Ptolemy
12-24-2005, 05:15 PM
FAKE LANGUAGE, FALSELY-NAMED STATE
in the Athens weekly, TO VIMA, Sunday 16 Feb 1992
Giorgos Babiniotis, Professor of Linguistics, University of Athens
"Da Vigo pretstavam sina mi Blazeta... Mu ja dador na Petrata knigata... Go razbivali peracot..." Do you undesrand anything? Not a word? But don't you know "Macedonian"? Shame Greeks, particularly you Greeks of Macedonia, not to know the "macedonian" language of your "brothers" of Skopje, not to know your language! Shame! Such as you are, you deserved to stay under the Greeks! While the "Macedonians" of Skopje have managed to become free... In a brand-new "Macedonia", with a history of 48 whole years (since 1944!), whose only relationship with your 3,000 years old history is the *name* of the state (People's Republic of Macedonia!) and the name of their language (Macedonian language!). If you wish to be called Macedonians, you Greeks of Thessaloniki, Serres, Florina, Kastoria and every other region of northern Greece, you don't have but to prove that you are Slavs! It is that simple!
Such paranoid dialogues and questions can arise, when historical paranoia and cunning nationalistic voracity prevail, such as those that gave birth in 1944 to a state with the fake title "Macedonia", taken from Greek Macedonia, and a fake language, the "Macedonian", whose name deliberately and and for confusion was chosen to characterise as language, in reality, a mixed Bulgarian-Serbian slavic idiom, the slavic idiom of the state of Skopje [1], which is the correct name of the language spoken today in the People's Republic of Skopje.
Two of the modern natural (spoken) languages constitute international linguistic examples, different to each other, as to how it is possible for a new state to acquire a formal national language. One is the example of the modern hebrew language (Neo-Hebrew), which was resynthesized after the establishment of the state of Isreal (1948) based on the ancient Hebrew scripts (Old Testement, et al) and bold linguistic planning (modernization of the vocabulary, structuring of grammar and syntax, etc) from great Jewish scientists under Eliezer Ben-Yehouda. The other one is the artificial upgrade to a language of one slavic idiom, mainly Bulgarian and in a lesser way Serbian, spoken by the inhabitants of the areas of Prilep, Bitolja, Kicevo and Veles, those that happened to live in the central region of the newly established federated republic of Skopje. The upgrade of this Bulgraro- Serbian idiom to a language, the one which for political reasons was nsubstantiatingly named "macedonian language", was based on the scientific, absolutely regulatory, linguistic work of a few scientists such as Bl. Koneski, K. Kepeski, B. Vidojevski and R. Ugrinova. The tactic of regulatory tranformation of the central idioms of the state of Skopje in a unified language was dictated, like its name, by political criteria: To eradicate, as much as possible, the Bulgrarian-Serbian elements and to enhance the Serbian-Slavic elements. This artificial alteration of the idiom was also gradually weakening the dependence from the Bulgarian language, the Bulgarian cultural influence and, in general, from the Bulgarian political connection from the history of the macedonian issue and its essence.
Note must be made here, I think, for a case not given the necessary attention. Initially and for many years, the issue of the falsely-named state of Skopje and its fake language was the subject of a dispute between Bulgaria and Skopje. Greece was not preoccupied with this issue, because it considered it ridiculous and without substance. On the contrary, Bulgaria was in open conflict with Skopje, considering that the population of Skopje is, mainly, of Bulgarian descent and not Serbian. For those Bulgarian intentions over Skopje, Andriotis characteristically wrote in 1960: "As it is natural, the Bulgars, who even under a communist regime, have not stopped being chauvinist and aroused by the dream of Greater Bulgaria, are passionately protesting stating that Yugoslavia's policy in the republic of Skopje is aiming at aleinating this region from Bulgaria, lingustically as well as spiritually. They are declaring that the only common language of this region is the Bulgarian, that the local linguistic forms are nothing else but idioms of Bulgarian, that distinct "macedonian language" does not exist, that the literary language being developed and promoted as common to all Slavophones of Serbian Macedonia, mixed with Serbian elements, is not Macedonian but a "Kolisevskian Serbian" language (after the name of the Prime Minister of Skopje Laraz Kolisevski), that those who do it are not Macedonian, but Serbian agents, enemies of the people and that this purpose, assigned to them by the "fascists of Belgrade", is the denationalization of Vardar Macedonia and with a Serbian-like language to achieve the making of Serbian-Macedonians, like they have managed the Serbian making of names by changing the endings -ev and -ov to -evski and -ovski"[2].
Of course and the Bulgarians, being ones of the instigators of a "unified Macedonia" as a distinct federal state in a Balkan Federation (!), which was planned to include the "Aegean Macedonia" (i.e, Greek Macedonia) and together with the "Vardar Macedonia" (the Skopjan state) and the "Pirin Macedonia" (i.e., Bulgarian Macedonia), are also using the name Macedonia and Macedonians with enthlogical meaning in order to support their territorial and nationalistic claims, which were particularly intense in the period 1949 (after the Tito-Stalin rift) to 1963. Therefore, they, like the people of Skopje forget that the only real name the Skopjans had up until 1944, was not Macedonians but Bugari (Bulgars). The names Macedonia, Macedonians and Macedonian language, with ethnological content, are invented only in 1944! Two great linguists, the French slavist, Andre Vaillant and the Italian
indoeuropeanist, Vittore Pisani, say the following for those names. Vaillant (referring to the change of phonetic l in u) writes: "apart from the word Bugari which is the true national name of the Slavic Macedonians, which shows that they adopted the form of the name "Bulgarians" given to them by the Serbs"[3]. In other words they were calling themselves Bulgars, with the name the other Serbs were making them apart. But Pisani as well, states clearly: "Indeed, the macedonian language is a product essentialy of political origin"[4]. And a more recent German slavist, Fredrich Schlolz, in his bok on the etymology of the Slavic languages says that: "Macedonian national conscience and from that conscientious promotion of Macedonian as a written language, first appears just in the beginning of our century and is strengthened particularly during in the years between the two world wars"[5].
And here an immence moral and national issue arises: How is it possible for a very ancient historical name to be used as camouflage, to darken the horizon and to cover in a childish, under other ciscumstances, manner, territorial and other intentions of a clearly nationalistic policy, sometimes of Skopje and other times of Bulgaria. And to stay with the language, what kind of macedonian language is this slavic idiom, lately elevated to a national language, for which the only certain thing is that it is a slavic idiom with a debatable dominance of Serbian or Bulgarian linguistic elements? Without the issue itself being of particular interest to the Greeks, the prevailing theory about the origin of this slavic idiom is that it continues, in general lines, from the ancient slavic[6] "and it is placed among the Bulgarian idioms, either as a dialectic part of Bulgarian or a part of Bulgaro-macedonian, along the general lines of Serbo-Croatian"[7], having, according to Vaillant undergone influences from Serbian which vary in its many idioms. In relation to the family of slavic languages and, in particular, the South-Slavic which contains the "macedonian" of Skopje, together with Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian and Bulgarian, Heinz Wendt claims: "If one classifies the slavic languages on the basis of their modern structure, then Bulgarian and Macedonian, due to their dominant structural features, comprise a group separate to the other slavic languages"[8]. It is obvious that, when one talks about the "Macedonian" of Skopje, it refers to a slavic language, more Bulgarian before 1944, less Bulgarian and more Serbian today, and which, whatever the case has no relation to the Greek of Macedonia, as refered by the term Macedonian (language).
In spite of that, the Skopjan propaganda -and that of Bulgaria for different intentions- has gradually established the terms Macedonia, Macedonians and Macedonian in the international terminology, since Greece through its official policy chose not to rise such issues in discussions neither to support them scientifically or otherwise. As a result: The distorted terminology appropriated by Skopje and Bulgaria, has been internationally established and we are today trying to prove that we are not white elephants!...That Macedonians are only the Greeks of Macedonia, that Macedonia is Greece, that Macedonian language is none other than the Hellenic of the Macedonian region, etc.
We should not forget that these issues are even older. They originate from challenges of the Hellenism of the ancient macedonian lamguage [9] and the ancient Macedonians, either through clearly conscripted
positions, such as those of Weigand and Kazaroff, or through genuine, more or less extremist scientific positions. So the beginning of this century finds Georgios Hatzidakis fighting in the international arena for the hellenism of (ancient) Macedonian [10], with supportive allies the German Otto Hoffmann [11] and others. Half a century later, the historian and linguist professor Ioannis Kalleris in a two-volume "lifetime work" titled "Les anciens Macedoniens. Etude linguistique et historique" (A' vol. 1954, B'vol. 1974, published by the French Institute) will permanently close the subject on the Greekness of the ancient Macedonians, examining and discussing exhaustively -and strikingly- one by one the testimonies and counter-arguments stated since the issue was first raised until the time of publication of this monumental work.
More than anything else the "macedonian" nature of Skopje and our other neighbors we must oppose with the authentic scientific method. Everywhere, and in particular abroad, more than in Greece. We need to
do nothing else than state the truth and desrcibe facts. After all, for centuries we are, in this corner of the earth, defending the obvious and are fighting for what belongs to us.
Notes:
[1] The ever-remembered Nikolaos Andriotis, professor of Linguistics at the University of Thessaloniki, in one of his best scientific studies on the Macedonian issue ("The Federative State of Skopje and its Language",
Thessaloniki 1960, first published in English in 1957), was the first to propose this name for the language of the State of Skopje (p.21).
[2] N. Andriotis, p.37-8.
[3] A. Vaillant, "Le probleme du Slave Macedonien", in "Bulletin de la Societe de Linguistique de Paris" 39 (1938), p.205.
[4] V. Pisani, "Il Macedonico", in, "Paideia" 12 (1957), p.250.
[5] Fr. Scholz, "Slavische Etymologie", 1966, p.61.
[6] A. Vaillant, p.199.
[7] Although, as Fr. Scholz states (p.61), "the relationship with the ancient ecclesiastical slavic, which is the basis of the macedoian dialect, was terminated a long time ago". The same opinion was later expressed by N. Andriotis: "Written documents worth mentioning start in the 9th century and end in the 13th century" (p.33).
[8] H. Wendt, "Sprachen" (Slawische Sprachen) 1961, p.285.
[9] This issue I have addressed in two lengthy articles: "H Thesi tis Makedonikis stis arhaies ellinikes dialektous" (Glossologia, 7-8, 1988, p.53-69), and "Media question in Ancient Macedonian reconsidered" (in the special edition for linguist O. Szemerenyi).
[10] G. Hatzidakis, 1897, "Zur Abstammung der alten Makedonen; 1901,
"Peri tou Ellinismou ton arhaion Makedonon (Glossologikai Meletai 1,33-
114), et al.
[11] O. Hoffmann, "Die Makedonen. Ihre Sprache und ihr Volkstum".
__________________________________________________ _________________________
in the Athens weekly, TO VIMA, Sunday 16 Feb 1992
Giorgos Babiniotis, Professor of Linguistics, University of Athens
"Da Vigo pretstavam sina mi Blazeta... Mu ja dador na Petrata knigata... Go razbivali peracot..." Do you undesrand anything? Not a word? But don't you know "Macedonian"? Shame Greeks, particularly you Greeks of Macedonia, not to know the "macedonian" language of your "brothers" of Skopje, not to know your language! Shame! Such as you are, you deserved to stay under the Greeks! While the "Macedonians" of Skopje have managed to become free... In a brand-new "Macedonia", with a history of 48 whole years (since 1944!), whose only relationship with your 3,000 years old history is the *name* of the state (People's Republic of Macedonia!) and the name of their language (Macedonian language!). If you wish to be called Macedonians, you Greeks of Thessaloniki, Serres, Florina, Kastoria and every other region of northern Greece, you don't have but to prove that you are Slavs! It is that simple!
Such paranoid dialogues and questions can arise, when historical paranoia and cunning nationalistic voracity prevail, such as those that gave birth in 1944 to a state with the fake title "Macedonia", taken from Greek Macedonia, and a fake language, the "Macedonian", whose name deliberately and and for confusion was chosen to characterise as language, in reality, a mixed Bulgarian-Serbian slavic idiom, the slavic idiom of the state of Skopje [1], which is the correct name of the language spoken today in the People's Republic of Skopje.
Two of the modern natural (spoken) languages constitute international linguistic examples, different to each other, as to how it is possible for a new state to acquire a formal national language. One is the example of the modern hebrew language (Neo-Hebrew), which was resynthesized after the establishment of the state of Isreal (1948) based on the ancient Hebrew scripts (Old Testement, et al) and bold linguistic planning (modernization of the vocabulary, structuring of grammar and syntax, etc) from great Jewish scientists under Eliezer Ben-Yehouda. The other one is the artificial upgrade to a language of one slavic idiom, mainly Bulgarian and in a lesser way Serbian, spoken by the inhabitants of the areas of Prilep, Bitolja, Kicevo and Veles, those that happened to live in the central region of the newly established federated republic of Skopje. The upgrade of this Bulgraro- Serbian idiom to a language, the one which for political reasons was nsubstantiatingly named "macedonian language", was based on the scientific, absolutely regulatory, linguistic work of a few scientists such as Bl. Koneski, K. Kepeski, B. Vidojevski and R. Ugrinova. The tactic of regulatory tranformation of the central idioms of the state of Skopje in a unified language was dictated, like its name, by political criteria: To eradicate, as much as possible, the Bulgrarian-Serbian elements and to enhance the Serbian-Slavic elements. This artificial alteration of the idiom was also gradually weakening the dependence from the Bulgarian language, the Bulgarian cultural influence and, in general, from the Bulgarian political connection from the history of the macedonian issue and its essence.
Note must be made here, I think, for a case not given the necessary attention. Initially and for many years, the issue of the falsely-named state of Skopje and its fake language was the subject of a dispute between Bulgaria and Skopje. Greece was not preoccupied with this issue, because it considered it ridiculous and without substance. On the contrary, Bulgaria was in open conflict with Skopje, considering that the population of Skopje is, mainly, of Bulgarian descent and not Serbian. For those Bulgarian intentions over Skopje, Andriotis characteristically wrote in 1960: "As it is natural, the Bulgars, who even under a communist regime, have not stopped being chauvinist and aroused by the dream of Greater Bulgaria, are passionately protesting stating that Yugoslavia's policy in the republic of Skopje is aiming at aleinating this region from Bulgaria, lingustically as well as spiritually. They are declaring that the only common language of this region is the Bulgarian, that the local linguistic forms are nothing else but idioms of Bulgarian, that distinct "macedonian language" does not exist, that the literary language being developed and promoted as common to all Slavophones of Serbian Macedonia, mixed with Serbian elements, is not Macedonian but a "Kolisevskian Serbian" language (after the name of the Prime Minister of Skopje Laraz Kolisevski), that those who do it are not Macedonian, but Serbian agents, enemies of the people and that this purpose, assigned to them by the "fascists of Belgrade", is the denationalization of Vardar Macedonia and with a Serbian-like language to achieve the making of Serbian-Macedonians, like they have managed the Serbian making of names by changing the endings -ev and -ov to -evski and -ovski"[2].
Of course and the Bulgarians, being ones of the instigators of a "unified Macedonia" as a distinct federal state in a Balkan Federation (!), which was planned to include the "Aegean Macedonia" (i.e, Greek Macedonia) and together with the "Vardar Macedonia" (the Skopjan state) and the "Pirin Macedonia" (i.e., Bulgarian Macedonia), are also using the name Macedonia and Macedonians with enthlogical meaning in order to support their territorial and nationalistic claims, which were particularly intense in the period 1949 (after the Tito-Stalin rift) to 1963. Therefore, they, like the people of Skopje forget that the only real name the Skopjans had up until 1944, was not Macedonians but Bugari (Bulgars). The names Macedonia, Macedonians and Macedonian language, with ethnological content, are invented only in 1944! Two great linguists, the French slavist, Andre Vaillant and the Italian
indoeuropeanist, Vittore Pisani, say the following for those names. Vaillant (referring to the change of phonetic l in u) writes: "apart from the word Bugari which is the true national name of the Slavic Macedonians, which shows that they adopted the form of the name "Bulgarians" given to them by the Serbs"[3]. In other words they were calling themselves Bulgars, with the name the other Serbs were making them apart. But Pisani as well, states clearly: "Indeed, the macedonian language is a product essentialy of political origin"[4]. And a more recent German slavist, Fredrich Schlolz, in his bok on the etymology of the Slavic languages says that: "Macedonian national conscience and from that conscientious promotion of Macedonian as a written language, first appears just in the beginning of our century and is strengthened particularly during in the years between the two world wars"[5].
And here an immence moral and national issue arises: How is it possible for a very ancient historical name to be used as camouflage, to darken the horizon and to cover in a childish, under other ciscumstances, manner, territorial and other intentions of a clearly nationalistic policy, sometimes of Skopje and other times of Bulgaria. And to stay with the language, what kind of macedonian language is this slavic idiom, lately elevated to a national language, for which the only certain thing is that it is a slavic idiom with a debatable dominance of Serbian or Bulgarian linguistic elements? Without the issue itself being of particular interest to the Greeks, the prevailing theory about the origin of this slavic idiom is that it continues, in general lines, from the ancient slavic[6] "and it is placed among the Bulgarian idioms, either as a dialectic part of Bulgarian or a part of Bulgaro-macedonian, along the general lines of Serbo-Croatian"[7], having, according to Vaillant undergone influences from Serbian which vary in its many idioms. In relation to the family of slavic languages and, in particular, the South-Slavic which contains the "macedonian" of Skopje, together with Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian and Bulgarian, Heinz Wendt claims: "If one classifies the slavic languages on the basis of their modern structure, then Bulgarian and Macedonian, due to their dominant structural features, comprise a group separate to the other slavic languages"[8]. It is obvious that, when one talks about the "Macedonian" of Skopje, it refers to a slavic language, more Bulgarian before 1944, less Bulgarian and more Serbian today, and which, whatever the case has no relation to the Greek of Macedonia, as refered by the term Macedonian (language).
In spite of that, the Skopjan propaganda -and that of Bulgaria for different intentions- has gradually established the terms Macedonia, Macedonians and Macedonian in the international terminology, since Greece through its official policy chose not to rise such issues in discussions neither to support them scientifically or otherwise. As a result: The distorted terminology appropriated by Skopje and Bulgaria, has been internationally established and we are today trying to prove that we are not white elephants!...That Macedonians are only the Greeks of Macedonia, that Macedonia is Greece, that Macedonian language is none other than the Hellenic of the Macedonian region, etc.
We should not forget that these issues are even older. They originate from challenges of the Hellenism of the ancient macedonian lamguage [9] and the ancient Macedonians, either through clearly conscripted
positions, such as those of Weigand and Kazaroff, or through genuine, more or less extremist scientific positions. So the beginning of this century finds Georgios Hatzidakis fighting in the international arena for the hellenism of (ancient) Macedonian [10], with supportive allies the German Otto Hoffmann [11] and others. Half a century later, the historian and linguist professor Ioannis Kalleris in a two-volume "lifetime work" titled "Les anciens Macedoniens. Etude linguistique et historique" (A' vol. 1954, B'vol. 1974, published by the French Institute) will permanently close the subject on the Greekness of the ancient Macedonians, examining and discussing exhaustively -and strikingly- one by one the testimonies and counter-arguments stated since the issue was first raised until the time of publication of this monumental work.
More than anything else the "macedonian" nature of Skopje and our other neighbors we must oppose with the authentic scientific method. Everywhere, and in particular abroad, more than in Greece. We need to
do nothing else than state the truth and desrcibe facts. After all, for centuries we are, in this corner of the earth, defending the obvious and are fighting for what belongs to us.
Notes:
[1] The ever-remembered Nikolaos Andriotis, professor of Linguistics at the University of Thessaloniki, in one of his best scientific studies on the Macedonian issue ("The Federative State of Skopje and its Language",
Thessaloniki 1960, first published in English in 1957), was the first to propose this name for the language of the State of Skopje (p.21).
[2] N. Andriotis, p.37-8.
[3] A. Vaillant, "Le probleme du Slave Macedonien", in "Bulletin de la Societe de Linguistique de Paris" 39 (1938), p.205.
[4] V. Pisani, "Il Macedonico", in, "Paideia" 12 (1957), p.250.
[5] Fr. Scholz, "Slavische Etymologie", 1966, p.61.
[6] A. Vaillant, p.199.
[7] Although, as Fr. Scholz states (p.61), "the relationship with the ancient ecclesiastical slavic, which is the basis of the macedoian dialect, was terminated a long time ago". The same opinion was later expressed by N. Andriotis: "Written documents worth mentioning start in the 9th century and end in the 13th century" (p.33).
[8] H. Wendt, "Sprachen" (Slawische Sprachen) 1961, p.285.
[9] This issue I have addressed in two lengthy articles: "H Thesi tis Makedonikis stis arhaies ellinikes dialektous" (Glossologia, 7-8, 1988, p.53-69), and "Media question in Ancient Macedonian reconsidered" (in the special edition for linguist O. Szemerenyi).
[10] G. Hatzidakis, 1897, "Zur Abstammung der alten Makedonen; 1901,
"Peri tou Ellinismou ton arhaion Makedonon (Glossologikai Meletai 1,33-
114), et al.
[11] O. Hoffmann, "Die Makedonen. Ihre Sprache und ihr Volkstum".
__________________________________________________ _________________________