www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Albanian History

Dear Pavel,

Thank you for the article, it answered many questions. I know from a map I have showing the movement of people after and before the world wars, that the Bulgarians were the one's that might have sufferred the most through ethnic cleansing. It seems that about a million were forced to move and settle in Bulgaria after WW I. The probability exists that they might have been Muslims. I don't know!

I recall reading once, that when the Greek soldiers took over the areas around Solonika during one of their many wars, they kept encountering Bulgarians and insisted that they were Greek and to stop speaking Bulgarian.

It seems the Greeks were predominantly city dwellers, but then again, who knows who was Greek. ...it is a dominant culture. During the Middle ages, when the crusaders needed more men, rather than having them come from France, they had them come from Southern Greece. Actually four languages were spoken there: Greek, French, Slavic and either Roumanian (Vlachs), or Albanian. I don't recall which one. Many places though, still have Slavic names.

As for Macedonia, it is a province in Northern Greece. The nation that now claims that name, was a concoction of Tito's because there were no Slavs in that area at the time of Alexander the Great.

What disturbed the Greeks the most about FYRON, (Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia), was that they were not only imposing on their identity, but were showing pictures of the city of Solonika, (Thessalonika) on their travel posters. Very threatening!

I believe though that FYRON does have problems and is trying hard to establish an identity in order to avoid trouble with it's Muslim population.

Thanks again for the article.

Zenovia

There have been so many migrations of people in the regions. Dont forget southern Italy had strong Greek past. Sometimes peoples blend or take on the language and customs of another group and sometimes it went the otherway. Slavs and Bulgars and various others have certainly moved down and into what is today Greece. There stamp has certianly been left in the northern regions. People crossed over into the old empire in large numbers in Roman times and that changed the demographics considerably. So if they were no Slavs anywhere near the Danube in Alexander's time there certainly were later on and later on still they came over in large numbers because someone else was pushing in behind them forcing them on. Yes later under the post 1900 agreements large numbers of Bulgars were relocated to Bulgaria from East and West Thraki and Greek northern territories.

I think the big mistake we can make is getting too caught up in their disputes. We run the risk of maintining a line that rapidly becomes yesterdays politics in the area concerned. How many Greeks come to Australia to visit their relatives to say that it is like walking into the past. That the Australian Greeks have sort of frozen themselves in trying to maintian the Greekness of when they came here while modent Greece evolved and changed. I note similar comments from posters here who are obviously of Irish ancestry who are more Irish than the Irish and have developed an identity to modern Irish people which is so out of step with todays Irish culture and politics. They are more anti British than the Irish. They forget or dont know that the Irish are the largest minority in the England Scotland and Wales and live very well there as Irish people (I am one of them). I think the same might also apply to the Balkans.

ICXC
NIKA

Dear Pavel Ivanovitch,
Kindly refrain from taking cheap shots at the Irish - or anyone else; cheap shots are not nice. Any sociologist can tell you that it is entirely normal for a community in a settlement away from the Metropol (the home country of the ethnic group) to maintain certain customs, older language forms and similar phenomena which are sometimes superseded or forgotten in the Metropol itself. To take a lovely example: harp singing is a lovely musical form of British origin, which now survives only in the Cumberlands in the USA. If you get the chance to go and hear some, by all means do so.

Incognitus

No cheap shots were made, apart from unhelpful comments by those who are still fighting yesterdays war, where people on the ground, the ones affected have made their solution to their problems. I once worked with a Hungarian lady who had migraged from northern Serbia and found herself working next to a Turkish woman who became a good freind. The problem was she had been brought up to hate Turks and calling someone a Turk was fighting words. She had been taught to hate as her parents had been before her. They ahd never seen a Turk she said and she had never seen one either until the day she started work next to her friend. She does understand the history of the Balkans. She also is very aware that she had to be taught to hate a people she had never seen before, by people who had never seen one either. My family have been refugees from civil war and have settled in new lands (even the USA) where they went on intermarry with people from Africa, eastern Europe and Asia.

North America like the areas around Sydney Australia is a wonderful repository of examples of older forms of English. When I was a child we used to get punished for using American spelling and grammar in school. Those priest knew how to cane very well and did lot sof it. It was described as "bad English" and got a nice red pen through it. Recently on TV there was a very interesting program that showed how these other variations of English were once in use in England as the norm were alive and well in some corner of America. So those defenders of 'Standard English' who used the cane so easily were showing their own lack of knowledge of the history of the English language. It is better today to regard all variations of the language as of equal value and of interest and not in the right or wrong usage category. A lot of people in the British Isle would not know about cultural and lingustic tradtions in other lands.

I am sorry you see my comments as a "cheap shot" when none was intended. I do beleive that my comments are quiet correct as the previous remarks went unchallenged at the time. The only comment was about such remarks not being allowed here.

ICXC
NIKA

Dear Pavel you said to Icognitus:

"I am sorry you see my comments as a "cheap shot" when none was intended."

I say:

I think Icognitus was joking...or at least I hope he was.

You said:

"North America like the areas around Sydney Australia is a wonderful repository of examples of older forms of English."

I say:

Actually I believe if it was not for radio and then TV, the people in one part of this nation, wouldn't be able to understand the people in another part of it.

Just think of the 'drawls' of the deep South, and the Brooklynese formed by the Dutch and Germans in that part of NYC.

You are right though when you say that people that immigrate retain the speech of another era. It becomes quite funny to the natives when they return to their original country...or when their children go back with their out dated and 'Americanized' speech.

Zenovia

Dear Pavel you said:

"I once worked with a Hungarian lady who had migraged from northern Serbia and found herself working next to a Turkish woman who became a good freind. The problem was she had been brought up to hate Turks and calling someone a Turk was fighting words. She had been taught to hate as her parents had been before her. They ahd never seen a Turk she said and she had never seen one either until the day she started work next to her friend."

I say:

I find this strange. Actually, the people on my mother's island were massacred at the beginning of the Greek revolution. That is about 1823, yet I never heard a disparaging word about the Turks. But what I did hear was that the islanders were considered 'stupid' because one of their 'sons', that had become one of the wealthiest men in the world, wanting to buy it from the Turks so that they could have their independance, and they refused him. Now that was around the beginning of the last century.

As for my father's side, they were too busy recounting how my ancestors fought the war for independance to mention any hatred. And then again, as for the Greeks that escaped from Asia Minor in 1923, they were too busy saying how they sufferred in Greece, and how they were discriminated against, to bother with saying anything about the Turks.

The same hold's true for the Germans. I never heard anything disparaging about the Germans, even though there was mass starvation and severe reparations. It was probably because the civil war at the end of the occupation was probably far more severe than what they suffered before.

So I guess it's all relative. Or it could be, as one Dane said when condemning the Swede's during WW II, it's more painful when it's one's own.

Zenovia

Point taken Ladies. I suppose this goes back to differences in our English language usage. About 5 years ago I visited the USA for my first real visit beyound an airport and loved it (am thinking I must repeat the excercise). I spent about 6 weeks all up mostly in southern California. 3 of them with the monks at HRM
I was on a bus tour and the party consisted of English, Irish and Australians and we had a great time despite the fact we ahd all ages with us. Our tour guide was most helpful as she knew the differences in our English usage from American. Some explanations were needed from time to time so we would avoid missunderstandings. Some American phrases or terms were confusing and some of ours which all 3 groups on the bus understood among ourselves were the reverse to Americans. One point we did pick up on was humour does not always translate and offence could be taken where none was intended.
I should not be so thin skinned and would have seen the humour if I had not ahd somthing on my mind. You see I thought I was being repremanded. Having slept on it I sort of wish I had not responded at all and just let it pass. Point taken because in reality this is an American forum and you understand the usage and know each other to some degree, with a very small handfull of others putting their 10 cents or in Angela's case her 10 pence into various topics.
It is Sunday and I am getting ready to go to Church and hope that I have not in turn offended deliberatly on otherwise anyone.
Amasing what what the first coffee of the morning can bring on. Next...toast...then more coffee...just looked out the window and the sun is shining and there are no clouds...a nice day...God is good

ICXC
NIKA