Monday, July 2, 2018

Σλαβομακεδόνικα


Σλαβομακεδόνικα.

  Τέλη της δεκαετίας του ’70, μια και ήξερα ρώσικα αποφάσισα να ασχοληθώ και με τις άλλες σλάβικες γλώσσες. Όταν ξέρεις μία της οικογένειας, τις άλλες τις μαθαίνεις εύκολα. Για παράδειγμα, ξέροντας γαλλικά (επάρκεια), έμαθα αρκετά εύκολα ιταλικά, ισπανικά και πορτογαλικά. Έτσι ασχολήθηκα με τα βουλγαρικά, τα σερβοκροάτικα και τελευταία τα τσέχικα, σε επίπεδο μεθόδου άνευ διδασκάλου.  Θυμάμαι που συνάντησα στον Παχύ Άμμο ένα τσέχο και τον έβαλα και μου διάβασε τα κείμενα του teach yourself books και τα ηχογράφησα.  Μόνο με τα πολωνικά δεν ασχολήθηκα γιατί δεν είχα δείγματα προφοράς. Όταν βλέπω όμως πολωνική ταινία αναγνωρίζω πάρα πολλές λέξεις από τα ρώσικα.
  Αργότερα αυτές τις γλώσσες τις εγκατέλειψα. Δεν μπορούσα να κυνηγάω δυο λαγούς, όπως έλεγε ο πατέρας μου. Έτσι περιορίστηκα μόνο στη βελτίωση των ρωσικών μου. Τώρα που έχει γίνει επίκαιρο το μακεδονικό, αποφάσισα να ρίξω μια ματιά στη γλώσσα των Σκοπίων, όχι για να εμβαθύνω, αλλά σε επίπεδο μεθόδου άνευ διδασκάλου, όπως και με τις άλλες. Εδώ βρήκα ένα κείμενο και αποφάσισα να αναρτήσω τις έξι πρώτες σελίδες του, γιατί οι υπόλοιπες πενήντα πέντε είναι καθαρά γλωσσολογικές. Φυσικά δεν μπορώ να εγγυηθώ για την εγκυρότητα όσων υποστηρίζονται εκεί. 

0 Sociolinguistic and Geolinguistic Situation
0.1 Geography
Macedonia has been the name of a Balkan region since ancient times, when it was bounded by
Epirus, Thessaly, and Thrace on the southwest, south, and east. At present geographic Macedonia
is best defined as the region bounded by a series of mountains and ranges (Olympus, Pindus, S‹ar,
Rhodopes) and the lower course of the river Mesta (Greek: Néstos). It comprises the Republic of
Macedonia, the Blagoevgrad District in southwestern Bulgaria (Pirin Macedonia), and the district
of Makedhonía in the province of Northern Greece (Aegean Macedonia). Two small parts of
eastern Albania — one around Lakes Ohrid and Prespa and the other around Golo Brdo (Albanian:
Golobordë) — can also be included in a geographic definition of Macedonia (cf. Vidoeski in
Koneski 1983:117).
0.2 Terminology and History
The geographic region, like the rest of the Balkans, has always been multilingual. For our
purposes, Modern Macedonian (henceforth, Macedonian) can be defined as the Slavic dialects
spoken on the territory of geographic Macedonia.1 Macedonian is a South Slavic language in the
Indo-European language family. Together with Bulgarian, Macedonian comprises the East South
Slavic sub-group. The West South Slavic languages are Slovenian and the former Serbo-
Croatian.2
Ancient Macedonian, an independent Indo-European language of uncertain affiliation, was spoken
in at least part of Macedonia in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. and presumably both earlier and
later. This gave way to Greek, which was in turn supplanted by Slavic when the Slavs invaded
and settled in the Balkans in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. The Ottoman conquest of the
Balkan peninsula in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries brought about a disruption of cultural
continuity with regard to Slavic literacy in that region. The history of Modern Literary (or
Standard, for the purposes of this exposition, the two terms are synonymous) Macedonian begins
in the latter part of the eighteenth century with the birth of South Slavic nationalism. Until about
1840, publications using Macedonian dialects were ecclesiastical and didactic works that were
influenced by Church Slavonic but had clearly identifiable colloquial bases. The goal was to
establish a vernacular-based Slavic literary language in opposition to both the archaizing influence
of those who would have imposed some form of Church Slavonic and the Hellenizing attempts of
the Greek Orthodox Church, to which the majority of Macedonians and Bulgarians belonged. The
authors of this period on the Ottoman territory that later became Macedonia and Bulgaria called
their vernacular language Bulgarian. By the mid-nineteenth century, a struggle over the dialectal
base of the emerging vernacular literary language became manifest. Two principal literary centres
1 The dialects of the Slavic-speaking Muslims of the Gora region on the eastern and northern slopes of Mts.
Korab and S‹ar in Albania and Kosovo are also classed as Macedonian by Vidoeski (1986), a view that i s
implicitly accepted by the Croatian and Serbian linguists Brozovic! and Ivic! (1988:70-71). Other languages
spoken on the territory of geographic Macedonia include Albanian, Aromanian, Bulgarian, Greek, Megleno-
Romanian, Romani, Serbian, and Turkish. Until the Holocaust, Judezmo was also an important language in
Macedonia, and it is still spoken by some survivors.
2 The West South Slavic dialects adjacent to Macedonian are all Serbian, and the variant of the former
Serbo–Croatian standard of the former Yugoslavia that had the most influence in Macedonia was the Serbian
variant. Thus, in this work I use the term Serbian, depending on the context, to refer to the Serbian variant of
the former Serbo–Croatian, the current standard of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, or to the Serbian
dialects. The term Serbo–Croatian is used to refer to the standard language of former Yugoslavia as such.
LW/M 117 5 MACEDONIAN
arose: One in northeastern Bulgaria and the other in southwestern Macedonia. Macedonian
intellectuals envisioned a Bulgarian literary language based on Macedonian dialects or a Macedo-
Bulgarian dialectal compromise. Bulgarians, however, insisted that their Eastern standard be
adopted without compromise. This period was marked by considerable struggles and polemics
over the publication and use of textbooks with Macedonian dialectal bases.
The establishment of an independent Bulgarian Church (the Exarchate) in 1870-72 marked a
definitive victory over Hellenism. It is from this period that we have the first published statements
insisting on Macedonian as a language separate from both Serbian and Bulgarian (Pulevski
1875:48-49), although these ideas were expressed during the preceding period in private
correspondence and similar documentation. In his book Za makedonckite raboti ‘On Macedonian
matters’ (Sofia, 1903), Krste Misirkov outlined the principles of a Macedonian literary language
based on the Prilep-Bitola dialect group, i.e. precisely the dialects which later served as the basis
of Literary Macedonian. This work documents the coherent formulation of a Macedonian literary
language and nationality from the beginning of the twentieth century, thus belying the claim that
Macedonian separateness dates only from the end of World War Two.
On 18 October 1912 the Kingdoms of Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia united against Turkey in the
First Balkan War. Less than a year later Macedonia was partitioned among these three allies,
essentially marking the end of the development of Literary Macedonian outside the borders of
Yugoslavia except for the period 1946-1948, during which the Macedonians of Pirin Macedonia
were recognized as a national minority in Bulgaria with their own schools and publications in
Literary Macedonian. In accordance with article 9 of the Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920)
concerning minority population language rights in Greece, a commission of three men, probably
from Bitola and of Aromanian origin, composed a Macedonian primer entitled Abecedar printed in
Athens in 1925 using a Latin orthography and based on dialects spoken between Bitola and Lerin
(Greek Florina). The book was never used, however, and most copies were destroyed. In
Yugoslavia, Macedonian was treated as a South Serbian dialect, which was consistent with claims
that had been advanced since the nineteenth century, but the Yugoslav government permitted
Macedonian literature to develop on a limited basis as a dialect literature. Some Macedonian
poetry was also published in Bulgaria under the guise of (Bulgarian) dialect literature. It was
during this interwar period that linguists from outside the Balkans published studies in which they
emphasized the distinctness of Macedonian from both Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian (Vaillant
1938).
0.3 Standardization
Although efforts at the creation of a Macedonian literary language date from the nineteenth century,
it was not until 2 August 1944 that Macedonian was formally declared the official language of the
Republic of Macedonia. The standardization of Literary Macedonian proceeded rapidly after its
official recognition, in part because an inter-dialectal koine was already functioning. The West
Central dialect (Bitola-Veles-Prilep-Kic#evo), which was the largest in both area and population,
supplied a base to which speakers from other areas could adjust their speech most easily. In many
respects these dialects are also maximally differentiated from both Serbian and Bulgarian, but
differentiation was not an absolute principle in codification. A significant sociolinguisitc issue
now, for Literary Macedonian, is the fact that Skopje — the capital and principal cultural and
LW/M 117 6 MACEDONIAN
population centre — is peripheral to the West Central dialect area and the Republic as a whole has
been subject to considerable Serbian influence (see Minova-G⁄urkova 1987). For more details see
Friedman (1985, 1998, 2000), and Lunt (1984, 1986).
0.4 Status
Literary Macedonian is the official language of the Republic of Macedonia. It was recognized as
such by all countries except Bulgaria — where it was an official minority language 1946-48 and
subsequently officially viewed as a “regional norm” or "dialect" of Bulgarian — and Greece,
where Macedonian is usually claimed not to exist — except in proclamations banning its use — or
it is claimed that the term Macedonian can only be used to refer to the Greek dialects of Macedonia
or to Ancient Macedonian (see Human Rights Watch/Helsinki 1994). In 1999, the Bulgarian
government officially recognized the standard language of the Republic of Macedonia as an
independent language, but did not recognize the dialects spoken outside the Republic as part of that
language. Nonetheless, there are citizens of and emigrants from both Bulgaria and Greece who
identify their native (Slavic) language as Macedonian. It is also spoken in about 50 to 75 villages in
eastern Albania and Southwestern Kosovo, where it is used as a language of instruction in
elementary schools up through grade 4 only in the southwestern villages of the Ohrid-Prespa
region. The relationship of Macedonian to Bulgarian is mutatis mutandis, comparable to that of
Dutch to German. The main difference is that no serious modern scholar, nor even journalistic
authors, would describe Dutch as a codified German dialect, whereas such misstatements of the
relationship of Macedonian to Bulgarian continue to appear. See Haugen (1968) for relevant
comparative material on the Scandinavian languages.
0.5 Dialects
The map shows the location of the thirty pre-1996 municipal centers of the Republic of Macedonia
as well as rivers and regions of dialectological significance.3 Locations outside the Republic of
Macedonia of significance for Macedonian dialectology are also indicated. Names in parentheses in
Greece and Albania are in Greek and Albanian, respectively. In Bulgaria, the pre-1950 names are
given in parentheses. The names of the major dialect groups are given below the map. The towns
given in parentheses are included in the given group.
0.5.1 Major Isoglosses
The major East-West bundle of isoglosses runs roughly from Skopska Crna Gora along the rivers
Vardar and Crna, east of Lerin (Greek Florina) and then bifurcates south of Lerin separating the
Korc#a-Kostur (Albanian Korçë, Greek Kastoria) dialects into a separate group (see Vidoeski in
Koneski 1983). A significant North-South bundle separates the Lower Polog and Kratovo-Kriva
Palanka dialects from the rest. Skopje is located roughly at the intersection of these two main
bundles of isoglosses.

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