page_title: Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia
section_title: Education and language
hierarchical_section_title: Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia / Education and language
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of dialect divisions in Macedonian and related Slavic varieties of geographic Macedonia.Македонски: Карта на македонските дијалекти.
context_page_description: Slavic-speakers are a linguistic minority population in the northern Greek region of Macedonia, who are mostly concentrated in certain parts of the peripheries of West and Central Macedonia, adjacent to the territory of the state of North Macedonia. The language called "Slavic" in the context of Greece is generally called "Macedonian" or "Macedonian Slavic" otherwise. Some members have formed their own emigrant communities in neighbouring countries, as well as further abroad.
context_section_description: The Slavic dialects spoken across Northern Greece belong to the eastern group of South Slavic, comprising Bulgarian and Macedonian, and share all the characteristics that set this group apart from other Slavic languages: existence of a definite article, lack of cases, lack of a verb infinitive, comparative forms of adjectives formed with the prefix по-, future tense formed by the present form of the verb preceded by ще/ќе, and existence of a renarrative mood. These dialects include the Upper and Lower Prespa dialects, the Kostur, Nestram-Kostenar, Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop dialect, and Solun-Voden dialects. The Prilep-Bitola dialect is widely spoken in the Florina region, and forms the basis of the Standard Macedonian language. The majority of the speakers also speak Greek, this trend is more pronounced amongst younger persons.
  Speakers employ various terms to refer to the language which they speak. These terms include Makedonski (Macedonian: Македонски), Slavomakedonika (Greek: Σλαβομακεδονικά, "Slavomacedonian"), Entopia (Greek: Εντόπια, "local" language), Naše (Macedonian: Наше, "our own" language), Starski (Macedonian: Старски, "the old" language) or  Slavika (Greek: Σλαβικά, "Slavic"). Historically, the terms Balgàrtzki, Bolgàrtski or Bulgàrtski had been used in the region of Kostur (Kastoria), and Bògartski ("Bulgarian") in the region of Lower Prespa (Prespes).
  According to Peter Trudgill,
  There is, of course, the very interesting Ausbau sociolinguistic question as to whether the language they speak is Bulgarian or Macedonian, given that both these languages have developed out of the South Slavonic dialect continuum...In former Yugoslav Macedonia and Bulgaria there is no problem, of course. Bulgarians are considered to speak Bulgarian and Macedonians Macedonian. The Slavonic dialects of Greece, however, are "roofless" dialects whose speakers have no access to education in the standard languages. Greek non-linguists, when they acknowledge the existence of these dialects at all, frequently refer to them by the label Slavika, which has the implication of denying that they have any connection with the languages of the neighboring countries. It seems most sensible, in fact, to refer to the language of the Pomaks as Bulgarian and to that of the Christian Slavonic-speakers in Greek Macedonia as Macedonian.
  Until the middle of the nineteenth century the language of instruction in virtually all schools in the region was Greek. One of the first Bulgarian schools began operation in 1857 in Kukush. The number of Bulgarian schools increased as the Bulgarian struggle for ecclesiastical independence intensified and after the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870. According to the statistics of the Bulgarian Exarchate, by 1912, when the First Balkan War broke out, there were 296 Bulgarian schools with 589 teachers and approximately 19 000 pupils in Greek Macedonia. For comparison, the total number of Bulgarian-exarchist schools in all of Macedonia in 1912 was 1196 with 2096 teachers and 70 000 pupils. All Bulgarian schools in Greek and Serbian Macedonia were closed after the Second Balkan War. The Abecedar language primer, originally printed in 1925, was designed for speakers in using the Prilep-Bitola dialect in the Florina area. Although the book used a Latin script, it was printed in the locally Prilep-Bitola dialect. In the 1930s the Metaxas regime banned the use of the Slavomacedonian language in public and private use. Laws were enacted banning the language, and speakers faced harsh penalties including being arrested, fined, beaten and forced to drink castor oil.
  During the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II however these penalties were lifted. The Macedonian language was employed in widespread use, with Macedonian-language newspapers appearing from 1942. During the period 1941-1944 within The Bulgarian occupation zone the Bulgarian language was taught.
  During the Greek Civil War, the codified Macedonian language was taught in 87 schools with 10,000 students in areas of northern Greece under the contro
caption: Dialectic divisions of the Macedonian language within Greece.[144]
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