From: schoinas@fox.cs.wisc.edu (Yannis Schoinas)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.greek
Subject: Re: Independent Slavo-Macedonia
Date: 2 Sep 92 19:14:32 GMT
Organization: U of Wisconsin Madison - Computer Sciences

sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:

>Yannis Schoinas (schoinas@fox.cs.wisc.edu) writes:
>>Can you give me a definition to the word greeks that would explain 
>>why the vlachs or the slavophones are not greeks?

>A reasonable definition that Macedonians and Vlachs are not Greeks
>is that Greek is not their mother tongue. At least in my universe.

>You better watch out folks. Sooner or later we will all be told
>that you are Dutch/Americans/Americans/etc with a Greek conscience.

Thanks for the ball. Watch out the strike...

So, in your universe language specifies the nationality.
Interesting universe, I dare say. Let's make a tour around
the world to see if it belongs to your universe. 

Well, the best example is Israel. Of course, there is
no such thing as a jewish nation. Israelis from Germany
speak german, from Russia russian, from Poland polish,
from Netherlands dutch... 

Basques and Catalans should not be taken as Spanish,
Brittons and Alsatians are not French, Switzerland 
has no reason to exist and I guess can be annexed
by the sourrounding nation states to the delight of
its citizens. Wales should be independent since their
people are not English and I will not even think of
believing that Scottish leave in the same state as
the rest of the inhabitants of the British islands.
Of course, we all know that US is inhabited by
english speaking English. As for India, there should
be a dozen independent states or should it unite with
Pakistan?

I will end the tour here. I hope you got the impression
that the real universe is quite more complex than yours.

I think your misconceptions about the Balkans (and not only yours)
start from a lack of understanding of the european history. You must
realize that for the last 2000 years the only connecting link between
the peoples of the current states in the Balkans was their religion 
and their roman tradition. The current states were carved through
pressure from the outside, the result of the conflict of the european
powers to control the region(I am exagerrating a bit but the process
of carving nations was completed very lately compared to the rest of
the europe).

Let's take Vlachs for example. The current opinion is that they 
come from the latin speaking roman garrisons that were placed
along the roads of the roman empire. Intermarriage of the soldiers 
with the locals (remember that the roman soldiers were given pieces
of land after their retirement) created enclaves of latin speaking
people all over the balkans. It is said that in Thessaly the greek 
language survided only in the cities.

Note that there is not a single vlach dialect but a bunch of them 
that all have as an ancestor the common latin. All of these dialects 
have the same connection between them as french have to italian or 
spanish. Can you make the nationality of the vlachs scattered throughout 
the Balkans from their language? 

An interesting information: the dialect of the majority of the 
Greek Vlachs (armanic) has 50% greek words and 8% slavic words
compared to 8% and 20% respectively in the romanian language.

In Greece around 2 million(not sure about the number) people can be 
said that have their ancenstry from Vlachs. 
Right from the start of the creation of the Greek state, the Vlachs 
have contributed to this state in every aspect of the social life.

Among the Vlachs of Greece there is a small group that is called
Patsinakoi(in Peloponessos, I think). They are said to have come 
from Dobrutsa in Romania.  Their name suggests that probably their
origin is the remnants of the turkish speaking Petsinaks that were
defeated and romanized a dozen hundred years ago. Try to classify
these people.

To conclude, language alone does not define the people. Cultural
heritage and sense of history is the key element. The tribal beliefs
of the pure race, so popular with the germanics, don't apply to real 
world. 

						 Bye,
						Yannis.

ps: One more piece of info: The vlachs of western macedonia are not
    armanis but belong to a group called arvanito(albanian)-vlachs.
    The same kind of Vlachs are the ones that reside in the x-yugoslavian
    republic of Macedonia.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.greek,eunet.politics