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The Slavic dialects of Greece are the dialects of Macedonian and Bulgarian spoken by minority groups in the regions of Macedonia and Thrace in northern Greece. Usually, these dialects are classified as either Bulgarian or Pomak in Thrace, transitional dialects in East Macedonia, and Macedonian in Central and West Macedonia. Until the official codification of the Macedonian language in 1944 many linguists considered all the dialects to be Bulgarian. This has remained the predominant opinion in Bulgarian linguistics and dialectology and the position of the Bulgarian governments, and it is also supported by some international scholars.

Present situation

At present, the number of Slavophones in Greece is unknown. In the latest census posing a question on mother tongue (1951), 41,017 people declared themselves speakers of Slavic. Almost all Slavic speakers today in Greek Macedonia also speak Greek and most regard themselves as ethnically and culturally Greek. Many of those for whom a non-Greek identity was particularly important have tended to leave Greece during the past eighty years. Very few speakers can understand written Macedonian and Bulgarian and according to Euromosaic, the dialects spoken in Greece are mutually intelligible as is the case with the Macedonian and Bulgarian languages. Some linguists used the term "Greek-Slavic" instead of the confusing interchangeable terms "Macedonian" and "Bulgarian".

Distribution

The distribution of the Macedonian and Bulgarian languages in Greece varies widely. Much of the population is concentrated in the prefectures of Florina, Kastoria, Pella, Kilkis and Imathia, with a smaller Bulgarian-speaking population in Thrace. There has never been a large Slavic-speaking population in the Chalcidice, Pieria and Kavala.

Population estimates

The exact numbers of speakers in Greece is hard to ascertain. Jacques Bacid estimates in 1983 in his book that "over 200,000 Macedonian speakers remained in Greece". Other sources put the numbers of speakers at 180,000 , 220,000 250,000 and 300,000. The Reader's Digest World Guide. puts the figure of Ethnic Macedonians in Greece at 1.8% or c.200,000 people and that for Pomaks at 0.9% or c.100,000 people, with the native language roughly corresponding with the figures. The UCLA also states that there is 200,000 Macedonian speakers in Greece and 30,000 Bulgarian speakers.. A 2008 article in the Greek newspaper Eleftherotipia put the estimate at 20,000.

This refers to speakers regardless of Ethnic identity. No information is given regarding how the figures were obtained.

Political representation

A political party that promotes the concept and rights of the "Macedonian minority in Greece", and wider use of the Macedonian language - the Rainbow Party (Template:Lang-el, Template:Lang-mk) - was founded in September 1998, and received 2,955 votes in the region of Macedonia in the 2004 elections. Rainbow didn't participate in the Greek legislative election, 2007 citing financial reasons. Several ethnic Macedonian members of Rainbow have been elected to public office, such as Petros Dimtsis in Florina and Pando Ašlakov (Panagiotis Anastasiadis) as the mayor of Meliti (Ovčarani), alongside other ethnic Macedonian mayors in Vevi, Neochoraki, Achlada and Pappagiannis.

In 2009, another pro-Macedonian organisation, the Educative and Cultural Movement of Edessa was founded in the city of Edessa. The group currently engages itself with teaching the Macedonian language, publishing the Macedonian language newspaper, Zadruga (Template:Lang-mk), and in engaging with other Macedonian minorities living in Bulgaria and Macedonians in Albania.

Classification and dialects

It is generally accepted that both Macedonian and Bulgarian are spoken in the north of Greece. They are split into three major groups: Macedonian, transitional dialects, and Bulgarian. This opinion is not accepted by Bulgarian authors who consider all of these dialects, and the Macedonian language as a whole to be part of the Western Bulgarian dialects.

According to Peter Trudgill,

There is, of course, the very interesting Ausbau sociolinguistic question as to whether the language they speak is Bulgarian or Macedonian, given that both these languages have developed out of the South Slavonic dialect continuum that embraces also Serbian, Croatian, and Slovene. In former Yugoslav Macedonia and Bulgaria there is no problem, of course. Bulgarians are considered to speak Bulgarian and Macedonians Macedonian. The Slavonic dialects of Greece, however, are "roofless" dialects whose speakers have no access to education in the standard languages. Greek non-linguists, when they acknowledge the existence of these dialects at all, frequently refer to them by the label Slavika, which has the implication of denying that they have any connection with the languages of the neighboring countries. It seems most sensible, in fact, to refer to the language of the Pomaks as Bulgarian and to that of the Christian Slavonic-speakers in Greek Macedonia as Macedonian.

According to Roland Schmieger,

Apart from certain peripheral areas in the far east of Greek Macedonia, which in our opinion must be considered as part of the Bulgarian linguistic area (the region around Kavala and in the Rhodope Mountains, as well as the eastern part of Drama nomos), the dialects of the Slav minority in Greece belong to the Macedonian diasystem.

Macedonian Language

Various dialects of the Macedonian language are spoken in the peripheries of West and Central Macedonia. The dialects of the Macedonian language spoken in Greece include the Upper and Lower Prespa dialects, the Kastoria dialect, the Nestram-Kostenar dialect, the Florina variant of the Prilep-Bitola dialect and the Salonica-Edessa dialect. Certain characteristics of the these dialects include the changing of the suffix ovi to oj creating the words лебови> лебој (lebovi> leboj/ bread). Often the intervocalic consonants of /v/, /g/ and /d/ are lost, changing words from polovina >polojna (a half) and sega > sea (now). In other phonological and morphological characteristics, they remain similar to the other South-Eastern dialects spoken in the Republic of Macedonia and Albania.

Transitional dialects

The Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop dialect is considered a transitional dialects between Macedonian and Bulgarian in Macedonian dialectology. In Bulgarian dialectology, Drama-Ser dialect and Solun dialect are considered Eastern Bulgarian dialects which are transitory between the Western and Eastern Bulgarian dialects and are grouped as West-Rupian dialects, part of the large Rupian dialect massif of Rhodopes and Thrace . They are spoken in the peripheral region of East Macedonia along with a small population in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian vowels of я /ja/ and Й /ji/ are kept, transforming words such as николаи/nikolai into николай/nikolaĭ and Кои/Koj into Кой/Koĭ. Macedonian and Western Bulgarian words like Бел/Bel convert to the Eastern Bulgarian form of бял /bʲal/ (white). Old Church Slavonic ръ/рь and лъ/ль are pronounced as ər and əl, respectively (cf. ръ~ър (rə~ər) and лъ~ъл (lə~əl) in Standard Bulgarian and vocalic r~oл (ɔl) in Standard Macedonian). Likewise, Old Church Slavonic yus and ъ are both pronounced as in Bulgarian, rather than and , as in Macedonian. The /h/ phoneme also adopts the Bulgarian pronunciation of (kh). The dialects also have many similarities to both the Bulgarian and Macedonian standards are often placed in both.

References

1. Mladenov, Stefan. Geschichte der bulgarischen Sprache, Berlin, Leipzig, 1929, § 207-209.
2. Mazon, Andre. Contes Slaves de la Macédoine Sud-Occidentale: Etude linguistique; textes et traduction; Notes de Folklore, Paris 1923, p. 4.
3. Селищев, Афанасий. Избранные труды, Москва 1968, с. 580-582.
4. Die Slaven in Griechenland von Max Vasmer. Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1941. Kap. VI: Allgemeines und sprachliche Stellung der Slaven Griechenlands, p.324.
5. Стойков (Stoykov), Стойко (2002) . Българска диалектология (Bulgarian dialectology) (in Bulgarian). София: Акад. изд. "Проф. Марин Дринов". ISBN 9544308466. OCLC 53429452.
6. Institute of Bulgarian Language (1978). Unity of the Bulgarian language in the past and today (Единството на българския език в миналото и днес) (in Bulgarian). Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. p. 4. OCLC 6430481.
7. Шклифов, Благой. Проблеми на българската диалектна и историческа фонетика с оглед на македонските говори, София 1995, с. 14.
8. Шклифов, Благой. Речник на костурския говор, Българска диалектология, София 1977, с. кн. VІІІ, с. 201-205,
9. Keith Brown, Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 1994: From a strictly linguistic point of view Macedonian can be called a Bulgarian dialect, as structurally it is most similar to Bulgarian.
10. Colin Baker, Sylvia Prys Jones, Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education, p. 415: Macedonian is similar to Bulgarian and is sometimes been regarded as a variety of that language.
11. Euromosaic - Le [slavo]macédonien / bulgare en Grèce
12. See Ethnologue (); Euromosaic, Le (slavo)macédonien / bulgare en Grèce, L'arvanite / albanais en Grèce, Le valaque/aromoune-aroumane en Grèce, and Mercator-Education: European Network for Regional or Minority Languages and Education, The Turkish language in education in Greece. cf. also P. Trudgill, "Greece and European Turkey: From Religious to Linguistic Identity", in S Barbour, C Carmichael (eds.), Language and nationalism in Europe, Oxford University Press 2000.
13. Minority Rights Group,Minorities in the Balkans, page 75.
14. Jacques Bacid, Ph.D. Macedonia Through the Ages. Columbia University, 1983.
15. GeoNative - Macedonia
16. L. M. Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World 1995, Princeton University Press
17. Hill, P. (1999) "Macedonians in Greece and Albania: A Comparative study of recent developments". Nationalities Papers Volume 27, 1 March 1999, page 44(14)
18. Poulton, H.(2000), "Who are the Macedonians?",C. Hurst & Co. Publishers
19. Readers Digest Encyclopedia of World Geography, 1994, p. 302
20. UCLA Language Materials Project: Language Profile
21. UCLA Language Materials Project: Language Profile
22. Eletherotipia article
23. Press release of Rainbow
24. Historical succes, a Macedonian elected in office in Ovčarani (Meliti)
25. Ovčarani proves that Greece is multicultural
26. Our language will be heard via radio in Lerin
27. Educative and Cultural Movement of Edessa
28. In Greece a Macedonian school will open
29. ^ Stoyko Stoykov. Bulgarian Dialectology. Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Publishing House, 4th Edition, Sofia, 2002, pp. 170–186
30. Trudgill P., 2000, "Greece and European Turkey: From Religious to Linguistic Identity". In: Stephen Barbour and Cathie Carmichael (eds.), Language and Nationalism in Europe, Oxford : Oxford University Press, p.259.
31. Schmieger, R. 1998. "The situation of the Macedonian language in Greece: sociolinguistic analysis", International Journal of the Sociology of Language 131, 125-55.
32. стр.247 Граматика на македонскиот литературен јазик, Блаже Конески, Култура- Скопје 1967
33. bg:s:Дописка от село Бобища
34. Topolinjska, Z. (1998). "In place of a foreword: facts about the Republic of Macedonia and the Macedonian language" in the International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Issue 131
35. стр. 244 Македонски јазик за средното образование- Стојка Бојковска, Димитар Пандев, Лилјана Минова-Ѓуркова, Живко Цветковски- Просветно дело- Скопје 2001
36. Friedman, V. (2001) Macedonian (SEELRC)
37. Poulton, Hugh. (1995). Who Are the Macedonians?, (London: C. Hurst & Co. Ltd:107–108.).
38. Z. Topolińska- B. Vidoeski, Polski~macedonski- gramatyka konfrontatiwna, z.1, PAN, 1984
39. Friedman, V. (1998) "The implementation of standard Macedonian: problems and results" in International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Issue 131
40. ^ Sussex, Roland (2006). The Slavic Languages. Cambridge University Press. p. 509. ISBN 0521223156. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
41. Trudgill P., 2000, "Greece and European Turkey: From Religious to Linguistic Identity". In: Stephen Barbour and Cathie Carmichael (eds.), Language and Nationalism in Europe, Oxford : Oxford University Press

Bibliography

• Trudgill P. (2000) "Greece and European Turkey: From Religious to Linguistic Identity" in Language and Nationalism in Europe (Oxford : Oxford University Press)
• Iakovos D. Michailidis (1996) "Minority Rights and Educational Problems in Greek Interwar Macedonia: The Case of the Primer 'Abecedar'". Journal of Modern Greek Studies 14.2 329-343

External links

• Dialectial dictionary of the Oschima speech of the Lerin dialect

• Articles to be merged from August 2011
• Bulgarian language
• Macedonian language
• Languages of Greece