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From: rturkel@cas.org (Rick Turkel)
Subject: Re: Macedonian (was: Flemish and Dutch)
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References: <1995Apr24.141327.14665@yvax.byu.edu> <3ouiag$jfm@giga.bga.com> <3out06$97d@nntp5.u.washington.edu> <brgD8zAxp.6wB@netcom.com>
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Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 17:30:28 GMT
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In article <brgD8zAxp.6wB@netcom.com>, Bruce R. Gilson <brg@netcom.com> wrote:
>In article <3out06$97d@nntp5.u.washington.edu>,
>Robert Beer <bbeer@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>[text deleted]
>>
>>These distinctions can change according to political realities as well.
>>Example:  Serbian and Macedonian are now considered two separate
>>languages.  Standard Serbian of Belgrade has seven cases, nouns that
>>decline, etc.  Standard Macedonian of Skopje has three cases only, which
>>affect pronouns but not nouns.  Before the creation of Jugoslavia, and the
>>Macedonian republic, what is now considered "Macedonia" was just south
>>Serbia, its inhabitants considered themselves either serbian or bulgarian
>>depending on the church alliance.  Their language was considered a Serbian
>>dialect.  The ones that allied with the Bulgiarian church considered their
>>language "bulgarian."  (The slavic speaking "macedonians" of northern
>>greece still do) Then the border was drawn, a national consciousness
>>formed, and the standard Macedonian language was defined.  But the real
>>linguistic distinctions are fuzzy - traveling south from Belgrade to
>>Skopje, the change is gradual, at no point is there one village where they
>>speak "serbian" with a sudden break to "macedonian".  What is a dialect of
>>what is defined by the political border.  Serbs and Macedonians can
>>understand each other mostly, though it varies with distance of course.
>>Yet Serbian and Macedonian are considered separate languages today.
>
>As far as I can tell, Macedonian was
>considered a separate language many
>years before the independence of Mace-
>donia came about. Macedonian was men-
>tioned in DeBray's book on Slavic lang-
>uages, just to give one example, dec-
>ades ago.

Macedonian was recognized as a separate language by the former
Yugoslavia after WWII.  When the central government sent information to
Skopje that wasn't being understood, they realized that they had a
separate language on their hands, and responded accordingly.

As for there not being a clear demarcation between the two, the same
situation of transitional dialects exists between French and Italian,
and to a lesser degree between German and Dutch (because the dialect
boundary is less diffuse), so that is no criterion for anything.  In all
of these cases, it is the standard languages which aren't mutually
intelligible.
-- 
Rick Turkel         (___  _____  _  _  _  _  __     _  ___   _   _  _  ___
rturkel@freenet.columbus)oh.us|   |  \  )  |/  \     |    |   |   \__)    |
rturkel@cas.org        /      |  _| __)/   | ___)    | ___|_  |  _(  \    |
Rich or poor, it's good to have money.  Ko rano rani | u jamu pada.
