Your Opinion On The Macedonian Issue

[Bulair]

My family originates from present day FYROM, from the region of Krushevo to be exact and the language they spoke was pure Bulgarian until 19445 when new serb words and letters were introduced.And I still think that it has little to do with Serbian.

Anyway, they have the full right to identify themselves as whatever they want, the only thing that bothers me is their interpretation of history, which is proven to be wrong.

[Zrinski]

You know how they say - language is a sovereign state with an army.
Same could be said for history.

[Awar]

Originally Posted by Bulair

My family originates from present day FYROM, from the region of Krushevo to be exact and the language they spoke was pure Bulgarian until 19445 when new serb words and letters were introduced.And I still think that it has little to do with Serbian.

Anyway, they have the full right to identify themselves as whatever they want, the only thing that bothers me is their interpretation of history, which is proven to be wrong.

I fail to see your point. You might as well come from Dimitrovgrad,
a town in Serbia where the majority of the population is ethnic Bulgarian. So...?

In addition, the Serbian language went through some language reforms other languages haven't. In the late 19th and early 20th century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_language

[Bulair]

Originally Posted by Awar

I fail to see your point. You might as well come from Dimitrovgrad,
a town in Serbia where the majority of the population is ethnic Bulgarian. So...?

In addition, the Serbian language went through some language reforms other languages haven't. In the late 19th and early 20th century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_language

My point is that the Bulgarian speaking slavs in Macedonia spoke Bulgarian, and the Serb speaking slavs spoke Serbian, eventually the communist mixed the two languages and imposed it upon every different ethnic group inside Macedonia.So the modern FYROMian is not an actual language, evolved from the original Macedonian language, but an artificial one.

[Awar]

No language today is derrived from the original Macedonian language.
That's just the name of the teritory.

About your statement that the official FYROM language is a 1945 invention of the
communists... well, I'd like to see some sources about that.

( preferably non-biased sources, neither from Serbia, FYROM, Greece or Bulgaria )

[Bulair]

I'm not talking about ancient Macedonians, sorry I should refer to Macedonians slavs as FYROMians


Hehe, you got me there, I cannot find independant sources, but I think you'll agree that prior to WW2 there were no evidence of other languages in FYROM other than Serbian and Bulgarian.

[Awar]

Originally Posted by Bulair

Hehe, you got me there, I cannot find independant sources, but I think you'll agree that prior to WW2 there were no evidence of other languages in FYROM other than Serbian and Bulgarian.

Well, yes, but then again, that's the result of the mess the Ottomans left
in the early 20th century.

The modern Balkan nations are just a distant continuance of the feudal pseudo-nations which existed before the Ottomans arrived.

In the 19th century, there was a mess... the people had no such identity.
Most people who today know themselves as Bulgarians, or Serbs, or Vlachs, Croats, Bosnians etc. didn't keep their identity since medieval times.

They knew themselves as 'we', not more than that.

Even in medieval times, these people weren't exactly 'Bulgarians' or 'Serbs' or whatever, they were just an asset of whichever Feudal lord had power over that teritory at the time.

Take also into account the close relation of the south-Slavic languages,
and you got a mess which was then 'solved' through several wars,
early 20th century nationalistic propaganda ( used both for forming nations, as well as for forming animosities ).

This is the fate of peoples who were occupied by empires.

[Bulair]

Yes, you're right to some extend, but nationalist movements appeared in the early 18th century and since then most people started realising that they were not just regular citizens of the Ottoman empire.Well actually these ideas didn't reach the majority of the population living by that time in isolated villages, but it did spread in the major cities and the importand thing is that the progressive elite adopted these nationalistic ideas.

Bulgaria was split in two major administrative parts (if we don't count Macedonia) - Rumelia and Moesia, but there is no written evidence that the people in these districts called themselves Rumelians or Moesians.Bulgarians were Bulgarians, Serbs were Serbs etc.Same thing with Macedonia.

[Rusalka]

Great point you make there, Awar, and obviously very true. Since the Balkans got invaded and ruled by the Ottomans before they ever got out of feudal rule themselves, they never quite got that "national" as opposed to "local" or ruler-based identity and when they were free by themselves at last, they sort of picked up where they had left. Also, as all empires, the Ottoman Empire did a pretty good job at "divide and rule" politics too, hence the post-Empire situation with people who only had their locality and their religion to identify with.

[Rusalka]

Originally Posted by Bulair

Bulgaria was split in two major administrative parts (if we don't count Macedonia) - Rumelia and Moesia, but there is no written evidence that the people in these districts called themselves Rumelians or Moesians.Bulgarians were Bulgarians, Serbs were Serbs etc.Same thing with Macedonia.

Actually, Bulair, in those days the majority of the people would call themselves "Greek Orthodox", "Roum" or just "Christian" unless they were educated. That's how the Ottomans classified them for centuries, and when the nationalistic movements did reach those parts it was solely for the literate minority to understand what it was all about.

[Archangelos]

Timo, seeing that all the archaeological findings from ancient macedonia all show the greek language, where do you get the idea of a 'macedonian' language?

[Timo]

Originally Posted by Archangelos

Timo, seeing that all the archaeological findings from ancient macedonia all show the greek language, where do you get the idea of a 'macedonian' language?

I'd like to see such evidence that you speak of first, before I think they spoke greek. As I said, they adopted greek culture and language, and perhaps had no writing system of their own so they used the greek one for writing. I don't claim to know. I am just sceptical of Macedonians as Greeks.


--edited--

I'll make an Amendment.
According to Author N.G.L. Hammond, in The Peguin Encyclopedia of Ancient Civilizations: He writes on the Macedonian Civilization in this Encyclopedia, and makes it quite clear that nobody can be sure if the ancient macedonian really spoke greek. "The surviving words of Macedonian do not show conclusively whether the Macedonians spoke Greek or not in early times." Then he goes on to say that some suggest that they did speak greek in the Aeolic dialect. However, I am rather sceptical, as I said above, since we don't know for sure that the early macedonians did or not.

[Archangelos]

Sorry i havnt been around, computer problems.

Here is afew sites with some pictures and information, id post more but my computer seems to keep restarting every few minutes and i rather get atleast something post rather then nothing.

http://truth.macedonia.gr/discoveries.html

If i have time this week during classes ill post more, cause ill be on school computers and not my home one.

[Vojvoda]

Slav Macedonians, according to Serb geographer and ethnologist Jovan Cvijic, were a Slavic speaking mass of people without a clearly defined national consciousness.Cvijic puts the Nis region in SE Serbia & Sofia region in W Bulgaria in the same category.

[East_Prussian]

Hehe, you got me there, I cannot find independant sources, but I think you'll agree that prior to WW2 there were no evidence of other languages in FYROM other than Serbian and Bulgarian.

Well, according to the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1911), the only Slavonic nationality even mentioned in Macedonia, were Bulgarians. Here are some quotes:

Bulgaria, Volume 4, pp 772:

The Berlin Treaty boundary was far from corresponding with the ethnological limits of the Bulgarian race, which were more accurately defined by the abrogated treaty of San Stefano. A considerable portion of Macedonia, the districts of Pirot and Vranya belonging to Servia, the northern half of the vilayet of Adrianople, and large tracts of the Dobrudja, are, according to the best and most impartial authorities, mainly inhabited by a Bulgarian population.

Bulgaria, Volume 4, pp 776-777:

The Bulgarian inhabitants of the Peninsula beyond the limits of the principality may, perhaps, be estimated at 1,500,000 or 1,600,000, and the grand total of the race possibly reaches 5,500,000.

Slavs, Volume 25, pp 228:

The Southern Slays, Slovenes, Serbo-Croats and Bulgarians, are cut off from the main body by the Germans of Austria proper and the Magyars, both of whom occupy soil once Slavonic, and have absorbed much Slavonic blood, and by the Rumanians of Transylvania and the Lower Danube, who represent the original Dacians romanized. These Slays occupy the main mass of the Balkan Peninsula downwards from the Julian Alps and the line of the Mura, Drava and Danube, North of this all three races have considerable settlements in southern Hungary. Their southern boundary is very ill-defined, various nationalities being closely intermingled. To the south-west the Slays march with the Albanians, to the south-east with the Turks, and to the south and along the Aegean coasts they have the Greeks as neighbors.

Although the Southern Slays fall into these three divisions, linguistically the separation is not sharp, nor does it coincide with the political frontiers. Roughly speaking, the eastern half of the peninsula is held by the Bulgarians, some 5,000,000 in number, the western half by the Serbo-Croats, of whom there must be about 8,000,000. This is the most divided of the Slavonic races; its members profess three forms of religion and use three alphabets, the Serbs and Bosnians being mostly Orthodox and using the Cyrillic alphabet, but including many Mussulmans; the Croats being Roman Catholics, writing with Latin letters; and the Dalmatians also Roman Catholics, but using, some of them, the ancient Glagolitic script for their Slavonic liturgy. The language also falls into three dialects independent of the religions, and across all these lines run the frontiers of the political divisions the kingdom of Servia (more correctly written Serbia); the kingdom of Montenegro; the Turkish provinces of Old Servia and Novibazar, still in Turkish hands; those of Bosnia and Herzegovina, annexed by Austria; the coast-line and islands of Istria and Dalmatia, which also form part of Austria; and the kingdom of Croatia, which is included in the dominion of Hungary, to say nothing of outlying colonies in Hungary itself and in Italy. In the extreme north-west, in Carniola, in the southern parts of Styria and Carinthia, and over the Italian border in the province of Udine and the Vale of Resia live the Slovenes, something under 1,500,000, much divided dialectically.

There is no mention of a "Macedonian" race, they are simply Bulgarians (given the fact that there were no "Macedonians" until 1944 should speak volumes and is proof in and of itself that they are a created 'ethnicity', just like the 'Moldovans'). Also, with regards to the statement of the Vardar region joining Greece, that's BS, especially considering the fact that the Greeks deported 670,000 Bulgarians from Western Thrace and Aegean Macedonia from 1913-1926, if anything the Bulgarians ought to have the Aegean territory between the Struma/Strimon and Tundzha-Meric rivers, considering they had lived there for ages and made up the majority of the population there before the Second Balkan War. With regards to the Vardar territory, it ought to be divided between Albania and Bulgaria with Bulgaria gaining at least 4/5 of the territory with the cities of Skopje and Ohrid.

I fail to see your point. You might as well come from Dimitrovgrad, a town in Serbia where the majority of the population is ethnic Bulgarian.

Despite the best efforts of the Serbian Government to assimilate them. Yes, I know about the situation in Bossilegrad, Tsaribrod and to a lesser extent Pirot.

Slav Macedonians, according to Serb geographer and ethnologist Jovan Cvijic, were a Slavic speaking mass of people without a clearly defined national consciousness.Cvijic puts the Nis region in SE Serbia & Sofia region in W Bulgaria in the same category.

He also said that they were very closely related to Serbs. Cvijic's work can't be taken any more seriously than that of the Bulgarians or Greeks of his time, for it is, like theirs, obviously biased.

[daniel_tanevski]

Macedonia had previously been settled by the original European peoples during the Neolithic age, these people created the Old European civilizations, which were some of the most advanced in Europe at the time.

Macedonia's origins lay in an invasion of the area by a Nordic tribe some time during the great Nordic migrations which occurred from around 5000 BC onwards, at first conquering but then integrating with these original Old European peoples. This massive influx of peoples brought about the fall of these Old European civilizations - and in their place arose a great civilization which have come to epitomize the classical world: Macedonia!


Archaeological investigations have revealed just how Nordic the Macedonians were - particularly in contrast to the peoples who, by the time of the first Macedonian expeditions, made up the majority of the inhabitants of southern Greece.


Macedonians were not "Hellenic-speaking" people. From historic writtings we have available it is clear that macedonians were "barbarians" in the eyes of Greeks and they spoke a totally different language which obviously Greeks couldn't understand.


The Greeks never saw the Macedonians as Hellenes; they were excluded from the Olympics and from social gatherings - this is one of the reasons why it wasn't uncommon for a Macedonian to be able to speak Greek.


The Macedonian kings, however, knew that Greece was the centre of European civilization, culture and learning at the time and they wanted to be part of it. They adopted much culture of the Greeks in the South. Alexander the Great conquered most of greece and then went on to spread Macedonian culture and language throughout the known world.


If one would ask Plato if Macedonians were Greeks, he'd say they were not. One of the greatest philosophers of all time, Aristotle, was also a Macedonian (by his father), and he too would argue on the subject-matter.


With the arrival of the Slavs in the 5th or 6th centuries AD, the Macedonian culture began to decline, and when the Slavs conquored the region - the Macedonians began to adopt many cultural facets, one of these being the Slavic dialects (of which the Macedonians formed their own).
Today's Macedonians are the very descendants of the Ancient Macedonians, making a distinct ethnic group - they are one of the few White people remaining in the Balkans - due to the mixing of Albanians with Turks, and Greeks with Ethiopians.

[NatVox]

Originally Posted by daniel_tanevski

Macedonia had previously been settled by the original European peoples during the Neolithic age, these people created the Old European civilizations, which were some of the most advanced in Europe at the time.

The Old European people.. from the Neolithic?

Macedonia's origins lay in an invasion of the area by a Nordic tribe some time during the great Nordic migrations which occurred from around 5000 BC onwards

Surely you can offer some solid evidence about this. Please, feel free to provide it.

Archaeological investigations have revealed just how Nordic the Macedonians were - particularly in contrast to the peoples who, by the time of the first Macedonian expeditions, made up the majority of the inhabitants of southern Greece.

Again, please provide solid evidence to support such claim. Thank you.

[Agrippa]

The FYROM should probably be part of Bulgaria from an ethnic point of view, since the slavic Macedonians are just subgroup of the Bulgarian people ethnically.