The existence and distinctiveness of the
Macedonian languageMacedonian is the official language of Republic of Macedonia and is a part of the Eastern group of South Slavic languages. Macedonian is closely related to and shares a high degree of mutual intelligibility with the Bulgarian language and to a certain extent with Serbian and Croatian...
is disputed among the politicians, linguists and common people from the neighboring countries. Macedonian dialects are indeed a part of dialectal continuum which stretches from Croatian, Bosnian and
SerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a country located in both Central and Southeastern Europe. Its territory covers the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and central part of the Balkans...
n
Shtokavian dialectShtokavian or Štokavian is the main dialect of the Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian languages.The Štokavian dialect is spoken in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the southern part of Austria’s Burgenland, and in part of Croatia. The Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian standard languages are all...
through Torlakian on the northwest, to western and eastern
BulgarianBulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic innovations that set it apart from all other Slavic languages except the Macedonian language, such as the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite...
dialects on the East, and the Macedonian language, like
BulgarianBulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic innovations that set it apart from all other Slavic languages except the Macedonian language, such as the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite...
,
SerbianSerbian is a South Slavic language, spoken chiefly in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and in the Serbian diaspora...
,
CroatianCroatian is a South Slavic language which is used primarily in Croatia, by Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Croatian minorities in some neighbouring countries, in the Italian region of Molise, and parts of the Croatian diaspora....
and
BosnianBosnian is a South Slavic language spoken primarily in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the region of Sandžak in Serbia and Montenegro, although it is also spoken in various places throughout the world, as many speakers were forced to become refugees during the Bosnian war...
, is a standardized form of (some of) these dialects.
Macedonian view
According to the Macedonian view, now prevalent and official in the books in Republic of Macedonia, Macedonian was the first official language of the Slavs, thanks to the St. Cyril and St. Methodius's introduction of Slavic literacy language through the Glagolitic script, that was based on Southern Macedonian dialect from the neighbourhood of
ThessalonikiThessaloniki , Thessalonica, or Salonica is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the Greek region of Macedonia. It is honorarily called the Συμπρωτεύουσα Symprotevousa of Greece, as it was once called the συμβασιλεύουσα symvasilevousa of the Byzantine Empire...
, the home of the two saints. Later on, Macedonia fell under the rule of Bulgarians, and the
ByzantinesThe Byzantine Empire or Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on the capital of Constantinople, and ruled by Emperors in direct and de jure succession to the ancient Roman Emperors...
regarded all Slavic Macedonians as Bulgarians. According to a minority view, supported in the Republic of Macedonia, Samuil's realm in the early
Middle AgesThe Middle Ages of European history is a period of European history covering roughly a millennium in the 5th century through 16th centuries. More specific starting and ending points are sometimes adopted by scholars to suit their respective specializations or current focus...
was allegedly the first Macedonian Slavic state. However,
Krste MisirkovKrste Petkov Misirkov was a philologist, reformer of the standard Macedonian language, slavist, historian, ethnographer, publicist, author of the first book and magazine on standard Macedonian language and he was elected as the greatest Macedonian of the 20-th...
, who allegedly set the principles of the Macedonian literary language in the late 19th century, stated: "We speak a Bulgarian language and we believed with Bulgaria is our strong power."
Bulgarian view
Although Bulgaria was the first country to recognize the independence of the Republic of Macedonia, most of its academics, as well as the general public, regard the language spoken there as a form of Bulgarian. However after years of diplomatic impasse caused by an academic dispute, in 1999 the government in Sofia solved the problem with the
Macedonian LanguageMacedonian is the official language of Republic of Macedonia and is a part of the Eastern group of South Slavic languages. Macedonian is closely related to and shares a high degree of mutual intelligibility with the Bulgarian language and to a certain extent with Serbian and Croatian...
under the formula: "
the official language of the country (Republic of Macedonia) in accordance with its constitution".
Most Bulgarian linguists consider the Slavic dialects spoken in the
region of MacedoniaMacedonia is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe. Its boundaries have changed considerably over time, but the region is nowadays held to include parts of five Balkan countries: Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania and Serbia...
as a part of the
Bulgarian diasystemBulgarian dialects are the regional spoken varieties of the Bulgarian language, a South Slavic language. Bulgarian dialectology dates to the 1830s and the pioneering work of Neofit Rilski, Bolgarska gramatika...
. Numerous shared features of these dialects with Bulgarian are cited as proof. Bulgarian scholars also claim that the overwhelming majority of the Macedonian population had no conscience of a Macedonian language separate from Bulgarian prior to 1945. Russian scholars cite the early references to the language in Slavic literature from the middle of 10th century to the end of 19th century as "bulgarski" or "bolgarski" as proof of that claim. From that, the conclusion is drawn that modern standard Macedonian is not a language separate from Bulgarian either but just another written "norm" based on a set of Bulgarian dialects. See
dialectThe term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by scholars of language. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other...
and
dialect continuumA dialect continuum is a range of dialects spoken across a large geographical area, differing only slightly between areas that are geographically close, and gradually decreasing in mutual intelligibility as the distances become greater. Dialects separated by great geographical distances may not be...
to assess the validity of these arguments. Moreover, Bulgarian linguists assert that the Macedonian and Yugoslav linguists who were involved in codifying the new language artificially introduced differences from literary Bulgarian to bring it closer to Serbian.. They are also said to have resorted to falsifications and deliberate misinterpretations of history and documents in order to further the claim that there was a consciousness of a separate Macedonian ethnicity before 1944. Part of Bulgarian scholars and people hold the view that
MacedonianMacedonian is the official language of Republic of Macedonia and is a part of the Eastern group of South Slavic languages. Macedonian is closely related to and shares a high degree of mutual intelligibility with the Bulgarian language and to a certain extent with Serbian and Croatian...
is one of three “norms” of the
Bulgarian languageBulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic innovations that set it apart from all other Slavic languages except the Macedonian language, such as the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite...
, the other two being standard Bulgarian and the language of the
Banat BulgariansThe Banat Bulgarians are a distinct Bulgarian minority group which settled in the 18th century in the region of the Banat, which was then ruled by the Habsburg and after World War I was divided between Romania, Serbia, and Hungary...
. This formulation was detailed in 1978 in a document of the
Bulgarian Academy of SciencesThe Bulgarian Academy of Sciences is the National Academy of Bulgaria, established in 1869. The Academy is autonomous and has a Society of Academicians, Correspondent Members and Foreign Members...
entitled “The Unity of the Bulgarian Language Today and in the Past”. Although Bulgaria was the first country to recognize the independence of the
Republic of MacedoniaMacedonia , officially the Republic of Macedonia , is a country in the central Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe. It is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, from which it declared independence in 1991...
, it has refused to recognise the existence of a separate Macedonian ethnicity and a separate Macedonian language. This was a major obstacle to the development of diplomatic relations between the two countries until a compromise solution was worked out in 1999.
Historical overview
Bulgarian ethnos in Macedonia existed long before the earliest articulations of the idea that
Macedonian SlavsThe Macedonians also referred to as Macedonian Slavs are a South Slavic people who are primarily associated with the Republic of Macedonia. They speak the Macedonian language, a South Slavic language...
might form a separate ethnic group from the
BulgariansThe Bulgarians are a South Slavic people, generally associated with the Republic of Bulgaria and the Bulgarian language. Emigration has resulted in Bulgarian minorities or immigrant communities in a number of other countries.-Ethnogenesis:...
in Danubian Bulgaria and
ThraceThrace is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. As a geographical concept, Thrace designates a region bounded on the north by the Balkan Mountains, on the south by the Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea and on the east by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara...
. Throughout the period of
OttomanThe Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299 to November 1, 1922 The Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِیَّهِ عُثْمَانِیَّه Dawlet-il ʿAliyyat-il ʿOs̠māniyye, Modern Turkish:...
rule, the Slav-speaking people of the geographic regions of
MoesiaMoesia was an ancient region and Roman province situated in the Balkans, along the south bank of the Danube River...
,
ThraceThrace is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. As a geographical concept, Thrace designates a region bounded on the north by the Balkan Mountains, on the south by the Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea and on the east by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara...
and
MacedoniaMacedonia is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe. Its boundaries have changed considerably over time, but the region is nowadays held to include parts of five Balkan countries: Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania and Serbia...
referred to their language as Bulgarian and called themselves Bulgarians. For instance, the Serbian researcher St. Verković who was a long term teacher in Macedonia, sent by the Serbian government with special assimilatory mission wrote in the preface of his collection of Bulgarian folk songs: "I named these songs Bulgarian, and not Slavic because today when you ask any Macedonian Slav: Who are you? he immediately answers: I am Bulgarian and call my language Bulgarian ... ." The name "Bulgarian" for various Macedonian dialects can be seen from early vernacular texts such as the four-language dictionary of Daniil of Moschopole, the early works of Kiril Pejchinovich and Ioakim Kurchovski and some vernacular gospels written in the Greek alphabet. These written works influenced by or completely written in the Bulgarian vernacular were registered in Macedonia in the 18th and beginning of the 19th century and their authors referred to their language as Bulgarian. The first samples of Bulgarian speech and the first grammar of modern Bulgarian language were written by the leading Serbian literator Vuk Karadjić on the basis of the Macedonian Razlog dialect. In those early years the re-emerging Bulgarian written language was still heavily influenced by Church Slavonic forms so dialectical differences were not very prominent between the Eastern and Western regions. Indeed, in those early years many Bulgarian activists sometimes even communicated in Greek in their writing.
When the Bulgarian national movement got under way in the second quarter of the 19th century some cities in Macedonia were among the first to demand education in Bulgarian and Bulgarian-speaking clerics for their churches. By the 1860’s however, it was clear that the Central Balkan regions of Bulgaria were assuming leadership in linguistic and literary affairs. This was to a large extent due to the fact that the affluent towns on both sides of the Central Balkan range were able to produce more intellectuals educated in Europe than the relatively more backward other Bulgarian regions. Consequently, when the idea that the vernacular rather than Church Slavonic should be represented in the written language gained preponderance, it was the dialects of the Central Balkan region between
Veliko TarnovoVeliko Tarnovo is a city in north central Bulgaria and the administrative centre of Veliko Tarnovo Province...
and
PlovdivPlovdiv is the second-largest city in Bulgaria after Sofia, with a population of 380,312. Known in ancient times as Philippoupolis, it is the administrative center of Plovdiv Province in southern Bulgaria and three municipalities and Bulgaria's Yuzhen tsentralen planning region , as well as the...
that were most represented..
Some prominent Bulgarian educators from Macedonia like
Parteniy ZografskiParteniy Zografski was a 19th-century cleric, philologist, folklorist and enlightener from Macedonia, one of the early figures of the Bulgarian National Revival. In his works he referred to his language as Bulgarian and demonstrated a pro-Bulgarian spirit, though besides contributing to the...
and
Kuzman ShapkarevKuzman Anastasov Shapkarev, , was a Bulgarian folklorist, ethnographer and scientist from Macedonia, author of textbooks and ethnographic studies, significant figure of the Bulgarian National Revival. He is considered an ethnic Macedonian in the Republic of Macedonia.- Biography :Kuzman Shapkarev...
called for a stronger representation of Macedonian dialects in the Bulgarian literary language but their advice was not heeded at the time and sometimes met with hostility..In the article
The Macedonian Question by
Petko Rachev SlaveykovPetko Rachov Slaveykov was a noted nineteenth-century Bulgarian poet, publicist, public figure and folklorist.-Early years and educational activity:...
, published on 18th January 1871 in the
Makedoniya (newspaper)Makedonia was a Bulgarian newspaper edited and published by Petko Slaveykov in Istanbul with aim to help the foundation of an independent Bulgarian Church...
in Constantinople, Macedonism was criticized, his adherents were named Macedonists, and this is the earliest surviving indirect reference to it, although Slaveykov never used the word
Macedonism.The term's first recorded use is from 1887 by
Stojan NovakovicStojan Novaković , was a Serbian scholar, politician and diplomat, and the foremost Serbian historian of nineteenth century, holding the post of Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Serbia on two occasions.He was born in the western Serbian town of Šabac and died in the southern city of Niš, Serbia's...
to describe Macedonism as a potential ally for the Serbian strategy to expand its territory toward Macedonia, whose population was regarded by almost all neutral sources as Bulgarian at the time.
The consternation of certain Macedonians with what they saw as the domineering attitude of Northern Bulgarians towards their vernacular was later deftly exploited by the Serbian state, which had begun to fear the rise of Bulgarian nationalism in Macedonia.
Up until 1912/18 it was the standard Bulgarian language that most Macedonians learned (and taught) in the Exarchate schools. All activists and leaders of the Macedonian movement, including those of the left, used standard Bulgarian in documents, press publications, correspondence and memoirs and nothing indicates they viewed it as a foreign language. This is characteristic even of the members of IMRO (United) well into the 1920’s and 1930’s, when the idea of a distinct Macedonian nation was taking shape.
From the 1930s onwards the Bulgarian Communist Party and the Comintern sought to foster a separate Macedonian nationality as a means of achieving autonomy for Macedonia within a Balkan federation. Consequently it was Bulgarian-educated Macedonians who were the first to develop a distinct Macedonian language, culture and literature. When Socialist Macedonia was formed as part of Federal Yugoslavia, these Bulgarian-trained cadres got into a conflict over the language with the more Serbian-leaning activists, who had been working within the Yugoslav Communist Party. Since the latter held most of the political power, they managed to impose their views on the direction the new language was to follow, much to the dismay of the former group.
After 1944 the communist-dominated government sought to create a Bulgarian-Yugoslav federation (see
Balkan Communist FederationThe Balkan Federation was a failed project about the creation of a Balkan federation or confederation, based mainly on left political ideas. The concept of a Balkan federation emerged at the late 19th century from among left political forces in the region...
) and part of this entailed giving "cultural autonomy" to the Pirin region. Consequently, Bulgarian communists recognised the
Macedonian languageMacedonian is the official language of Republic of Macedonia and is a part of the Eastern group of South Slavic languages. Macedonian is closely related to and shares a high degree of mutual intelligibility with the Bulgarian language and to a certain extent with Serbian and Croatian...
as distinct from Bulgarian.. After 1948, the date of the
Tito-Stalin splitThe Tito-Stalin Split was a conflict between the leaders of Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which resulted in Yugoslavia's expulsion from the Communist Information Bureau in 1948...
, those plans were abandoned. This date also coincided with the first claims of Bulgarian linguists as to the
SerbianisationSerbianisation or Serbification is a term used to its belief that all South Slavs, comprising Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, Montenegrins and Macedonians, should consider themselves, in their essential being, as Serbs...
of the Macedonian language. Officially Bulgaria continued to support the idea of a
Macedonian unificationUnited Macedonia is an irredentist concept among ethnic Macedonians that aims to unify the transnational region of Macedonia in southeastern Europe, which they claim as their homeland, and which they assert was wrongfully divided under the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913, into a single state under...
and a Macedonian nation but within the framework of a Balkan Federation and not within Yugoslavia. However, a reversal in the Macedonisation policy was already announced in the secret April plenum of the BCP in 1956 and openly proclaimed in the plenum of 1963. 1958 was the first time that a "serious challenge" to the Macedonian position was launched by Bulgaria. These developments led to violent polemics between Yugoslav and Bulgarian scholars and sometimes reflected on the bilateral relations of the two countries.
Claims of Serbianisation
Although the original aim of the codifiers of Macedonian was to distance it from both Bulgarian and Serbian, Bulgarians today view the standard Macedonian language as heavily Serbianised, especially with regards to its vocabulary. Bulgarian scholars such as Kosta Tsrnushanov claim there are several ways in which standard Macedonian was influenced by Serbian.
Serbian view
SerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a country located in both Central and Southeastern Europe. Its territory covers the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and central part of the Balkans...
officially recognises the Macedonian Language as separate language to
BulgarianBulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic innovations that set it apart from all other Slavic languages except the Macedonian language, such as the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite...
. In the 2002 census c.26,000 people declared themselves as Macedonians.
Greek view
From the
GreekGreece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula....
point of view, there can be only one meaning for the term
Macedonia, and that is in reference to ancient
MacedonMacedonia or Macedon was an ancient kingdom, centered in the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula, bordered by Epirus to the west, Paionia to the north, the region of Thrace to the east and Thessaly to the south...
and the modern Greek region of
MacedoniaMacedonia is a geographical and historical region of Greece in southeastern Europe. Macedonia is the largest and second most populous Greek region...
. It follows that the term cannot properly be used for a Slavic language. Greece similarly
rejectsThe Macedonia naming dispute refers to the disagreement over the use of the name Macedonia between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia. Greece opposes the post-1991 constitutional name of its northern neighbour, citing the lack of disambiguation between it and the adjacent Greek region of Macedonia...
the name "
Republic of MacedoniaMacedonia , officially the Republic of Macedonia , is a country in the central Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe. It is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, from which it declared independence in 1991...
", seeing it as an implicit territorial claim on the whole of the region.
Books have been published in Greece which purport to expose the artificial character of the Macedonian language. Some Greeks believe that the Slavic dialects spoken in Greek Macedonia are actually a mixture of Slavic and Greek
http://www.uoc.es/euromosaic/web/document/macedoni/fr/i1/i1.html (
see Slavic language (Greece)The Slavic dialects of Greece are the dialects of Macedonian and Bulgarian spoken by minority groups in the regions of Macedonia and Thrace in northern Greece. Usually, these dialects are classified as either Bulgarian or Pomak in Thrace, transitional dialects in East Macedonia, and Macedonian in...
).
Other views
In the word of
Horace LuntHorace G. Lunt is a linguist working in the field of Slavic Studies and professor at Harvard University. He has been described as, "one of the finest scholars in the field" . Lunt wrote the first English language grammar of the Macedonian language in the early 1950s.-Bibliography:* Lunt, H. G. Old...
, a Harvard professor, who wrote the first
English languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
grammarIn linguistics, grammar is the set of logical and structural rules that govern the composition of sentences, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology,...
of the
Macedonian languageMacedonian is the official language of Republic of Macedonia and is a part of the Eastern group of South Slavic languages. Macedonian is closely related to and shares a high degree of mutual intelligibility with the Bulgarian language and to a certain extent with Serbian and Croatian...
in the early 1950s, "Bulgarian scholars, who argue that the concept of a Macedonian language was unknown before World War II, or who continue to claim that a Macedonian language does not exist look not only dishonest, but silly, while Greek scholars who make similar claims are displaying arrogant ignorance of their Slavic neighbours"; (Lunt 1984:110, 120).
Loring DanforthLoring M. Danforth is a professor of anthropology and author working at Bates College in the United States.Danforth received a B.A. from Amherst College in 1971 and a M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1974 and 1978. He has written many award winning books and articles on Macedonia,...
, professor of Anthropology at
Bates CollegeBates College is a private liberal arts college located in Lewiston, Maine, in the United States. The college was founded in 1855 by abolitionists. Bates confers Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degrees. Bates College is one of the first colleges to be coeducational from establishment...
in Lewiston, Maine, addresses the stance of linguists, who attribute the origin of the Macedonian language to their will, stressing that all languages in the standardisation process have a certain political and historical context to them and the fact that Macedonian language had a political context in which it was standardised doesn't mean it's not a language. Italian linguist Vittore Pisani stated "the Macedonian language is actually an artifact produced for primarily political reasons".
Venko MarkovskiVenko Markovski, in Bulgarian and Macedonian Венко Марковски, born as Veniamin Milanov Toshev; was a Bulgarian and Macedonian writer, poet and Communist politician.-Biography:...
, writer, poet and
CommunistCommunism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...
politician from
MacedoniaMacedonia is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe. Its boundaries have changed considerably over time, but the region is nowadays held to include parts of five Balkan countries: Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania and Serbia...
, who in 1945 participated in the Commission for the
Creation of the Macedonian Alphabet and once wrote in the Macedonian language and published what was the first contemporary book written in standardized Macedonian, stated in an interview for
Bulgarian National TelevisionThe Bulgarian National Television or BNT is the public broadcaster of Bulgaria. The company was founded in 1959 and began broadcasting on December 26 of the same year. It began broadcasting in color in 1970...
only seven days prior to his death, that ethnic Macedonians and the
Macedonian languageMacedonian is the official language of Republic of Macedonia and is a part of the Eastern group of South Slavic languages. Macedonian is closely related to and shares a high degree of mutual intelligibility with the Bulgarian language and to a certain extent with Serbian and Croatian...
do not exist and that they were a result of
CominternThe Comintern was an international Communist organization founded in Moscow in March 1919...
manipulation. Austrian linguist Otto Kronsteiner, states that the Macedonian linguists artificially introduced differences from the literary Bulgarian language to bring Macedonian closer to Serbian, jesting that the Macedonian language is a Bulgarian one, but written on a Serbian typewriter.
External links
- Otto Kronsteiner, The Fathering of the Macedonian Literary Language
- James F. Clarke, Macedonia from S. S. Cyril and Methodius to Horace Lunt and Blazhe Koneski: Language and Nationality
- Коста Църнушанов, "Сърбизиране на македонския казионен "литeратурен език"" (част I)
- Коста Църнушанов, "Сърбизиране на македонския казионен "литeратурен език"" (част II)
- Ив. Кочев и Ив. Александров, ДОКУМЕНТИ ЗА СЪЧИНЯВАНЕТО НА МАКЕДОНСКИЯ КНИЖОВЕН ЕЗИК
- И. И. Калиганов, "Размышления о македонском "срезе" палеоболгаристики"
- А.М.Селищев, "Македонские говоры"
- Любомир Андрейчин, Из историята на нашето езиково строителство
- Стојан Киселиновски "Кодификација на македонскиот литературен јазик", Дневник, 1339, сабота, 18 март 2006.