Template talk:National Awakening in the Balkans

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The reason why I have deleted the use of the term Macedonia in this template is because Macedonia is a region, not a state. If you wish to describe the Slavomacedonian national awakening, please do so using a different, not provocative manner for Greek Macedonians. Kapnisma 08:53, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Open to suggestions, using self-identifying terms. - Francis Tyers · 09:23, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

My concern is the use of the term. You can't use this term only for Slavomacedonians, it creates confusion. You can rename it National Awakening of Slavs in Macedonia, or National Awakening of Slavomacedonians. And since there is a debate on this matter by insisting on to use this term in this template, you are clearly ignoring the views of Greek Macedonians Kapnisma 09:29, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I would never ignore you beautiful people! - Francis Tyers · 09:35, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I've changed it to "National awakening of Macedonia (ethnic Macedonians)". This removes the risk that we are talking about Macedonians, and makes it explicitly Macedonians. - Francis Tyers · 09:37, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I like your sence of humour.

I would like to clarify my view on the subject. My problem is not the name of these ethnic groups, my problem is the use of the term Macedonia only for Slavomacedonians. In this template you include all the nations in Balkans by their homelands Greece for Greeks, Bulgaria for Bulgarians, etc. When you write Macedonia you obviously consider that their homeland is Macedonia. That thing is insulting for me, Greek Macedonians, Greeks. Kapnisma 09:49, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I consider that the homeland of the Macedonians is Macedonia. I also consider that the homeland of the Macedonians is Macedonia. I consider that both the Macedonians and the Macedonians live in a region called (for better or worse), Macedonia.

While you are talking about "being insulted" (which is a popular pastime in the Balkans), you must realise that just as you consider "Macedonians" in reference to Macedonians insulting, so the epithet "Slavomacedonians" is considered insulting by the Macedonians. I don't like insulting people, so I use Macedonians to refer to both. - Francis Tyers · 10:14, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Exactly! Macedonia is a region which includes many Macedonians Greek ones, Slav ones, Bulgarian ones, etc. The problem starts when someone tries to use this term to describe not a nationality, but a state. Slavomacedonians have a state that self identifies as RoM, while is officially recognised as FYRoM, untill a solution on the dispute is found. When you describe their state as Macedonia you are not objective, you are clearly supporting their views and ignoring Greek ones.

Kapnisma 10:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

When you say "officially recognised", you mean officially recognised by Greece. Which is fair enough, you're from Greece. There is no ambiguity in the name Republic of Macedonia, after all there is only one Republic of Macedonia, just as there is only one Greek Region of Macedonia. When I call their country Macedonia, I'm using the common short-form English name for the country. When I call their country Macedonia, I'm using the term they use to describe it themselves. Just as when I call Macedonia, Macedonia, I'm using the both the common English name for the region of Greece, and the name that they use themselves. I have no interest in using a name which the people to which it is applied do not want. So I'll go on using Macedonians to describe both, without ascribing to, or supporting either the Macedonians POV or the Macedonians POV. - Francis Tyers · 11:49, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

When I say "officially recognised", I mean EU, UN, NATO, etc. All I am saying is that since the name of the state is not permanent and under negotiation, by calling their country Macedonia promotes their POV. I'm not asking to use Greek POV instead, but a temporary name suggested by the international community. Kapnisma 12:04, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I' ve also seen some minor changes that you have done with the term Slavomacedonians (usage as slur, etc), while I agree with them I'm expecting that you also do the same for the term Macedonian when used to decribe Slavomacedonians (that it is offensive for Greek Macedonians, etc) since you seem to believe in neutrality. Kapnisma 12:11, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I did as you reasonably requested. Regarding "official", NATO is a military alliance, largely irrelevant. The UN and EU are varyingly official depending on how you much faith you place in them. In the end, I'll use what is common in my country, and in my language, which is Macedonia and Macedonians for both. The phrase "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" is a mouthful, and completely useless in everyday speech, "EFF-WHY-ARE-OH-EMM" is equally as unwieldy. The people I know find it funny rather than anything else, like a name designed by committee. The Greeks I know call the country either Macedonia, or Skopje (one guy even calls it "the country that everyone except Greece calls Macedonia"). The English I know call the country Macedonia, this may be "Macedonian POV", but it is (unfortunately for you I suppose) also common English usage. Don't presume that I'm supporting the extremist nationalists among them, I'm just using the most common term in my language. - Francis Tyers · 12:32, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Hey guys. I followed all three discussions (your talk pages and this one). The anti-Epsilonist solution decided by the Wikipedian Ethnicist Supporting Committee of Keen Balkanians Aiming to Destruction (W.E.S.U.C.K.B.A.D. for short) is the one you'll see on top of the page if you click FYROM and it comprises of 3 words. Now you may never hear that "solution" from a Greek's mouth, but we got 2.6 million^[1] reasons for it, plus some of us kinda hate to be robbed off our history^[2][3] and our land.^[4] NikoSilver 15:54, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

You are plain wrong. User:Macrakis is Greek and he uses Republic of Macedonia. I know other Greeks who do too :)

"This is an international encyclopedia written in English. "Skopje" is almost never used in English to refer to the RoM; after all, it is the name of a city. FYROM was a compromise in some international organizations where Greece in effect has a veto. Greece does not have a veto on the Wikipedia. And it is not true that "everybody has to use" the name FYROM. The US government, for example, has used the name "Macedonia" since November 2004 (not even Republic of Macedonia), as you can see for example in the CIA factbook, the US Embassy web site, etc. Almost all international reference works use "Macedonia". "Republic of Macedonia" is a good and stable compromise. --Macrakis 23:36, 16 March 2006 (UTC)"

Try harder :P - Francis Tyers · 16:22, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

So you both say that you like the fact that people have to know all this in order not confuse this with this or this or this or this; and that with that or that or that; and these with these or these or these or these or these or these; thereby not to help promote the idea that these are not the descendants of these (or even him^[1], who also slaughtered them, who were the major ancestors of them -probably in an amok against his own), and that doesn't sound at all like that, and this is not an occupied territory of this by this and this? I call that oppression of the unaware... Can you imagine? Instead of disambiguating it with one (ANY) word, we have to explain all that to the poor uninformed... Ah, I forgot: 99% of those uninformed don't give a shit, so they naturally assume that these who speak that and live in there, are the descendants of these that spoke that and should of course live there (so naturally those who support this are right...)

PS. Try to understand what I mean without mouse-hovering, because that's what we get down to without proper disambiguation (and that's how the minds of all people work when they are constantly used to face e.g. these speaking that and living there, descending from them)... NikoSilver 17:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I can understand perfectly, although I didn't quite get the "these" with respect to Tetovo until I hovered over! Do you have an expression in Greek? Variety is the spice of life, rather a cliché I'm afraid, but amusing nevertheless. - Francis Tyers · 23:42, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Is User:Macrakis really Greek? Cambridge, Massachusetts wasn't in Greece last time I checked. Being an American of Greek ancestry is not quite the same thing, I'm afraid. ·ΚέκρωΨ· 19:11, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

No true Scotsman. A classic logical fallacy. - Francis Tyers · 23:42, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

It's a perfectly legitimate question, given that you cite him as an example of a dissenting Greek. Ancestry does not equal nationality. He may be no more Greek than Shane Warne is English. ·ΚέκρωΨ· 02:55, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

He identifies as being Greek. If you are saying he isn't Greek because he is living in another country then it would be a bit strange! Interestingly enough there are Irish-Americans, Welsh-Americans and Scottish-Americans but no English-Americans. - Francis Tyers · 11:59, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Francis, is right, there are Greeks calling Fyrom "Macedonia". The antiethnistiki kinisi for a start (they also support giving half the Aegean Islands to Turkey or something like that). On the other hand, there are people from FYROM, who call their country FYROM, such as the campaign for the release of Archbishop Jovan of Ohrid from prison. In FYROM apparently performing a baptism is an imprisonable offence. //Dirak 12:14, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

And thus the pot continues to call the kettle black :) - Francis Tyers · 14:35, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, Francis, if you want to see the views some ethnic Macedonians hold, you should have a word with User:Evlekis who parents are from the Socialist Republic of "Macedonia". His views on the topic would likely turn the hair of FYROM nationalists and their supporters such as yourself white. Perhaps according to you he is no true "Macedonian". //Dirak 12:24, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

User:Evlekis is a good man from what I've seen and read of him. No matter how long you call a spade a fork, it will not make it a fork. Just as the ethnic Macedonians have found out about our dear Alex. :)) - Francis Tyers · 14:35, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't assuming anything either way. I just happen to have met a few "Greeks" whose loyalties lie with the US, Australia or other countries and who couldn't care less what happened in or to Greece. That's all. ·ΚέκρωΨ· 12:33, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

On a different issue Fransiscule, when does this "Macedonian" national awakening start? With Misirkov who uses "Macedonians" and "Macedonian Slavs" interchangeably (in which case it's debatable why we can't use the word SLAV in the template) and affirms the bulgarianness of Skopje, with Tito, or with Alexander the Great? //Dirak 14:10, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Probably sometime in the late 1800s early 1900s. Popular time of national awakening. Certainly after Bulgarian and Serb, but before the second World War. - Francis Tyers · 14:35, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

But still a "minority view" amongst the population in question until Tito decreed it wouldn't be any more. ·ΚέκρωΨ· 14:41, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

So you assert... - Francis Tyers · 15:13, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Well you're the omniscient sage; prove to us that it wasn't. My knowledge of the subject is obviously lacking. ·ΚέκρωΨ· 15:15, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to see a scholar's quote on the issue. Let's not WP:OR this. So, is there any historian or whatever quoting something like "the national awakening of the Macedonian Slavs took place in the middle of the 19th century." Other than that, we are forced to accept Tito's date. NikoSilver 17:44, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Not to mention that it is highly disputed that the "Macedonians/Macedonian Slavs" Misirkov was speaking of have any relation whatsoever with the people in Fyrom currently declaring as "Macedonians" (ergo we can't say with 100% certainty that they are nor can we set his time as the absolute latest). I'd also like to see some sources... Francis's optimism that it started about the same time as everyone else seems rather dubious - there was absolute silence emanating from Macedonia is we were listening for "ethnic Macedonians". Even the Turks who liked dividing the population and created a millet-i Ulah for the Greek identifying Vlach population don't seem to have even considered creating a millet-i Makedon. This "Macedonian" ethnicity (whose existence back then seems to be treated as a given for some bizarre reason) can't have been that obvious back then. //Dirak 17:54, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually it started later, probably around 50 years later or perhaps 70 than most others. Danforth (1995) places it in the nineteenth century, and comments that Macedonian nationalists place it either with Alexander (lol) or with Cyril and Methodius (lol). But that Greek nationalists place it with Tito (lol). - Francis Tyers · 18:19, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Could we get some actual quotes. Mere name dropping can be misleading... it needed something powerful such as international communist interests to de-bulgarianize the western bulgarians and make them declare as "macedonians" overnight (a situation comparable to the moldovans). //Dirak 18:27, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll Croatianise your Kosovo Albanian and Romanianise your Slavic speaking Greek!

"The history of the construction of a Macedonian national identity does not begin with Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C. or with Saints Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century A.D., as Macedonian nationalist historians often claim. Nor does it begin with Tito and the establishment of the People's Republic of Macedonia in 1944 as Greek nationalist historians would have us believe. It begins in the nineteenth century with the first expressions of Macedonian ethnic nationalism on the part of a small number of intellectuals in places like Thessaloniki, Belgrade, Sophia and St. Petersburg. This period marks the beginning of the process of "imagining" a Macedonian national community, the beginning of the construction of a Macedonian national identity and culture" (Danforth, 1995)

- Francis Tyers · 18:32, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mea culpa

Sorry for the missing code, Niko. Never was much of a programmer. ·ΚέκρωΨ· 11:02, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Don't let it happen again or I'll have the Culpa Code Cabal sue you! NikoSilver 11:09, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

 :,( ·ΚέκρωΨ· 11:11, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Montenegro

...is missing. --PaxEquilibrium (talk) 14:31, 26 March 2008 (UTC)