130-708: The Smolyani ( Bulgarian : смоляни ; in Byzantine sources Smolenoi or Smoleanoi ) were a medieval Slavic tribe that settled in the Rhodope Mountains , the valley of the Mesta River and the region around Blagoevgrad Province , possibly in the 7th–8th century. The tribe revolted against the Byzantine authorities of Constantinople in 837 and were supported by Bulgarian ruler Presian , who, together with his deputy Kavhan Isbul , crossed
260-717: A "House of Macedonian Culture" in Florina began. MAKIVE participated in the 1993 local elections and received 14 percent of the vote in the Florina Prefecture. According to a study by anthropologist Ricki van Boeschoten, 64% of the inhabitants of 43 villages in the Florina area were Macedonian-language speakers. According to a 1993 study, of the 90 villages in Florina Prefecture , 50% were populated only by Slavic speakers, while another 23% with mixed population of Slavic speakers and other groups. One study of
390-686: A Macedonian ethnic revival in much of Northern Greece, especially where Macedonian speakers have not been minoritised. In 1984 the "Movement for Human and National Rights for the Macedonians of Aegean Macedonia" was founded, and was followed by the creation of the "Central Committee for Macedonian Human Rights" in Salonika in 1989. In 1990 a manifesto by this group was presented to the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe on behalf of
520-532: A consonant and are feminine, as well as nouns that end in –а/–я (most of which are feminine, too) use –та. Nouns that end in –е/–о use –то. The plural definite article is –те for all nouns except for those whose plural form ends in –а/–я; these get –та instead. When postfixed to adjectives the definite articles are –ят/–я for masculine gender (again, with the longer form being reserved for grammatical subjects), –та for feminine gender, –то for neuter gender, and –те for plural. Both groups agree in gender and number with
650-640: A developed national consciousness. Within Greece, the ejection of the Bulgarian church, the closure of Bulgarian schools, and the banning of publication in Bulgarian language, together with the expulsion or flight to Bulgaria of a large proportion of the Macedonian Bulgarian intelligentsia, served as the prelude to campaigns of forcible cultural and linguistic assimilation. The remaining Macedonian Bulgarians were classified as " Slavophones ". After
780-528: A dialect continuum, and there is no well-defined boundary where one language ends and the other begins. Within the limits of the Republic of North Macedonia a strong separate Macedonian identity has emerged since the Second World War, even though there still are a small number of citizens who identify their language as Bulgarian. Beyond the borders of North Macedonia, the situation is more fluid, and
910-521: A few days. Despite the removal of official recognition to those identifying as ethnic Macedonians after the end of the Greek Civil War , a 1954 letter from the Prefect of Florina , K. Tousildis, reported that people were still affirming that the language they spoke was Macedonian in forms relating to personal documents, birth and marriage registries, etc. Since the late 1980s there has been
1040-675: A gradual and voluntary process. Economic and social gain was an incentive to become a Muslim. Muslims also enjoyed some legal privileges. Nevertheless, the rise of European nationalism in the 18th century led to the expansion of the Hellenic idea in Macedonia and under the influence of the Greek schools and the Patriarchate of Constantinople , and part from the urban Christian population of Slavic origin started to view itself more as Greek. In
1170-705: A handful of officers from the Bulgarian army , to the zones occupied by the Italian and German troops to be attached to the German occupying forces as "liaison officers". All the Bulgarian officers brought into service were locally born Macedonians who had immigrated to Bulgaria with their families during the 1920s and 1930s as part of the Greek-Bulgarian Treaty of Neuilly which saw 90,000 Bulgarians migrating to Bulgaria from Greece. These officers were given
1300-525: A means of gaining its support. The National Liberation Front (NOF) was organized by the political and military groups of the Slavic minority in Greece, active from 1945 to 1949. The interbellum was the time when part of them came to the conclusion that they are Macedonians. Greek hostility to the Slavic minority produced tensions that rose to separatism. After the recognition in 1934 from the Comintern of
1430-502: A middle ground between the macrodialects. It allows palatalizaton only before central and back vowels and only partial reduction of / a / and / ɔ / . Reduction of / ɛ / , consonant palatalisation before front vowels and depalatalization of palatalized consonants before central and back vowels is strongly discouraged and labelled as provincial. Bulgarian has six vowel phonemes, but at least eight distinct phones can be distinguished when reduced allophones are taken into consideration. There
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#17327728841591560-658: A militant movement dedicated to the autonomy of Macedonia and Thrace within the Ottoman Empire. Many Bulgarian exarchists participated in the Ilinden Uprising in 1903 with hope of liberation from the Porte. In 1883 the Kastoria region consisted of 60,000 people, all Christian, of which 4/9 were Slavophone Greeks and the rest 5/9 were Grecophone Greeks, Albanophone Greeks and Aromanians . From 1900 onwards,
1690-446: A much smaller group of irregular nouns with zero ending which define tangible objects or concepts ( кръв /krɤf/ 'blood', кост /kɔst/ 'bone', вечер /ˈvɛtʃɛr/ 'evening', нощ /nɔʃt/ 'night'). There are also some commonly used words that end in a vowel and yet are masculine: баща 'father', дядо 'grandfather', чичо / вуйчо 'uncle', and others. The plural forms of the nouns do not express their gender as clearly as
1820-490: A number of phraseological units and sayings. The major exception are vocative forms, which are still in use for masculine (with the endings -е, -о and -ю) and feminine nouns (-[ь/й]о and -е) in the singular. In modern Bulgarian, definiteness is expressed by a definite article which is postfixed to the noun, much like in the Scandinavian languages or Romanian (indefinite: човек , 'person'; definite: човек ът , "
1950-686: A policy of making Macedonia connecting link for the establishment of new Balkan Federative Republic and stimulating in Bulgarian Macedonia a development of distinct Slav Macedonian consciousness. However, differences soon emerged between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria concerning the national character of the Macedonian Slavs – whereas Bulgarians considered them to be an offshoot of the Bulgarians , Yugoslavia regarded them as an independent nation which had nothing to do whatsoever with
2080-599: A result, a bilateral Bulgarian-Greek agreement was signed in Geneva on September 29, 1925, known as Politis-Kalfov protocol after the demand of the League of Nations, recognizing Greek Slavophones as Bulgarians and guaranteeing their protection. Next month a Slavic language primer textbook in Latin known as Abecedar published by the Greek ministry for education, was introduced to Greek schools of Aegean Macedonia. On February 2, 1925,
2210-531: A special count form in –а/–я , which stems from the Proto-Slavonic dual : два/три стола ('two/three chairs') versus тези столове ('these chairs'); cf. feminine две/три/тези книги ('two/three/these books') and neuter две/три/тези легла ('two/three/these beds'). However, a recently developed language norm requires that count forms should only be used with masculine nouns that do not denote persons. Thus, двама/трима ученици ('two/three students')
2340-635: Is " Ye lena Yankovich" ( Йелена Янкович ). Until the period immediately following the Second World War , all Bulgarian and the majority of foreign linguists referred to the South Slavic dialect continuum spanning the area of modern Bulgaria, North Macedonia and parts of Northern Greece as a group of Bulgarian dialects. In contrast, Serbian sources tended to label them "south Serbian" dialects. Some local naming conventions included bolgárski , bugárski and so forth. The codifiers of
2470-524: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Bulgarian language Rup Moesian Bulgarian ( / b ʌ l ˈ ɡ ɛər i ə n / , / b ʊ l ˈ -/ bu(u)l- GAIR -ee-ən ; български език , bŭlgarski ezik , pronounced [ˈbɤɫɡɐrski] ) is an Eastern South Slavic language spoken in Southeast Europe , primarily in Bulgaria . It
2600-647: Is also a significant Bulgarian diaspora abroad. One of the main historically established communities are the Bessarabian Bulgarians , whose settlement in the Bessarabia region of nowadays Moldova and Ukraine dates mostly to the early 19th century. There were 134,000 Bulgarian speakers in Ukraine at the 2001 census, 41,800 in Moldova as of the 2014 census (of which 15,300 were habitual users of
2730-496: Is based on a general consensus reached by all major Bulgarian linguists in the 1930s and 1940s. In turn, the 39-consonant model was launched in the beginning of the 1950s under the influence of the ideas of Russian linguist Nikolai Trubetzkoy . Despite frequent objections, the support of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences has ensured Trubetzkoy's model virtual monopoly in state-issued phonologies and grammars since
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#17327728841592860-433: Is common in all modern Slavic languages (e.g. Czech medv ě d /ˈmɛdvjɛt/ "bear", Polish p ię ć /pʲɛ̃tɕ/ "five", Serbo-Croatian je len /jělen/ "deer", Ukrainian нема є /nemájɛ/ "there is not ...", Macedonian пишува ње /piʃuvaɲʲɛ/ "writing", etc.), as well as some Western Bulgarian dialectal forms – e.g. ора̀н’е /oˈraɲʲɛ/ (standard Bulgarian: оране /oˈranɛ/ , "ploughing"), however it
2990-599: Is confirmed by the KKE , which claims that the total number of political refugees from Greece (incl. Greeks) was 55,881. Since the end of the Greek Civil War many ethnic Macedonians have attempted to return to their homes in Greece. A 1982 amnesty law which stated "all Greek by descent who during the civil war of 1946–1949 and because of it have fled abroad as political refugees had the right to return", thus excluding all those who did not identify as ethnic Greeks. This
3120-405: Is currently no consensus on the number of Bulgarian consonants, with one school of thought advocating for the existence of only 22 consonant phonemes and another one claiming that there are not fewer than 39 consonant phonemes. The main bone of contention is how to treat palatalized consonants : as separate phonemes or as allophones of their respective plain counterparts. The 22-consonant model
3250-817: Is mainly split into two broad dialect areas, based on the different reflexes of the Proto-Slavic yat vowel (Ѣ). This split, which occurred at some point during the Middle Ages, led to the development of Bulgaria's: The literary language norm, which is generally based on the Eastern dialects, also has the Eastern alternating reflex of yat . However, it has not incorporated the general Eastern umlaut of all synchronic or even historic "ya" sounds into "e" before front vowels – e.g. поляна ( polyana ) vs. полени ( poleni ) "meadow – meadows" or even жаба ( zhaba ) vs. жеби ( zhebi ) "frog – frogs", even though it co-occurs with
3380-479: Is not represented in standard Bulgarian speech or writing. Even where /jɛ/ occurs in other Slavic words, in Standard Bulgarian it is usually transcribed and pronounced as pure /ɛ/ – e.g. Boris Yeltsin is "Eltsin" ( Борис Елцин ), Yekaterinburg is "Ekaterinburg" ( Екатеринбург ) and Sarajevo is "Saraevo" ( Сараево ), although – because of the stress and the beginning of the word – Jelena Janković
3510-478: Is one more to describe a general category of unwitnessed events – the inferential (преизказно /prɛˈiskɐzno/ ) mood. However, most contemporary Bulgarian linguists usually exclude the subjunctive mood and the inferential mood from the list of Bulgarian moods (thus placing the number of Bulgarian moods at a total of 3: indicative, imperative and conditional) and do not consider them to be moods but view them as verbial morphosyntactic constructs or separate gramemes of
3640-401: Is perceived as more correct than двама/трима ученика , while the distinction is retained in cases such as два/три молива ('two/three pencils') versus тези моливи ('these pencils'). Cases exist only in the personal and some other pronouns (as they do in many other modern Indo-European languages ), with nominative , accusative , dative and vocative forms. Vestiges are present in
3770-418: Is that mutable parts of speech vary grammatically, whereas the immutable ones do not change, regardless of their use. The five classes of mutables are: nouns , adjectives , numerals , pronouns and verbs . Syntactically, the first four of these form the group of the noun or the nominal group. The immutables are: adverbs , prepositions , conjunctions , particles and interjections . Verbs and adverbs form
3900-600: Is the Service of Saint Cyril from Skopje (Скопски миней), a 13th-century Middle Bulgarian manuscript from northern Macedonia according to which St. Cyril preached with "Bulgarian" books among the Moravian Slavs. The first mention of the language as the "Bulgarian language" instead of the "Slavonic language" comes in the work of the Greek clergy of the Archbishopric of Ohrid in the 11th century, for example in
4030-601: Is the language of the Bulgarians . Along with the closely related Macedonian language (collectively forming the East South Slavic languages ), it is a member of the Balkan sprachbund and South Slavic dialect continuum of the Indo-European language family . The two languages have several characteristics that set them apart from all other Slavic languages , including the elimination of case declension ,
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4160-399: Is used, and the choice between them is partly determined by their ending in singular and partly influenced by gender; in addition, irregular declension and alternative plural forms are common. Words ending in –а/–я (which are usually feminine) generally have the plural ending –и , upon dropping of the singular ending. Of nouns ending in a consonant, the feminine ones also use –и , whereas
4290-551: The Balkan language area (mostly grammatically) and later also by Turkish , which was the official language of the Ottoman Empire , in the form of the Ottoman Turkish language , mostly lexically. The damaskin texts mark the transition from Middle Bulgarian to New Bulgarian, which was standardized in the 19th century. As a national revival occurred toward the end of the period of Ottoman rule (mostly during
4420-632: The Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrid the Slavonic liturgy was preserved on the lower levels until its abolition in 1767. This led to the first literary work in vernacular modern Bulgarian, History of Slav-Bulgarians in 1762. Its author was a Macedonia-born monk Paisius of Hilendar , who wrote it in the Bulgarian Orthodox Zograf Monastery , on Mount Athos . Nevertheless, it took almost a century for
4550-714: The Bulgarian Empire introduced the Glagolitic alphabet which was devised by the Saints Cyril and Methodius in the 850s. The Glagolitic alphabet was gradually superseded in later centuries by the Cyrillic script , developed around the Preslav Literary School , Bulgaria in the late 9th century. Several Cyrillic alphabets with 28 to 44 letters were used in the beginning and the middle of
4680-764: The Bulgars , the Slavic tribes started in the 6th century a gradual invasion into the Byzantine lands. They invaded Macedonia and reached as far south as Thessaly and the Peloponnese , settling in isolated regions that were called by the Byzantines Sclavinias , until they were gradually pacified. At the beginning of the 9th century, the Slavic Bulgarian Empire conquered Northern Byzantine lands, including most of Macedonia. Those regions remained under Bulgarian rule for two centuries, until
4810-806: The Gianitsa region. Many Aromanians also joined the Macedonians in NOF, especially in the Kastoria region. The NOF merged with the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) which was the main armed unit supporting the Communist Party. Owing to the KKE's equal treatment of ethnic Macedonians and Greeks, many ethnic Macedonians enlisted as volunteers in the DSE (60% of the DSE was composed of Slavic Macedonians). It
4940-519: The Greek hagiography of Clement of Ohrid by Theophylact of Ohrid (late 11th century). During the Middle Bulgarian period, the language underwent dramatic changes, losing the Slavonic case system , but preserving the rich verb system (while the development was exactly the opposite in other Slavic languages) and developing a definite article. It was influenced by its non-Slavic neighbors in
5070-739: The Ilinden Uprising , the Balkan Wars and especially after the First World War more than 100,000 Bulgarians from Greek Macedonia moved to Bulgaria. There was agreement in 1919 between Bulgaria and Greece which provided opportunities to expatriate the Bulgarians from Greece. Until the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) and the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923 there were also some Pomak communities in
5200-515: The Metaxas regime took power in 1936. Metaxas was firmly opposed to the irredentist factions of the Slavophones of northern Greece mainly in Macedonia and Thrace, some of whom underwent political persecution due to advocacy of irredentism with regard to neighboring countries. Place names and surnames were officially Hellenized and the native Slavic dialects were banned even in personal use. It
5330-543: The Soviet Union , which saw a chance for using this well developed revolutionary movement to spread revolution in the Balkans. In the so-called May Manifesto of 6 May 1924, for first time the objectives of the unified Slav Macedonian liberation movement were presented: "independence and unification of partitioned Macedonia, fighting all the neighbouring Balkan monarchies, forming a Balkan Communist Federation ". In 1934
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5460-803: The accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union , following the Latin and Greek scripts . Bulgarian possesses a phonology similar to that of the rest of the South Slavic languages, notably lacking Serbo-Croatian's phonemic vowel length and tones and alveo-palatal affricates. There is a general dichotomy between Eastern and Western dialects, with Eastern ones featuring consonant palatalization before front vowels ( / ɛ / and / i / ) and substantial vowel reduction of
5590-445: The person") or to the first nominal constituent of definite noun phrases (indefinite: добър човек , 'a good person'; definite: добри ят човек , " the good person"). There are four singular definite articles. Again, the choice between them is largely determined by the noun's ending in the singular. Nouns that end in a consonant and are masculine use –ът/–ят, when they are grammatical subjects , and –а/–я elsewhere. Nouns that end in
5720-649: The " Big Excursion " of 1989. The language is also represented among the diaspora in Western Europe and North America, which has been steadily growing since the 1990s. Countries with significant numbers of speakers include Germany , Spain , Italy , the United Kingdom (38,500 speakers in England and Wales as of 2011), France , the United States , and Canada (19,100 in 2011). The language
5850-412: The 1920s in the region of Greek Macedonia 24 chetas and 10 local reconnaissance detachments were active. Many locals were repressed by the Greek authorities on suspicions of contacts with the revolutionary movement. In this period the combined Macedonian-Adrianopolitan revolutionary movement separated into Internal Thracian Revolutionary Organization and Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. ITRO
5980-422: The 1960s. However, its reception abroad has been lukewarm, with a number of authors either calling the model into question or outright rejecting it. Thus, the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association only lists 22 consonants in Bulgarian's consonant inventory . The parts of speech in Bulgarian are divided in ten types, which are categorized in two broad classes: mutable and immutable. The difference
6110-411: The 19th century during the efforts on the codification of Modern Bulgarian until an alphabet with 32 letters, proposed by Marin Drinov , gained prominence in the 1870s. The alphabet of Marin Drinov was used until the orthographic reform of 1945, when the letters yat (uppercase Ѣ, lowercase ѣ) and yus (uppercase Ѫ, lowercase ѫ) were removed from its alphabet, reducing the number of letters to 30. With
6240-461: The 19th century), a modern Bulgarian literary language gradually emerged that drew heavily on Church Slavonic/Old Bulgarian (and to some extent on literary Russian , which had preserved many lexical items from Church Slavonic) and later reduced the number of Turkish and other Balkan loans. Today one difference between Bulgarian dialects in the country and literary spoken Bulgarian is the significant presence of Old Bulgarian words and even word forms in
6370-484: The 19th century. The foundation of the Bulgarian Exarchate (1870) aimed specifically at differentiating the Bulgarian from the Greek population on an ethnic and linguistic basis, hence providing the conditions for the open assertion of a Bulgarian national identity. On the other hand, the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO) was founded in 1893 in Ottoman Thessaloniki by several Bulgarian Exarchate teachers and professionals who sought to create
6500-412: The Balkan Wars was that the Macedonian region was partitioned between Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia. IMARO maintained its existence in Bulgaria, where it played a role in politics by playing upon Bulgarian irredentism and urging a renewed war. During the First World War in Macedonia (1915–1918) the organization supported Bulgarian army and joined to Bulgarian war-time authorities. Bulgarian army, supported by
6630-439: The Bulgarian idea to regain ascendancy in the region. Paisius was the first ardent call for a national awakening and urged his compatriots to throw off the subjugation to the Greek language and culture. The example of Paisius was followed also by other Bulgarian nationalists in 18th century Macedonia. The Macedonian Bulgarians took active part in the long struggle for independent Bulgarian Patriarchate and Bulgarian schools during
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#17327728841596760-457: The Bulgarian population had increased by less than 50,000 and not larger was the decrease of the Greek population. During the beginning of the Second World War, Greek Slavic-speaking citizens fought within the Greek army until the country was overrun in 1941. The Greek communists had already been influenced by the Comintern and it was the only political party in Greece to recognize Macedonian national identity. As result many Slavic speakers joined
6890-513: The Bulgarian-controlled Ohrana and the EAM controlled SNOF followed when it was agreed that Greek Macedonia would be allowed to secede. Finally it is estimated that entire Ohrana units had joined the SNOF which began to press the ELAS leadership to allow it autonomous action in Greek Macedonia. There had been also a larger flow of refugees into Bulgaria as the Bulgarian Army pulled out of the Drama-Serres region in late 1944. A large proportion of Bulgarians and Slavic speakers emigrated there. In 1944
7020-400: The Bulgarians. Thus the initial tolerance for the Macedonization of Pirin Macedonia gradually grew into outright alarm. At first, the NOF organized meetings, street and factory protests and published illegal underground newspapers. Soon after its founding, members began forming armed partisan detachments. In 1945, 12 such groups were formed in Kastoria, 7 in Florina, and 11 in Edessa and
7150-479: The Comintern issued also a special resolution about the recognition of the Slav Macedonian ethnicity. This decision was supported by the Greek Communist Party . The 1928 census recorded 81,844 Slavo-Macedonian speakers or 1.3% of the population of Greece, distinct from 16,755 Bulgarian speakers. Contemporary unofficial Greek reports state that there were 200,000 "Bulgarian"-speaking inhabitants of Macedonia, of whom 90,000 lack Greek national identity. The bulk of
7280-423: The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and participated in partisan activities. The KKE expressed its intent to "fight for the national self-determination of the repressed Macedonians". In 1943, the Slavic-Macedonian National Liberation Front (SNOF) was set up by ethnic Macedonian members of the KKE. The main aim of the SNOF was to obtain the entire support of the local population and to mobilize it, through SNOF, for
7410-432: The German High Command approved the foundation of a Bulgarian military club in Thessaloníki. The Bulgarians organized supplying of food and provisions for the Slavic population in Central and Western Macedonia, aiming to gain the local population that was in the German and Italian occupied zones. The Bulgarian clubs soon started to gain support among parts of the population. Many Communist political prisoners were released with
7540-402: The Greek parliament, under pressure from Serbia , rejected ratification of the 1913 Greek-Serbian Coalition Treaty. Agreement lasted 9 months until June 10, 1925, when League of Nations annulled it. During the 1920s the Comintern developed a new policy for the Balkans, about collaboration between the communists and the Macedonian movement. The idea for a new unified organization was supported by
7670-457: The Greeks and Bulgarians started in the area of Kastoria, in the Giannitsa Lake and elsewhere; both parties committed cruel crimes. Both guerrilla groups had also to confront the Turkish army. These conflicts ended after the revolution of " Young Turks " in 1908, as they promised to respect all ethnicities and religions and generally to provide a constitution. During the Balkan Wars, many atrocities were committed by Turks, Bulgarians and Greeks in
7800-579: The Macedonian Serbian lords would accept supreme Ottoman rule. During the Middle Ages Slavs in South Macedonia were mostly defined as Bulgarians, and this continued also during 16th and 17th centuries by Ottoman historians and travellers like Hoca Sadeddin Efendi , Mustafa Selaniki , Hadji Khalfa and Evliya Çelebi . Nevertheless, most of the Slavic speakers had not formed a national identity in modern sense and were instead identified through their religious affiliations . Some Slavic speakers also converted to Islam . This conversion appears to have been
7930-440: The Macedonian dialects) was prohibited, and its surreptitious use, whenever detected, was ridiculed or punished. Bulgaria's entry into World War I on the side of the Central Powers signified a dramatic shift in the way European public opinion viewed the Bulgarian population of Macedonia. The ultimate victory of the Allies in 1918 led to the victory of the vision of the Slavic population of Macedonia as an amorphous mass, without
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#17327728841598060-449: The Macedonian ethnicity, the Greek communists also recognized Macedonian national identity. That separatism was reinforced by Communist Yugoslavia's support, since Yugoslavia's new authorities after 1944 encouraged the growth of Macedonian national consciousness. Following World War II, the population of Yugoslav Macedonia did begin to feel themselves to be Macedonian, assisted and pushed by a government policy. Communist Bulgaria also began
8190-511: The Macedonian language. In 2010 another group of ethnic Macedonians were elected to office, including the outspoken local chairman of Meliti , Pando Ašlakov. According to reports from North Macedonia, ethnic Macedonians have also been elected as chairmen in the villages of Vevi , Pappagiannis , Neochoraki and Achlada . Later that year the first Macedonian-Greek dictionary was launched by ethnic Macedonian activists in both Brussels and Athens. The Church of Saint Zlata of Meglen in Aridaia
8320-571: The Macedonian language. However, the lack of Macedonian-language literature has left many young ethnic Macedonian students dependent on textbooks from the Republic of Macedonia. In 2008 thirty ethnic Macedonians from the villages of Lofoi , Meliti , Kella and Vevi protested against the presence of the Greek military in the Florina region. Another ethnic Macedonian organisation, the Educational and Cultural Movement of Edessa ( Macedonian : Образовното и културно движење на Воден , romanized : Obrazovnoto i kulturnoto dviženje na Voden ),
8450-466: The Nazi occupation forces many members of the Ohrana joined the SNOF where they could still pursue their goal of secession. The advance of the Red Army into Bulgaria in September 1944, the withdrawal of the German armed forces from Greece in October, meant that the Bulgarian Army had to withdraw from Greek Macedonia and Thrace. There was a rapprochement between the Greek Communist Party and the Ohrana collaborationist units. Further collaboration between
8580-427: The Second All-Macedonian congress was held in Florina. Soon after the "Makedoniko" magazine also began to be published. In 2001 the first Macedonian Orthodox church in Greece was founded in the Aridaia region, which was followed in 2002 by the election of a Rainbow Candidate, Petros Dimtsis, to office in the Florina Prefecture. The year also saw the "Loza" ( Macedonian : Лоза , lit. Vine) magazine go into print. In
8710-465: The Slavo-Macedonian minority was concentrated in West Macedonia . The census reported that there were 38,562 of them in the nome (district) of Florina or 31% of the total population and 19,537 in the nome of Edessa ( Pella ) or 20% of the population. According to the prefect of Florina, in 1930 there were 76,370 (61%), of whom 61,950 (or 49% of the population) lacked Greek national identity. The situation for Slavic speakers became unbearable when
8840-452: The US, Canada and Australia. Other estimates claim that 5,000 were sent to Romania, 3,000 to Czechoslovakia, 2,500 to Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary and a further 700 to East Germany. There are also estimations that 52,000 – 72,000 people in total (incl. Greeks) were evacuated from Greece. However a 1951 document from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia states the total number of ethnic Macedonian and Greeks arriving from Greece between
8970-439: The aims of the National Liberation Front (EAM). Another major aim was to fight against the Bulgarian organisation Ohrana and Bulgarian authorities. During this time, the ethnic Macedonians in Greece were permitted to publish newspapers in Macedonian and run schools. In late 1944 after the German and Bulgarian withdrawal from Greece, the Josip Broz Tito 's Partisans movement hardly concealed its intention of expanding . It
9100-406: The archives in Langadas and the Lake Koroneia basin in Thessaloniki Prefecture found that most of the 22 villages in the area contained a population primarily made up of former Slavic speakers. In January 1994, Rainbow ( Macedonian : Виножито , romanized : Vinožito , Greek : Ουράνιο Τόξο , romanized : Ouránio Tóxo ) was founded as the political party to represent
9230-478: The area in 1943, after Italian withdrawal from Greece. All Slav-speakers there were regarded as Bulgarians and not so effective in German-occupied Western Macedonia. A ban was placed on the use of the Greek language, the names of towns and places changed to the forms traditional in Bulgarian. In addition, the Bulgarian government tried to alter the ethnic composition of the region, by expropriating land and houses from Greeks in favour of Bulgarian settlers. The same year,
9360-636: The battle, the KKE changed its policy towards them. At the fifth Plenum of KKE on January 31, 1949, a resolution was passed declaring that after KKE's victory, the Slavic Macedonians would find their national restoration as they wish. The DSE was slowly driven back and eventually defeated. Thousands of Slavic speakers were expelled and fled to the newly established Socialist Republic of Macedonia , while thousands more children took refuge in other Eastern Bloc countries. They are known as Децата бегалци/Decata begalci . Many of them made their way to
9490-472: The beginning of the occupation in Greece most of the Slavic speakers in the area felt themselves to be Bulgarians. Only a small part espoused a pro-Hellenic feelings. The Bulgarian occupying forces began a campaign of exterminating Greeks from Macedonia. The Bulgarians were supported in this ethnic cleansing by the Slavic minority in Macedonia. In the city of Drama in May 1941, over 15,000 Greeks were killed. By
9620-412: The completion of the action of the verb and form past perfective (aorist) forms; imperfective ones are neutral with regard to it and form past imperfective forms. Most Bulgarian verbs can be grouped in perfective-imperfective pairs (imperfective/perfective: идвам/дойда "come", пристигам/пристигна "arrive"). Perfective verbs can be usually formed from imperfective ones by suffixation or prefixation, but
9750-805: The conquest of Bulgaria by the Byzantine Emperor of the Macedonian dynasty Basil II in 1018. In the 13th and the 14th century, Macedonia was contested by the Byzantine Empire, the Latin Empire , Bulgaria and Serbia but the frequent shift of borders did not result in any major population changes. In 1338, the geographical area of Macedonia was conquered by the Serbian Empire , but after the Battle of Maritsa in 1371 most of
9880-571: The danger of Bulgarian control had upset the Greeks. The Bishop of Kastoria , Germanos Karavangelis , realised that it was time to act in a more efficient way and started organising Greek opposition. Germanos animated the Greek population against the IMORO and formed committees to promote the Greek interests. Taking advantage of the internal political and personal disputes in IMORO, Karavangelis succeeded to organize guerrilla groups. Fierce conflicts between
10010-511: The declarations of Bulgarian nationality were estimated by the Greek authorities, on the basis of monthly returns, to have reached 16,000 in the districts of German-occupied Greek Macedonia, but according to British sources, declarations of Bulgarian nationality throughout Western Macedonia reached 23,000. In the beginning of the Bulgarian occupation in 1941 there were 38,611 declarations of Bulgarian identity in Eastern Macedonia. Then
10140-401: The development of a suffixed definite article , and the lack of a verb infinitive . They retain and have further developed the Proto-Slavic verb system (albeit analytically). One such major development is the innovation of evidential verb forms to encode for the source of information: witnessed, inferred, or reported. It is the official language of Bulgaria , and since 2007 has been among
10270-564: The eastern dialects prevailed, and in 1899 the Bulgarian Ministry of Education officially codified a standard Bulgarian language based on the Drinov-Ivanchev orthography. Bulgarian is the official language of Bulgaria , where it is used in all spheres of public life. As of 2011, it is spoken as a first language by about 6 million people in the country, or about four out of every five Bulgarian citizens. There
10400-478: The end of 1941, over 100,000 Greeks were expelled from this region. Unlike Germany and Italy, Bulgaria officially annexed the occupied territories, which had long been a target of Bulgarian irridentism . A massive campaign of " Bulgarisation " was launched, which saw all Greek officials deported. This campaign was successful especially in Eastern and later in Central Macedonia, when Bulgarians entered
10530-411: The ethnic Macedonian minority. At the 1994 European Parliament election the party received 7,263 votes and polled 5.7% in the Florina district. The party opened its offices in Florina on September 6, 1995. The opening of the office faced strong hostility and that night the offices were ransacked. In 1997 the "Zora" ( Macedonian : Зора , lit. Dawn) newspaper first began to published and the following year,
10660-460: The ethnic Macedonians. Following this the "Macedonian Movement for Balkan Prosperity" (MAKIVE) was formed, and in 1993 this group held the first "All Macedonian Congress" in Greece. The bilingual Macedonian and Greek-language " Ta Moglena " newspaper was first put into print in 1989, and although restricted to the Moglena region had a readership of 3,000. In 1989 the first attempts at establishing
10790-620: The ethnic composition of the Serres region consisted of 67 963 Greeks, 11 000 Bulgarians and 1237 others; in Sidirokastro region- 22 295 Greeks, 10 820 Bulgarians and 685 others; Drama region- 11 068 Bulgarians, 117 395 Greeks and others; Nea Zichni region – 4710 Bulgarians, 28 724 Greeks and others; Kavala region – 59 433 Greeks, 1000 Bulgarians and 3986 others; Thasos - 21 270 and 3 Bulgarians; Eleftheroupoli region- 36 822 Greeks, 10 Bulgarians and 301 others. At another census in 1943
10920-680: The first time. In early 2010 the Zadruga ( Macedonian : Задруга , Greek : Koinotita ) newspaper was first published, This was shortly followed by the publication of the "Nova Zora" newspaper in May 2010. The estimated readership of Nova Zora is 20,000, whilst that of Zadrgua is considerably smaller. The "Krste Petkov Misirkov Foundation" was established in 2009, which aims to establish a museum dedicated to ethnic Macedonians of Greece, whilst also cooperating with other Macedonian minorities in neighbouring countries. The foundations aims at cataloguing ethnic Macedonian culture in Greece along with promoting
11050-487: The following years several Macedonian-language radio stations were established, however many including "Makedonski Glas" ( Macedonian : Македонски Глас , lit. Macedonian Voice), were shut down by Greek authorities. During this period ethnic Macedonians such as Kostas Novakis began to record and distribute music in the native Macedonian dialects . Ethnic Macedonian activists reprinted the language primer Abecedar ( Macedonian : Абецедар ), in attempt to encourage further use of
11180-544: The group of the verb or the verbal group. Nouns and adjectives have the categories grammatical gender , number , case (only vocative ) and definiteness in Bulgarian. Adjectives and adjectival pronouns agree with nouns in number and gender. Pronouns have gender and number and retain (as in nearly all Indo-European languages ) a more significant part of the case system. There are three grammatical genders in Bulgarian: masculine , feminine and neuter . The gender of
11310-489: The historical yat vowel or at least root vowels displaying the ya – e alternation. The letter was used in each occurrence of such a root, regardless of the actual pronunciation of the vowel: thus, both ml ya ko and ml e kar were spelled with (Ѣ). Among other things, this was seen as a way to "reconcile" the Western and the Eastern dialects and maintain language unity at a time when much of Bulgaria's Western dialect area
11440-588: The intercession of Bulgarian Club in Thessaloniki, which had made representations to the German occupation authorities. They all declared Bulgarian ethnicity. In 1942, the Bulgarian club asked assistance from the High command in organizing armed units among the Slavic-speaking population in northern Greece. For this purpose, the Bulgarian army, under the approval of the German forces in the Balkans sent
11570-627: The lands of the Smolyani and conquered the territory as far south as Philippi , including most of Macedonia . Their name etymologically derives from Proto-Slavic word "smola" (' resin '), with same derivation being ethnonym of the West Slavic tribe of Smeldingi and the East Slavic toponym of the city of Smolensk . The city of Smolyan in southern Bulgaria is named after this tribe. This article about an ethnic group in Europe
11700-725: The language), and presumably a significant proportion of the 13,200 ethnic Bulgarians residing in neighbouring Transnistria in 2016. Another community abroad are the Banat Bulgarians , who migrated in the 17th century to the Banat region now split between Romania, Serbia and Hungary. They speak the Banat Bulgarian dialect , which has had its own written standard and a historically important literary tradition. There are Bulgarian speakers in neighbouring countries as well. The regional dialects of Bulgarian and Macedonian form
11830-576: The language, but its pronunciation is in many respects a compromise between East and West Bulgarian (see especially the phonetic sections below). Following the efforts of some figures of the National awakening of Bulgaria (most notably Neofit Rilski and Ivan Bogorov ), there had been many attempts to codify a standard Bulgarian language; however, there was much argument surrounding the choice of norms. Between 1835 and 1878 more than 25 proposals were put forward and "linguistic chaos" ensued. Eventually
11960-409: The latter. Russian loans are distinguished from Old Bulgarian ones on the basis of the presence of specifically Russian phonetic changes, as in оборот (turnover, rev), непонятен (incomprehensible), ядро (nucleus) and others. Many other loans from French, English and the classical languages have subsequently entered the language as well. Modern Bulgarian was based essentially on the Eastern dialects of
12090-540: The left-wing did form the new organisation called IMRO (United) in 1925 in Vienna . However, it did not have real popular support and remained based abroad with, closely linked to the Comintern and the Balkan Communist Federation . IMRO's and ITRO's constant fratricidal killings and assassinations abroad provoked some within Bulgarian military after the coup of 19 May 1934 to take control and break
12220-481: The literary norm regarding the yat vowel, many people living in Western Bulgaria, including the capital Sofia , will fail to observe its rules. While the norm requires the realizations vidyal vs. videli (he has seen; they have seen), some natives of Western Bulgaria will preserve their local dialect pronunciation with "e" for all instances of "yat" (e.g. videl , videli ). Others, attempting to adhere to
12350-475: The low vowels / ɛ / , / ɔ / and / a / in unstressed position, sometimes leading to neutralisation between / ɛ / and / i / , / ɔ / and / u / , and / a / and / ɤ / . Both patterns have partial parallels in Russian, leading to partially similar sounds. In turn, the Western dialects generally do not have any allophonic palatalization and exhibit minor, if any, vowel reduction. Standard Bulgarian keeps
12480-399: The masculine ones usually have –и for polysyllables and –ове for monosyllables (however, exceptions are especially common in this group). Nouns ending in –о/–е (most of which are neuter) mostly use the suffixes –а, –я (both of which require the dropping of the singular endings) and –та . With cardinal numbers and related words such as няколко ('several'), masculine nouns use
12610-477: The most significant exception from the above are the relatively numerous nouns that end in a consonant and yet are feminine: these comprise, firstly, a large group of nouns with zero ending expressing quality, degree or an abstraction, including all nouns ending on –ост/–ест -{ost/est} ( мъдрост /ˈmɤdrost/ 'wisdom', низост /ˈnizost/ 'vileness', прелест /ˈprɛlɛst/ 'loveliness', болест /ˈbɔlɛst/ 'sickness', любов /ljuˈbɔf/ 'love'), and secondly,
12740-572: The newspaper Makedoniya : "Such an artificial assembly of written language is something impossible, unattainable and never heard of." After 1944 the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia began a policy of making Macedonia into the connecting link for the establishment of a new Balkan Federative Republic and stimulating here a development of distinct Macedonian consciousness. With
12870-447: The norm, will actually use the "ya" sound even in cases where the standard language has "e" (e.g. vidyal , vidyali ). The latter hypercorrection is called свръхякане ( svrah-yakane ≈"over- ya -ing"). Bulgarian is the only Slavic language whose literary standard does not naturally contain the iotated e /jɛ/ (or its variant, e after a palatalized consonant /ʲɛ/ , except in non-Slavic foreign-loaned words). This sound combination
13000-659: The noun can largely be inferred from its ending: nouns ending in a consonant ("zero ending") are generally masculine (for example, град /ɡrat/ 'city', син /sin/ 'son', мъж /mɤʃ/ 'man'; those ending in –а/–я (-a/-ya) ( жена /ʒɛˈna/ 'woman', дъщеря /dɐʃtɛrˈja/ 'daughter', улица /ˈulitsɐ/ 'street') are normally feminine; and nouns ending in –е, –о are almost always neuter ( дете /dɛˈtɛ/ 'child', езеро /ˈɛzɛro/ 'lake'), as are those rare words (usually loanwords) that end in –и, –у, and –ю ( цунами /tsuˈnami/ ' tsunami ', табу /tɐˈbu/ 'taboo', меню /mɛˈnju/ 'menu'). Perhaps
13130-994: The noun they are appended to. They may also take the definite article as explained above. Pronouns may vary in gender, number, and definiteness, and are the only parts of speech that have retained case inflections. Three cases are exhibited by some groups of pronouns – nominative, accusative and dative. The distinguishable types of pronouns include the following: personal, relative, reflexive, interrogative, negative, indefinitive, summative and possessive. A Bulgarian verb has many distinct forms, as it varies in person, number, voice, aspect, mood, tense and in some cases gender. Finite verbal forms are simple or compound and agree with subjects in person (first, second and third) and number (singular, plural). In addition to that, past compound forms using participles vary in gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and voice (active and passive) as well as aspect (perfective/aorist and imperfective). Bulgarian verbs express lexical aspect : perfective verbs signify
13260-518: The objective to form armed Bulgarian militias. Bulgaria was interested in acquiring the zones under Italian and German occupation and hopped to sway the allegiance of the 80,000 Slavs who lived there at the time. The appearance of Greek partisans in those areas persuaded the Italians to allow the formation of these collaborationist detachments. Following the defeat of the Axis powers and the evacuation of
13390-473: The official languages of the European Union . It is also spoken by the Bulgarian historical communities in North Macedonia , Ukraine , Moldova , Serbia , Romania , Hungary , Albania and Greece . One can divide the development of the Bulgarian language into several periods. Bulgarian was the first Slavic language attested in writing. As Slavic linguistic unity lasted into late antiquity,
13520-417: The oldest manuscripts initially referred to this language as ѧзꙑкъ словѣньскъ, "the Slavic language". In the Middle Bulgarian period this name was gradually replaced by the name ѧзꙑкъ блъгарьскъ, the "Bulgarian language". In some cases, this name was used not only with regard to the contemporary Middle Bulgarian language of the copyist but also to the period of Old Bulgarian. A most notable example of anachronism
13650-479: The organization's forces, was successful in the first stages of this conflict, came into positions on the line of the pre-war Greek-Serbian border. The Bulgarian advance into Greek held Eastern Macedonia, precipitated internal Greek crisis. The government ordered its troops in the area not to resist, and most of the Corps was forced to surrender. However the post-war Treaty of Neuilly again denied Bulgaria what it felt
13780-429: The past pluperfect subjunctive. Perfect constructions use a single auxiliary "be". The traditional interpretation is that in addition to the four moods (наклонения /nəkloˈnɛnijɐ/ ) shared by most other European languages – indicative (изявително, /izʲəˈvitɛɫno/ ) imperative (повелително /poveˈlitelno/ ), subjunctive ( подчинително /pottʃiˈnitɛɫno/ ) and conditional (условно, /oˈsɫɔvno/ ) – in Bulgarian there
13910-551: The pockets of speakers of the related regional dialects in Albania and in Greece variously identify their language as Macedonian or as Bulgarian. In Serbia , there were 13,300 speakers as of 2011, mainly concentrated in the so-called Western Outlands along the border with Bulgaria. Bulgarian is also spoken in Turkey: natively by Pomaks , and as a second language by many Bulgarian Turks who emigrated from Bulgaria, mostly during
14040-455: The power of the organizations, which had come to be seen as a gangster organizations inside Bulgaria and a band of assassins outside it. The Tarlis and Petrich incidents triggered heavy protests in Bulgaria and international outcry against Greece. The Common Greco-Bulgarian committee for emigration investigated the incident and presented its conclusions to League of Nations in Geneva. As
14170-704: The proclamation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia as part of the Yugoslav federation, the new authorities also started measures that would overcome the pro-Bulgarian feeling among parts of its population and in 1945 a separate Macedonian language was codified. After 1958, when the pressure from Moscow decreased, Sofia reverted to the view that the Macedonian language did not exist as a separate language. Nowadays, Bulgarian and Greek linguists, as well as some linguists from other countries, still consider
14300-737: The region. During the Balkan Wars IMRO members joined the Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Volunteer Corps and fought with the Bulgarian Army. Others with their bands assisted the Bulgarian army with its advance and still others penetrated as far as the region of Kastoria, southwestern Macedonia. In the Second Balkan War IMRO bands fought the Greeks behind the front lines but were subsequently routed and driven out. The result of
14430-466: The resultant verb often deviates in meaning from the original. In the pair examples above, aspect is stem-specific and therefore there is no difference in meaning. In Bulgarian, there is also grammatical aspect . Three grammatical aspects are distinguishable: neutral, perfect and pluperfect. The neutral aspect comprises the three simple tenses and the future tense. The pluperfect is manifest in tenses that use double or triple auxiliary "be" participles like
14560-525: The singular ones, but may also provide some clues to it: the ending –и (-i) is more likely to be used with a masculine or feminine noun ( факти /ˈfakti/ 'facts', болести /ˈbɔlɛsti/ 'sicknesses'), while one in –а/–я belongs more often to a neuter noun ( езера /ɛzɛˈra/ 'lakes'). Also, the plural ending –ове /ovɛ/ occurs only in masculine nouns. Two numbers are distinguished in Bulgarian– singular and plural . A variety of plural suffixes
14690-481: The standard Bulgarian language, however, did not wish to make any allowances for a pluricentric "Bulgaro-Macedonian" compromise. In 1870 Marin Drinov , who played a decisive role in the standardization of the Bulgarian language, rejected the proposal of Parteniy Zografski and Kuzman Shapkarev for a mixed eastern and western Bulgarian/Macedonian foundation of the standard Bulgarian language, stating in his article in
14820-532: The territory of the state of North Macedonia . Their dialects are called today "Slavic" in Greece, while generally they are considered Macedonian . Some members have formed their own emigrant communities in neighbouring countries, as well as further abroad. The Slavs took advantage of the desolation left by the nomadic tribes and in the 6th century settled the Balkan Peninsula. Aided by the Avars and
14950-484: The various Macedonian dialects as part of the broader Bulgarian pluricentric dialectal continuum . Outside Bulgaria and Greece, Macedonian is generally considered an autonomous language within the South Slavic dialect continuum. Sociolinguists agree that the question whether Macedonian is a dialect of Bulgarian or a language is a political one and cannot be resolved on a purely linguistic basis, because dialect continua do not allow for either/or judgements. In 886 AD,
15080-535: The verb class. The possible existence of a few other moods has been discussed in the literature. Most Bulgarian school grammars teach the traditional view of 4 Bulgarian moods (as described above, but excluding the subjunctive and including the inferential). There are three grammatically distinctive positions in time – present, past and future – which combine with aspect and mood to produce a number of formations. Normally, in grammar books these formations are viewed as separate tenses – i. e. "past imperfect" would mean that
15210-498: The verb is in past tense, in the imperfective aspect, and in the indicative mood (since no other mood is shown). There are more than 40 different tenses across Bulgarian's two aspects and five moods. Bulgarians in Greece Slavic speakers are a 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
15340-552: The war over Macedonia. After the Balkan Wars ended in 1913, Greece took control of southern Macedonia and began an official policy of forced assimilation which included the settlement of Greeks from other provinces into southern Macedonia, as well as the linguistic and cultural Hellenization of Slav speakers, which continued even after World War I . The Greeks expelled Exarchist churchmen and teachers and closed Bulgarian schools and churches. The Bulgarian language (including
15470-461: The yat alternation in almost all Eastern dialects that have it (except a few dialects along the yat border, e.g. in the Pleven region). More examples of the yat umlaut in the literary language are: Until 1945, Bulgarian orthography did not reveal this alternation and used the original Old Slavic Cyrillic letter yat (Ѣ), which was commonly called двойно е ( dvoyno e ) at the time, to express
15600-805: The years 1941–1951 is 28,595. From 1941 until 1944 500 found refuge in the People's Republic of Macedonia , in 1944 4,000 people, in 1945 5,000, in 1946 8,000, in 1947 6,000, in 1948 3,000, in 1949 2,000, in 1950 80, and in 1951 15 people. About 4,000 left Yugoslavia and moved to other Socialist countries (and very few went also to western countries). So in 1951 in Yugoslavia were 24,595 refugees from Greek Macedonia. 19,000 lived in Yugoslav Macedonia, 4,000 in Serbia (mainly in Gakovo-Krusevlje) and 1595 in other Yugoslav republics. This data
15730-405: Was a revolutionary organization active in the Greek regions of Thrace and Eastern Macedonia to the river Strymon . The reason for the establishment of ITRO was the transfer of the region from Bulgaria to Greece in May 1920. At the end of 1922, the Greek government started to expel large numbers of Thracian Bulgarians into Bulgaria and the activity of ITRO grew into an open rebellion. Meanwhile,
15860-560: Was brought to a forefront shortly after the independence of the Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia) in 1991. Many ethnic Macedonians have been refused entry to Greece because their documentation listed the Slavic names of the places of birth as opposed to the official Greek names, despite the child refugees, now elderly, only knowing their village by the local Macedonian name. These measures were even extended to Australian and Canadian citizens. Despite this, there have been sporadic periods of free entry, most of which have only ever lasted
15990-430: Was controlled by Serbia and Greece , but there were still hopes and occasional attempts to recover it. With the 1945 orthographic reform, this letter was abolished and the present spelling was introduced, reflecting the alternation in pronunciation. This had implications for some grammatical constructions: Sometimes, with the changes, words began to be spelled as other words with different meanings, e.g.: In spite of
16120-399: Was determined by the geopolitical position of each village. Depending upon whether their village was vulnerable to attack by the Greek communist guerrillas or the occupation forces, the peasants would opt to support the side in relation to which they were most vulnerable. In both cases, the attempt was to promise "freedom" (autonomy or independence) to the formerly persecuted Slavic minority as
16250-654: Was during this time that books written in the Macedonian dialect (the official language was in process of codifying) were published and Macedonians cultural organizations theatres were opened. According to information announced by Paskal Mitrovski on the I plenum of NOF in August 1948, about 85% of the Slavic-speaking population in Greek Macedonia had an ethnic Macedonian self-identity. It has been estimated that out of DSE's 20,000 fighters, 14,000 were Slavic Macedonians from Greek Macedonia. Given their important role in
16380-423: Was during this time that many Slavic speakers fled their homes and emigrated to the United States , Canada and Australia . The name changes took place according to the Greek language. Ohrana were armed detachments organized by the Bulgarian army, composed of pro-Bulgarian oriented part of the Slavic population in occupied Greek Macedonia during World War II , led by Bulgarian officers. In 1941 Greek Macedonia
16510-620: Was formed in 2009. Based in Edessa , the group focuses on promoting ethnic Macedonian culture, through the publication of books and CD's, whilst also running Macedonian-language courses and teaching the Macedonian Cyrillic alphabet. Since then Macedonian-language courses have been extended to include Florina and Salonika . Later that year Rainbow officially opened its second office in the town of Edessa . In early 2010 several Macedonian-language newspapers were put into print for
16640-488: Was from this period that Slav-speakers in Greece who had previously referred to themselves as "Bulgarians" increasingly began to identify as "Macedonians". By 1945 World War II had ended and Greece was in open civil war. It has been estimated that after the end of the Second World War over 20,000 people fled from Greece to Bulgaria. To an extent the collaboration of the peasants with the Germans, Italians, Bulgarians or ELAS
16770-562: Was its share of Macedonia. From 1913 to 1926 there were large-scale changes in the population structure due to ethnic migrations. During and after the Balkan Wars about 15,000 Slavs left the new Greek territories for Bulgaria but more significant was the Greek–Bulgarian convention 1919 in which some 72,000 Slavs-speakers left Greece for Bulgaria, mostly from Eastern Macedonia, which from then remained almost Slav free. IMRO began sending armed bands into Greek Macedonia to assassinate officials. In
16900-561: Was occupied by German, Italian and Bulgarian troops. The Bulgarian troops occupied the Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace. The Bulgarian policy was to win the loyalty of the Slav inhabitants and to instill them a Bulgarian national identity. Indeed, many of these people did greet the Bulgarians as liberators, particularly in eastern and central Macedonia, however, this campaign was less successful in German-occupied western Macedonia. At
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