Ancient Macedonians Spoke Greek Dialect
I do not feel competent to discuss either the political issues raised by "History Doesn't Aid Greek Land Claim" (letter, Jan. 5) or the position of the Slavic dialects spoken in southern Yugoslavia. However, the views on the tongue of the ancient Macedonians is outdated.
Our knowledge of ancient Macedonian does not depend any longer on "scanty glossary items compiled by the fifth-century Greek grammarian Hesychius." The epigraphic discoveries of the last decades have shown a great number of names, words and even entire phrases from the Classical and Hellenistic periods.
The new documents establish that the ancestral tongue of the Macedonians was a Greek dialect akin to the dialects spoken in neighboring Thessaly and Epirus. This has been acknowledged by all recent major works on ancient Macedonia written by specialists from different nations, such as N. G. L. Hammond, J. R. Ellis, M. Errington and Fanoula Papazoglou. M. B. HATZOPOULOS Director of Research, National Hellenic Research Foundation Athens, Feb. 4, 1991
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE2DC173BF930A15751C0A967958260&scp=6&sq=%22ancient%20Macedonia%22&st=cseMacedonia Is More Than a Name to Greece; Skopje to Explain
The writers say that stores in Florina and Thessaloniki accommodate their customers by speaking Slavic and this is proof the owners are not Greek. Yugoslavs have in recent years been vacationing in the northern part of Greece in droves. If the shopkeepers in Florina and Thessaloniki try to communicate with their customers in Slavic (Bulgarian), that is good business practice.
Ms. Proeva and Ms. Krstevski claim that the Slavs have been Macedonians for 1,400 years but they fail to define what they mean. When one examines the history of Skopje, the capital of the republic, for example, the argument that it is Macedonian is invalidated.
Skopje was never part of ancient Macedonia but was an Illyrian tribal center in the third century B.C. The Slavs made many incursions but did not capture Skopje until A.D. 1189. Stephan Dushan was crowned emperor there by the Serbs in 1346. Skopje was incorporated by Serbia in 1913 and was made part of Yugoslavia in 1918. In 1945 Tito conveniently designated Skopje as the capital of the new "Macedonian" republic.
Greece is not denying the republic of Skopje its right to independence and existence. The question is not why Greece objects to its neighbor's appropriating the name Macedonia, but why the neighboring state is so insistent and intent on adopting such a name. ELENE COSTOPOULOS New York, May 4, 1992 The writer is a member of the publications committee, Hellenic-American Educators Association-United Federation of Teachers.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE2D61639F933A05756C0A964958260&scp=4&sq=%22ancient%20Macedonia%22&st=cseThe World; The Land That Can't Be Named
By RAYMOND BONNER
Published: May 14, 1995
Of all the destabilizing factors, the quarrel over the name should be easy to resolve.
Even though there was a Macedonian kingdom 2,500 years ago, Slavs and Bulgars moved into the region in the 5th and 7th centuries, and a Macedonian nationalism did not arise until the end of the last century. A discrete Macedonian state did not exist until the 1940's, when Tito created an autonomous Republic of Macedonia as part of Communist Yugoslavia, which still left a Macedonian province in northern Greece and a sliver of Macedonia in Bulgaria.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE0DA1039F937A25756C0A963958260&scp=8&sq=%22ancient%20Macedonia%22&st=cse
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Тема: Европа и САД за историјата на Македониjа (Прочитано 269230 пати)