The Federative Republic Of Skopje And Its Language

[Ptolemy]

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.)

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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.

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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.

[Ptolemy]

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.).

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Page 43.

Historical Conclusions from the impact of Greek on the Slavic Language.
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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.

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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.
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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.

[Ptolemy]

CHAPTER VIII

A HISTORY OF THE LINGUISTIC IDIOM OF THE STATE OF SKOPJE ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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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.

[Ptolemy]

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),

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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.


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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


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


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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


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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.

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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.


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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.