Slavic language (Greece)
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| Slavic/(Slav-)Macedonian/Bulgarian makedonski / bugarski / balgarski |
||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Greece | |
| Total speakers: | 41,017 (1951) | |
| Ranking: | not official | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Slavic South Slavic Eastern South Slavic Slavic/(Slav-)Macedonian/Bulgarian |
|
| Official status | ||
| Official language of: | None | |
| Regulated by: | Unknown | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | none (B) | none (T) |
| ISO/FDIS 639-3: | none | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
Slavic (Greek: Σλάβικα Slávika, reported self-identifying names: makedonski, bugarski, balgarski [1]) is the term sometimes used to designate the dialects spoken by the Slavophone (i.e. Slavic-speaking) minority of the region of Macedonia in northern Greece; other names include Slav-Macedonian or Dopia. Linguistically, these dialects are classified as Bulgarian or Macedonian Slavic depending on the abstand (distance) of each dialect from the standard languages.
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[edit] Linguistic classification
According to Peter Trudgill, the usage of the name Slavic to refer to the language(s) spoken by these people raises ausbau sociolinguistic questions as to whether they are dialects of Bulgarian or Macedonian, as both these languages have developed out of the South Slavic dialect continuum that includes also Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Slovene. Unlike the standard languages in the respective countries, the Slavic dialects of Greece are "roofless" dialects whose speakers have no access to education or media in the standard languages. The usage of the term Slavic to refer to a language or dialect which could otherwise be referred to as Bulgarian or Macedonian, may have the effect of denying that it has any immediate connection with the languages of the neighbouring countries.
[edit] Recognition
Under the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 (which was never ratified [2]), Greece undertook the obligation to open schools for minority-language children. In 1925 the government of Greece submitted copies of a schoolbook called ABECEDAR, which was written in the Slavic language for the Slavophone children and published by the Greek Ministry of Education, to the League of Nations as evidence that they were carrying out these obligations. ABECEDAR was written in a newly adapted variety of the Latin alphabet for the Slavic language in Greece, and not in the Cyrillic alphabet which was the official alphabet of neighbouring Bulgaria and Serbia - this also shows the intent of the Greek government to create a distinctively Slavic minority, not a Bulgarian or Serbian minority; the result being that Bulgaria and Serbia would have no right to interfere in Greece's internal affairs. Another reason was to discourage the Slavophone community themselves from colluding with their ethnic affiliates across the immediate border territories in Bulgaria and the Serbian Kingdom to collectively compose a Macedonian national identity, this was something which had been developing and was seen as a threat to the stability not only of Greece but to Bulgarian and Serbian interests too.
In October 2006 [3] [4] [5], the Rainbow Party in Greece reprinted the original ABECEDAR Slavic language primer in Thessaloniki, Greece, which was printed in Athens in 1925 and was based on the Florina/Lerin dialect, as well as an up to date primer in the standardized Macedonian language and script as taught in the Republic of Macedonia and presented it to the Greek Ambassador to the OSCE, Mr Manesis [6] [7]. The book is reportedly being distributed to people self-identifying as ethnic Macedonians in northern Greece and it has been successfully promoted in the city of Thessaloniki [8]. According to the Rainbow Party, this book is proof that ethnic Macedonians in Greece actually do exist and speak a separate language.
[edit] The Metaxas regime
On the 4th August 1936 the authoritarian regime of General Metaxas came to power, and a new state sponsored policy of Hellenisation was enacted. The aim was to Hellenise all the non-Greek speaking Orthodox Christian populations within the Greek state's territory; other Balkan countries (Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania) respectively followed similar policies. In Greece, the ensuing result left the Slavic speakers (and other minority speech communities) forcibly suppressed, and their privileges under the Treaty of Sèvres withdrawn.
[edit] 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 [9].
A political party promoting the concept and rights of what they describe as the "Macedonian minority in Greece", and refers to the Slavic language as Macedonian - the Rainbow (Ουράνιο Τόξο) - was founded in September 1998, and received 2,955 votes in the region of Macedonia in the 2004 elections. Similarly, a pro-Bulgarian political party, known as Bulgarian Human Rights in Macedonia (Βουλγαρικά Ανθρώπινα Δικαιώματα στη Μακεδονία) was founded in June 2000, promoting the concept and rights of what they describe as the "Bulgarian minority in Greece", and prefers to designate the local Slavic language as Bulgarian. This party has not yet participated in any elections.
[edit] See also
- Greece
- Macedonia (Greece)
- Bulgarian language
- Macedonian language
- Bulgarians
- Macedonians (ethnic group)
- Slavic speaking minority of Greece
- Slavic peoples
- Slavic languages
| Slavic languages | |||
| East Slavic | Belarusian | Old East Slavic † | Old Novgorod dialect † | Russian | Rusyn (Carpathians) | Ruthenian † | Ukrainian | ||
| West Slavic | Czech | Kashubian | Knaanic † | Lower Sorbian | Pannonian Rusyn | Polabian † | Polish | Pomeranian † | Slovak | Slovincian † | Upper Sorbian | ||
| South Slavic | Banat Bulgarian | Bulgarian | Church Slavic | Macedonian | Old Church Slavonic † | Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian, Bunjevac, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian) | Slavic (Greece) | Slovenian | ||
| Other | Proto-Slavic † | Russenorsk † | Slavoserbian † | Slovio | ||
| † Extinct | |||
[edit] References
- 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 [10]
