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Revision as of 16:31, 31 July 2006 by Eliade (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)- This article is about the history of the Slavic language. For the history of the non-Slavic language spoken in the ancient world, see Ancient Macedonian language.
The standard Macedonian language can be said to have been born in August 1944, when a provisional government run by the Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM) declared the Macedonian republic. It should be noted however that at least some work has been recorded as being done on standardising the Macedonian language prior to 1944. This date is not precise, however as Friedman states, "it nonetheless functions as the symbolic act demarcating the beginning of the period in which efforts received the official sanction that enabled standardization to reach the stage of implementation" .
The region of Macedonia and the Republic of Macedonia are located on the Balkan peninsula. The Slavs first came to the Balkan peninsula in the sixth and seventh centuries. In the ninth century, the monks Cyril and Methodius developed the first writing system for the Slavonic languages. At this time, the Slavic dialects were so close as to make it practical to develop the written language on the dialect of a single region. There is dispute as to the precise region, but it is likely that they were developed on the dialect of the region of Thessaloniki. This written standard came to be known as Old Church Slavonic, and some linguists refer to this as the "first standardization of a Macedonian Slavic dialect" .
The earliest texts showing specifically Macedonian phonetic features are Old Church Slavonic classical texts written in Glagolitic which date from tenth to eleventh centuries (Codex Zographensis, Codex Assemanianus, Psalterium Sinaiticum). By the twelfth century the Church Slavonic Cyrillic become the main alphabet. Texts reflecting vernacular Macedonian features appear in the second half of the sixteenth century (translations of the sermons of the Greek writer Damascene Studite) .
Ottoman era
In the fourteenth century, the Ottoman Turks invaded and conquered most of the Balkans, incorporating Macedonia into the Ottoman Empire. While the written language remained static as a result of Turkish domination, the spoken dialects moved further apart. Only very slight traces of written Macedonian survive from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries .
The first printed work that included Macedonian texts was a multilingual "conversational manual", printed during the Ottoman era . It was published in 1793 and contained texts written by a priest in the dialect of the Ohrid region of Macedonia. In the Ottoman Empire, religion was the primary means of social differentiation, with Muslims forming the ruling class and non-Muslims the subordinate class .
The Orthodox Church, to which the majority of Christian Slavs were members, was controlled by Greek Patriarchate. The Patriarchate embarked on a policy of Hellenisation. In the view of the Orthodox Church, the Orthodox Christian Slavs were Greek, and so should speak Greek. During the renaissance of South Slavic nationalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Slavs of Macedonia and Bulgaria fought against this policy. This fight culminated in the formation of the Bulgarian Exarchate, an autonomous religious authority for Bulgarians and Macedonians, in 1870.
For the Macedonians though this was not the end of the story. The Bulgarians intended for the standard language of the Orthodox Slavs to be Bulgarian based on the eastern variety spoken in Thraco-Moesian, the Macedonians rejected this in favour of a standard Bulgarian language, but significantly influenced by the more western dialects of Macedonia .
Balkan nationalism
During the increase of national consciousness in the Balkans, standards for the languages of Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian were created . As Turkish influence in Macedonia waned, schools were opened up that taught the Bulgarian standard language.
Although literature had, as mentioned, been written in the dialects of Macedonia before, arguably the most important book published in relation to the Macedonian language was On Macedonian Matters by Krste Misirkov, a native of Thessaloniki in what is now Greek Macedonia. In his book, published in 1903, Misirkov argued for the creation of a standard literary Macedonian language from the central dialects of Macedonia which would use a phonetic orthography . Krste Misirkov outlined the principles of the Macedonian language based on the Veles-Prilep-Bitola dialect group of the west central region. These dialects were the most highly differentiated from both Bulgarian and Serbian.
After the first two Balkan wars, the region of Macedonia was split between Greece, Bulgaria and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia . The Kingdom of Yugoslavia occupied the area that is currently the Republic of Macedonia incorporating it into the Kingdom as "Southern Serbia" . During this time, the language of public life, education and the church was Serbo-Croatian , the dialects spoken by the local population were described as dialects of Serbo-Croatian, although limited literature, mostly of a folkloric character was permitted to be published . Friedman writes that the Serbianisation policies of the Kingdom may have had the inadvertent effect of increasing Macedonian national consciousness.
- Forcing Macedonians to attend Serbian schools had the effect of increasing Macedonian self-awareness and unity by bringing together Macedonians from different parts of the country and compelling them to learn a language which was obviously different from their native one.
In the other two states, Greece and Bulgaria, the respective national languages were imposed, in Bulgaria, the local dialects were described as dialects of Bulgarian .
There was a limited literary activity between the two World wars as attested in the dramas by Vasil Iljoski, Anton Panov and Risto Krle and the poetry of Koco Racin and Kole Nedelkovski .
Second World War
During the second World War, Macedonia was occupied by the Bulgarians, who were allied with the Axis. The Bulgarian language was introduced into schools and the church. The Bulgarians were initially welcomed as "liberators" from Serbian domination, although as a result of excessive assimilation policies, reminiscent of both the Serbs and the Greeks before them, they were quickly seen as "conquerors" .
There were a number of groups fighting the Bulgarian occupying force, some advocating independence and others union with Bulgaria. The details are complicated , see , but the eventual outcome was that Macedonia was incorporated into the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as a constituent Socialist Republic with the Macedonian language holding official status within both the Federation and Republic. The present orthography was established in 1945 and in the next ten years the literary language was standardised. The codifiers took Misirkov’s choice of a west-central dialectal base.
Notes
- Friedman, V. (1998) "The implementation of standard Macedonian: problems and results" in International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Vol. 131, pp. 31-57
- Topolinjska, Z. (1998) "In place of a foreword: facts about the Republic of Macedonia and the Macedonian language" in International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Vol. 131, pp. 1-11
- Price, G. (2000) Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe. (Oxford : Blackwell) ISBN 0631220399
- Lunt, H. (1953) "A Survey of Macedonian Literature" in Harvard Slavic Studies, Vol. 1, pp. 363-396
- Lunt, H. (1952) Grammar of the Macedonian Literary Language (Skopje)
- Lunt, H. (1986) "On Macedonian Nationality" in Slavic Review, Vol. 45, pp. 729-734
- Friedman, V. (1985) "The sociolinguistics of literary Macedonian" in International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Vol. 52, pp. 31-57
- Tomić, O. (1991) "Macedonian as an Ausbau language" in Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations, pp. 437-454
- Topolinjska, Z. (1998) "In place of a foreword: facts about the Republic of Macedonia and the Macedonian language"
- Price, G. (2000) Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe
- Known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes prior to the then King Alexander proclaiming a personal dictatorship on the 6th January, 1929.
- Mahon, M. (1998) "The Macedonian question in Bulgaria" in Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 4, pp. 389-407
- Lunt, H. (1953) "A Survey of Macedonian Literature"
- Friedman, V. (1985) "The sociolinguistics of literary Macedonian"
- Friedman, V. (1985) "The sociolinguistics of literary Macedonian"
- Topolinjska, Z. (1998) In place of a foreword: facts about the Republic of Macedonia and the Macedonian language"
- Mahon, M. (1998) "The Macedonian question in Bulgaria"
- Mahon, M. (1998) "The Macedonian question in Bulgaria"
- Price, G. (2000) Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe