Institut dEtudes Slaves de l'Universite de Paris" (1958). This glossary has made it possible to estimate the dates of the different grammatical features of Slavic dialects, on which the so-called "Macedonian language" is based.


From the 17th century onwards the living local idiom breaks through the ice of Serb and later Russian Slavonian, making at first a modest appearance in a few insignificant texts. Such were the Epistle of Krusevo and some texts written in Greek characters of which the quadrilingual Greek, Albanian, Aromounian, and Slav dictionary


Page 47


by Daniel Moschopolite (1793) was an example. The Slav language is represented by the Slavic dialect of Ochrid (there was no official Serb or Bulgarian language yet). Of interest is also the translation of the Gospel that was published in Salonica in 1852. These texts, however, later offended Bulgarian nationalism. Ever since the Bulgarian exarchate took the place of the Ecumenical patriarchate in the Slavophone parts of Macedonia, late in the 19th century, it has indeed refused to tolerate any form of Slavic iterature, other than Bulgarian.

Quite clearly then, important written documents of the Slavic Macedonian dialects appear only between the 9th and 13th centuries. -On
these the linguists and philologists of Skopje have tried to base their contentions that the dialect for which they claim the status of a
separate and independent language, has an ancient written tradition. They forget that such a tradition is not sufficient to transform an idiom or dialect into a separate language. Several other idioms and dialects have written traditions without, for that reason, being regarded as distinct languages. Such for instance are the ancient Greek dialects which possess written documents, but do not, as a result of this, constitute separate languages. Cyprus can equally claim its written documents which belong to the Middle Ages, but no one has ever propounded the theory of a Cypriot modern Greek dialect, let alone the existence of a distinct hellenic language in Cyprus. And the same could be said of Italian and French mediaeval dialects, to mention only a few well-known examples.

CHAPTER IX


CONTEMPORARY LITERARY MOVEMENTS IN THE SKOPJE DIALECT
--------------------------------------
So far we have studied the Slavic character of the dialect spoken by the inhabitants of the State of Skopje, its differences from ancient Slavic, its relations with the modern Bulgarian and Serb languages, we discussed its few peculiarities, the impact of spoken Greek on it and finally its written documents. Until recently, the dialect of the State of Skopje showed no uniformity.

Several forms of it were spoken in different parts of the country. A common formeither written or spoken was unknown and there was practically no literature. The only language which could be regarded common to the entire region was the relatively more developed Bulgarian, a


Page 48


fact which placed the Slavophone Northern Macedonia in a position of cultural dependence on Bulgaria. As early as 1858 Partenij Zografski had proposed a compromise, namely a fusion of Bulgarian and «Macedonian» linguistic elements, since the established Bulgarian language which is based primarily on eastern Bulgarian idioms, sounds somewhat alien to the Serbs of the Skopje region. This solution was supported by the Serbs, but objected to by the Bulgarians who considered it «Bulgaro-Serb».

After, however, this territory was annexed by Serbia in 1912 and to a still higher degree after it was first proclaimed an autonomous state in 1944 and added to the group of six confederate states which constitute Yugoslavia, the chief and foremost concern both of the central Yugoslav Government and of the Skopje authorities, was to free the people of that region from their intellectual and linguistic dependence on Bulgaria. To this end it was necessary:


1) to weaken and make less conspicuous the close relationship of the idiom with Bulgarian and to stress, to place under a stronger light, its lesser affinity with Serb;
2) to give the idiom official status immediately and cultivate it as a written language under the influence of Serb, for administrative, literary and scientific purposes. It was hoped in this way to widen the gap between that idiom and Bulg~rian and to bring it closer to Serb.

It was with this end in view that a few months after the creation of the State of Skopje, in September 1944, the National Assembly set up a committee of scholars, writers and scientists to determine the grammatical form and spelling of this new Slavic «language", which thus took its place, for the first time, amongst the known Slavic languages. This committee carried out the mandate of the National Assembly in the following manner:
1) As a grammatical basis for the new language, it used not the western form spoken between the Lakes of Ochris and Prespa as originally considered, but the form spoken in the most densely populated central area of the State, namely in the region west of the river Axios (Vardar) which is contained in the quadrangle Prilep-Bitolja-Kicevo-Veles and forms the borderland where the extreme forms of the idiom meet.
2) In order to enrich the vocabulary, the Committee adopted the principle of cleansing the language from Turkish admixtures and of borrowing words, where necessary, from other Yugoslav dialects or forming new words for modern concepts, thus limiting recourse to foreign languages to cases of absolute necessity. The complete lack of scientific terms places the scholars and scientists before a difficult dilemma. Should they import from other


Page 49


Slavic or European languages, or should they create new words of their own? They cannot afford to waste time for they must answer the pressing claims of science, education, the Press, administration, and broadcasting.
3) The problem of spelling was solved by establishing phonetic spelling, i.e., writing each sound exactly as it is pronounced, disregarding historical spelling completely. The silent big -R- and small -r-, which Bulgarian retained until recently, were abolished, the soft (palatial) consonants were represented in the Serbian manner where Serb has similar consonants, i.e., soft -I- was represented by -b- and soft -n- by H or, where Serb has no equivalent sounds, a symbol of stress served to denote soft consonants, as K' (=soft K), G (=soft g).


The committee's recommendations were implemented by a law of the 3rd May 1945 which came into force on the 7th June of the same year. This law established this new language as the only official and acceptable medium for any form of intellectual activity in the new State. The Philosophical Faculty of the university of Skopje became, naturally, the centre of study, cultivation and enrichment of this new language. Several school-grammar-books were produced, e.g. one by K. Kepeski and BI. Kopeski. Since 1950 a special periodical entitled «Makedonski Jazik» (Macedonian language) and devoted to linguistic research and discussion of practical problems has been regularly published by the Philosophic Faculty under the direction of a board consisting of BI. Koneski, Krum Tosev, Bozo \7idojeveski and Rada Ugrirnova. In 1953 an «Institute of the Macedonian Language» was established. It was assigned the task of compiling and publishing an official dictionary. A committee composed of BI. Koneski, M. Petrusevski and K. Tosev was established for that purpose. The first volume of this dictionary (A-N) appeared in Skopje in 1961 and the second (0-P) in 1965 under the title «Retsnik na Makedonskiot Jazik So
Srpskohrvatski Tolkovania».(12c)The language of the new State of Skopje attracted the attention of foreign linguists.
Thus the American H. Lunt, Professor of Slavonic studies at the University of Harvard, studied it extensively and published its grammar in English for the use of American students, under the title ""Grammar of the Macedonian Literary Language"" (Skopje l952).(13).~ The Italian linguist,
------------------------
12c. See K. Tosev: Prvata kniga na retsnikot na makedonskiot Jazik in the Journal Makedonija No 107 (1962). Cf. N.P.Andriotis in the Journal Balkan Studies 2 (1962), pp. 201 ff.


13. Cf .Bl. Koneski: Makedonskata Literatura i Makedoeskiot jazik (Skopje 1945), BI. Koneski: (Odzivenite recnicki elementi vo nasiot jazik, Nov. Dec. Vol. 3 (1945),

Page 50


V. Pisani, published a very useful treatise ""Il Macedonico"" in the periodical «Paedeia» (12. 1957 pp. 249-264). Apart from linguistic studies and attempts to establish the grammatical structure of the language, its literary cultivation received within a few years an impulse so strong that it might be termed amazing. In addition to an affluent production of original literary works, scholars and philologists gave themselves to the systematic translation of the most important works of the world's literature - of Tolstoi, Gogol, Gorki, Shakespeare, Dickens, R. Rolland and Balzac - into the language of the State of Skopje. The reason for this truly impressive literary activity is obvious. It is the result of an effort to make up for lost time within the shortest possible period, to quicken the pace of progress and raise the region and its inhabitants to the level of intellectually developed nations. A parallel effort consists in making available plenty of reading material directly or indirectly conducive to Communist ideology. It is further attempted to accelerate the literary cultivation of the language and promote its enrichment with the means of expression which are naturally lacking in an idiom of rustics only just aspiring to the dignity of a cultured tongue. The fact that the literary cultivation idiom will permit it to increasingly deviate from the Bulgarian language and eventually break loose from Bulgarian domination is, of course, an added gain from the point of view of the political opportunism which determines the attitude of the leaders of the State of Skopje towards Bulgaria. This will also serve the ultimate objective, for when the educated classes of the people are able to satisfy their intellectual needs by books written in their mother tongue, they will no longer have to resort to Bulgarian writings; and this intellectual emancipation
----------------------------------------
Bl. Koneski, Nekoi beleski vo vrska so recnikot na nasiot jazik, Nov. Dec. No 7-8, Krume Kepeski: Makedonska Grammatica (Skopje 1950), BI. Koneski, Grammatika na makedonskiot literaturen jazik (Skopje 1952).
R. Aitzeamuller: Sudslawische Sprachwissenschaft 1945-1952, Sudostforschungen 12 (1953),
Alois Schmaus: Makedonische Schriftsprache und Literatur - Osteuropa 3
(1 953) pp. 178-183, Krum Tosev: Die mazedonische Schriftsprache - Sudstforschungen 15 (1956), pp. 491-503.
B. Ristovski: Makedonskiot jazik vo zerniata i vo strantsvo - Makedonija 7 (1959, 70-71 Bl. Koneski: The Macedonian Literary Language (Beograd 1959).

About the influence of the Greek languagc on the Slavs of the Balkans
See: A.G. Tahovski: Grtski zborovi vo makedonskiot naroden govor (Filozofski Fakultet na Univertzitetot Skopje. Posebni Izdanija kniga
1) (Skopje 1951);. Cf. G. Boukouvala: H glossa ton en Makedonia Boulgarofonon (Cairo 1905) St.Mladenov: Retznik na tsuzdite dumi vaf bulgarskija exik (Sofia 1932) N.P. Andriotis: Ta Ellhnika stoixeia ths Boulgarikhs glosshs, Thrac.Archives 17 ( 1945) pp.65 ff.


Page 51


will spell the end of the cultural and national orientation of the people of the State of Skopje towards Bulgaria. The zeal with which this State has pursued its objectives through the media of public education is also impressive. The growth of education as compared with pre-war standards is unprecedented. In 1939-1940 there were, for the whole of the country, only 843 four-year Elementary Schools, 9 four-form Urban Schools, 6 complete High Schools, 1 Teacher's Training College and 4 Technical Colleges with a total of 109.118 students. During the scholastic year 1953 to 1954 these numbers had increased to 1.305 four-form Elementary Schools, 147 eight-form Elementary Schools, 12 four-form Secondary Schools, and 11 eight-form High Schools, 5 Senior Secondary Schools, 5 Teacher's Training Colleges, (medicine, economics, agriculture, veterinary services, music, art, physical education and engineering), 27 Lower Technical Schools, 21 Arts and Crafts Schools making up a total of 1.549 schools with a total number of 182.990 pupils. In the field of higher education during the pre-war years, there was only an incomplete philosophical school in Skopje with an average of 160 students. In 1946 a university was established for the first time. During the academic year 1953-1954, the university functioned with six faculties and a special school of post-graduate studies. The number of students by faculties is as follows:


Faculty of Philosophy 1.512
Faculty of Law and Economic Science 1.297
Faculty of Medicine 823
Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry 396
Technical School 483
Institute of Education 449


There were in other words, 4.960 students of which 3.704 were regular and 1.246 part-time auditors. By 1959 the number of students had reached the 7.955 mark. The university staff consisted in 1958 of 300 university teachers: regular or part-time professors, lecturers, etc. A further feature of the intensive work undertaken in the field of education, apart from increasing the number of public schools at all levels and establishing the University, is a major effort to reduce illiteracy. In the first post-war years 300.000 people could neither read nor write. At the end of 1953 their number had decreased to 235.347. By 1958, 31 libraries had been founded in towns, 300 in


Page 52


villages, 377 in factories and 922 in schools. Another 47 libraries of special scientific interest brought the total number of books to a million and half. In 1939 there existed no more than 14 popular book shops and reading rooms, with 5.512 volumes all in all; by 1953 the number of such establishments had usen to 50, with 1.154.318 volumes. In 1945, 3 museums existed in the country with 8.000 exhibits. In 1953 they had reached the number of 17. Finally the number of theatres has grown from 2 in 1939 (one in Skopje and one in Monastir) to to-day's 10, which in 1953 alone produced 270 tragedies, 95 operas, 5 operettas and 18 ballet shows.(13a ). In 1958, 55 art :exhibitions were organized which attracted 154.000 visitors. The Writers' Association which in 1954 had only 10 members, claimed 50 members in 1959. These merely indicative facts abundantly show with what zeal and enthusiasm the State of Skopje has pursued its linguistic, educational and cultural policies which, as we have seen, can be summed up as an effort to laise the very low cultural level of the people, to develop a national consciousness based on independence from other Slavic nations, more particularly Bulgaria, and to mould the Skopje dialect in such a way as to widen the gap between it and Bulgarian and to bring it closer to Serb.

As early as 1908 the great Slavic scholar, C. Jagic in his book «Die Slavischen Sprachen>> (p. 21) described the early attempts to develop the Slavic dialec[ of that region into a written language as «a useless waste of intellectual energy>>.

<<The Macedonian language is really an artifice, produced for political purposes», wrote the Italian linguist Vittore Pisani in his treatise «Il Macedonico» in the periodical Paedeia (12, 1957, p. 250).

The justification which the country's cultural authorities put forward for the gradual transformation of the language under the influence of Serb is that by such means the understanding and cooperation between the people of the State of Skopje and those of the other republics of Yugoslavia will be enhanced. As might be expected, the Bulgarians who, even under the cornmunist regime, have not abandoned their strong nationalist feelings, have protested passionately against this Yugoslav policy which tends to alienate this region, linguistically and culturally, from Bulgaria.
--------------------------------------------------


13a. See Journal: Wissenschaftlicher Dienst fur , Sudost--Europa 3 (1954) No11 / 12, cf. L. Kolisevski: Aspekti na makedonskoto prasanje: (skopje 1962), p. 324.


Page 53

They proclaim that the one common language of that area is Bulgarian and that the local forms are simply Bulgarian dialects. They further insist that a distinct Macedonian language does not exist and that the literary language which is now being developed as a common language for all Slavophones of Serb Macedonia is not Macedonian, but «Kolisefskian Serb» (after the name of the former premier of the State of Skopje, Lazar Kolisefski). They maintain that what is being done amounts to the wilful destruction of the language, that such action is perpetrated not by Macedonians, but rather by Serb agents, enemies of the people, instruments of the «Fascists of Belgrade» whose purpose has always been to undermine the national identity of the Macedonians of the Vardar and by «Serbianizing» the language to secure the assimilation of all Macedonians as they have already achieved the Serbianization of their surnames, changing the endings --ef and -of into -efski and -ofski.


In reply to the argument put forward by Dimitri Vlachof that by gradually bringing closer the official language of the State of Skopje and the Serb language, the mutual understanding and co-operation of that people with the other federal states of Yugoslavia will be promoted, the Bulgarians say that the alteration of a language for the sake of temporary political objectives is unheard of and that this policy has
been imposed by the rulers of Yugoslavia upon a reluctant Macedonian people.


To Greeks, as indeed to all foreign observers, these national and linguistic disputes of our northern neighbours, the question that is, of whether the inhabitants of the State of Skopje are Serbs or Bulgarians, whether their language is a distinct and separate one or just a Slavic dialect, whether the attempts made to develop it as a literary and scientific medium are right or wrong, whether its development and enrichment should rather be based on the Bulgarian or the Serb language etc. would have presented no more than purely scientific interest, they would have been regarded as «other people's business», as an internal problem of our neighbours, entirely devoid of any particular
significance for our nation, if as might have been expected, the discussion had been limited to the linguistic and ethnological problems beyond our frontiers and if the ultimate objective had not been directed at Greek Macedonia itself. The Greeks, both as a nation and as a State, have faced the national and political alienation of territories which for thousands of years had been part of their national patrimony with a sense of realism and a great deal of historical understanding. Where


Page 54


they have been unable to stop the penetration and ethnological domination by foreigners, especially the Slavisation of Northern Macedonia, they accepted this sacrifice of very considerable remains of Greek blood and culture, of towns and villages that were Greek since time immemorial, as an accomplished and irrevocable fact. More, they have sincerely endeavoured to cooperate with their neighbours in the
arena of peaceful emulation for the sake of progress. They would therefore have no difficulty in remaining unconcerned in the face of these present problems, if our northern neighbours showed a similar spirit and understanding of our own historical rights, if they were content to keep the lands, the blood, the culture they usurped in the course of centuries, and leave us in peace in the little corner of our ancient homeland, to which their rapacity as a chief factor of historical developments, has confined us.


To be continued.

Page 54.


CHAPTER X


ARGUMENTS PUT FORWARD BY THE SLAVS TO SUPPORT THEIR CLAIM ON GREEK MACEDONIA
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A. The argument regarding the name ""Macedonians-Maeedonia"".
-----------------------
We have seen that the name Macedonia was assigned to Southern IServia, whose inhabitants had hitherto been called Bulgari by the Bulgarians and Bugari by the Serbs.
This name was arbitrarily applied by Panslav propaganda with the devilish purpose of using it as an argument in support of the annexation of Greek Macedonia by the State of Skopje. But that the Slavs should Give themselves the name ""Macedonians"", that they should call their newly founded state ""Macedonia"" is no less inappropriate and historically unacceptable, than if the Turks who
now inhabit the lands of anvient Ionia and Aeolia, decided to call themselves Ionians and Aeolians respectively and on the strength of those names endeavoured to establish a claim on any georgraphical extension of the ancient Ionians and Aeolians into Greek territory. And yet it is on the basis of this argument that the Slavs of Skopje claim as their national heritage the entire geographical region of Macedonia, the so-called ""Aegean Macedonia"", which has been peopled since remotest antiquity, through the middle Ages to this very day by an uninterrupted succession of Greek generations.


Page 55


The Slavs choose to ignore the fact that in those remote times when the genuine Greek names «Macedonian, Macedonia, Aegean Sea», what they now so fondly call «Egejska Makedonija», came into use, their own ancestors lived in some unknown Russian steppe.


This habit to appropriate foreign names for political purposes, is by no means new. In an attempt to unite the Yugoslavs, from 1830 to 1850, the Croats assumed the name «Jllyrian» and fought for political and national ends under this foreign, pre-slavic appellation. The Slavs of Skopje to-day are doing exactly the same with the pre-slavic name «Macedonian».(14)


If the historical and national rights of peoples are decided in this fashion, then who could deny the Greeks the right to reverse the argument of the Slays and to argue with equal logic, that since the Greeks have saved the southern part of Macedonia from Slavisation and kept it ethnologically and linguistically Greek, indeed a trustee of Greek civilization, just as the ancient Macedonians were trustees, members and promoters of Greek civilisation the world over, and since furthermore the inhabitants of Greek Macedonia are historically and ethnologically the heirs and successors of ancient Macedonians, it is to this Greek Macedonia that its northern, Yugoslav, extension should be annexed whether or not it is inhabited to day by many Greeks; and it is in fact inhabited by approximately two millions of pure and nationally conscious Greeks.


The Greeks nevertheless have accepted the present ethnological reality in the Balkan peninsula and respect the new rights which history has created de facto in this part of the world. They make no claims on the northern, Slavophone parts of Macedonia, and recognise as an accomplished fact the situation which history has created to their disadvantage.
They ask no more than that their northern neighbours should themselves realise that the extent of provocation for which they have been responsible has reached the limit. «There are limits which ought to be respected "" or else who could ever put an end to this vicious circle of mutual malice?


The Greeks and all sensible and objective people, whatever their nationality, regard the fate of Macedonia as decided once and for all. Macedonia has been divided by the sword of history ethnologically, linguistically and politically into two zones:
A) the Slavic zone which to-day is contained in the State of Skopje and the Pirin region
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------------
14. M. Laskaris: To' Anatolikon Zhthma-- 18OO /1923. (Thessaloniki 1948) 1, 299.


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in the south-western part of Bulgaria and
B) the Greek zone which forms part of the Hellenic State. The latter is inhabited solely by Greeks. It has resisted Slavic penetration. The former can no longer claim a substantial Greek population. It is inhabited chiefly by Slavs whose right it is to attribute any name they like to themselves, if only a greater respect for their racial origins taught them to refrain from using a name so doubtlessly Greek and so closely bound up with the glorious past of Greece, as is the name of Macedonia.


The Macedonians, as is well known, spoke Greek at least from the 5th century B.C. onwards even if we accept for a moment that their language was not, originally, some older Hellenic dialect as indeed we now know for sure that it was. The Macedonians clung to Hellenic culture and according to Polybius (9,35), the ancient historian, «they never ceased fighting in defense of the security of the Greeks». Their names are well-known to us, they are all pure Greek and none is Thracio-Illyrian or Slavic. How, then, could the people who from the time they first set foot on Greek lands and throughout the Middle Ages and the period of Turkish rule were linguistically, culturally and politically Slavs, who ignored completely the geographical name Macedonia, who before the Balkan wars sent Bulgarian representatives to the Turkish Parliament,
how could these people become Macedonians overnight?

How can they reconcile their new Greek name with either their Slavic language or their fanatical hatred of everything Greek?
But this is not all; the western region of the State of Skopje is inhabited by 164.000 Albanians who consider themselves both linguistically and in every other respect part of the Albanian nation.

Are these Macedonians too? If so why not call by the same name the 200.000 Turcophones, the Gypsies and the Armenians?

Why not attribute this national name to the Vlachs? But then we should first have to fashion a new definition of historical and ethnological concepts.

B. The argument of territorial and economic unity. -------------------------------------------------------------------
The Slavs of the State of Skopje, lost up till now in the welter of Greeks, Albanians, Vlachs, Turks and Gypsies who, during the Byzantine era and later under Turkish rule composed the population of southern
Servia, never had a trace of national conscience. The struggle for liberation against Ottoman domination left them completely unmoved. The call to freedom trumpeted by the Greeks to all Christian nations of the
Balkan peninsula at the beginning of the 19th century resulted in the liberation of a part of Greek territories


Page 57


and the establishment of the modern Greek state, failed to wake them from their sleep. Devoid of national consciousness, devoid of culture and of a tradition of independent statehood, they naturally lacked the
scientific background necessary to the study of the particular political and historical problems of their country. Since the Treaty of San Stephano until recently, the representatives of Slav aggressive nationalism and expansionism in the Balkan peninsula were the Bulgarians. But when in the troubled period of German occupation of the Balkans, during World War II, the Cominform proclaimed Macedonia an independent State, these people took up the ready-made Bulgarian slogans for a united Macedonia and have since been using them blindly and slavishly. Whoever would refute their arguments, must therefore answer the Bulgarians rather than the scholars of Skopje.


According to the Serb geographer, J. Cvijic (15), the Slav Valley of Morava and the Greek Valley of the river Axios constitute a geographical unit. Consequently, so the argument goes, the two should co
nstitute a single -and of course Slav- political entity. This is obviously an untenable theory for how is it possible to set national boundaries by the flow of rivers, or by the orientation of the plains and valleys? Valleys had a decisive influence in shaping national entities only in the stone age when lack of communications resulted unavoidable isolation. It is absurd to argue today that frontiers should be defined
by the unity of rivers, valleys and plains. The whole of the world nowadays forms a geographical and economic unit. The only conceivable boundaries at present are those running along the lines dividing different linguistic and national groups. Besides, modern means of communication have changed these geographical features from dividing lines into links for the exchange of material and cultural goods between different nations and states.


The towns and villages of the Axios valley south of its tributary Erogan (L. Erigonas) , are and have always been -in antiquity and through the Middle Ages and to this day- ethnologically Greek, whereas north of that river they were Illyrian in ancient times, then Greek, and later on predominantly Slavic.
It can clearly be seen that the geographical unity of that valley failed to deterinine its national and political unity in the past; it could much less determine such a unity today. Commercially and economically, the ever Greek valley of the lower Axios is linked with the ports of the Aegean and with the nation
----------------------------------------------------------------------
15. J. Cvijic: La peninsule balkanique (Paris 1918).


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which for thousands of years has inhabited the Aegean coast. The valley of the upper Axios and of Morava is linked with the northern Balkan region and the Danube. It would be interesting to learn from the intellectual and political leaders of the State of Skopje when their people first heard of the existence of the Aegean Sea and what people's glory it was that the Aegean waves cradled ever since, and long before, the beginning of history on the European continent.

C. The argument about the alleged Slavic character of the whole of Macedonia.
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--------------------
The argument regarding the name ""Macedonian -- Macedonia "", is really only a pretext and is only put forward accessorily. The one argument on which they insist is the ethnological one, namely that Macedonia did not belong to the Hellenic world in antiquity, and that during the Middle Ages it had become thoroughly Slav.


Let us examine these arguments in turn.


1) The Slavs persist in regarding the ancient Macedonians as Thracio-Illyrians, i.e. a race which though Indo-European itself, was however quite distinct from the ancient Hellenes. It is well known that
the ancient Macedonians considered themselves Greeks and what is known of their language conforms entirely with Greek as a centum language, and differs fundamentally from Thracio - Illyrian which is a satem language. Like other Greeks, they chose the Attic dialect as the official language of their State, a circumstance which would have been inconceivable had their previous idiom not been a Greek dialect. While they were constantly at war with the Thracio-Illyrians, they invariably defended the Hellenic world and it was the Greek civilisation and language that they enforced in the Eastern and Mediterranean regions they conquered.
What more should they have done to convince us that they were Greeks? No objective and bona fide historian to-day questions the Greek ethnological character of the ancient Macedonians.
The great linguist P. Kretschmer in his book «Sprache» (p. 87) maintains that the ancient Macedonians were a tribe which broke away from the main body of the Greek nation and settled at an early stage in
the mountainous country which is situated to the north of Thessaly. And the historian 0. Reche in his book «Rasse und Heimat der Indogermanen» : (p.54) writes that the Macedonians followed the Dorians
as the last of successive waves of Hellenic migrations into the Greek peninsula.
The only question to-day is to know to what extent its language received foreign admixtures as a result of the contacts which the ancient Mace-


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donians established with the Thracio-Illyrian tribes which they conquered. This we readily admit but will insist that it is irrelevant in a discussion of the Greek character and consciousness of the Macedonian people. In order to support their contentions that ever since the Middle Ages, when they first appeared in the Balkan peninsula, they have never settled on Greek territory, but have only encountered and assimilated Thracio-Illyrian tribes, - for which reason they regard themselves as
the heirs of historical and racial Thracio - Illyrian rights in the Balkans - the Slavs disregard all evidence of the Greekness of the ancient Macedonians.
They further refuse to admit the universally accepted fact that the Macedonians as an undoubtedlyGreek-speaking group - at least from the 5th century onwards - gradually hellenised the majority of Thracio-Illyrians in the Balkan peninsula, with the result during the Alexandrian, Roman and Byzantine eras, the Balkan was a Greek peninsula; a fact which is amply illustrated by the Greek inscriptions preserved in those regions.
On the basis of these inscriptions, the Czech historian Cj. Jirecek (16), traced the well-known line which bears his name. The Jirecek line marking the limits of the Hellenic civilisation and language in the Balkans at least up to the 7th century A.D. runs from the mouth of the river Skumbi on the Adriatic sea through Skopje and Serdika (contemporary Sofia) and eastward along the Aemos range to the Black sea.


According to Jirecek who was neither a Greek nor a Philhellene, but a Slav who respected historical truth, the whole area of the present State of Skopje belonged to the sphere of Greek language and culture - at least down to the 7th century A. D. that is when the presence of the Slavs in the Greek peninsula first made itself felt.


It was Greeks, then, both linguistically and culturally, not Thracio-Illyrians that the Slavs met in the Balkans, and Greeks that they strove to assimilate as the large number of Greek words in their language shows. The Slavs did not come into contact with Thracio-Illyrians, firstly because the latter had disappeared a long time before; secondly, because the Slav languages in theBalkan peninsula have not preserved any Thracio-Illyrian elements as they certainly would have, if the Thracio-Illyrian language had been alive at the time when the Slavs invaded the Balkans. By contrast, Slav languages
---------------------------------------------------
16. C. J. Jirecek: Die Romanen in den Stadten Dalmatiens wAhrend des Mittelalters l,13.


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have several Hellenic admixtures which are proof that the only people whom the Slavs encountered in the Balkans were Greeks.


2) The Slavs insist on exaggerating both the duration and the importance of the consequences of the Slavic occupation of Greek Macedonia during the Middle Ages by Serb and Bulgarian rulers.
The Slavs first entered the Balkans as inercenaries of the Avars, during the 6th century A.D. It was only after the defeat of the Avars in Constantinople that they began to settle sporadically as peaceful
peasants south of the Danube. These sporadic and peaceful settlements continued in the 7th and 8th centuries. That the Byzantine empire, then at the height of its power, tolerated these Slav settlements on the southern bank of the Danube is in itself proof of the fact that the Slav immigrants were numerically
few and in their quality as peaceful peasants presented no threat to the safety of the State. Thessaloniki, the great metropolis of Macedonian Greekdom, «towered over the Slavs as a great military and civilising power armed with the sword and the gospel » as Rambaud (17 ) writes epigrammatically.
The Serbs who undoubtedly had more Illyrian blood in their veins, were relatively less war-like people who «ever submitted to the rule of neighbourly powers» as the historical writer Choniatis(18) says. So long as Byzantium was powerful, it had nothing to fear from them. It was only with the decline of the Byzantine Empire under the Angeli, that the Serb leader Stepan Nemania (1331-1355) and his dynasty were able to found a viable Serb State, to conquer Kastoria and Serrai in 1345 and to occupy J annina and Thessaly (1348). That Stephan Nemania proclaimed himself Czar of the Serbs and the Greeks can be taken as evidence of the fact that in the middle of the 14th century, Macedonia south of Servia was Greek. For otherwise who could be Stepan Nemania's Greek subjects? Greek inscriptions in Western Macedonia (19) during that period abundantly show that even under Serb occupation the dominant language was Greek and that the Greek element continued to predominate as a race in Macedonia.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
17. Rambaud: L' empire grec an Xe siecle , p. 235.
18. N. Choniatis: History, p. 23, 4 (Bonn): «Soon afterwards, he (the Emperor loannis Komnenos conducted a military campaign against the nation of Trivalloi Or Serbs, as they are called by some) because they
had committed crimes and had not respected the truce; and after they came to grips he defeated them completely and subdued them: these people were unfit for war, wherefore they were always subdued by neighbouring powers "".
19. Gelzer: Byzantinische Inschriften aus Westmakedonien (Athen, Mitteilungen, 27, 431).


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The half brother of Stepan Uresi III, Symeon Uresi, a Palaeologue on his mother's side, became the independent ruler of Epirus, Thessaly and southern Macedonia, with Trikala as his capital and Greeks as his
subjects. Greek was the established language and in this official documents were written. But John Uresi, Symeon's son, became a monk by the name of Ioasaf in Mount Athos and Meteora and the Serb occupation of the above mentioned Greek regions, lasted for a decade only. The other Serb ruler John Uglesi, local governor of Eastern Macedonia with Serrai as his capital, is known to have broken away from the Serb State, separated his church from the Serb Patriarchate of Pec, and joined it to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The Greek Byzantine civilisation and the compact Greek population of the country under their rule, always exerted an irresistible assimilating influence on the Serb princes.


The only thing that the Serbs achieved as a result of their temporary
expansion in Greek Byzantine territories, was to undermine the power of
the Byzantine Empire, when it was fighting the Turks in Asia Minor.
Thus, in contributing to its downfall, they also brought about their
own subjugation which was complete by 1371, their territories having
been conquered by the Turks while some parts of Byzantium, then the
only Christian bulwark in the Balkans, still resisted destruction.


It should, however, be noted that though the short-lived territorial expansion into Greek regions was not only useless from the point of view of the history of Christendom and Civilisation, but even prejudiced the common cause of Christianity in the face of the conquering fury of Turkish Islam, though by undermining the defensive strength of Byzantium, (the only power that stood between their own civilisation and Asian barbarism), precipitated their own enslavement, the Slavs during their invasions of Greek territories were never as blood-thirsty, cruel and destructive to Greek populations (20) as were the Bulgarians.


The Bulgarians were by heredity and tradition a nation of nomads, to whom productive economy was unknown. Thus it often happened that as soon as the loot taken through pillage of Greek villages was consumed, their country was again stricken by famine, and famine urged them on to new incursions. Pillage, cruelty and abduction of Greeks to the north of the Aemos range where the Bulgarians established a
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-
20. K. Amantos: Istorikai sxeseis Ellhnwn, Servwn, kai Bougarwn, Athens 1949 p. 68.


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base, were common in the Balkan regions of the Byzantine state during the period of the old Bulgarian State since it was established by Asparuch in 679 A.D. until under Basil II it became once more a Byzantine province.


In 977 Samuel, the son of Count Nicolaus, contrived by bringing together all the Boyars that were discontented against the Bulgarian ruler Peter, to create a small State in Northern Macedonia. From there he invaded Thessaly, and faithful to Bulgarian practice, he deported the Greek inhabitants of Larissa to Prespa and Ochris. His rule over purely Greek countries, however was very short, for his activities, brought against him the wrath of the Byzantines and accelerated his death and the downfall of his country at the sword of Basil II in 1014.


After this, Bulgaria again became a Byzantine province and remained so until 1186. Ochris, Samuel's capital, was restored as a centre of Greek civilisation, as is shown by the famous inscriptions of the church of St. Achillius on the island of Prespa. The country south of Aemos remained ethnologically and linguistically Greek throughout the Middle Ages. The Bulgarian predominance there had merely the character of robber incursions, undertaken only when the Byzantine empire, engaged in a life or death struggle on other fronts, left its rear uncovered.


The present Slavophone population of southern Bulgaria is descended from Greeks who, as a result of the legendary Bulgarian cruelty, were slowly assimilated, and from north Bulgarian settlers who proceeded
southwards during the years of Turkish occupation when the whole of the Balkan peninsula was open to population movements. It was during Ottoman rule that small scale infiltrations of Slavs occurred in Greek Macedonia with a result that a few unimportant Slavophone villages were founded, villages, which the Bulgarians to-day cite in support of their expansionist claims as if they constituted the ancient cradle of their nationality.


The Bulgarians have nothing to show to prove that they made a contribution, either during the Byzantine era, or during the Turkish occupation, to the civilisation of the country whose nationals they have tried for centuries, by sword and fire to drive out of their ancient homesteads. After their conversion to Christianity, the Bulgarians modelled their language on Greek and acquired a literature by translating the works of Greek writers. They learnt from the Greeks the art of urban living and inhabited exclusively Greek towns, where by assimilating the willing and cruelly persecuting the unwilling, they succeeded in enforcing their nationality. In these towns the Bulgarians now display the works produced by Greek hands with the


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Greek sense of beauty as works of their own alleged ancient civilisation.


The one and only contribution by the Bulgarians to the fates of the Balkan was that by robbery, pillage, abduction, criminal acts of cruelty and horror of which the Byzantine historical writer Nikita Choniati wrote that they were such "" as the ear had never heard, and the eye had never seen before "", they impeded the civilising mission of the mediaeval Greek nation, undermined the strength of the sole defender of
Christendom in the East and hastened its fall under the onslaught of the Asian conqueror. The Bulgarians themselves were first subdued by the Turks in 1393, 60 years before the capture of Constantinople.

D. The argument about the nationality of the inhabitants of Greek Macedonia to-day.


The claim on Greek Macedonia advanced by the Slavs of Skopie rests not only on an over-estimation of the Slav cultural and demographic factor, but also on summary dismissal of the present Greek ethno-logical element arid on distortion of recent historical facts. These views find expression in Hristo Antonovski's new book,""Egejska Makedonija"" (Skopje, year of publication not mentioned) which is full of historical inaccuracies. It is well-known that the part of Macedonia which is now contained in the kingdom of Greece is inhabited by 2.000.000 people. (Census 1951 ). Of these, only 80.000 are bilingual Greeks. Those who had a Slav conscience departed fcom Grecec either under the Treaty of Neuilly, 1919) (21) or after the end of the guerilla war in 1949. Seeing that no serious claim could rest on a linguistic minority of this size in a country with so compact a Greek population, Antonovski decided to raise the number of Slavophones to 250.000. He distributes
----------------------------------------------------------------------
21. H. Morgenthau: "I Was Sent to Athens", page 304 writes: "" The turks and the Bulgarians...........all left for their respective countries and left Macedonia purely Greek"". Swire: ""Bulgarian conspiracy"" (London 1939) p.31 writes:""The Bulgarians emigrated from Macedonia voluntarily. They were not forced to do so. Bulgarians claims were cancelled and Macedonia became a Greek province"".


Busch Zantner writes: ""Unterdem Vorwande volkspolitische Gesichtspunkte zu vertreten, kann heute Bulgarian auf Sud-Mazedonien keinen Anspruch mehr erheben"".

S.K. Macartney writes: ""National States and National Minority"" (London 1934) p.439: ""Southern Macedonia is constanly inhabited by true
Greeks"". (See :Ch. Naltsas ref.p.522). For statistics about the percentage of Greek population in Macedonia before 1912 see the book by Ch. K. Sotiropoulos: Apantisis pros Vorran (Athens 1962) pp.17.ff.

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them by regions in the following proportions, as compared with the Greek-speaking population. Kastoria ~72%, Kailaria -32 %, Edessa -54,8 %, Serrai -13 %, Salonica -27,6%. But as even with this gross over-estimation the Greek majority in""Aegean Macedonia"" remains overwhelming, Antonovski excludes from the Greek population the large number of Greek refugees who arrived from Asia Minor and settled in Macedonia, in 1923 under the Lausanne population exchange Treaty. He claims that they are not Greeks, but Karamanlides, pure Turks (tsisti Turtsi) (22 ) whom Turkey sent to Greece on the occasion of the exchange of populations because being Christian Orthodox they did not
have a Turkish conscience. Turkey, according to Antonovski, wanted to be rid of them for that reason and at the same time because they might furnish Greece a pretext to claim on their behalf the Turkish territories they inhabited. Even the Pontian refugees, who are exlusively Greek-speaking and universally known to be the true descendants of the ancient lonian settlers of the Black sea, he calls Lazoi.
He assigns them as well as the refugees from Caucasus, who were themselves Pontian settlers, Turkish nationality. A hundred thousand of
these refugees who settled in Greek Macedonia he describes as Armenian. He even discovered some Kurds among them! It is hard to choose between his ignorance of historical facts and his impudence. For never since the Turks established their rule in Asia Minor, and by means of cruel persecution and oppression converted to Islam the majority of its Christian Greek population, never once did it happen that a Turk decided to become a Christian; that he exchanged his position of religious~ economic and political power for subjection; that
he chose to become a slave at a time when people born Christians gave up their religion for Islam because they were able no longer to suffer
oppression and tyranny. But assuming that notwithstanding all this a Turk decided to take this step, how could he ever survive since death
was the certain penalty for rejection of the dominant religion? Death was even meted out to those Christians whose conversion to Islam
did not go beyond the surface if it were ever discovered that they practised Christianity stealthily (the well-known Crypto-Christians ).
(23). It is a shame in the face of the verv science which they are trying for the first time to establish in their country that the Slavs of Skopje, though themselves Christians, have no scrup-
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------
22. Hr. Antonovski: Egejska Makedonija p. 42.
23. N. P. Andriotis: Kryptochristianikh filologia (Thessaloniki, 1953), N.Milioris: Oi Kryptoxristianoi (Athens 1962).


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les about distorting history - even creating a university in their capital for that purpose-and about reviling that section of Greek Christendom which amidst tortures and under the cruellest yoke known to history, in preserving their Greek conscience have also managed to preserve the religion of Christ for centuries, and finally breathe the air of national and religious liberty on free Greek soil.
The Slavs of Skopje must know that many of their own fellow countrymen were compelled by Turkish oppression to embrace Islam. There
are in that country today, as there are also in Bulgaria, many hundred thousand Mahommedan Slavs. But can they point to a single Christian Slav who had been a Turk and was converted to Christianity during the Ottoman rule? They insist that the Moslems of their country are Slav converts to Islam; they moan over the alleged fact that the Turks of Greek Macedonia who went to Turkey in consequence of the exchange of populations were in fact islamised Slavs (24) and their evacuation reduced the Slav element in the country;
Why then do they refuse to accept the historically proven fact that a considerable number of Moslems in Asia Minor, Macedonia and Thrace
were Greeks whom Turkish tyranny forced to embrace Islam but who to this day retain their Greek language?
Such are the Ophites of Pontus, the Vallaades of Macedonia and the so-called Turco-Cretans. The original Turks were of Mongolian race,
whilst all the Turks of Asia Minor and Europe to-day are white. Whence can these white Turks claim descent except from Christians,
i.e., from Byzantine Greeks! And if it is admitted that white Turks are descended from Greeks, by what logic is it possible to argue that Greek-speaking Christians of Turkey are Turks, indeed pure Turks "tsisti turtsi " as the scholars of Skopje maintain?
But what can one expect from a science which has no tradition to respect and which from the very first was made to the measure of
political expediency?
In order to explain away the lack of any considerable Slavophone minority in Greek Macedonia, Hristo Antonovski does not hesitate to use
the most preposterous arguments. He seriously maintains, for instance, that after the liberation of Greek Macedonia, the Slavophones were
decimated by Spanish influenza, as though this essentially epidemic disease had a special preference for Slavs, and avoided Greeks. And he goes on to say (p.55) that in Greek Macedonia to-day malaria, tuberculosis, psoriasis and eye diseases run havoc
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
24. K. Amantos : Makedonika p.65

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on the population, as if Greek medicine, the oldest in the whole of Europe and second to none in the Near East in modern times, had anything to learn from the newly founded university' of Skopje.

Those among the few Vlachophones of Greek Macedonia who are oriented towards Greek education and Greek civilization, he calls Grecomani, i.e. Grecomaniacs. A name clearly implying a silent protest against the people who failed to foresee that in the middle of the 20th century a new State would rise in Skopje whose civilisation and glory would at once overshadow the oldest civilisation in the Greek peninsula.

It is impossible to read such arguments without amusement and wonder at the degree of objectivity shown by the scholars of Skopje. The terms in which they couch their arguments are also characteristic.

According to Antonovski some Vlachs fell (Propadnale) under Greek influence, others gained (Dobile) a Slavic conscience. (25).
It is probable that the Vlachs are latinised Greeks. But let us suppose that they are not, and that they' came from Dacia during the Byzantine era. The fact that they loved and admired, or even just showed respect for the culture and the civilisation of the people in whose midst they had come to live, is considered as a fall, as a decline! Adoption of Slav culture on the other hand, a culture which was
non-existant - and that is precisely why the Slavs became «Grecomani» during the Byzantine period or under the Turkish rule -is regarded as a gain!

Antonovski (p. 36) describes in sinister terms the migration of 700.000 peasants from the border regions to the urban centers during the recent guerilla war. The writer knows of course, though he is careful not to admit it, that those peasants had nothing in common with the Slavophone minority and that this mass migration, so costly to the Greek nation as a whole, was made necessary in order to safeguard those
peasants from imprisonment and the danger of being taken as hostages, or of seeing their children abducted by the Communist guerillas who were dissolved as soon as Yugoslavia ceased to tolerate them.

From the way in which Antonovski distorts recent events it is possible to surmise what treatment our ancient history receives at his hands. The name « Macedonia», he writes in the beginning of his book, appears in ancient times as that of the State of Macedonia. He conceals its Greek derivation from the Homeric adjective ""Mace-dnos"" (tall) from Macos (length) he thinks his readers had better not know any-
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---
25. Hr. Antonovski reff. p. 44.


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thing about it, so he only says that it comes from the same root "mak" as the Latin Magnus. In other words he begins from the very first page of his book with a falsification of facts. He does not say of what nationality these ancient Macedonians were and what language they spoke, for if he said it, he would be forced to admit that they were a Hellenic tribe and spoke a Hellenic dialect, or, at any rate did so from the 5th century B.C. when the Attic dialect became the official language in Macedonia and was spread by the Macedonians through the ancient world together with Greek civilisation; and that Greek has remained their language through the Roman and Byzantine ages, through the period of Turkish rule to this day. For if he admitted this truth, what sense would there be in the subsequent pages of his book where Macedonia is represented as a kind of common property with Slavs, Albanians, Vlachs and even Thracio-Illyrians moving freely about and Greeks conspicuously absent?

How could he create the impression that this mixture of peoples just waited for the year of grace 1944 in order to let their national Macedonia heritage materialise?

In the distortion of history the Slavs of Skopje have proved themselves worthy disciples of the Bulgarians. It was «Bulgarian science» which seriously put forward the view that the Bulgarians were the oldest inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula; that they came from India, that they founded the oracle of Delphi, that Alexander the Great was a Bulgarian, that Paul the Apostle preached the gospel to Bulgarians and that Justinian, the Byzantine Emperor was a Slav etc. (26).

In their books, Antonovski and Lape present photographs of walls, temples, castles and other historical monuments of the Greek Macedonian
cities. (27). They fail to explain that in building these monuments not a stone was contributed by Slavs, that the walls were constructed for the express purpose of defending those cities against the attacks and pillages of the Slavs, that the murals in those churches portray the victories of Greece against Slavs and Saints assisting the Greeks in their defensive wars against the Slav attacks. Of the history of those towns that well-meaning Antonovski has nothing more to say than what is related with the insignificant and transitory presence of Slavs. Of Thessaloniki, for instance, he knows only that the first press was established there during the Turkish occupation, as well as the first Slav
--------------------------------------------------------------------
26. St. Kyriakidis: ""The Northern Ethnological Boundaries of Hellenism"" (Thessaloniki, 1955) pp. 13 ff.
27. Hr. Antonovski ref. pp. 8, 12, 40, 56, 64, Ljuben Lape: ""Odbrami Tsetva za istorijata na makedonskiot narod "" (Skopje 1952) pp. 16, 19, 41 42, 57, 67.

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school in 1869 and the first and last Slavic gymnasium in 1880 in addition to the fact that the town served as headquarters for the
BMPO---Komitadji. Of the monasteries of Mount Athos he knows that they possess manuscripts that are invaluable for Balkan history, but in what language these documents are written he does not feel it incumbent upon him to say.

The struggles which the Greeks of Macedonia fought in order to defend themselves against the threat of extermination by Panslavism, Antonovski will not regard as national struggles. He describes them as the result of the activities of Turkish Government Agents. In other words he denies the Greeks of Macedonia both national feeling and the desire to survive the danger of national annihilation.

Speaking of the economic life of Greek Macedonia under the Turkish rule, Antonovski uses corrupt Slav versions of the original Greek place-names in order to create the impression that he is referring to Slav territories; he speaks for instance of Soloun, instead of Thessaloniki, of Kostur, instead of Kastoria, of Voden, instead of Edessa and so on. Furthermore, he can think of no other contributors to the industrial and commercial development of Macedonia, except the Slavs, The Tsindzars and the Turks. No mention is made of the Greeks, although Greek predominance on the economic scene in the area is universally known.
He is blissfully innocent of the mass execution of Greek Macedonians by Bulgarian Komitadji and chooses to ignore the fact that they deliberately murdered Turks in the proximity of Greek villages in order to provoke the wrath of Turkish authorities against the Greek population.

He is also unaware that during the Balkan wars and during the two World Wars, the Bulgarians, proceeded with the wholesale murder of Greeks, the taking of men as hostages and the devastation of Greek villages. He knows nothing of all these atrocities, for the result was
precisely what the Slavs desired. His humanitarian sentiment is only moved by the thought that the separation of Greek Macedonia from Serb and Bulgarian Macedonia deprived the former of the many economic advantages which it enjoyed under the Turkish rule when the whole of the Balkan peninsula formed a single economic unit.

He would have us believe that a new prosperity awaits the people of Greek Macedonia if only their region were united with the Slav Macedonias to the north. But even if this were true, is national freedom, the highest good in life, to be bargained against economic advantages? Yet we Greeks continue to take these people seriously and to fear


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in our discussions with them, lest we should advance an argument not strictly in accordance with historical evidence. They are people who, in the name of Communism, have abandoned as bourgeois superstition all respect for what we regard as sacred, for
historical truth and national justice.
Their creed is contained in the principles propounded by Lenin in 1919: «It will be essential for us to have recourse to any stratagems. We shall not hesitate to use falsehood. By deceit, illegality and craft we will ensure the corcealment of truth... so long as capitalism survives we cannot live in peace. In the end one side or other will triumph.. but until that happens, the important thing is to learn to be deceitful and flexible». (28)
One might wonder whether it is worthwhile to attach so much importance to proving the incorrectness of a book, even if it is one of bad faith. The answer is that Antonovski's book is not the only one of its kind for several others have been published with the self-same
objective of furthering expansionist aims by distorting the judgment of people with historical untruth.
I am not competent to deal with the political aspect of the threat which the State of Skopje presents to Greek Macedonia, I will refer the reader to an excellent book on this subject by A.A. Kyrou: «Our Balkan Neighbours» (Athens 1962) and will restrict myself to quoting a few passages which show, beyond any doubt, the official attitude of that country on the subject with which we are concerned.
Prime Minister Lazar Kolisefsky declared in 1945 that «the unification of the whole of Macedonia within the limits of Tito's Yugoslavia was amongst the objectives of the Popular front of Macedonia from the very first day of its creation»(28a). Tito's close and trusted collahorator, Mosha Pijade, made it clear at the Paris Peace Conference where he acted as leader of the Yugoslav delegation that «it is our intention to bring up the question of Aegean Macedonia... It is time that this lamentable question (the Macedonian problem) were solved in a way which would allow these peoples (of Greek, and Bulgarian Macedonia) to unite and enjoy in national unity the freedom and independence which only citizens of the people's Macedonian republic of the Yugoslavian Federation enjoy to-day.(28b )Kolisefsky's collaborator D. Vlachof, said
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
28. Ch. Naltsas: To Makedonikon Zitima k.l.p. p. 527

28a. For the political aspect of the menace from the State of Skopje today against Greek Macedonia see A.A. Kyrou: "Oi Balkanikoi geitones mas" (Athens 1962) pp. 202 ff. and Ch. K. Sotiropoulos ref pp. 41 ff.

28b. See A.A. ½roo ref. pp.202 ff.


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in 1946 :«We declare emphatically that Greece has absolutely no right on the Aegean Macedonia... the Macedonian nation is fighting for its unification with the Macedonian People's Republic which constitutes an inseparable part of the federation of popular republics "".
It is D. Vlachof's contention, in other words, that two million Greeks of Macedonia strive for unification with the State of Skopje, a thing that has surely never entered their minds and the mention of which they would repudiate with indignation. Leaving aside national pride and dignity what sort of state would emerge from this plan for unification: a Greek or a Slav State and on what national languages, and on what culture would that State be founded, on the Greek majority element, or on the Slavo -Turco - Albano - Gipsy minority?. It is enough to mention but the latest work of Lazar Kolisefski, Prime Minister of the State of Skopje, «La question Nationale Macedoniemie» (Beograd, 1959) to show to what extent the official Government has adopted and taken upon itself to propagate those views.
All historical, linguistic and demographic facts are lightly waved aside by the statement «nous sommes des communistes, des marxistes, et non des pragma tistes... Les Cominunistes yougoslaves ont toujours puise' leur force... dans le fait qu'ils ont pose' des objectifs
politiques concordant profondement avec les aspirations des peuples, avec les lois objectives du developpement social et national» (p. 10) In other words ""DO not talk to us about reason and historical truth"". «It may well be» he writes (p. 11)....... «that many of our ancestors considered themselves Bulgarians, Serbs or Greeks. There is no need for us to conceal the fact or to be ashamed of it. We cannot,
for the sake of a bourgeois method of history-writing, determine history on the basis of one piece of fact or another taken separately, when such facts contradict the combined whole of objective historical laws and their results», which is as much as to say: «We have established a state, we have named it Macedonia, whatever is not in conformity with this fact is mere vain talk.»

very good thread perseas,
a article that must read from all:read:

Some more infos:

European ethnographs and linguists until the Congress of Berlin usually regarded the language of the Slavic population of Macedonia as Bulgarian. French scholars A. Boue in 1840 and G. Lejean in 1861, Germans A. Griesebach in 1841, J. Hahn in 1858 and 1863, A. Petermann in 1869 and H. Kiepert in 1876, Slovak Safarik in 1842 and the Czechs J. Erben in 1868 and F. Brodaska in 1869, Englishmen Wyld in 1877 and G. M. Mackenzie and A.P. Irby in 1863, Serbians Davidovitch in 1848, Desjardins in 1853 and S. Verkovic in 1860, Russians V. Grigorovich in 1848, V. Makushev and M.F. Mirkovitch in 1867, as well as Austrian K. Sax in 1878 published ethnography or linguistic books, or travel notes, which defined the Slavic population of Macedonia as Bulgarian.

Austrian doctor J. Muller published travel notes in 1844 where he regarded the Slavic population of Macedonia as Serbian.

The region was further identified as predominantly Greek by French F. Bianconi in 1877 and by Englishman E. Stanford in 1877. Stanford maintained that the urban population of Macedonia was entirely Greek, whereas the peasantry was of mixed, Bulgarian-Greek origin and had Greek consciousness but had not yet mastered the Greek language.

Serbian propaganda

Spiridon Gopcevic (also known as Leo Brenner) published in 1889 the ethnographic research Macedonia and Old Serbia, which defined more than three-quarters of the Macedonian population as Serbian. The population of Kosovo and northern Albania was identified as Serbian or Albanian of Serbian origin and the Greeks along the Aliakmon as Greeks of Serbian origin.

The work of Gopcevic was further developed by two Serbian scholars, geographer Jovan Cvijic and linguist Aleksandar Belic . Less extreme than Gopcevic, Cvijic and Belic claimed only the Slavs of northern Macedonia were Serbian whereas those of southern Macedonia were identified as "Macedonian Slavs", an amorphous Slavic mass that was neither Bulgarian, nor Serbian but could turn out either Bulgarian or Serbian if the respective people were to rule the region. The only Slavs in Macedonia which were referred to as Bulgarian were those living along the Strymon and Nestos rivers, i.e. present-day Pirin Macedonia and parts of northeastern Greece. Cviic further argued that the name Bugari (Bulgarians) used by the Slavic population of Macedonia to refer to themselves actually meant only ‘rayah’ – peasant Christians – and in no case affiliations to the Bulgarian ethnicity.

The Serbian propaganda effort in Macedonia was led chiefly on the educational front. The number of Serbian schools in Macedonia and Kosovo rose from only a handful of before 1878 to 178 with 321 teachers and 7,200 pupils at the turn of the 20th century. The Society of Saint Sava in Belgrade gave study scholarships to talented Macedonians, usually turning them into staunch supporters of the Serbian cause after the end of their education. Serbia was also successful in launching armed guerilla groups, mainly in northern Macedonia, which clashed with pro-Bulgarian IMRO. Despite the enormous financial support from Serbia the Serbian cause in Macedonia never made a significant success outside the northern districts of Tetovo, Skopje and Kumanovo where the local dialect had certain similarities with Serbian.

Statistical data

The 1911 edition of the Encylopaedia Britannica gave the following statistical estimates about the population of Macedonia:

* Bulgarians (described in encyclopaedia as "Slavs, the bulk of which is regarded by almost all independent sources as Bulgarians", a statement referring to the controversy between Bulgaria and Serbia as to the national affinities of the Slavs of Macedonia): ca. 1,150,000, whereof, 1,000,000 Orthodox and 150,000 Muslims (the so-called Pomaks)
* Turks: ca. 500,000 (Muslims)
* Greeks: ca. 250,000, whereof ca. 240,000 Orthodox and 14,000 Muslims
* Albanians: ca. 120,000, whereof 10,000 Orthodox and 110,000 Muslims
* Vlachs: ca. 90,000 Orthodox and 3,000 Muslims
* Jews: ca. 75,000
* Roma: ca. 50,000, whereof 35,000 Orthodox and 15,000 Muslims

In total 1,300,000 Christians (almost exclusively Orthodox), 800,000 Muslims, 75,000 Jews, a total population of ca. 2,200,000 for the whole of Macedonia.

It needs to be taken into account that a substantial part of the Bulgarian population in southern Macedonia regarded itself as Greek and a smaller percentage, mostly in northern Macedonia, as Serbian. All Muslims (except the Albanians) tended to view themselves and were viewed as Turks, irrespective of their mother tongue. Most Vlachs and orthodox Albanians regarded themselves as Greeks.

I want also to add a photograph that show from whom created this language. The commission that established in November 1944 in order to create the alpahvete first and of course all the history of the laguage that clearly said from the Proffessor Adriotis.

http://img365.imageshack.us/img365/4921/fyrom1944language1br.jpg



Left to right:
Vasil Ilioski, Hristo Zografov, Krum Toshev, Dare Djambas, Venko Markovski, Mirko Pavlovski, Mihail Petrushevski, Hristo Prodanov, Georgi Kiselinov, Georgi Shoptraianov, Iovan Kostov.

That's a great pic Akritas.

excellent article perseas...

Here is a great non-biased Academic site discussing the Slav-Macedonian language, it's history, creation and change until present. It also discusses it's similarities with Bulgarian, Serbian and the addition of Greek into it.

From the following site:

http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/Profile.aspx?LangID=42&menu=004




Number of Speakers: 2 million

Key Dialects: Eastern, Western, Northern

Geographical Center: Republic of Macedonia

Educational Resources: Few

GENERAL INTRODUCTIONMacedonian is the official language of the Republic of Macedonia, formerly the Yugoslavian Socialist Republic of Macedonia; it has a total of 2 million speakers including 1.4 million in Macedonia and about 200,000 in Greece. There are also speakers in Yugoslavia ( Republic of Serbia), Albania, and Bulgaria. Outside of Europe there are speakers in the USA, Canada, and Australia. Numbers of speakers are not available for Bulgaria or Albania because of those countries' language policies. Total speakers may number 2.5 million (Friedman 1985).

LINGUISTIC AFFILIATION
Macedonian is a Slavic language belonging to a group of South Slavic languages that includes Old Church Slavonic (a liturgical language), Slovene, Serbian/Croatian, and Bulgarian. The modern South Slavic languages form a continuum of a series of mutually intelligible dialects. The two end points, Slovene and Bulgarian, are not mutually intelligible, but the transition between Serbian/Croatian and Macedonian, and Bulgarian and Macedonian is gradual and mutual intelligibility is high. It is most closely related to Bulgarian. Some consider Macedonian a dialect of Bulgarian, but this is a highly charged issue hotly disputed by others. For example, Henniger (1992) discusses the matter from a Bulgarian point of view; Friedman (1987) from a Macedonian perspective.

Slavic languages (with the Baltic languages--Latvian and Lithuanian) form a branch of the Indo-European language family. Other Slavic subgroups are West Slavic (Czech, Slovak, Polish, etc.) and East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian).

LANGUAGE VARIATION
Although Macedonian is fairly homogeneous, several dialect areas can be distinguished (Friedman 1987): a major division of East and West, then a subsidiary division into Northern which cuts across the major east-west distinction. The dialect of the capital, Skopje, is located within the Northern area. The Western area consists of a large Central area, and a Peripheral one, the latter located in Macedonia along the Albanian and southwestern Serbian borders. The East comprises a relatively undifferentiated area which includes the Macedonian dialects of Bulgaria (Pirin Macedonian) and those of northern Greece (Aegean Macedonian). The dialects of the West Central area, largest in size and population and most distinct from both Serbian/Croatian and Bulgarian, with elements from the dialect of Skopje, the Macedonian capital, are the basis of the literary standard.

ORTHOGRAPHYA modified Cyrillic alphabet, more similar to that used for Serbian than for Russian or Bulgarian, is the official orthography; it was codified in the late 1940s and adopted in final form in the early 1950s.

LINGUISTIC SKETCH
Macedonian, like other Slavic languages, is a highly inflected language with an rich morphological system that distinguishes various grammatical functions and relationships. Nouns are marked for three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter. However, unlike other Slavic languages, the case system has been almost entirely lost; traces exist in nouns referring to male kin. Instead of case markers, syntactic distinctions are indicated by prepositions. The numbers, singular and plural, are distinguished for most nouns. Definite nouns are indicated by a set of three suffixal articles, a proximate, distal, and neuter. Adjectives indicate gender only in the singular but share a common plural. Adjectives are compared by using separate prefixes for the comparative and superlative. Like nouns, neither adjectives nor numerals are declined for case. Pronouns preserve some aspects of the system of inflection and distinguish nominative, direct, and indirect objective cases.

Macedonian is conservative relative to other Slavic languages in preserving the Common Slavic verbal system. Verbs are marked for person and number; the oppositions for present, imperfect, and aorist (a kind of past tense that expresses completed action) are present; as are the mood distinctions for indicative and imperative. The perfect is expressed, however, by the use of an auxiliary and a past participle. The future is marked by a particle prefixed to the present. In addition to verb conjugation, there are periphrastic verb constructions (sentence-like constructions) for talking about events that the speaker has not witnessed.

The neutral order of sentential constituents is Subject-Verb-Object. Other orders are determined by discourse context and pragmatics.

Macedonian has only five short vowel phonemes, but a fairly rich consonantal system of 28 phonemes; stress is placed on the fist syllable of bi-syllabic words and on the antepenult in words of three or more syllables.

Macedonian has borrowed heavily from both Greek and Turkish; influence from Serbian is also strong. Turkish loans and expressions are mainly found in colloquial and humorous speech; they have been consciously replaced in written Macedonian or been naturalized. English is a dominant source of loans today.

ROLE IN SOCIETY
The standard dialect of Macedonian was recognized in 1944. It is the official language. While it is the norm in all areas of public life, Serbian/Croatian (often a second language for many Macedonians) and local dialect forms continue to exert an influence on the language, especially those in the Western dialect area, which is the basis for the standard. Texts are a problem for university classes and texts in Serbian/Croatian are often used in many subjects.

In areas outside the republic, Macedonian is not recognized and in some cases linguistic independence for the language and its dialects is repressed. In Bulgaria, Macedonian is viewed as a dialect of Bulgarian. Macedonian and publications in Macedonian are not permitted. The Greek government has actively pursued a policy of hellenizing Macedonian culture and language. It is not permitted in the media, education, or public life, and the official attitude is that Macedonian is a dialect of Greek rather than a Slavic language. In Albania, neither the language nor the people have status or recognition.

Other languages spoken in Macedonia include Albanian--which is spoken throughout Western Macedonia and which is the majority language in the cities of that region--and Turkish, the main language of the Muslim minority. Two others are Rom and Aromanian. Most speakers of minority languages, especially in the urban areas, are bilingual in Macedonian.

Numerous publications and newspapers exist. Macedonian is used in the media. There is a substantial amount of literature and translations of Western authors.

HISTORY
In the sixth and seventh centuries, the Slavs settled the following areas of Macedonia: Vardar Macedonia, or the Republic of Macedonia; Pirin Macedonia in the southwestern corner of Bulgaria; and Makedonia Province in northern Greece, also known as Aegean Macedonia. Cyril and Methodius, ninth century Greek missionaries to the Slavs, based their translations of Christian writings on the Macedonian dialect of the Thessalonika area. These formed the basis of the literary standard known as Old Church Slavonic which is still used as a liturgical language in some Slavic Orthodox Christian services. A rich literature developed early, but when Macedonia came under Turkish control at the end of the fourteenth century, literacy declined until the nineteenth century when revival efforts were undertaken. Today Macedonian is used at the University of Skopje. Numerous translations of international authors are made and the language is used in broadcasts.

The history of modern literary Macedonian begins near the end of the eighteenth century with the rebirth of South Slavic nationalism. Initially Bulgarians and Macedonians worked together in creating a modern literary standard, both at this time writing in their own local dialects. The issue of a "base dialect" for the standard was not an issue. But by the mid-nineteenth century this became a problem and the two groups strongly disagreed; a Macedo-Bulgarian compromise was rejected and Macedonians called for national and linguistic separatism. Bulgarians, for their part, moved in their own direction rejecting any notion that Macedonian dialects had any value. In fact, they considered them degenerate and argued that Macedonians should learn literary Bulgarian. This led to a split and the recognition of the two as separate languages.

Between the world wars Macedonian was treated as a Serbian dialect. Literary Serbo-Croatian was the language of education, media, and public life; even so Macedonian literature was tolerated as a local dialectal folkloristic form. During WWII Macedonia was occupied by Bulgarian fascists who set up Bulgarian medium schools, but under Tito's policy of cultural autonomy, Macedonia was formally established as the official and literary language confirming a de facto situation.

Click here to visit CARLA for a list of institutions in North America that teach this language.

REFERENCES
Bright, W., ed. 1992. International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Campbell, G. L. 1991. Compendium of the World's Languages, Vol. 1 -2. London and New York: Routledge.

Comrie, B. 1987. "Slavonic Languages." In B. Comrie, ed. The World's Major Languages, pp. 322-328. New York: Oxford University Press.

Friedman, V. A. 1977. The Grammatical Categories of the Macedonian Indicative. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers.

Friedman, Victor A. 1985. "The Sociolinguistics of Literary Macedonian." In Thomas F. Magner, ed. Yugoslavia in Sociolingusitic Perspective. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 52:31-57.

Grimes, B. F., ed. 1992. Ethnologue, Languages of the World. Dallas, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Henniger, J. 1994. "Bulgarian and Macedonian." In R. E. Asher, ed. The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. 1:429-430. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Linguistic Society of America. 1992. Directory of Programs in Linguistics in the United States and Canada. Washington, DC: Linguistic Society of America.

Experts agree that the Slavic language he [Delchev] spoke – and the one spoken here now – is closer to Bulgarian than to Serbian. But on account of Tito’s break with Stalin, the Yugoslav government, encouraged by the Serbs, promoted a separate ethnic and linguistc identity for Macedonian, in order to sever any emotional link between the local population and the one next door in Bulgaria

[Robert D. Kaplan, “Balkan Ghosts�, p.60]

Below is document that showed how created the Skopjan alphabete.Is from the book of Spyridon Sfetas with title ..The Configuration of the Slavmacedonian Identity, Vanias,2003.
The major dialect that choosen between 51 , was this that spoken in Prilep-Monastirion.The reason that was chossen is because had the less influence from the Serba and Bulgarian language.Give your attention in the letters, date and of course the Stamp Record.

http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/4296/akritassfetasfyromabwh6.jpg
http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/4062/scan10048wi4.jpg

Akritas, is there an English translation of this document?

Type of document: Manuscript, dated and signed

Seal: Institution, reads: "Archive of Macedonia-Skopje"


Content:

"Macedonian army is the force of the Maced. people"........................

"Macedonian army is the garantion that Macedonian people shall find his mother language for ever!"

"From now, with our macedonian teachers,the macedonian army struggles (a number of words are unreadable)"
'We beleve that all Macedonians are fond of singing songsand proclamations written in the mother's language.Because of that we believe that (they) will immidiatelly learn these 24 letters

А В Б Г Д Е З Ж И К Л М Н О П Р С Т Ф Х У Щ Ч Ъ

"That will be the Macedonian alphabet for now.(It) is very easy. 12 letters are (to be found?) (unreadable) 15 are to be found in the Greek one.Those are pures Slavic letters.It is not: neither short for our language, nor overburdening.Now (unreadable) Macedonians who are fond of reading journals in Macedonian language, may they learn it.From tommorow, will will give them (the journals-Vasiliye) to you.

Long live the Mac. name!

5-9- 44

Akritas, is there an English translation of this document?
I don't have it but Vasiliye gave us the English translation

Hugh Poulton mention as about the creation of the Skopjan alphabete(Who are the Macedonians, page 116)


In Yugoslav Macedonia the new authorities quickly set about consolidating their position. The new nation needed a written language, and initially the spoken dialect of northern Macedonia was chosen as the basis for the Macedonian language. However, this was deemed too close to Serbian and the dialects of Bitola-Veles became the norm.(1) These dialects were closer to the literary language of Bulgaria but because the latter was based on the eastern Bulgarian dialects, it allowed enough differentiation for the Yugoslavs to claim it as a language distinct from Bulgarian-a point which Bulgaria has bitterly contested ever since(2). In fact the differentiation between the Macedonian and Bulgarian dialects becomes progressively less pronounced on an east-west basis. Macedonian shares nearly all the same distinct characteristics which separate Bulgarian from other Slav languages lack of cases, the post-positive definite article, replacement of the infinitive form, and preservation of the simple verbal forms for the past and imperfect tenses-but whether it is truly a different language from Bulgarian or merely a dialect of it is a moot point.

The alphabet was accepted on 3 May 1945 and the orthography on 7 June 1945, and the first primer in the new language appeared by 1946, in which year a Macedonian Department in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Skopje was also founded.

A grammar of the Macedonian literary language appeared in 1952, and the Institute for the Macedonian Language "Krste P' Misirkov" was founded the following year. Since the Second world 'war the new republic has used the full weight of the education system and the bureaucracy to make the new language common parlance, and indeed it is noticeable that old people still tend to speak a mixture of dialects which include obvious Serbianisms and Bulgarianisms, while those young enough to have gone through the education system in its entirety speak_ a 'purer' Macedonian.



Koinos tous xevrakonei :laugh:

[K.Misirkov, Balazki po jusno-slavjanskata folilogija...", Balfarka Sbirka, XVII, 1 Sofijia,1910,Kn 1-39-41 and Kn 3-168] ..
We the Macedonians voluntarily choose one and the same language with Bulgarians long before the liberation of Bulgaria from Turkey. The prohibition from the Serbs to use our literally language, which is the only one connection between us and Bulgarians is significant violation of our human rights. .. and further.. when they forbid us to call ourselves Bulgarians, to learn Bulgarian history and to be ashamed from everything which connect us with Bulgarians. It is enough to learn our Macedonian culture and history to understand that we are very different from Serbian nationality.
..

If, to this population (Bulgarian), which identifies itself as Bulgarian, one adds the speakers of the Macedonian language, the majority of whom also considered themselves Bulgarians until 1944, when the Macedonian language was created (cf. Kocev et al., 1994; Bozhinov and Panayotov, 1978; Angelov, 2000) the number of Bulgarian speakers may reach 10.5 million

[Keith Brown, Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, page 146]

Modern Macedonian (makedonski in Macedonian) is a South Slavic language (Slavic, Indo-European). It is not to be confused with Ancient Macedonian, an Indo-European language of uncertain (but not Slavic) affiliation, whose most famous speaker was Alexander the Great.
Macedonian is closest to Bulgarian and Serbian.
Macedonian is descended from the dialects of Slavic speakers who settled in the Balkan peninsula during the 6th and 7th centuries C.E.

[Keith Brown, Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, page 356]

FYROM Linguistic forgeries: «Macedonian» language and the Slavmacedonian minority (http://modern-macedonian-history.blogspot.com/2008/08/linguistic-forgeries-macedonian.html)

by George Babiniotis
newspaper VIMA, Sunday 3 Aug 2008 (http://tovima.dolnet.gr/print_article.php?e=B&f=15426&m=B16&aa=1)
mainly tranlsation from FOCUS Information Agency (http://www.focus-fen.net/?id=f1680)

It is astonishing (and deserving attention) that such a small country – FYROM, has such huge ambitions (requirements) and loose connection to reality.

Over the last weeks (pushed form outside) FYROM got deep into play with the language – with the false ‘Macedonian’ language in Skopje, and with the (invented) ‘minority’, which is alleged to speak ‘Macedonian’ like in Skopje, and we have to call things their ‘scholarly’ names, which we already did in 1992 with the collective work published under the title ‘The Language of Macedonia: Ancient Macedonian language and fake language of Skopje’ (It should be noticed that Greece has never agreed, even when asked, on publishing the book in English and popularize the Greek position on the issue).To make it clear to the readers, and as the topic itself requires it, I explain that there are three languages, which are either completely different (the Greek language in Macedonia, the Serbian-Bulgarian in Skopje and the dialect of Bulgarian origin, popular as Slavic -Macedonian), or partially different (Serbian-Bulgarian in Skopje deriving form the Bulgarian dialect, which is spoken – restrictedly – in the border regions of Greece by Greeks who, together with the Greek language, knew also the so-called Slavmacedonian).

Greek language in Macedonia
This is to a great extend Macedonian – i.e. Greek language, spoken by Greeks in Macedonian since the ancient times – then being developed – to nowadays. This is the language of Philip II, Alexander the Great and other Greeks from Macedon, and more precisely an ancient Greek dialect with more Doric character, used mainly in spoken language as in the written text and in official language was predominant the Attic dialect, a dialect in which are saved thousands of inscriptions from Macedonia .

Serbian-Bulgarian in Skopje
This is the recent – in the frames of the 20th century – language of the FYROM State (created, as it is known, during the era of Tito in 1944). This is the Bulgarian language (the first people in the region are Bulgarians and Bulgarians have always claimed on this lands, which their consider their won – in fact people living in the region used to call themselves Bugari!)

This language is artificially ‘Serbianized’ (!), i.e. some lexis and grammatical elements of the surrounding regions, where the Serbian language was spoken, were added to it so that to lower the Bulgarian language element and adopt the Serbian language form, which is the requirement of Tito’s United Serbia, the Yugoslavian Republic.

Thus, the Slavic language in FYROM is a Serbian-Bulgarian language, a Bulgarian language that has been artificially Serbianized, adopted as official language because of obvious reasons which the Bulgarians call ‘Kolisevski’. The Skopje citizens themselves gave this language, the Serbian-Bulgarian, the name ‘Macedonian’ (!), to avoid future claims on behalf of Bulgaria and to also hide the Bulgarian origin of the language. In addition, to usurp a right over a name (Macedonian), which bears prestige and historical notion (by fake identification with the greatness and world known name Macedonia of Alexander the Great) and finally – because their impudence has no limit… (remember the Alexander the Great Airport in Skopje (!) and Skopjie’s soldiers with ancient Greek clothes and long spear (!), which welcome the leader of the Burusho tribe from Pakistan as heir of Alexander the Great (!) in Skopje – to claim certain pretensions, when there is a chance for change in the frontiers on the Balkans.Thanks to the tolerance and silliness of the official Greek state (let’s bear in mind that in the 70ties and 80ties of the last century, speaking about the frauds of the falsifications of the Skopje people was considered ‘nationalistic’, while during the Tito era such issues were a taboo) the name ‘Maceodnia’ for Skopje and the ‘Macedonian language’ for the Serbian-Bulgarian language in Skpopje became widely spread and almost manage to establish image on international level.

Slavmacedonian
It is a dialect in few Greek-Bulgarian border regions, where few Greeks who apart form the Greek language knew a dialect of Bulgarian origin, as it always happens in the regions near the borderline between the countries. We should notice that due to the bilingual character of the people speaking this dialect and due to the different Bulgarian dialect, as well as because this spoken dialect has not been Serbianized like the Bulgarian language in Skopje, the Slavic-Macedonian is not identical to the Serbian-Bulgarian in Skopje.FYROM, of course, thanks to (inspired y the USA) Gruevski’s machinations recently started to making provocations, stating that the Slavmacedonian language is one and the same fake ‘Macedonian’ in Skopje and thus there is Skopje majority in Greece and Greece has to recognize it. This is some paranoiac conception, which is offered like a theatre play entitled ‘From Kolisevski to Gruevski’!

Three language forgeries
This brief introduction of one highly