Ptolemy
11-29-2005, 03:55 PM
Languages and Ethnicity in Balkan Politics: Macedonian, Bulgarian and
Albanian
by Victor Friedman
Victor Friedman is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the
University of Chicago, IL.
The Balkans in general and Macedonia in particular have been characterized
by widespread multi-lingualism. Ironically, while the term Balkanization has
come to mean "fragmentation," the linguistic term Balkanism refers to shared
grammatical and lexical features which originated through intense
multi-lingual contact. Such contact could only have arisen under conditions
of predominantly peaceful coexistence. Yet, although language served as a
group marker, religion was a more important source of identity in Ottoman
Turkey where it constituted the basis of an individual's millet
('nationality').
Throughout the nineteenth century, the basis of national identity in
European Turkey gradually shifted from religion to language. The various
Eastern (Greek) Orthodox Christian populations under the Patriarchate of
Constantinople were most affected by this shift, although the change also
impacted some Muslims, especially Albanian-speakers. In the vernacular,
Greek meant "adherent of the Greek Orthodox Church" while Turk meant
"Muslim." After the recognition of a separate Bulgarian church (the
Exarchate) in 1870, the term Bulgarian often meant "adherent of the
Exarchate" (which was declared schismatic by the Greek Patriarchate). In the
context of Macedonia, the most important contrast among Christians was
between the Slavic-speaking and Greek-speaking (or Hellenized) Greek
Orthodox. As Ottoman territorial control of the Balkans retreated the
predecessors of the modern-Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbian literary languages
and nation-states arose and expanded.
The entire territory of Bulgaria and former Yugoslavia, together with the
relevant adjacent parts of neighboring states, constitutes a continuum on
which dialectal differentiation proceeds with greater or lesser rapidity
from village to village. Dialectal differentiation is particularly complex
in Slovenia and Macedonia, but on contiguous South Slavic territory the
differentiation is never so sharp that adjacent Slavic-speaking villages
have mutually unintelligible dialects. On the other hand, boundaries can be
drawn between the presence and absence of a given dialect feature, e.g.
whether or not stress is permitted on the final syllable of a word or
whether the dialect possesses a definite article (English the). Such
boundaries are called isoglosses and are themselves subjected to various
shades of definition.
Macedonia was at the periphery of Serbian, Bulgarian, and Greek state and
literary language formation in the nineteenth century, and was thereby at
the center of their overlapping territorial claims. Serbia and Bulgaria in
particular utilized conflicting linguistic arguments among other
nationality-defining tools to advance their respective territorial
interests. Greece generally attempted to eliminate other languages on its
territory.
Although the Slavic dialects spoken on the territory of Macedonia represent
a particularly complex intersection of isoglosses, the west central region
(Veles-Prilep-Bitola- Kichevo) forms a relatively homogenous area. In
general, Slavic-speaking Orthodox Christians on the territory of Macedonia
at the beginning of the nineteenth century, insofar as they were aware of a
language-based identity marker at all, usually chose the label Bulgarian. Among the populations of Macedonia's western and northern regions, the
option Serbian was occasionally selected. The small Slavic-speaking
intelligentsia that emerged in Macedonia during this period usually
envisioned a Bulgarian literary language based on their dialects or at the
very least a literary language incorporating most of these dialects to a
significant degree.
Throughout the nineteenth century, literary Bulgarian became more firmly
established on the basis of eastern Bulgarian dialects while literary
Serbian was established on the basis of the northern dialects of Serbia
proper. By the middle of the century, it was clear to some Macedonian Slavs
that their dialects, which were used as the basis of textbooks and similar
publications on the territory of Macedonia, were not included in the
canonization of the literary language and state formations emerging among
other Christian groups of the Ottoman Empire. This marked the birth of the
concept of Macedonian in opposition to Bulgarian, Serbian, or Greek. The
process is illustrated by Partenij Zografski in an 1858 article, proposing
that literary Bulgarian be based on Macedonian dialects; by Gjorgji
Pulevski's 1875 Dictionary of Three Languages, in which he states that
Macedonians are a nation distinct from other Slavs; and by Krste Misirkov's
1903 book On Macedonian Matters, in which he outlines the principles for
codifying an independent Macedonian literary language. The French Slavist,
Andre Vaillant, concluded his 1938 article, "The Problem of Macedonian
Slavic," by stating: "[I]t is difficult to make of Macedonian a simple
dialect of Bulgarian, and it is more accurate to attribute to it a separate
place in a Macedo-Bulgarian group."
Throughout this period, censuses, isoglosses, and ethnographic maps were
used to justify conflicting territorial claims in Southeastern Europe .
Consequently, between 1889 and 1905, wildly different census figures for the
largest ethnicity in Macedonia were quoted by different sources, each
betraying its national origin: Bulgarian (52%), Greek (38%), Serbian (71%),
or Turkish (52%). The Greek and Turkish sources used religion as their
classificatory principle thereby disregarding the Albanian population
completely, the Serbian source counted all Slavs who kept certain folk
customs as Serbian, while the Bulgarian source extrapolated from a census
based on household figures and assumed that Christians had larger households
than Muslims. None of these sources allowed for the possibility of
self-identified Macedonians, although by this time they existed. Similarly,
Bulgarian linguists used (and sometimes still use) the isogloss to define as
"ethnically" Bulgarian all of Macedonia as well as southern and eastern
Serbia, while in 1919 a Serbian linguist used a different isogloss to claim
most of Macedonia and western Bulgaria as Serbian.
In a similar example of oversimplification, ethnographic maps were and are
still used to erase complexity and advance ethno-political claims. A
Bulgarian-based map of Macedonia, published in 1914, displayed ethnicities
in solid colors, with the overwhelming majority color representing
Bulgarian. A Serbian-based map from the same publication showed Macedonian
Slavs with a separate color and attempted to give some indication of ethnic
complexity by portraying some regions with stripes of different colors,
thereby representing a mixture of different ethnicities. An ethnographic map
of the Republic of Macedonia, published by the national Bureau of Statistics
and based on the 1994 census, used different sized human figures to
represent individuals in units of 10, 100,500, 1,000, 10,000 and 50,000 in
seven colors (one for each of the constitutionally recognized languages and
a seventh for Other) to dramatically capture the ethno-linguistic complexity
of the Republic. In a stunningly retrogressive map, published by the
National Geographic magazine of February 2000, solid colors were used to
represent "ethnic groups that make up more than fifty percent of the
population in their region" without any indication of the size of the
"regions" used to calculate the placing of the colors. Moreover, with the
simple caveat "Greece does not recognize ethnic divisions," the
cartographers portrayed Greek ethnicity as corresponding solely to a solid
color and fitting exactly to Greece's political boundaries. The result is a
misleading map worthy of the nineteenth century.
Since the 1944 recognition of Macedonian as the official language of the
Republic of Macedonia as well as a minority language in Bulgaria (1946-48),
and in some of the regions in Albania, politics has been involved in the
process of standardization. This process is complicated by the fact that
Macedonian was never officially recognized in Greece . The Tito-Stalin break
of 1948 began the Bulgarian repudiation of the recognition of Macedonian, a
process that took place in stages until about 1960. In 1999, the Bulgarian
government officially recognized literary Macedonian as the standard
language of the Republic of Macedonia but continues to claim its own
self-identified Macedonian minority, as well as all the Slavic dialects of
Greece and Albania, as Bulgarian.
Since the first literary Macedonian codification conference in 1944, it was
agreed that the official alphabet would be Cyrillic. Argument over whether
the principle should follow the nineteenth century Serbian one-letter-per
sound, or the more archaic Bulgarian and Russian type of Cyrillic in which
single letters sometimes represent combinations of sounds persisted. The
one-letter-per sound principle of Serbian was chosen. From a strictly
linguistic point of view, the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was adequate for the
representation of the phonological system of the Macedonian dialects which
serve as the basis for literary Macedonian. For ideological reasons,
however, new letters were created to represent certain sounds that
phonetically differed from Serbian. The fear, in part, was that Serbian
graphic representation would encourage Serbian phonology. Another issue was
the inclusion of the many Turkish words which had entered the spoken
language during the course of five centuries of Ottoman occupation. Although
one faction encouraged incorporating these into the formal style, Turkisms
were relegated to archaic or stylistically colloquial registers.
The rise of pluralist politics in former Yugoslavia in 1990 witnessed the
deployment of linguistic issues in Macedonian politics. An example was the
proposed introduction of a Cyrillic letter that would represent the vowel
schwa (a sound similar to the /u/ in English but), an issue that had been a
source of debate in 1944-45. This vowel occurs in many Macedonian dialects
and also in Bulgarian (where it is represented with a separate letter). The
schwa does not occur in the west central Macedonian dialects on which the
standard language is based, and consequently it is represented, when
necessary, by an apostrophe in the official orthography. This same sound
does not occur in standard Serbian or in most of its dialects. Right-wing
political parties accused those in power of "Serbianizing" Macedonian by
omitting a letter to represent schwa, while left-wing parties accused the
right wing of attempting to "Bulgarize" Macedonian.
During this same period, many newspapers and other mediums of public
discourse also began using Turkisms in formal contexts where they would not
have occurred earlier. The logic was that since Turkisms had been
stylistically denigrated during the communist period, their use in formal
contexts was now democratic and pluralistic. This same tendency occurred in
other literary languages of former communist Balkan countries (Albania,
Bulgaria, and Romania).
Albania portrayed similar linguistic complexities and difficulties
throughout its state formation and consolidation periods. Due in part to the
Muslim heritage of the majority of Albanian-speakers in Ottoman Turkey, an
Albanian national movement began relatively late in the nineteenth century
and widespread efforts at establishing Albanian as a literary language were
similarly delayed. A watershed event in the linguistic history of the
Albanian national movement was the 1908 Congress of Manastir (Bitola,
Republic of Macedonia), where intellectuals representing the three religions
(Islam, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodox) and two major dialects of
Albanian (Geg in the north and Tosk in the south) agreed on adopting the
Latin alphabet (as opposed to Arabic used by some Muslims, or Greek used by
some Orthodox Albanians). However, two then-competing Latin alphabets were
sanctioned, and only later did the current alphabet become firmly
established. Although A. Xhuvani published a brief proposal for a unified
Tosk-based literary standard in 1915, it was not until after World War Two
that a unified Albanian literary language, based on the Tosk dialect of
Korcha, emerged, and not until 1968 that the Albanians of Yugoslavia decided
to give up their own Geg-based literary Albanian in favor of the standard
language of Albania for the sake of ethno-national unity. This decision
culminated in the unified orthographic conference of 1972. In 1992, as part
of the rise of pluralist politics, some intellectuals in the northwestern
Albanian town of Shkodra organized a conference whose theme was the
possibility of re-introducing bi-dialectalism in the literary language. The
northern Albanians were not supported by the Kosovar representatives, who
continued to favor unity.
Professor Friedman spoke, together with Professor Robert Greenberg and PhD
Candidate Burcu Arkan, at an EES seminar entitled "Languages and Ethnicity
in the Balkans" on April 11, 2000. The above is a summary of Dr. Friedman's
presentation. Meeting Report #215.
Source:
http://wwics.si.edu/ees/reports/2000/215fri.htm
Albanian
by Victor Friedman
Victor Friedman is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the
University of Chicago, IL.
The Balkans in general and Macedonia in particular have been characterized
by widespread multi-lingualism. Ironically, while the term Balkanization has
come to mean "fragmentation," the linguistic term Balkanism refers to shared
grammatical and lexical features which originated through intense
multi-lingual contact. Such contact could only have arisen under conditions
of predominantly peaceful coexistence. Yet, although language served as a
group marker, religion was a more important source of identity in Ottoman
Turkey where it constituted the basis of an individual's millet
('nationality').
Throughout the nineteenth century, the basis of national identity in
European Turkey gradually shifted from religion to language. The various
Eastern (Greek) Orthodox Christian populations under the Patriarchate of
Constantinople were most affected by this shift, although the change also
impacted some Muslims, especially Albanian-speakers. In the vernacular,
Greek meant "adherent of the Greek Orthodox Church" while Turk meant
"Muslim." After the recognition of a separate Bulgarian church (the
Exarchate) in 1870, the term Bulgarian often meant "adherent of the
Exarchate" (which was declared schismatic by the Greek Patriarchate). In the
context of Macedonia, the most important contrast among Christians was
between the Slavic-speaking and Greek-speaking (or Hellenized) Greek
Orthodox. As Ottoman territorial control of the Balkans retreated the
predecessors of the modern-Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbian literary languages
and nation-states arose and expanded.
The entire territory of Bulgaria and former Yugoslavia, together with the
relevant adjacent parts of neighboring states, constitutes a continuum on
which dialectal differentiation proceeds with greater or lesser rapidity
from village to village. Dialectal differentiation is particularly complex
in Slovenia and Macedonia, but on contiguous South Slavic territory the
differentiation is never so sharp that adjacent Slavic-speaking villages
have mutually unintelligible dialects. On the other hand, boundaries can be
drawn between the presence and absence of a given dialect feature, e.g.
whether or not stress is permitted on the final syllable of a word or
whether the dialect possesses a definite article (English the). Such
boundaries are called isoglosses and are themselves subjected to various
shades of definition.
Macedonia was at the periphery of Serbian, Bulgarian, and Greek state and
literary language formation in the nineteenth century, and was thereby at
the center of their overlapping territorial claims. Serbia and Bulgaria in
particular utilized conflicting linguistic arguments among other
nationality-defining tools to advance their respective territorial
interests. Greece generally attempted to eliminate other languages on its
territory.
Although the Slavic dialects spoken on the territory of Macedonia represent
a particularly complex intersection of isoglosses, the west central region
(Veles-Prilep-Bitola- Kichevo) forms a relatively homogenous area. In
general, Slavic-speaking Orthodox Christians on the territory of Macedonia
at the beginning of the nineteenth century, insofar as they were aware of a
language-based identity marker at all, usually chose the label Bulgarian. Among the populations of Macedonia's western and northern regions, the
option Serbian was occasionally selected. The small Slavic-speaking
intelligentsia that emerged in Macedonia during this period usually
envisioned a Bulgarian literary language based on their dialects or at the
very least a literary language incorporating most of these dialects to a
significant degree.
Throughout the nineteenth century, literary Bulgarian became more firmly
established on the basis of eastern Bulgarian dialects while literary
Serbian was established on the basis of the northern dialects of Serbia
proper. By the middle of the century, it was clear to some Macedonian Slavs
that their dialects, which were used as the basis of textbooks and similar
publications on the territory of Macedonia, were not included in the
canonization of the literary language and state formations emerging among
other Christian groups of the Ottoman Empire. This marked the birth of the
concept of Macedonian in opposition to Bulgarian, Serbian, or Greek. The
process is illustrated by Partenij Zografski in an 1858 article, proposing
that literary Bulgarian be based on Macedonian dialects; by Gjorgji
Pulevski's 1875 Dictionary of Three Languages, in which he states that
Macedonians are a nation distinct from other Slavs; and by Krste Misirkov's
1903 book On Macedonian Matters, in which he outlines the principles for
codifying an independent Macedonian literary language. The French Slavist,
Andre Vaillant, concluded his 1938 article, "The Problem of Macedonian
Slavic," by stating: "[I]t is difficult to make of Macedonian a simple
dialect of Bulgarian, and it is more accurate to attribute to it a separate
place in a Macedo-Bulgarian group."
Throughout this period, censuses, isoglosses, and ethnographic maps were
used to justify conflicting territorial claims in Southeastern Europe .
Consequently, between 1889 and 1905, wildly different census figures for the
largest ethnicity in Macedonia were quoted by different sources, each
betraying its national origin: Bulgarian (52%), Greek (38%), Serbian (71%),
or Turkish (52%). The Greek and Turkish sources used religion as their
classificatory principle thereby disregarding the Albanian population
completely, the Serbian source counted all Slavs who kept certain folk
customs as Serbian, while the Bulgarian source extrapolated from a census
based on household figures and assumed that Christians had larger households
than Muslims. None of these sources allowed for the possibility of
self-identified Macedonians, although by this time they existed. Similarly,
Bulgarian linguists used (and sometimes still use) the isogloss to define as
"ethnically" Bulgarian all of Macedonia as well as southern and eastern
Serbia, while in 1919 a Serbian linguist used a different isogloss to claim
most of Macedonia and western Bulgaria as Serbian.
In a similar example of oversimplification, ethnographic maps were and are
still used to erase complexity and advance ethno-political claims. A
Bulgarian-based map of Macedonia, published in 1914, displayed ethnicities
in solid colors, with the overwhelming majority color representing
Bulgarian. A Serbian-based map from the same publication showed Macedonian
Slavs with a separate color and attempted to give some indication of ethnic
complexity by portraying some regions with stripes of different colors,
thereby representing a mixture of different ethnicities. An ethnographic map
of the Republic of Macedonia, published by the national Bureau of Statistics
and based on the 1994 census, used different sized human figures to
represent individuals in units of 10, 100,500, 1,000, 10,000 and 50,000 in
seven colors (one for each of the constitutionally recognized languages and
a seventh for Other) to dramatically capture the ethno-linguistic complexity
of the Republic. In a stunningly retrogressive map, published by the
National Geographic magazine of February 2000, solid colors were used to
represent "ethnic groups that make up more than fifty percent of the
population in their region" without any indication of the size of the
"regions" used to calculate the placing of the colors. Moreover, with the
simple caveat "Greece does not recognize ethnic divisions," the
cartographers portrayed Greek ethnicity as corresponding solely to a solid
color and fitting exactly to Greece's political boundaries. The result is a
misleading map worthy of the nineteenth century.
Since the 1944 recognition of Macedonian as the official language of the
Republic of Macedonia as well as a minority language in Bulgaria (1946-48),
and in some of the regions in Albania, politics has been involved in the
process of standardization. This process is complicated by the fact that
Macedonian was never officially recognized in Greece . The Tito-Stalin break
of 1948 began the Bulgarian repudiation of the recognition of Macedonian, a
process that took place in stages until about 1960. In 1999, the Bulgarian
government officially recognized literary Macedonian as the standard
language of the Republic of Macedonia but continues to claim its own
self-identified Macedonian minority, as well as all the Slavic dialects of
Greece and Albania, as Bulgarian.
Since the first literary Macedonian codification conference in 1944, it was
agreed that the official alphabet would be Cyrillic. Argument over whether
the principle should follow the nineteenth century Serbian one-letter-per
sound, or the more archaic Bulgarian and Russian type of Cyrillic in which
single letters sometimes represent combinations of sounds persisted. The
one-letter-per sound principle of Serbian was chosen. From a strictly
linguistic point of view, the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was adequate for the
representation of the phonological system of the Macedonian dialects which
serve as the basis for literary Macedonian. For ideological reasons,
however, new letters were created to represent certain sounds that
phonetically differed from Serbian. The fear, in part, was that Serbian
graphic representation would encourage Serbian phonology. Another issue was
the inclusion of the many Turkish words which had entered the spoken
language during the course of five centuries of Ottoman occupation. Although
one faction encouraged incorporating these into the formal style, Turkisms
were relegated to archaic or stylistically colloquial registers.
The rise of pluralist politics in former Yugoslavia in 1990 witnessed the
deployment of linguistic issues in Macedonian politics. An example was the
proposed introduction of a Cyrillic letter that would represent the vowel
schwa (a sound similar to the /u/ in English but), an issue that had been a
source of debate in 1944-45. This vowel occurs in many Macedonian dialects
and also in Bulgarian (where it is represented with a separate letter). The
schwa does not occur in the west central Macedonian dialects on which the
standard language is based, and consequently it is represented, when
necessary, by an apostrophe in the official orthography. This same sound
does not occur in standard Serbian or in most of its dialects. Right-wing
political parties accused those in power of "Serbianizing" Macedonian by
omitting a letter to represent schwa, while left-wing parties accused the
right wing of attempting to "Bulgarize" Macedonian.
During this same period, many newspapers and other mediums of public
discourse also began using Turkisms in formal contexts where they would not
have occurred earlier. The logic was that since Turkisms had been
stylistically denigrated during the communist period, their use in formal
contexts was now democratic and pluralistic. This same tendency occurred in
other literary languages of former communist Balkan countries (Albania,
Bulgaria, and Romania).
Albania portrayed similar linguistic complexities and difficulties
throughout its state formation and consolidation periods. Due in part to the
Muslim heritage of the majority of Albanian-speakers in Ottoman Turkey, an
Albanian national movement began relatively late in the nineteenth century
and widespread efforts at establishing Albanian as a literary language were
similarly delayed. A watershed event in the linguistic history of the
Albanian national movement was the 1908 Congress of Manastir (Bitola,
Republic of Macedonia), where intellectuals representing the three religions
(Islam, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodox) and two major dialects of
Albanian (Geg in the north and Tosk in the south) agreed on adopting the
Latin alphabet (as opposed to Arabic used by some Muslims, or Greek used by
some Orthodox Albanians). However, two then-competing Latin alphabets were
sanctioned, and only later did the current alphabet become firmly
established. Although A. Xhuvani published a brief proposal for a unified
Tosk-based literary standard in 1915, it was not until after World War Two
that a unified Albanian literary language, based on the Tosk dialect of
Korcha, emerged, and not until 1968 that the Albanians of Yugoslavia decided
to give up their own Geg-based literary Albanian in favor of the standard
language of Albania for the sake of ethno-national unity. This decision
culminated in the unified orthographic conference of 1972. In 1992, as part
of the rise of pluralist politics, some intellectuals in the northwestern
Albanian town of Shkodra organized a conference whose theme was the
possibility of re-introducing bi-dialectalism in the literary language. The
northern Albanians were not supported by the Kosovar representatives, who
continued to favor unity.
Professor Friedman spoke, together with Professor Robert Greenberg and PhD
Candidate Burcu Arkan, at an EES seminar entitled "Languages and Ethnicity
in the Balkans" on April 11, 2000. The above is a summary of Dr. Friedman's
presentation. Meeting Report #215.
Source:
http://wwics.si.edu/ees/reports/2000/215fri.htm