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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 Bulgarian in Thrace, while the dialects in Macedonia are classified as Macedonian, with the exception of some eastern dialects which can also be classified as Bulgarian. Until the official codification of the Macedonian language in 1945 many linguists considered all these to be Bulgarian dialects. However, some linguists opposed this view and considered Macedonian dialects as comprising an independent language distinct from both Bulgarian and Serbian.

Slavic dialects spoken in the region of Greek Macedonia

The continuum of Macedonian and Bulgarian is spoken today in the prefectures of Florina and Pella, and to a lesser extent in Kastoria, Imathia, Kilkis, Thessaloniki, Serres and Drama.

According to Riki van Boeschoten, the Slavic dialects of Greek Macedonia are divided into three main dialects (Eastern, Central and Western), of which the Eastern dialect is used in the areas of Serres and Drama, and is closest to Bulgarian, the Western dialect is used in Florina and Kastoria, and is closest to Macedonian, the Central dialect is used in the area between Edessa and Salonica and is an intermediate between Macedonian and Bulgarian. Trudgill classifies certain peripheral dialects in the far east of Greek Macedonia as part of the Bulgarian language area and the rest as Macedonian dialects. Victor Friedman considers those Macedonian dialects, particularly those spoken as west as Kilkis, to be transitional to the neighbouring South Slavic language.

Macedonian dialectologists Božidar Vidoeski and Blaže Koneski consider the eastern Macedonian dialects to be transitional to Bulgarian, including the Maleševo-Pirin dialect.

Bulgarian dialectologists claim all dialects and do not recognize the Macedonian. They divide Bulgarian dialects mainly into Eastern and Western by a separating isogloss(dyado, byal/dedo, bel "grandpa, white"(m., sg.)) stretching from Salonica to the meeting point of Iskar and Danube, except for the isolated phenomena of the Korcha dialect as an of Eastern Bulgarian Rup dialects in the western fringes.

The nasal vowels are absent in all Slavic dialects except for the dialects of Macedonian in Greece and the Lechitic dialects (Polabian, Slovincian, Polish and Kashubian). This, along with the preservation of the paroxitonic in the Kostur dialect and Polish, is part of a series of isoglosses shared with the Lechitic dialects, which led to the thesis of a genetic relationship between Proto-Bulgarian and Proto-Macedonian with Proto-Polish and Proto-Kashubian.

The Old Church Slavonic language, the earliest recorded Slavic language, was based on the Salonica dialects. Church Slavonic, long-used as a state language further north in East and West Slavic states and as the only one in Wallachia and Moldavia until the 18th century, influenced other Slavic languages on all levels, including morphonology and vocabulary. 70% of Church Slavonic words are common to all Slavic languages, the influence of Church Slavonic is especially pronounced in Russian, which today consists of mixed native and Church Slavonic vocabulary.

Fringe views

A series of ethnological and pseudo-linguistic works were published by three Greek teachers, notably Boukouvalas and Tsioulkas, whose publications demonstrate common ideological and methodological similarities. They published etymological lists tracing every single Slavic word to Ancient Greek with fictional correlations, and they were ignorant of the dialects and the Slavic languages entirely. Among them, Boukouvalas promoted an enormous influence of the Greek language on a Bulgarian idiom and a discussion about their probable Greek descent. Tsioulkas followed him by publishing a large book, where he "proved" through an "etymological" approach, that these idioms are a pure Ancient Greek dialect. A publication of the third teacher followed, Giorgos Georgiades, who presented the language as a mixture of Greek, Turkish and other loanwords, but was incapable of deifining the dialects as either Greek or Slav.

Serbian dialectology does not usually extend the Serbian dialects to Greek Macedonia, but an unconventional classification has been maken by Aleksandar Belić, a convinced Serbian nationalist, who regarded the dialects as Serbian. In his classification he distinguished three categories of dialects in Greek Macedonia: a Serbo-Macedonian dialect, a Bulgaro-Macedonian teritorry where Serbian is spoken and a Non-Slavic territory.

Slavic dialects spoken in the region of Thrace

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Some of the Rup dialects of the Bulgarian language are spoken by the Pomaks in Western Thrace in Greece. These dialects are native also in Bulgaria, and are classified as part of the Smolyan subdialect. Not all Pomaks speak this dialect as their mother language.

Extinct Slavic dialects

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Attempts of codification

Abecedar

Under the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, Greece must opened schools for minority-language children. So in September 1924 Greece agreed to a protocol with Bulgaria to place its Slavic-speaking minority under the protection of the League of Nations as Bulgarians. However, the Greek parliament refused to ratify the protocol due to objections from Serbia, and from Greeks who considered the Slavic-speakers to be Slavicized Greeks rather than Slavic people. Vasilis Dendramis, the Greek representative in the League of the Nations, stated that Macedonian Slav language was neither Bulgarian, nor Serbian, but an independent language. The Greek government went ahead with the publication in May 1925 of the Abecedar, described by contemporary Greek writers as a primer for "the children of Slav speakers in Greece ... printed in the Latin script and compiled in the Macedonian dialect." The book's publication sparked controversy in Greek Macedonia, along with Bulgaria and Serbia. The Bulgarians and Serbs objected to the book being printed in Latin alphabet. Although some books reached villages in Greek Macedonia, it was never used in their schools. In January 1926, the region of Florina saw extensive protests by Greek and pro-Greek Slavic speakers campaigning against the primer's publication, demanding the government change their policies on minority education.

Greek comunists' codification

After the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, under the auspices of some Macedonian intellectuals in Bucharest, anti-Yugoslav, non-serbianised alphabet, grammar, and primer were created. The Communist Party of Greece led by Nikos Zahariadis took the side of the Cominform. After the defeat of communists in the Greek Civil War in 1949, a hunt for Titoist spies began in the midst of Greek political immigrants - civil war refugees, living in socialist countries in Eastern Europe (often coming there after a brief stay in the so called “Tito's traitorous fascist Yugoslavia"). As result the Greek communist publisher "Nea Ellada" issued a Macedonian grammar (1952) and developed a different alphabet. Between 1952 and 1956, the Macedonian Department of Nea Hellas published a number of issues in this literary standard, officially called " Macedonian language of the Slav Macedonians from Greek or Aegean Macedonia". This failed attempt of codification included the Ъ, Ь, Ю, Я, Й and was proclaimed as non-serbianised. However it was merely a form of the Bulgarian. This codification did not gain widespread acceptance. The Soviet-Yugoslav rapprochement from the mid. of the 1950s probably helped to put this codification to an end. The grammar was prepared by a team headed by Atanas Peykov. Atanas Peikov himself came to Romania from Bulgaria, where till 1951 he had worked at the Informbureau of Elas Press. Although this "Aegean Macedonian language" legitimized the symbolic importance of the "Macedonian language" and thus facilitated the later spread of the standard Yugoslav Macedonian norm among the Aegean emigrants, it also delayed this process, creating certain reservations towards the Yugoslavian Macedonian standard. Educated in this norm Greek refugees were nearly unable to adopt later the Yugoslav version.

Makedonska Iskra (Macedonian Spark) was the first Macedonian newspaper published in Australia, from 1946 to 1957. Its articles were not in standard Macedonian but in local Slavic dialects of Greece. A monthly with national distribution, it commenced in Perth and later moved to Melbourne and Sydney.

Features

See also

• Slavs in Greece
• Slavic-speakers of Greek Macedonia
• Eastern South Slavic
• Pomak language
• Fallmerayer's Greek theory

References

1. 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.
2. Mladenov, Stefan. Geschichte der bulgarischen Sprache, Berlin, Leipzig, 1929, § 207-209.
3. Mazon, Andre. Contes Slaves de la Macédoine Sud-Occidentale: Etude linguistique; textes et traduction; Notes de Folklore, Paris 1923, p. 4.
4. Селищев, Афанасий. Избранные труды, Москва 1968, с. 580-582.
5. 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.
6. Antoine Meillet (French, linguist, 1928): Their dialects, differing among themselves, are not truly Serbian nor truly Bulgarian, especially if one is thinking of written Bulgarian, which is based on dialects quite far removed from the Macedonian dialects. In reality these dialects do not properly belong to either the one or the other of the two groups under dispute.
   1. Todor Dimitrovski, Blaže Koneski, Trajko Stamatoski. About the Macedonian language; "Krste Misirkov" Institute of the Macedonian Language, 1978; p.31.
   2. Kulturen Život. Macedonian Review, Volume 10; Kulturen Zhivot., 1980; p.105
7. Vaillant, André (1938), "Le Problème du slave macédonien, Bulletin de la Société linguistique, 39, 2(# 116): 194–210, cited in Fishman, J. A. (ed) (1993), The Earliest Stage of Language Planning, New York, p. 164.
8. Małecki, M. (1938), Z zagadnień dialektologii macedońskiej, Rocznik slawistyczny, 14: 119–144, cited in Fishman, J. A. (ed) (1993), The Earliest Stage of Language Planning, New York, p. 164.
9. "Несмотря на значительное диаметральное разнообразие, македонские говоры представляют собою единство и заметно отличаются от народных говоров Фракии, Родоп, Мизии и Балкан" whole and differ markedly from the folk dialects of Thrace, the Rhodopes, Moesia and the Balkans]. Berstein, S. (1938), Great Soviet Encyclopedia, no. 36, p. 743, cited in Bernstein (1944), Несколько замечаний о македонском литературном языке .
10. "The European Union and Lesser-Used Languages". European Parliament. 2002: 77. Macedonian and Bulgarian are the two standard languages of the eastern group of south Slavonic languages. In Greek Macedonia several dialectal varieties, very close to both standard Macedonian and Bulgarian, are spoken ... The two words (Macedonian and Bulgarian) are used here primarily because they are the names the speakers use to refer to the way they speak. In fact, many speak of 'our language' (nasi) or 'the local language' (ta dopia): the use of actual names is a politically charged national issue ... Yet (Slavo)Macedonian/ Bulgarian is still spoken by considerable numbers in Greek Macedonia, all along its northern borders, specially in the Prefectures of Florina, Pella, and to a lesser extent in Kastoria, Kilkis, Imathia, Thessalonika, Serres and Drama. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
11. Boeschoten, Riki van (1993): Minority Languages in Northern Greece. Study Visit to Florina, Aridea, (Report to the European Commission, Brussels) "The Western dialect is used in Florina and Kastoria and is closest to the language used north of the border, the Eastern dialect is used in the areas of Serres and Drama and is closest to Bulgarian, the Central dialect is used in the area between Edessa and Salonica and forms an intermediate dialect"
12. Ioannidou, Alexandra (1999). Questions on the Slavic Dialects of Greek Macedonia. Athens: Peterlang. p. 59, 63. ISBN 9783631350652. In September 1993 ... the European Commission financed and published an interesting report by Riki van Boeschoten on the "Minority Languages in Northern Greece", in which the existence of a "Macedonian language" in Greece is mentioned. The description of this language is simplistic and by no means reflective of any kind of linguistic reality; instead it reflects the wish to divide up the dialects comprehensibly into geographical (i.e. political) areas. According to this report, Greek Slavophones speak the "Macedonian" language, which belongs to the "Bulgaro-Macedonian" group and is divided into three main dialects (Western, Central and Eastern) - a theory which lacks a factual basis. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
13. 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.
14. Heine, Bernd; Kuteva, Tania (2005). Language Contact and Grammatical Change. Cambridge University Press. p. 118. ISBN 9780521608282. in the modern northern and eastern Macedonian dialects that are transitional to Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian, e.g. in Kumanovo and Kukus/Kilkis, object reduplication occurs with less consistency than in the west-central dialects
15. Fodor, István; Hagège, Claude (309). Language reform : history and future. Buske. ISBN 9783871189142. The northern dialects are transitional to Serbo-Croatian, whereas the eastern (especially Malesevo) are transitional to Bulgarian. (For further details see Vidoeski 1960-1961, 1962-1963, and Koneski 1983).
16. Vidoeski, Božo (2005). Dialects of Macedonian. Slavica. p. 33. ISBN 9780893573157. the northern border zone and the extreme southeast towards Bulgarian linguistic territory. It was here that the formation of transitional dialect belts between Macedonian and Bulgarian in the east, and Macedonian and Serbian in the north began.
17. "Карта на диалектната делитба на българския език". Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
18. Bethin, Christina Y.; Bethin, Christina y (1998). Slavic Prosody: Language Change and Phonological Theory. 84-87: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521591485.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
19. Hanna Popowska-Taborska. Wczesne Dzieje Slowianich jezyka. Instytut Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk. Warszawa 2014, p. 99-100 “Chodzi o wnioskowanie na podstawie różnego rodzaju zbieżności językowych o domniemanym usytuowaniu przodków współczesnych reprezentantów języków słowiańskich w ich słowiańskiej praojczyźnie. Trzy najbardziej popularne w tym względzie koncepcje dotyczą: 1. domniemanych związków genetycznych Słowian północnych (nadbałtyckich) z północnym krańcem Słowiańszczyzny wschodniej, 2. domniemanych związków genetycznych Protopolaków (Protokaszubów) z Protobułgarami i Protomacedończykami oraz … Również żywa jest po dzień dzisiejszy wysunięta w 1940 r. przez Conewa teza o domniemanych genetycznych związkach polsko-bułgarskich, za którymi świadczyć mają charakteryzująca oba języki szeroka wymowa kontynuantów ě, nagłosowe o- poprzedzone protezą, zachowanie samogłosek nosowych w języku polskim i ślady tych samogłosek w języku bułgarskim, akcent paroksytoniczny cechujący język polski i dialekty kosturskie. Za dawnymi związkami lechicko-bułgarsko-macedońskimi opowiada się też Bernsztejn , który formułuje tezę, że przodkowie Bułgarów i Macedończyków żyli w przeszłości na północnym obszarze prasłowiańskim w bliskich związkach z przodkami Pomorzan i Polaków. Do wymienionych wyżej zbieżności fonetycznych dołącza Bernsztejn zbieżności leksykalne bułgarsko-kaszubskie; podobnie czynią Kurkina oraz Schuster-Šewc , którzy– opowiadając się za tezą Conewa i Bernsztejna – powołują się na mój artykuł o leksykalnych nawiązaniach kaszubsko-południowosłowiańskich ”
20. Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Elsevier. 2010. p. 663. ISBN 9780080877754.
21. Crișan, Marius-Mircea (2017). Dracula: An International Perspective. Springer. p. 114. ISBN 9783319633664.
22. Die slavischen Sprachen / The Slavic Languages. Halbband 2. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. 2014. ISBN 9783110215472.
23. Bennett, Brian P. (2011). Religion and Language in Post-Soviet Russia. Routledge. ISBN 9781136736131.
24. ^ Ioannidou, Alexandra (1999). Questions on the Slavic Dialects of Greek Macedonia. Athens: Peterlang. p. 56–58. ISBN 9783631350652. (A) series of etymological and pseudo-linguistic publications ... appeared in Greece ... by "specialists", such as the teachers Giorgos Boukouvalas and Konstantinos Tsioulkas. Boukouvalas published in 1905 in Cairo a brief brochure under the title "The language of the Bulgarophones in Macedonia" (1905). This essay, which assumed the Slav character of the foreign-language idioms of Greek Macedonia by naming them "Bulgarian", included a long list of Slavic words with Greek roots which are used in the dialects. ... Konstantinos Tsioulkas published in 1907 in Athens a book over 350 pages in length to prove the ancient Greek character of the idioms in Greek Macecionia!... : "Contributions to the bilinguism of the Macedonians by comparison of the Slav'-like Macedonian language to Greek" ... Tsioulkas "proved" through a series of "etymological" lists that the inhabitants of Greece's Macedonia spoke a pure Ancient-Greek dialect. ... In 1948 by a third teacher, Giorgos Georgiades, (wrote) under the promising title "The mixed idiom in Macedonia and the ethnological situation of the Macedonians who speak it". Here it is stated that many words from the dialects maintain their "Ancient Greek character". Still, the language itself was presented as a mixture of Greek, Turkish and words borrowed from other languages. As a result, the author found himself incapable of defining it as either Greek or Slav. In examining such publications, one will easily recognise ideological and methodological similarities. One common factor for all the authors is that they ignored not only the dialects they wrote about, but also the Slavic languages entirely. This fact did not hinder them in creating or republishing etymological lists tracing every Slavic word back to Ancient Greek with fictional correlations. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
25. Bulgarian dialectology; Stoyan Stoykov; 4th edition, 2002; pp.128-143
26. Иванов, Й. Българска диалектология. Пловдивско Университетско Издателство “П. Хилендарски”. Пловдив, 1994 г., с. 80 (Ivanov, J. Bulgarian Dialectology. Plovdiv University Press “P. Hilendarski”. Plovdiv, 1994, p. 80)
27. ^ Danforth, Loring M. The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World, p. 70. Princeton University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-691-04356-6
28. Cite error: The named reference hugh was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
29. Andonovski, Hristo. "The First Macedonian Primer between the Two World Wars - The Abecedar". Macedonian Review. 6:64-69.
30. Poulton, Hugh. Who are the Macedonians?, pp. 88-89. C. Hurst & Co, 2000. ISBN 1-85065-534-0
31. Roudometof, Victor. Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question, p. 102. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002. ISBN 0-275-97648-3
32. Keith Brown, Macedonia's Child-grandfathers: The Transnational Politics of Memory, Exile, and Return, 1948-1998; Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, 2003, p. 32.
33. Euangelos Kōphos, Speros Basil Vryonis, Nationalism and communism in Macedonia: civil conflict, politics of mutation, national identity; Center for the Study of Hellenism, A. D. Caratzas, 1993, ISBN 0892415401, p. 203.
34. Sebastian Kempgen, Peter Kosta, Tilman Berger, Karl Gutschmidt as ed., The Slavic Languages. Volume 32 of Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science (HSK) Walter de Gruyter, 2014; ISBN 3110215470, p. 1476.
35. Roumen Daskalov, Tchavdar Marinov, Entangled Histories of the Balkans - Volume One: National Ideologies and Language Policies; BRILL, 2013; ISBN 900425076X, p. 480.
36. The Macedonian Times, issues 51–62; MI-AN, 1999, p. 141.
37. Roumen Daskalov, Tchavdar Marinov, Entangled Histories of the Balkans - Volume One: National Ideologies and Language Policies; BRILL, 2013; ISBN 900425076X, p. 480.

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

• Bulgarian language
• Macedonian language
• Languages of Greece