From: schoinas@fox.cs.wisc.edu (Yannis Schoinas)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.greek
Subject: Re: Independent Slavo-Macedonia
Date: 9 Sep 92 19:08:37 GMT
Organization: U of Wisconsin Madison - Computer Sciences

macrakis@osf.org (Stavros Macrakis) writes:

>I said that civil servants in Vlachophone villages could make some
>effort to learn the local language, Vlach traditions could be taught
>in schools, etc.  I also said that Greece is no better or worse than
>most other European countries in this respect.

>In article <1992Sep3.183104.10550@cs.wisc.edu>
>schoinas@fox.cs.wisc.edu (Yannis Schoinas) replied:

>   Come on, give me a break! Do civil servants in Crete speak cretan,
>   in Ionian islands the local (heavily influenced by italian) dialect,
>   etc.

>As you know, Yanni, Cretan and Ionian dialects are very close to
>standard Greek.  Vlach is not.

No, I don't buy this. There are probably much more words of vlach
origin in modern Greek than words of cretan origin. The problem
is that for linguists if two languages have grammars of different
origin are considered different right from the start. But I don't 
think it would be fair to try to save previous language forms based
on how close to an official language of a state they are.

>   Modern Greek were established out of the need of the newly founded
>   state to have a common language.

>I have no problem with this.  All I said was that local officials
>could make `some effort' to be accomodating.

>   In modern states, you cannot have 100 different dialects taught at
>   public schools. Local dialects are nowadays more of a matter of
>   cultural clubs than public education.

>I guess France is no longer a modern state.  After all, until a few
>years ago, children were punished for using local languages or
>dialects in school.  But now, Corsican (Italian dialect), Occitan
>(Provencal), Breton (Celtic language), Lorrain (German dialect), and
>Dutch are taught in the public schools in those regions.

You didn't catch the meaning of word "modern". I had in mind the
nation states that started beeing created during the last three
centuries. This trend you describe is quite a recent one, I guess 
part of what is known multiculturalism. If you want my opinion, 
it's a dead end. We are living in a global world and some people 
just don't want to realize it. For example, what language would 
a corsican use in Brittagne? We must understand that the closed
societies of the middle ages that led to the creation of many
different language forms don't exist. There is discussion about 
the future extiction of all the european languages and we are
worrying about almost extinct dialects? Survirval of any language 
form is up to the people and not the states. if you feel a language 
should be saved, teach it to your children, write literature or papers
using it.

And to continue with the corsican, what will happen when 
he marries a girl from Britagne? How many languages would 
their children have to speak? For example, if I take myself 
as a case and apply this mother tongue theory, I should have 
to learn quite a few languages, pontian from my father's father, 
turkish from father's mother and cretan from my mother's parents. 
Now, I know of a great grandmother that came from Carpathos and 
who knows what language they used to speak there. Not to count 
that my grandfather's ancestors is said that they came to 
Ierapetra from Chania so I would have to learn two different 
variations of cretan.

So, at least three mother tongues plus modern greek plus
english to communicate with foreigers. Quite a bunch, don't
you think? And what should I do with my kids if it happens
to marry a girl with equally mixed ancestry? My girl in 
Heraclion has a father with origins from Smyrna and a mother
from Lesvos. Should I add two more languages for my kids if
I get married to that girl? Hmm, perhaps I should saving for 
my grandchildren. Most probably the only thing they will have 
time to do in their life is learn their mother tongues. Thank 
God they will not have time to make any more children!

Note that the turkish that my grandmother spoke were not even the
modern Turkish. I made an experiment with a turkish girl roughly
from the same region(Trapizon) that my grandmother was living 
by giving her to read songs written in this kind if turkish and
there were words unknown to her. Also, this language was written
with the greek alphabet. Since there is not a written grammar 
or dictionary for the language, I would have to start visiting 
old people in the villages to learn this language or try to come 
up with the grammar from old Bibles written in turkish!!! 

And as a last example, you should take into account the
language that we are using in this article exchange and
in general in this newsgroup. Much less than half are written
in Greek.

>We then brought up the issue of the origin of the Vlachs.  Schoinas
>says:

>   Actually, there was a recent series of articles in Eleytherotypia
>   about the origins and culture of the vlachs. This was supposed to be
>   the most widely accepted one. 

>My reference was works on Romance philology.  Your reference is a
>newspaper article.  I tend to believe the former rather than the
>latter.

Actually, the series of articles was quite well documented.
There quite enough romanian historians among the people adopting 
the theory of the greek origin of the arumanian vlachs. On the other
side, there were quite enough greek historians of the older generation
supporting the theory of the dacorumanian origin(among them was 
Paparigopoulos). So the matter is highly disputed. Even if we
accept that there is a strong link between vlachs and rumanians,
the question of their origin is not answered. It just transforms
to the question, 'which is the origin of the rumanians?'. I have
read in a french book on balkan history(which I borrowed from
the local library), that the dacic origin of the rumanians
is not very probable. To be more exact, the author presented the
dacic theory and the translator(an american professor) added that 
the recent theories contradict the dacic origin of the rumanians.
He also added that the origin of the rumanians has been a disputed
subject mainly for hungarian and rumanian historians.

BTW, I would suggest avoiding sarcasm. If you do want references,
do ask and allow me some time to do some research. And it would
help if you could give me some titles from the books you are speaking
about.

>   ...I am not sure how widely accepted is the theory of the romanian
>   descent of the vlachs outside the romanian cycles.

>By philological evidence, Greek Vlach dialects are closely related to
>certain Rumanian dialects.  Thus it seems unlikely that they evolved
>independently since Roman times.  You asserted that Greek Vlach and
>Rumanian are as distantly related as French and Italian; this
>contradicts everything I've read on Romance philology (mostly by
>Western European and North American scholars, not Romanians!).

During the times of the east roman empire, Thessaly was known
as big Vlachia and Haetolo-Acarnania(sp?) as small Vlachia. 
So, the origins of the Vlachs must indeed be traced way back. Since 
Rumania was part of the roman empire for quite enough centuries, 
these languages needn't be to have evolved indepentently. 
During the times of the empire, trade and contact between various 
people was much more common than later on. And as I have already 
said, we don't know the origin of the rumanians.

BTW, my impression is that French, Italian and Spanish are quite 
close. I guess everything is a matter of the similarity measure.

					 Bye,
					Yannis.