From: lb@cs.man.ac.uk (Luben Boyanov)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia,soc.culture.bulgaria,soc.culture.greek
Subject: Re: The Balkan Dance of Death [Macedonia]
Date: 17 Dec 92 20:14:01 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Organization: Dept Computer Science, University of Manchester, U.K.

In article <1992Dec15.072100.15819@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> gd8f@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Gregory  Dandulakis) writes:
>In article <1992Dec15.055430.5311@cas.org> vkb57@cas.org () writes:
>>>
>>Yes,  Gregory,  they knew the official language of Greece was Greek,  just as
>>the official language of the Ottoman empire was Turkish,  but their language,
>>their names,  the toponyms,  and  the old church books did survive 500 yers
>>of the "Ottoman yoke."  It took about five years of the enlightened Greek
>>rule to destroy all that.  I really have hard time believing that you don't
>>feel bad about it.
>
>
>I didn't know that the Ottomans cultivated the Old Slavonic Language.
>The only thing which survived the Ottomans was the isolated societies
>"languages" made up of 2,000 words, unrecognizable by any
>Old Slavonic scholar.

That's not true Gregory. Many Slavists and linguists DID recognize the
language. I quoted you last time an (albanian I think) author. There were
others (Chech, etc) as well.

> As far as the books, I'm sorry but didn't
>you have any replicas? 

There are few books and writings from those times. However strange this
may sound to you.

>Because the Ottomans had burned books and

Not only Ottomans.

>books of Greek faith when they "didn't feel so good" with those 
>dangerous Rums. Go to check how many churches survived the Kemal's
>cleansing campaigns. The Old Slavonic books, during that period, probably had
>as much political importance under the Ottomans as has the Incas holly books

Maybe they didn't have political importance at all but they spoke about
what the local population was. And as I said - there ARE preserved books
from that time.

>What you consider "holly" today, because they tought you so in Skopjia,
>doesn't mean that it was always so for most of the people.
>By mixing values of today with those from before, you just reassure your
>efforts for cheap populism. With populistic appeals though you
>can't become a good politician; just a dangerous for the public
>interests sophist.

Very well said. I agree with that.

>The Skopjian language took a whole state to be established, defined,
>enriched, enforced on the populace and start building literature. 

If you have in mind the present Macedonian language, I think it was
formally shaped in Moscow and 'adjusted' to be as close to the Serbian as
possible and as remote to the Bulgarian as possible. A friend of mine here
has a collection of folk songs from Skopie from the 50-ies (or 60-ies)
which were still not 'Macedonized'. It's a problem to change the folk songs
overnight :-)

>In any case, do you consider the Old Bulgarian literature part of
>the Skopjian cultural heritage? It's like the Americans considering
>Shakespear as an American writer, right? (As you know the term
>"Macedonian Literature" was unknown uptill our century...!

There is no way of avoiding that truth. Fortunately there were
many books in Europe published from that time, speaking about Slav
literture...

>Gr

Luben
Xref: sparky soc.culture.yugoslavia:10007 soc.culture.europe:10358