The Federative Republic Of Skopje And Its Language

[Spartan]

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

From the following site:

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




Number of Speakers: 2 million

Key Dialects: Eastern, Western, Northern

Geographical Center: Republic of Macedonia

Educational Resources: Few

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[akritas]

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

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

[akritas]

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

[The Blood of Dorus]

Akritas, is there an English translation of this document?

[Vasiliye]

Type of document: Manuscript, dated and signed

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


Content:

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

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

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

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

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

Long live the Mac. name!

5-9- 44

[akritas]

Originally Posted by The Blood of Dorus

Akritas, is there an English translation of this document?

I don't have it but Vasiliye gave us the English translation

[akritas]

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

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

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

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

Koinos tous xevrakonei

[akritas]

[K.Misirkov, Balazki po jusno-slavjanskata folilogija...", Balfarka Sbirka, XVII, 1 Sofijia,1910,Kn 1-39-41 and Kn 3-168] ..

We the Macedonians voluntarily choose one and the same language with Bulgarians long before the liberation of Bulgaria from Turkey. The prohibition from the Serbs to use our literally language, which is the only one connection between us and Bulgarians is significant violation of our human rights. .. and further.. when they forbid us to call ourselves Bulgarians, to learn Bulgarian history and to be ashamed from everything which connect us with Bulgarians. It is enough to learn our Macedonian culture and history to understand that we are very different from Serbian nationality.

..

[akritas]

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

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

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

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

[akritas]

FYROM Linguistic forgeries: «Macedonian» language and the Slavmacedonian minority

by George Babiniotis
newspaper VIMA, Sunday 3 Aug 2008
mainly tranlsation from FOCUS Information Agency

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three language forgeries
This brief introduction of one highly important issue bearing different consequences (national, political, historical, cultural, and etc.), I believe, clears out the language forgeries made mainly due to political representatives of a small group, which in fact has nothing to divide with Greece. The first language forgery is the name of Skopje, which we accepted to be balled Macedonia, the region previously called Vardar (Vardarska Banovina). The second language forgery concerns the Bulgarian or Serbian-Bulgaria language in Skopje declared to be Macedonian.And the third – highly impudent one, the attempt to form a Slavic-Macedonian minority in Greece, grounded on the alleged similarity of the language of a small group of Greeks with the fake Macedonian in Skopje and the non-authentic Macedonian country.The whole thing seems ridiculous but it would have been ridiculous if we have proved to the international community how silly all these things are. Now, the issue adopted some provocative notion and evoked a serious of abuses.

Notes

1. Professor Giorgos Babiniotis is lecturer in linguistics, chairman of the Hellenic Foundation for Culture, former rector of the University of Athens, author of a dictionary of the Greek language
2. The author use the term "Skopje’ as definition of the FYROM State