Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
That modern Macedonian language dates back at least to that time.
Which contradicts Bulgarian and Greek claims, that Macedonians speak Bulgarian.
FYROM dates back at least to years 1539 - 1603 AD
- Thread starter Domen
- Start date
That modern Macedonian language dates back at least to that time.
Which contradicts Bulgarian and Greek claims, that Macedonians speak Bulgarian.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
There's a Greek idea that it was a recent copying of Greek heritage. If the people there now who speak the same slavic language as they did back then and that language was referred to as Macedonian, that contradicts the idea that it's a recent use. Now maybe the question of whether it was recent (in historic terms) isn't important, but I did think it was noteworthy.
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
Such a recent copying of long gone Ancient heritage also took place in Greece itself:
Watch this documentary (English subtitles):
Link to video.
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http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=526641
Pangur Bán
Deconstructed
These posts do a good job of undermining the Greek government's anti-Macedonian propaganda. Slavonic has been the language of Macedonia almost as long as English has been the language of England, and no-one was too much bothered by naming Macedonia's Slavonic dialect 'Macedonian'!
Modern Greece is the creation of Western great powers who wanted to and had the power to recreate the classical world they had learned about in their childhood. Had that world been left alone by them, there would be no 'Greeks' but Roman ('Greek') ethnic minority living in Romania (Anatolia) with the Aegean peninsula an ethnically divided mixture of Slavic, Turk, Albanian, Vlach and Roman.
Modern Greece is the creation of Western great powers who wanted to and had the power to recreate the classical world they had learned about in their childhood. Had that world been left alone by them, there would be no 'Greeks' but Roman ('Greek') ethnic minority living in Romania (Anatolia) with the Aegean peninsula an ethnically divided mixture of Slavic, Turk, Albanian, Vlach and Roman.
I'd say that Greece is far more an effort by Greek elites to recreate the Classical world that they had learned about in their childhood - in the early days it was extremely Classicising without any input from foreigners. The first government tried to ban demotic Greek from parliament and hoped to introduce the Attic of Demosthenes as the national language, I mean.
Pangur Bán
Deconstructed
Those guys only existed because of Westerners--and it would not have mattered that Westerners had the ideology if they didn't have the power. You really have to remember that in the 18th c. 'Greeks' (i.e. Romans) were one of several Christian ethnic minorities living in the Muslim world and were as 'oriental' as Syrians, Copts, Georgians and Armenians. Greek was something some advanced scholars studied in Western universities and seminaries to understand classics and the bible, the descendant spoken language was something you heard in Muslim cities and in certain Ottoman provinces.
Perhaps Israel is a good example of the same process working the other way. Ideology in this case spurring people of Europe and North America to go 'east' and 'reproduce' history.
Perhaps Israel is a good example of the same process working the other way. Ideology in this case spurring people of Europe and North America to go 'east' and 'reproduce' history.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
While that's admittedly an extreme example, I think every nation-state has done this to some degree. Every nation-state created in the 19th and 20th centuries had as many differences as similarities. To overcome this, they reached to the past (often a fictitious past) and played up their past heritage. The playing up of the Irish language (and establishment of Gaeltachts) is one example. The use of the Hebrew language and making Jerusalem (as opposed to Tel Aviv) the capital of Israel is another. Conquering Rome from the Papacy and using the Florentine dialect (Dante, Petrarch, Machiavelli, Boccaccio, etc.) for a unified Italy is another example. Germany always seemed a little more Prussian than some of the others (possibly complicated by the need to exclude Austria from the "German" heritage), but I'm sure someone with more knowledge can point to something there. Greece is hardly unique there. In fact, of all the examples I've listed, I think Israel has quite a few similarities.
Pangur Bán
Deconstructed
You're quoting Flying Pig Louis, but seem to be addressing my comment. Is that right?
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
No, I was replying to him.
Yes, I think this is all very true. Renan said that to create a nation required a collective memory, but also a collective forgetfulness, and I think he had a point. History is never simple enough to be shoehorned into a nationalist framework without serious distortion, so mythological pseudo-history is very much the order of the day wherever you go. I'm not entirely sure why nationalists are so without exception backward-looking, but it seems inescapable.
