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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".

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.

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. Jacques Bacid, Ph.D. Macedonia Through the Ages. Columbia University, 1983.
13. GeoNative - Macedonia
14. L. M. Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World 1995, Princeton University Press
15. Hill, P. (1999) "Macedonians in Greece and Albania: A Comparative study of recent developments". Nationalities Papers Volume 27, 1 March 1999, page 44(14)
16. Poulton, H.(2000), "Who are the Macedonians?",C. Hurst & Co. Publishers
17. Readers Digest Encyclopedia of World Geography, 1994, p. 302
18. UCLA Language Materials Project: Language Profile
19. UCLA Language Materials Project: Language Profile
20. Eletherotipia article
21. Press release of Rainbow
22. Historical succes, a Macedonian elected in office in Ovčarani (Meliti)
23. Ovčarani proves that Greece is multicultural
24. Our language will be heard via radio in Lerin
25. Educative and Cultural Movement of Edessa
26. In Greece a Macedonian school will open
27. Stoyko Stoykov. Bulgarian Dialectology. Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Publishing House, 4th Edition, Sofia, 2002, pp. 170–186
28. 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.
29. Schmieger, R. 1998. "The situation of the Macedonian language in Greece: sociolinguistic analysis", International Journal of the Sociology of Language 131, 125-55.
30. стр.247 Граматика на македонскиот литературен јазик, Блаже Конески, Култура- Скопје 1967
31. bg:s:Дописка от село Бобища
32. 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
33. стр. 244 Македонски јазик за средното образование- Стојка Бојковска, Димитар Пандев, Лилјана Минова-Ѓуркова, Живко Цветковски- Просветно дело- Скопје 2001
34. Friedman, V. (2001) Macedonian (SEELRC)
35. Poulton, Hugh. (1995). Who Are the Macedonians?, (London: C. Hurst & Co. Ltd:107–108.).

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