Professor Victor Friedman is one of the world's foremost experts on Balkan languages, and has been studying them for almost four decades, since 1993 as a linguist at the University of Chicago. During his last visit to Macedonia, he had an interview with "Balkanalysis" director Christopher Deliso, where among other topics, they discuss about the Macedonian language and the Macedonian - Greek relations.
On one place in the interview, Friedman mentions the language "Arvanitika" as "the Albanian dialect/language of speakers who migrated to Greece a millennium or so ago":
... and he gives an example of a woman who claims she is Greek, but fluently speaks Arvanitika which she learned at home, from her grandmother. The discussion moves to the Greek relations with Macedonia and Macedonians...
... and since I don't want to violate the copyright policy of Balkanalysis site, I will only copy one more excerpt from the interview, this time about the difference between the Bulgarian and the Macedonian languages.
I warmly invite anyone interested in the subject to read the entire interview. Professor Friedman speaks about dozens of interesting topics, with information that some might find surprising - especially if they lived under decades of nationalistic government propaganda. We all know who am I talking about, right?
On one place in the interview, Friedman mentions the language "Arvanitika" as "the Albanian dialect/language of speakers who migrated to Greece a millennium or so ago":
CD: By the term ‘Arvanitika,’ you mean medieval Albanian?
VF: Most precisely, it refers to the Albanian dialects of Greece that separated from the main body of Tosk Albanian 600-1000 years ago. The dialects were spoken on many Greek islands, the Peloponnese, and in Attica and Central Greece. Greeks don’t like to admit it, but they have had large Albanian-speaking populations for a very long time, not just post-Communist economic migrants. While these dialects are now moribund owing to hegemonistic Greek language policies, they can still be encountered in places like Livadhia.
... and he gives an example of a woman who claims she is Greek, but fluently speaks Arvanitika which she learned at home, from her grandmother. The discussion moves to the Greek relations with Macedonia and Macedonians...
CD: (Laughing) on that note, let’s talk about the Macedonia issue now. Greece denies the Macedonian identity, referring to ancient history. What do you think about this?
VF: Unfortunately, with independence, some Macedonians fell into the nationalist trap set by Greece. The Greeks came up with a line claiming the Macedonians could not claim the name Macedonia unless they were descended from the Ancient Macedonians.
Well, no one can reasonably claim to be descended from the Ancient Macedonians, but this became part of the argument, instead of other more pertinent things. And so the issue has remained. But the Greeks have been denying the existence of Macedonia and the Macedonians all along.
CD: From your perspective, how far back does this go as a state policy? To the breakdown of Yugoslavia, or further?
VF: Oh, it’s been that way ever since modern Macedonians began to call themselves Macedonians. The Greeks have been denying the existence of its Macedonian minority since acquiring Greek Macedonia at the Treaty of Bucharest following the Second Balkan War (1913), except for a brief period in the 1920s. In 1957, an otherwise respectable Greek linguist named N. Andriotis published a polemical and, from an academic point of view, deeply flawed booklet entitled ‘The Confederate state of Skopje and Its Language’ – referring, of course, to Macedonia and Macedonian within Socialist Yugoslavia.
CD: This is very interesting to me, because as you know, many Greeks today refer to the whole country of Macedonia by the name of the capital, and the people as ‘Skopjeans.’ So they were using this reference even then?
VF: Of course. But already in the 19th century, Macedonian speakers were calling themselves Macedonians (Makedontsi), their language, ‘Makedonski.’ This is documented.
... and since I don't want to violate the copyright policy of Balkanalysis site, I will only copy one more excerpt from the interview, this time about the difference between the Bulgarian and the Macedonian languages.
CD: Many Bulgarian politicians and academics claim that Macedonian is just a dialect of Bulgarian. What do you say on this topic?
VF: The answer is of course Macedonian is a distinct language. It is similar to Bulgarian, but just as Swedish and Norwegian are similar languages, but separate, so, too, are Macedonian and Bulgarian.
CD: Why?
VF: Both sets of languages have different dialectal bases. And for this reason it is not at all like the case of Moldovan and Romanian. The Moldovan standard language is not based on Moldovan dialects; it is based on the same Wallachian dialects as standard Romanian.
In the case of Macedonian, however, the standard language is based on the dialects spoken in the west-central geographical area defined by Veles, Bitola, Prilep and Kichevo. It is not identical with any specific dialect, and has elements from the eastern ones as well. Standard Bulgarian is not based on a single dialect, but is based on eastern Bulgarian dialects, from Veliko Tarnovo to the Danube and further east.
I warmly invite anyone interested in the subject to read the entire interview. Professor Friedman speaks about dozens of interesting topics, with information that some might find surprising - especially if they lived under decades of nationalistic government propaganda. We all know who am I talking about, right?
