Slavophone Greeks

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Slavophone Greeks (Greek: Σλαβόφωνοι Έλληνες) are a population group in northern Greece, who traditionally speak Slavika, a dialect of South Slavic, along with Greek. They are also referred to as Dopii, which means 'locals' in Greek, and the vast majority of them self-identify as Greeks. They live mostly in West and Central Macedonia and adhere to the Greek Orthodox Church.

[edit] Slavic presence in Macedonia

Distribution of races in the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor in 1922, Racial Map Of Europe by Hammond & Co. ("Macedonian Slavs" shown as Bulgarians)

Further information: Macedonia (region)

Slavic peoples started invading Macedonia around the 6th and 7th century. Since then, Slavic languages have been spoken alongside Greek. In 598 the Slavic tribes besieged Thessaloniki and settled its hinterlands in great numbers. These Slavs participated in several assaults against the Byzantine Empire, alone or aided by Bulgars or Avars.

Several massive expeditions of Byzantine Greeks took place against the Slavs of the Greek peninsula. In the mid-7th century, by the time Constans I, a significant number of Slavs of Macedonia were captured and led to central Asia Minor, while in the late 7th century, Justinian II captured over 110,000 Slavs and transferred them to Cappadocia. There are no records of Slavs, who were called Sklavines by the Byzantines, after 837, since large numbers of them were expelled from the region and the remainders were absorbed into the First Bulgarian Empire, the political and cultural center of which, at the end of the 10th century, was the region of the modern day Republic of Macedonia.

Intermittent slavic uprisings continued to occur, often with the support of the Serbian kingdoms to the north. Since the 12th century, the Serbian kingdom of Raška had been taking more and more of Macedonia, considering themselves as liberators of their fellow Slavs. In the 14th century the Serbs had already conquered all of Macedonia, which later came under the Ottoman rule.

Over the centuries Macedonia had become a multicultural region, inhabited by Greeks, Bulgarians, Turks, Vlachs, Jews, Albanians and Roma people. In the early 20th century the term Bulgarians was used to refer to all the Slavic-speaking populations of Macedonia, as synonymous to Slav-Macedonians, until the ethnic Macedonian identity emerged in the mid-20th century.

This fact has resulted in the Macedonia naming dispute between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia, over the name, the language and the main ethnic group of the latter and its claims that the Slavophone Greeks actually form an ethnic Macedonian minority in Greece, although a minority of the Slavophones self-identify as ethnic Macedonians and the vast majority as Greeks.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]} The linguistic classification of their language, Slavika, oscillates between Bulgarian and Macedonian.

[edit] Demographics

Further information: Minorities in Greece

[edit] See Also

• Aegean Macedonians

[edit] References