Talk:Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia

Macedonian template

Give me one reason why should not be included that template?--MacedonianBoy (talk) 14:22, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Because it is not related to the article. Since I have now provided you with a reason, I'll do ahead and remove it in due time. It's a shame, though, you do not use talkpages when there's a valid discussion on them. I'm talking about another revert you made earlier. Ignoring is not a good practise in some cases, you know. --Laveol ^T 14:25, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Have you seen the template? Have you been to Lerin and Voden? Have you read the article? Please do not delete the template since the Bulgarian should be deleted too. Do I see double standards?--MacedonianBoy (talk) 14:27, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Pfff, I thought that one was removed as well. Well, I'd prefer them both gone, but that'd be hard now, wouldn't it?--Laveol ^T 14:41, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh, you really did not see the BG template?--MacedonianBoy (talk) 14:51, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, I had got the impression both templates were removed some time ago. What I saw was the diff in which you added the mk template. Since I'm not willing to engage in stupid edit-wars with you, I'm not removing any of them again. When you're through with your revert spree I might try and discuss it with someone willing to do so. --Laveol ^T 14:53, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Since the article includes Greek template, it should includes templates of other Slavic people that live in Greece, in other words BG for the Pomaks and Macedonian for the Macedonians.--MacedonianBoy (talk) 15:04, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

As Laveol suggests, we could just remove both templates. After all, the article is clear that their identity is controversial (even among themselves) so slapping "BG for the Pomaks and Macedonian for the Macedonians" in the relevant sections transparently serves to negate the sourced information on their identity and is POV-pushing.--Ptolion (talk) 15:08, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Do you work together, since if it is the case it is against the rules of Wikipedia. I am just curious.--MacedonianBoy (talk) 15:10, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Question about Arvanitika

The chart in the article shows that Arvanitika (old Albanian) is still spoken around Attiki (the area around Athens, to make things simple). But I've never met anyone who speaks Arvanitika anywhere near Athens and the surrounding towns/cities. I mean all the folks I've met around here in my whole life speak Greek. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.202.135.142 (talk • contribs)

That's off-topic for this page, so you might want to take this to a more appropriate article. But the short answer is: Arvanitika is only spoken by the older generation in most places; all speakers are bilingual in Greek, and they speak Arvanitika only at home, if at all. There is no doubt the language is on its way out. Literature on the topic, including surveys of how and where it is still spoken, are cited at the Arvanites and Arvanitika articles. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:56, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the above and I have met older people who speak Arvanitika in Aspropigos and somewhere in north Athens, but is it not 'old Albanian' as we would say old English or German, we do not call Swiss German 'old German', it is a spoken though disappearing Albanian dialect. Politis (talk) 21:25, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the map shows Arvanitika in its maximum extent in 18th century and early 19th. At that time the population of Attica was roughly around 15 - 30 thousands. The Arvanitika speakers were no more than 50% (roughly 7 - 15 thousands). After the war of independence Attica was more or less destroyed and the population was diminished. It would be quite impossible to actually find many descendent of Arvanites today even in known old Arvanitika vilages.

Seleukosa (talk) 11:12, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

edit warring

Rather than blocking the disputants, I've reverted to the July version before this started and protected the article. If you are unable to work together as colleagues, then go to dispute resolution and have somebody babysit. Meanwhile, if there are non-contentious edits that need to be made, tell me here and I can add them in. — kwami (talk) 10:01, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Okay, per request, I've unblocked and restored the latest version, with one exception per the ARBCOM ruling on the word "Macedonian". I'll copy my comments from my talk page:

It's not just Macedonian–Bulgarian, but it can be offensive to use the word "Macedonian" to mean Slavic in an article on Greece, where "Macedonian" just means "of Macedonia", and "Macedonian dialects" can just as easily mean Greek dialects. Given the arbitration ruling on not using the term "Macedonian" for Slavic in such situations, I don't see how the wording can be defended, and edit warring to include it is AFAIK still a blockable offense.

I just scanned the article and purged it of "Macedonian" when that word was not used to mean "of Macedonia". I'm not claiming the words I chose to replace it are the best, and in some cases they were arbitrary (sometimes "Slavophone", sometimes "Slavic-speaking"; sometimes "Slavs", sometimes "Macedonian Slavs", etc.), though I hope the result is coherent. There are probably other instances I missed that need to be changed. There was a long ARBCOM battle between Greeks who insisted that we shouldn't use the word "Macedonian" even in the case of the RoM (that they speak "Skopje language" or some such nonsense), and Slavs insisting that we should use the word to mean "Slav" even within Greece. The result was that it's fine to use it to mean "Slav(ic)" in the case of the RoM, following common English usage, but not within Greece, nor when speaking of Macedonia as a whole (Greek Macedonia + the RoM), for then the term is truly ambiguous. Given the protracted and acrimonious nature of battle, I don't think there will be much tolerance for people using "Macedonian names" to mean Slavic names of villages within Greece, and this was one of the things I changed.

When "Macedonian" is part of the name of an organization or publication, it should of course be left in regardless of what it means. I hope that's clear, and if I've misinterpreted the Arbcom ruling, please let me know.

I should add that as an English speaker with no Greek or Slavic connections, this is purely a clarity-of-language issue. When speaking of the RoM, we call it "Macedonia", and the word "Macedonian" obviously means "of the RoM". However, when speaking of Greek Macedonia, or historical Macedonia, the word "Macedonian" is *not* understood to mean Slavic; it's generally understood to be Greek. Thus much of the latest version of this article called Slavs "Greeks" and Greeks "Slavs", an entirely untenable situation even if it weren't for all the political nonsense that surrounds this issue. — kwami (talk) 14:08, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree there were a few instances where "Macedonia" was used, whilst "Republic of Macedonia" should have been used. I have nothing against these changes.

There were a few instances where you have changed "Macedonian language" to "Slavic language", and "Macedonian speakers" to "Slavophones". I do not believe that there can be any confusion with Greek dialects in this instance, given that there is only form of "Macedonian language", and this is applied consistently across Wikipedia.

"Macedonian dialects" is unlikely to be confused with "Greek dialects" for the reason above (namely, "macedonian dialects" refers to 'Dialects of the Macedonian language' and "Greek dialects" refers to 'Dialects of the Greek language').

In this instances where simply Macedonians was used, I have no issues linking to "ethnic Macedonians" instead. Lunch for Two (talk) 14:36, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Please, do not revert even administrator. You do not have reached consensus. Jingby (talk) 15:14, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

My edit was explained here [2]. Please explain your revert. Lunch for Two (talk) 15:17, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

That has nothing to do with 1920-s or 1930-s. The Slavic dialects of Greece were regarded as Bulgarian language then and the population had predominatly Bulgarian sentiments. Nor Macedonians or Macedonian language were recognised as distinct entities or existed as such, excluding some Communist circles. Jingby (talk) 15:25, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

The majority of the changes I made related to the issues post-1920, so I am at odds at how you have used this to justify your revert. I have just had a look at the edit I made, and all of the changes related to post-1920 circumstances. Am I to assume, given your response, it will be acceptable to revert back to the previous edition? Lunch for Two (talk) 15:28, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and they should be real after 1943. As you perfectly know prior to their codification in 1945, Macedonian dialects were for the most part classified as Bulgarian and some linguists consider them still as such, but this view is politically controversial.

The Macedonian language is almost unilaterally recognised as a seperate language, and the only group of linguists which consider it to be Bulgarian are the Bulgarians themselves. This is considered to be a WP:FringeView. The Macedonian language did not simply appear overnight in 1944, but attempts at codification were begun in the late 1800s. Before this time the language existed yet in an non-codified form. I have appealed to you numerous times, please recognise the distinctiveness of the Macedonian ethnicity and langauge, which was not simply "created" in the 1940s as you allege. Unless this can occur you will continue to edit war based on your own personal beliefs, which at this stage do not appear to be WP:NPOV. Lunch for Two (talk) 15:47, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Here is not a science-fiction forum. Jingby (talk) 15:49, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Lunch, AFAIK the language *did* simply "appear" ca. 1950: language is not just reality, but the perception of that reality. Why Scandinavian is several language but German just one is perception, not the languages themselves. AFAIK there was no common perception of Macedonian as a separate language before ca. 1950. If 50 years from now everyone in the US says they don't speak English but "American", people will say that English and American are two different languages. But that doesn't mean that today they are two different languages, even though the language is about the same as it'll be 50 years from now. I may be wrong re. Macedonian, but this has been discussed elsewhere numerous times. — kwami (talk) 20:41, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Also, if the dialects are transitional between Mac. & Bulg, why are we IDing them all as Mac? Do they all self-ID as Mac rather than Bulg? And if they do, isn't it just as unambiguous to say 'Slav'? The title is "Slavic speakers", after all, and is presumably that way for a reason. (I'm moving to correct the punctuation.) — kwami (talk) 20:47, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Dialectal divisions of Macedonia.

A good example explaining the relationship between Macedonian and Bulgarian, is the relationship between Portuguese and Spanish or Dutch and German. They are related, but they are innately different and this is reflected in the fact that the seperateness of the languages is almost universally recognised as real (except for in Bulgaria since 1958, before that the Macedonian language was recognised). People have been writing in the Macedonian dialects for several hundred years now, an efforts to codify the language have been since at least the 1890s.

There is only one transitional dialects of all the dialects spoken, and that is at the very end of Greek Macedonia. The rest are also universally seen as uniquely Macedonian dialects. Take the Prilep-Bitola dialect, which is widely spoken in Florina, Greece, yet also forms the basis for the Standard form of Macedonian.

From what I am aware there are no people that identify as Bulg., however there is a large population that identifies as Macedonian, and this is discussed throughout much of the article (Recent History, Media, Education and Language, etc.) Lunch for Two (talk) 03:09, 14 August 2011 (UTC).

...People have been writing in the Macedonian dialects for several hundred years now,... Yeah, and the Macedonian identity has been existing since then! Please, Wikipedia is not a forum or a place for jokes. Jingby (talk)

Merge with Slavic Dialects of Greece

Any opinions regarding this merge? Most of the content already overlaps, so hopefully it wont be too controversial a process. Lunch for Two (talk) 14:42, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Fix redirect

Please fix the double redirect on Ethnic Macedonians of Greece present to the following:

#REDIRECT [[Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia]]

Thanks. Cheers, —mc10 (t/c) 03:20, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Done. Ucucha (talk) 23:02, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Merging

Lunch for Two, merging does not mean pushing cheap nationalistic propaganda over the article and changing it drastically. Do not rewrite it. You are not authorised from the communiry. Only merge, or you will be reverted. Jingby (talk) 04:25, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Huh? He doesn't need "authorization" to edit an article. If you find something objectionable, the usual rules about dispute resolution and edit-warring apply. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:45, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Authorization for drastical rewriting = consesus after discussion on the talk page + reliable sources. Jingby (talk) 06:04, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

WP:BOLD applies. If you object to something, the onus of initiating discussion is on you. Name specific points you disagree with, not blanket assertions of overall bias. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:24, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

I am objecting this article to be rewritten drastically and this to happen simultaneously with mass deletion of content and sources, without consesus was reached or discussion was held. Jingby (talk) 06:34, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Your objection is not actionable as long as you don't say what specifically you object to. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:51, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Lol! What about this passage:

Members of the group have professed a range of ethnic and linguistic identities since their incorporation into Greece in 1913. Before incorporation into Greece the speakers generally espoused either a Macedonian or Bulgarian identity. Various academics of the time also generally had conflicting views on the topic of self identification during this period. Vasil Kanchov for example writes in 1911 that "The local Bulgarians and Vlachs who live in the area of Macedonia call themselves Macedonians, and the surrounding nations also call them Macedonians." The community is today split between those with an ethnic Grek and an ethnic Macedonian identity. Of those that left Greece as refugees or immigrants following the civil war, almost all have an ethnic Macedonian identity. Within most contexts these people are known as Aegean Macedonians ([Егејски Македонци, Egejski Makedonci] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help)) both inside and outside Greece. These people refer to themselves as Dópia (Greek: Δόπια) or Tukašni (Macedonian: Тукашни), which translates to Locals, as distinct from the Pontic Greek immigrants which arrived in the region in the 1920s.

The rest of the changes is rich on the same pseudo-scientific and nationalistic biases. The stabile version bevore that POV above has stated:

Predominantly identified as Macedonian Bulgarians until the early 1940s, since the formation of a Macedonian nation state, many of the migrant population in the diaspora (Australia, America and Canada) have a strong Macedonian identity and have followed the consolidation of the Macedonian ethnicity. However, those who remain in Greece, now mainly identify nationally as ethnic Greeks, although, it should be noted, that though the Macedonian region is overwhelmingly inhabited by Greeks including descendants of Pontians, it is ethnically diverse (including Albanians, Aromanians and Slavs).

And more. Up until about one hundred years ago, the Slav population of Macedonia was universally considered to be Bulgarian. Since then, however, a number of different theories have been advanced, theories which are mutually exclusive but which have as their common denominator a desire to convince the Macedonian Slavs and the world at large that they are not Bulgarian, but something else. Since, however, contemporary sources make it unequivocally clear that, during the period untill 1940-s, the Slavs of Macedonia both regarded themselves predominantly as Bulgarian and were regarded as such by the world at large, the term 'Macedonian' is not used here only in the general geographical sense, but to push here the pseudo-scientific ideas of the Macedonism. Jingby (talk) 07:21, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Firsly if you only object to that passage, why add a whole string of reverts to it. And Secondly, what I wrote only condensed the section down and made the wording less complicated. Furthermore what do you object to the edit itself? It mentions that some people identified as Bulgarians and some as Macedonians, even V. Kanchov mentions that people identified themselves as that. The rest simply goes on to mention that now there are those identifying as ethnic Macedonians and those as identifying as ethnic Greeks and the terms used to refer to themselves were also listed.

Your conduct across various articles makes it apparent that it is not the words being used to express ideas which you opposed to (which would bring in WP:OR, WP:RS, etc.) but it is the whole concept being discussed that you cannot fathom and WP:IDONTLIKEIT is no reason for senseless reverts. Maybe you ought to click "edit" and better the articles rather than simply "undo" all the time. Lunch for Two (talk) 07:51, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

• Don't forget Jingiby, I opened up a comment section here a week ago asking users interested in the merge to put their input in and to generate the "consensus" you so often use. You chose not to comment and have neither did you assist with the merger between the two articles. Lunch for Two (talk) 12:14, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Jingiby that the latest edits are problematic. There is a strong "Ethnic Macedonian" POV running throughout. For example, gone is the (sourced) sentence "However, those who remain in Greece, now mainly identify nationally as ethnic Greeks", which we all know is the case, and it is replaced with "Many who have remained in Greece now an ethnic Greek identity or have rejected both ethnic affiliations. Nonetheless many still living in Greece have retained their ethnic Macedonian identity." Rather than acknowledge the fact that the number of those with an ethnic Macedonian consciousness nowadays is tiny (~10,000 by most estimates, witness the dreadful performance by Rainbow in elections), we get vagueness and "many". What's many? 100? 1,000? 10,000? Also gone is "and the smallest group is made up of those who have a clear ethnic Macedonian national identity.", even though again this is sourced. Also gone is any reference to the Bulgarian language, instead we get "Various Macedonian dialects are spoken in the region of Greek Macedonia." All of a sudden it's Macedonians this, Macedonians that, even though most members of the group this article covers do not identify as ethnic Macedonians. I think what's going on is an attempt to slowly re-write the article a way so that it is all about ethnic Macedonians, then once that is achieved go for renaming it to "Aegean Macedonians". In other, an attempt to re-create the deleted Ethnic Macedonians of Greece by the back door. Then there is the question of how these edits were implemented. They were rammed through in a single edit without so much as an edit-summary [3]. Fine, WP:BOLD maybe. But WP:BOLD does not call for avoiding edit-summaries and then edit-warring [4] [5]. In such instances, WP:BOLD rapidly turns into WP:TEND. We all know this is a highly contentious subject. Ramming through major changes is bad enough, doing so without an edit summary is completely unacceptable. Lunch for Two, it is quite clear that several editors have issues with your changes. Trying to impose them by force is hopeless. The sensible (and only) thing to do is propose your changes in the talkpage. And please no false claims of consensus in an attempt to justify relentless slow-revert warring as here [6]. Athenean (talk) 17:22, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Athenean, I am happy to discuss the changes made. Maybe instead of a simple revert constructive editing will provide some benefit to the article (and this is not in reference to you). Elections do not replace censa, which tell us the true number of people wishing to be identified as such. Claiming that there are only 10,000 Macedonians because thats how many voted for Rainbow is like saying only 1% of Canadian are interested in the Environment because that is how many votes the Green Party got. There is no way of identifying the exact number of people with this identity and with that identity, people can estimate (and that is what all of these figures are) and the estimates have to be reflected, however to used words such as "there are X number of people with an ethnic Macedonian identity" is misleading as we don't really know how many there are (neither do the researchers). I would be keen to see an estimate from these researches pertaining the 2010s and not the 1990s, I suspect that the estimates would be somewhat different.

In regards to the merge with Slavic dialects of Greece and the supposed omission of the Bulgarian language, this is due to the fact that Bulgarian was spoken by the Pomaks in Thrace (not "slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia"), and I merged the relevant section across at Pomaks#Greece. My edit in this section reflected linguistic classification and underneath the wide variety of terms Slavika/Dopia/Makedonski/Po Nashe/Starski etc. were all listed. To assert that only the word "Macedonian" was used doesn reflect the next paragraph where the issues regarding local identification with the langauge were highlighted. Furthermore, you have attacked me for the merge, yet I have not seen you take any interest in merging the two articles.

As for the discussion at Ethnic Macedonians, me and PB92 reviewed all of the sourced I mentioned and highlighted the flaws and acceptable parts of what was previously written. The text was then modified to provide some form of consensus between the 2 parties involved, nonetheless it was still reverted. You are more than welcome to participate in the dicussion pertaining the usability and validity of the sources at Talk:Macedonians (ethnic group). Lunch for Two (talk) 03:06, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the number of people that identify as ethnic Macedonians, while there is no census data, there are estimates in the literature. All of these estimates hover around the ~10,000 range, so there is good reason to believe that figure. It's not perfect, but it's good enough. Claiming "there is no data, so we have to be as vague as possible" is disingenuous and is not going to work. Before anything else, I want this issue closed. Your refusal to accept this figure and insist on vague language and innuendo is a big part of the problems we're having, and makes it very hard to assume good faith. Athenean (talk) 04:34, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

The assertion "there are X number of people with an ethnic Macedonian identity" is of course wrong, and i haven't seen anyone inserting or explicitly supporting such a thing. Lunch is right when describing the situation as volatile, and that's primarily because of the "middle group", which is more open το cultural and ethnic incentives from the other side of the border and at the same time is not caught inside the highly polarized national perspectives of any of the two (or three) countries. That said, if there were researchers doing fieldwork right now in the area how do you expect they would estimate the number of ethnic Macedonians ? The current estimate is an upward projection of the Rainbow's votes, it is clearly stated in the sources. These figures haven't risen at all. What would be the other option for them ? Summing up memberships to local cultural associations with an ethnic Macedonian agenda included in their activities wouldn't produce a higher result i think, and its accuracy wouldn't be better anyway, as, pertaining to the aforementioned polarization, we are talking about a conscious sociopolitical choice, which is better reflected through affiliations to a clearly political institution. To give an example so that i'm better understood, the frontman of Rainbow, Voskopoulos, is a first cousin of the former head of Florina prefecture, who has made it clear with his statements relating to the issue that he espouses an ethnic Greek identity. The comparison with the Green Party in Canada is of course not representative (following Lunch's Spanish-Portuguese example in a previous discussion relating to the Macedonian-Bulgarian differences which was even worse, try Danish-Norwegian or Russian-Belarusian and you're close), the obvious difference is that almost all parties in Canada have, to some degree, an environmental protection agenda, which is high in the country's priorities. On the other hand, no other Greek party except from Rainbow, has a Macedonian ethnonational agenda, like most Canadian parties don't support a greater autonomy or secession of Quebec. --IpProtected (talk) 10:51, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I generally agree with you also Ip. It is hard to judge how people define their ethnicity especially given the lack of recognition/assistance the Greek state provides to those identifying as non-Greeks (and I extend this to the manner in which Greek censa are conducted). However a lot has changed in the past 20 years, especially regarding greater freedoms which have been extended to people living in Greece. Unlike in the time during which the estimates were made, there are now numerous ethnic Macedonian organisations (there are groups for example which have split off from Rainbow and now conduct their own affairs, publish their own newspapers, etc.), classes have been started at a local level to teach the language, ethnic Macedonian folkloric groups from Greece now tour the R. of Macedonia and the diaspora, several newspapers exist (the most succesful of which prints 20,000 copies and is reportedly widely distributed) and there are now elected officials who declare themselves to be Macedonians and promote the recognition of ethnic minorities. You only have to look at my user page to see expression of identity in action (something which in the 1990s polarised communities such as in Meliti [to the stage where 2 seperate events were organised simply over which language songs would be sung], however is now much more mainstream). Furthermore from what I have read there is now a greater discernable distinction made in Greece between someones "ethnicity" and "nationality" which perhaps didn't exist before (from what I have read). Lunch for Two (talk) 11:31, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, thank you for agreeing but where are you going exactly with what you're writing ? Are you proposing a shift of framework in which we deal with this article's subject ? These reports on the manifestations of the Macedonian ethnonational movement in Greece don't point to anywhere, unless we are already practicing wishful thinking. Don't get me wrong, you are entitled to your own personal opinion in the matter. I have already checked your sources in ethnic Macedonians and produced a revised version there, which i think is more balanced, if others agree maybe it could be placed here as well, unaltered or with less detail. But what are we to suppose in general based on them ? You have a newspaper (a journalistic leaflet according to the editor's note) being distributed free of charge in 20.000 copies every month and supported mainly by foreign capital and another one in 1000 copies with probably local circulation in Kastoria. These numbers are logical, if we take into account a "target group" of more than 100,000, but do not lead to any conclusion about the readership. You have a report of 30 students attending unofficial language lessons in Thessaloniki and another class in Kastoria which did not have enough attendance to continue in the proceeding year. You have the Rainbow party, some activities in Meliti and a local organization in Kastoria. Please fill in the gaps if i have forgotten something important or correct me, but what do all these tell us about a change of attitude, and more importantly, about a change of scale ? These are all qualitative references on ethnic Macedonians in Greece, which are already acknowledged as a subgroup here. And a note on your last sentence, differentiating ethnicity and nationality would be very easy if Balkan states weren't build on an ethnic-nation ideology (Greece did not start like that exactly, but "had" to follow the trend). Some day, being a Greek and being an ethnic Macedonian might not be two mutually exclusive identities, and by that i'm not by all means supporting the essentialist view that there existed a Macedonian ethnonational identity/consciousness before the late 19th century, but rather that all modern nations in the area share a common heritage to some degree. Today, being an ethnic Macedonian in Greece is primarily a political/national issue, and the "local ethnos" that identify as Macedonians are distinct enough with the ethnicity that is expressed by and evolves around the neighboring nation. They are the leftovers of a past that legitimizes all views.--IpProtected (talk) 14:56, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Ethnic rant

Throughout the Middle Ages and until the early 20th century, there was no clear formulation or expression of a distinct Macedonian ethnicity. The Slavic speaking majority in the Region of Macedonia had been referred to (both, by themselves and outsiders) as Bulgarians, and that is how they were predominantly seen since 10th, up until the early 20th century. It is generally acknowledged that the ethnic Macedonian identity emerged in the late 19th century or even later. However, the existence of a discernible Macedonian national consciousness prior to the 1940s is disputed. Anti-Serban and pro-Bulgarian feelings among the local population at this period prevailed. According to some researchers, by the end of the war a tangible Macedonian national consciousness did not exist and bulgarophile sentiments still dominated in the area, but others consider that it hardly existed. After 1944 Communist Bulgaria and Communist Yugoslavia began a policy of making Macedonia into the connecting link for the establishment of new Balkan Federative Republic and stimulating here a development of distinct Slav Macedonian consciousness. With 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. In 1969 also the first History of the Macedonian nation was published. The past was systematycally falsified to conceal the truth, that most of the well-known Macedonians had felt themselves to be Bulgarians and generations of students were tought the pseudo-history of the Macedonian nation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jingiby (talk • contribs)

What is this rant supposed to be? A proposal of text for the article? Or just a bit of the usual talkpage soapboxing prettified with footnotes? Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:51, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Jingiby, how does this adress the issue? Lunch for Two (talk) 14:16, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Manipulation of the history as well as manipulation of the presence, must not be placed in any article. Jingby (talk) 14:33, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

All sources I have added are reliable, i.e. University Press' publications and they have countied around 50,000 Slavophones (10,00 to 100,000). Most of them, or nearly all are with Greek self-identification. Jingby (talk)

Nobody has "counted" anything. All these sources are merely citing each other's estimates. Do you know what the difference between counting and estimating is? Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:40, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

No, I did not understand you. Check here, please. The total estimate data ranges from 10,000 up: [7], [8], [9] and so on. Jingby (talk) 18:03, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Recommendation concerning the title of this article

Macedonia in Greece is not commonly referred to as "Greek Macedonia". If you exclude Wikipedia [10] there are only 369 Google hits for "Greek Macedonia". I recommend that the title of this article is changed to Slavic speakers of Macedonia (Greece) or Slavic speakers of northern Greece.  Nipsonanomhmata  ^(Talk) 19:35, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

This article reflects the common usage in English. Lunch for Two (talk) 15:54, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

The common usage is "Macedonia" and not "Greek Macedonia" and it has been so even before the English language became a dominant language. The usage of "Greek Macedonia" is scarce-at-best and as the Google hits show above.  Nipsonanomhmata  ^(Talk) 16:07, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Request to change the offensive name of the article

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No move. There's no agreement that the proposed title is preferable to the current one. The split discussion should continue separately from the RM. Cúchullain ^t/c 16:20, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

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Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia → Slavs in Greece –

In the way I see it Slavic speakers is only a translation of the Greek Σλαβόφωνοι, a nationalist Greek word that denies the existence of minority people in Greece. The word means that the indigenous Slav population of Northern Greece does not exist and that it is Greek "but with a Slavic language" as it's described by many Greek nationalist politicians. Maybe under the eyes of Greeks the title of the article is just fine, but under the perspective of the Bulgarians and also Macedonians it's a provocation. It's a fact that Slavs have always settled here, we can see that from many ethnographic projects made over the history till today, we can see that from the separate cultures, languages etc.

Wikipedia has not got a goal to be provocative, and that's why it should be not. I'm sure that other "Wikipedians" share my opinion for this article to be changed into a different name (like the one I have recommended Slavs in Greece) that would not have offensive words like "Slavophones", "Slavic speakers" etc. in the title.

--- Dr. Mr. Sea Fall Ph.D 10:16, 05 January 2013 (CET) 11:16, 05 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose the title has, IIRC, been debated to death, and the present article covers a very specific set of people, not all Slavs who ever lived in Greece (Melingoi and Ezeritai, anyone?). In addition, the nominator's account positively screams of sockpuppetry... Constantine ✍ 09:26, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

 Comment: Can you please define those specific kind of people, please? Because I don't understand you, your giving me a denial of my earlier assertion without arguments, you don't have arguments. What is this, some Slavic tribes that don't exist and God knows if they ever existed or not. We're talking about the Slavs as a whole, no matter where they are, and since there are a very little living in Southern Greece they made an article about Slavs in Macedonia (where they are mostly concentrated, thats why there is not other article about Slavs in Greece). In order for this article not to have nationalist, irredentist elements from both sides I asked for a move. Dr. Mr. Sea Fall Ph.D 09:51, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Your proposal would make sense if a) Slavic presence in Greece were confined to Macedonia and hence "Slavs of Greece" would be coterminous with "Slavs in Macedonia" (it isn't) and more importantly b) if the Slavic-speakers of today felt themselves demonstrably to be Slavs and Slavs alone (i.e. Serbs, Bulgarians, "Macedonians" or whatever else). As it is, this was not the case in the 19th and early 20th century, when nationalism was running rampant (just check any of many dozen studies on the fluidity of "national" self-perception at the time, or simply the case of Konstantinos Christou), and is not the case now. Similarly, a Turkish-speaker doesn't have to have Turkish origin or even identify as a Turk. Equating "Slavic-speaker" with "Slav" might seem straightforward, but these are the Balkans, and nothing like this ever is around here, and 99 out of a 100 times anyone who proposes getting rid of nuances in ethnonyms has an agenda of his own. BTW you would help your case if you did not utter complete nonsense like "some Slavic tribes that don't exist and God knows if they ever existed or not" for the well-attested Slavs of S. Greece, as well as the incredible "It's a fact that Slavs have always settled here". Constantine ✍ 12:52, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Well if we can't say that Slavs were always on the Balkan, I guess we must say that Greeks were always present here no matter what - Hahahahaha. Firstly, I would like to point out that Macedonians Bulgarians and Serbs are Slavs together, and since the Greek Government does not recognize and does not reveal the true numbers of those separate Slavic ethnic group we can only call them Slavs as a whole. Secondly, I would point at the recognizion of Slavs by the Greek Government in 1925 with the printing of the Abecedar. Yours trulyDr. Mr. Sea Fall Ph.D 17:36, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

And how does any of this refute what I wrote above? We are not discussing the morality of the Greek government's policies towards minorities here, but the best, most accurate and neutral way to refer to a very specific group of people. The point is that you equate "Slavic speakers" with "Slavs" in terms of an ethnic identity, and that in itself is unacceptable because it obliterates all the finer nuances and distinctions of self-identification among them. Constantine ✍ 21:33, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

• Comment I'm not sure I follow the proposer's logic here, and wonder if he really isn't reading something into the article title that isn't there. If it's good enough for Swedish-speaking population of Finland and German-speaking Community of Belgium (a self-chosen title), wouldn't Slavic-speaking population of Greece be equally acceptable in this case? Nobody ever suggests that the Swedish/Finnish title is the result of nationalist or xenophobic bias, and I fail to see how Slavic speakers can be classed as offensive (quite the contrary, Slavs would probably be more offensive as it suggests ethnicity rather than a linguistic minority, which some members of that linguistic minority may not wish to be labelled with). Skinsmoke (talk) 09:54, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

 Comment: The fact is, my friend, that all of these communities you have carefully selected for us are officially recognized by their governments by those names under agreement. The Slavs of Greece are NOT recognized by the Greek Government (as if they don't exist) and the name that is chosen for this article is leaning on the provocative given name to the Slavs by the Greek nationalists. When theres no official name we just have to call them Slavs of Greece.Dr. Mr. Sea Fall Ph.D 10:12, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Slavs of Greek Macedonia? Greek Slavs? — kwami (talk) 09:55, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

 Comment: Just like there are Albanian Australians, Bulgarian Americans etc. They are Slavs but citizens of Greece. What's so hard to understand? Dr. Mr. Sea Fall Ph.D 10:22, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose This article is not about the Slavs in Greece in general, but about the Slav-speaking (non-immigrant) inhabitants of (Greek) Macedonia (whether they self-define as Slavs or Greeks or "locals" or whatever). --79.160.40.10 (talk) 16:43, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Agreed that the proposed name is the wrong topic, but the current title suggests that topic. I doubt one reader in a thousand is going to understand that "Slavic" doesn't mean "Slavic". — kwami (talk) 21:53, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

• Keep or -- Slavic people of Greek Macedonia This is a highly politically contentious subject, because the Greek government seems to deny the possibility that theri country contains this ethnic minority. It also seeks to dney the eixistience of the independent Republic of Macedonia, insisting that its name is Skopje. This seems to be an unresolved dispute, arising form the Balkan wars about a century ago. The nom seeks to imply that this is about Slavs in Greece generally (which would include migrant workers), but that would blur the subject. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:39, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Splitting

This article has been a matter of controversy from the beginning. We have a mixed situation where we can't find an END of the discussions that are made. The name Slavic-speakers as it is given doesn't give a real picture what does the article tell. Are Slavic-speakers just Slavophones (Greek: Σλαβόφωνοι) the Greek word used to describe those who have the Slavic as a mother language as Greeks who have accepted the Slavic language, are forced to speak Slavic etc. All in all Slavophones in Greek politics means Hellenes by heritage that speak the Slavic language for some strange reason. Also there are a number of Slavic people with Greek self-awareness that proclaim themselves as "slavophones". Σλαβόφωνοι in translation means "speakers of Slavic", so (as you can apparently see) the name of the article lies on a Greek nationalist ethnic provocation.

First, we can't just call the Slavic residents of Greece Slavic-speakers when there existence in denied by the Greek Government and their community doesn't even have an official name for which to call on.

Second, we can't call all Slavs in Greece Slavic-speakers of Greek Macedonia, because there's a large number of Slavs that not reside in Greek Macedonia, but in the other regions of Greece as well.

We need to split this abnormal article into three totally different articles to achieve order. We need to have one about the Slavs in Greece (no matter from which region of the country they live), the Slavic dialects of Greece (dialects of the Slavic language, sometimes considered dialects of Macedonian, sometimes of Bulgarian), and one about Slavophones the Slavic people with Greek self-awareness.Dr. Mr. Sea Fall Ph.D 12:42, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. This article isn't about Russians in Athens or Poles in Salonika. It is about the non-immigrant community in Greek Macedonia that speaks Macedonian/Bulgarian. It is about one specific group of Slavs in Greece. Do we need an article that covers Slavic immigrant communities in Greece? No. We don't have articles on the many tens of thousands of immigrant communities scattered around the world. An article on the Slavic diaspora might be appropriate where Slavic immigrant communities throughout the world might be covered, but having a separate article for each immigrant community in each country is ridiculous. --Taivo (talk) 13:29, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

 Comment: Still Slavic-speakers doesn't identify nor Bulgarians, nor Macedonians.Dr. Mr. Sea Fall Ph.D 16:38, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. The Pomaks, who are the another native Slavic speaking minority in Greece are excluded. Jingiby (talk) 14:22, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

 Comment: I would not like to think of the Pomaks as such a distinctive ethnic group, all in all they're still Bulgarian.Dr. Mr. Sea Fall Ph.D 16:38, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose per Taivo and Jingiby. In addition, the proposed article "network" will be completely confusing to the users who want to learn something from wikipedia. --79.160.40.10 (talk) 16:46, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

 Comment: In what meaning would you describe that "confusing"?Dr. Mr. Sea Fall Ph.D 16:52, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Confusing in the sense of "Where do I find what I am looking for among all these articles?". --79.160.40.10 (talk) 16:56, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

That's not a good enough reason for this maze of an article not to be divided that tells about the Slavs in Greek Macedonia, then somebody says it doesn't tell about the Slavs it's about Greek Slavophones, then someone has writen about Bulgarians, Macedonians,................. If this isn't confusing as it is...WHAT IS?Dr. Mr. Sea Fall Ph.D 17:12, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Just my point, this article is about Slavophones thats why we need to make a separate article on Slavs in Greece.Dr. Mr. Sea Fall Ph.D 20:31, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Slavic Macedonians of Greece? I agree that "Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia" doesn't really say what the article is about. A Russian immigrant would qualify for that description. — kwami (talk) 03:12, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that "Slavic" is what the language continuum Macedonian-Bulgarian is called in Greece ([11]). Calling it Macedonian runs the risk of the "FYROM" nonsense from Greeks and the fact that the eastern end is more "Bulgarian" than "Macedonian". Calling this language "Slavic" in Greece simply bypasses all those problems as well as being based on a reliable source in Ethnologue. It's actually specific. --Taivo (talk) 05:02, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Citizens of Macedonia are Macedonians, aren't they? Doesn't matter which language they speak. Not calling the language anything.

Since when do we go by what the Greeks call these things? The normal English meaning of "Slavic speakers" is speakers of Slavic languages. Not specific at all. Maybe "Slavic inhabitants of Greek Macedonia"? Something that specifies who we're talking about. — kwami (talk) 06:50, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

This isn't a new discussion here and that issue has been brought up before. "Slavic speakers of Macedonia" isn't "what Greeks want to call these things", but the result of discussions among participating editors at the time. "Slavic" satisfied many more problems than any other option and since it is based on a reliable source, it was deemed the most neutral solution. And in the context of Greece, it is specific. "Slavic inhabitants" doesn't address your objection any better. Ethnicity in the Balkans is much more intimately tied to language use than it often is in other parts of the world. --Taivo (talk) 07:17, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

"Slavic speakers of Macedonia" is inaccurate in that it excludes Slavs who don't speak "Slavic languages" and now just speak Greek. Don't we also actually have Greeks who speak one of the Slavic languages without being Slavs? Are these included or excluded? I.e. whoever doesn't speak the language, is no more an ethnic minority, but is just Greek? This is what "Slavic speakers of Macedonia" actually means. For clarity, we should also specify "Greek Macedonia" as there is another "Macedonia" as well. Same would apply for when we say "Turkish speakers in Greece". There are Turks in Greece who don't speak Turkish but speak just Greek. There are also, as odd as it may sound, ethnic Greeks who speak Turkish. There are Kurd Greeks who do speak Turkish but are not Turks. So "Turkish speakers" (Turkophones) is biased just like "Slavic Speakers" (Slavophones). We have Slavs, regardless of whether they speak one of the Slavic languages or not. I support the title Slavs in Greece, with obviously a clear and extensive section consecrated to the Slavs in "Greek Macedonia" discussed within that general page. The present page can be expanded to include all Greece. probably that way it will be less contentious for everybody. werldwayd (talk) 10:46, 12 January 2013 (UTC) werldwayd (talk) 10:51, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

This article isn't about "Slavs in Greece", it's about one clearly-defined ethnic minority in Greek Macedonia only--those who speak dialects of the Macedonian-Bulgarian dialect continuum that is called "Slavic" in Greece. Your attempts to broaden the scope of the article simply show that you don't know what the article is about and don't really care as long as your attempts to defocus attention from a single group defined by the language they speak are successful. --Taivo (talk) 19:44, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I know exactly what the article is about. But the way the article is developed till now, it is riddled by so many idiosyncracies that boggles the mind. So let me get this straight. We are speaking about a rigid set of people that you narrowly want to identify, in a rigid (limited) plot of land (specified very clearly in the article). The moment they move into some other provincial Greek region, out of necessity or practicality, suddenly their identity disappears or is none of our, or the article's concern, right? Even further, they are clearly identified as "Slavic SPEAKERS" and no integration is involved and none (I am thinking about their newer generations) has lost or will be losing their ability to be "Slavic speaking" to become let's say for argument sake "Greek speaking"... (though still keeping keeping their "ethnic Slavic origins"... This is about a type of a static people who lack mobility or never ever can or want to move and are just stuck in this specific area with this specific language (so to speak).... Furthermore, it is their "proximity" to Bulgarian or Macedonian lands is what is actually being discussed and focussed upon ... This is what your defense of the present very rigid and puzzling terminology leads to, for any general reader. Unless that is that one has so much expertise in this, he/she probably never even needs to read the Wikipedia page to further explore... Again, I come back to my proposal. I suggest a broader less rigid concept, with sections more area-specific developed within such a general article. The way the article is now doesn't allow for such a flexible approach and thus all the cautionary comments you are getting from so many other colleagues as well. werldwayd (talk) 09:17, 13 January 2013 (UTC) werldwayd (talk) 10:13, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Agree that there's nothing to split, but this illustrates the problem with the title. Hardly any English speaker is going to understand the idiosyncratic use of "Slavic" by Greece. The normal reading is that this article is about speakers of Slavic languages, and that isn't going to change. — kwami (talk) 21:49, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Again we come back to a topic that has been discussed here before. The language is called "Slavic" in Greece, not "Macedonian" or "Bulgarian". --Taivo (talk) 22:03, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

And if we were Greek WP, that would be fine. But we're not in Greece. And outside of Greece, that's not what "Slavic" means. It's a misnomer. — kwami (talk) 22:11, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

It's not a "misnomer". It is a word that has a different meaning in one context than it has in other contexts. Using "Slavic" here is based on a long-standing consensus between Macedonians, Bulgarians, and Greeks as to what to call this language in this article. And the last time I checked, consensus trumped virtually everything else in Wikipedia. If you want to initiate another discussion on what to call this group of Macedonian/Bulgarian/Slavic dialects in Greek Macedonia, go right ahead and we'll see what comes out the other end. --Taivo (talk) 06:45, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

And in the right context the Sun is a planet. But we'd hardly want to name an article "Sol (planet)". This title is just as confusing. I'm not requesting a move, but it should be obvious that as long as we say this article is about Slavic speakers, our readers are going to misunderstand us to mean Slavic speakers. — kwami (talk) 11:23, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Life, and especially Wikipedia, is full of things we don't particularly like, but have to tolerate. The suggestion that you initiate a (separate) discussion about what to call this language in Greek Macedonia was a serious one although I sense that you took the suggestion as facetious. There are other interested editors just sitting on the sidelines watching this discussion without commenting specifically. They might have some useful input. Right now, this whole discussion about moving and splitting the article isn't going anywhere because the number of "Oppose" votes will serve as an anchor. --Taivo (talk) 11:48, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Comment. This article isn't about Russians or Poles or Czechs in Greece. It is about Macedonians in Greece, the vast majority of whom live in Greek Macedonia. After rereading WP:MOSMAC, two things become rather apparent.

• 1. Wikipedia's manual of style concerning Macedonia is clear that "Macedonian" is the name to be used in all cases when talking about the Slavic people or language of Macedonia.
• 2. #1 applies except when "Macedonian" is ambiguous, as it is in the case of Greek Macedonia, where "Macedonian" refers both to the inhabitants who are Greek and live in Greek Macedonia and the inhabitants who are Slavic and live in Greek Macedonia, both of whom also speak "Macedonian"--one a dialect of Greek, one a Slavic language.

Those two issues are part of the problem here. That is really why we used the term "Slavic speakers" here--to avoid the ambiguity of using "Macedonian" for any group of people living in Greek Macedonia. So the key is to find a term that avoids the ambiguity of using "Macedonian" to refer to a group of people who principally live in Greek Macedonia, but aren't Greek or Greek-speaking. --Taivo (talk) 12:57, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that it's not an easy problem to address. "Slavic", however, is similarly ambiguous. Agreed that "Macedonian" alone would be completely inappropriate. My suggestions above may also be problematic, though some of them seem less ambiguous to me. — kwami (talk) 19:55, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Images in infobox

A newly registred sock created an infobox for ethnic group called Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia. Such ethnic group did never exist. I recognized several Macedonian Bulgarians born in the Ottoman Empire, who died there or in Bulgaria. They are not directly related to Greece. I recognized also several ethnic Macedonians born in Yugoslavia, who live in the Republic of Macedonia. They are also not directly related to Greece. More, part of the images are copyright infringement, without proper license and date. The are with a false author. I disagree with such way of action. P.S. It is futile to argue that the current Prime Minister of Macedonia must have a picture here. In the same way we must include a photo from the current Bulgarian President Plevneliev. He is descended from Bulgarian refugees who resettled from today's village of Petrousa in Drama regional unit, Greek Macedonia, in 1913. The Plevneliev family name refers to the Bulgarian name of the village, Plevna. Jingiby (talk) 14:31, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

 Comment: I am not trying to suggest that they are an ethnic group. Just like in the articles of Macedonians (Greeks), Macedonian Muslims, Macedonians (Bulgarians) who are not distinctive ethnic groups but have articles I wanted to create a "memorial" that Slavs existed in Greek Macedonia in the history and so do now. I would like to apologize to Jingiby who, by the way, has no arguments for what he's doing and promise to never put images of Slav Macedonians that played a such a great role in the Macedonian, Bulgarian, and Greek history. Dr. Mr. Sea Fall Ph.D 16:32, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I think, we need a third opinion. Could anybody from other editors discuss this issue here? Thank you in advance. Jingiby (talk) 16:46, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I am opposed to putting pictures of people "belonging to the group" into infoboxes at all. A quick look at other articles shows that it tends to end up in eternal fights about who belongs to the group and who is important enough to put in. --79.160.40.10 (talk) 16:53, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I would oppose any editor who is arrogant enough to put their username in bigger letters than anything else on the page just for the sake of his/her arrogance. But, I also think that photos are rather silly, unless there are actual famous people to include that English speakers in the US or Britain might recognize and say, "I didn't know X was a Greek Macedonian!" Such is not the case here so an array of photos of unknown people who played some infinitessimal role in history is really pointless. I have been involved in those debates over "Who belongs here?" and the anon editor above is quite right--they quickly devolve into "Is X really a Macedonian?", "Just because X has Macedonian parents and speaks Macedonian is s/he really Macedonian because s/he lives in New York?", "Is X really Macedonian just because s/he was born in Y town?", "Is X really famous enough to include?", etc., etc., etc. --Taivo (talk) 21:16, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the IP, Taivo & Jingiby. Infoboxes have this unfortunate tendency to generate controversy. In general, it is a) hard to generate a generally acceptable "representative" gallery of people for a specific group and b) in this particular case, despite its large historical section, which is necessary to understand the article, the article itself seems to focus on the Slavic-speakers after southern Macedonia came under Greek rule. Representative figures of the Slavic-speaking community would be those that have lived and acted within Greece. Including figures like Gruevski who did not grow up under Greek rule are hence irrelevant to the topic of the Slavic-speaking community in Greece, just as a German-speaker whose parents emigrated from Belgium to Germany is irrelevant to the affairs of the German-speaking community in Belgium. Constantine ✍ 21:43, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Possible Changes

I have only recently created a Wikipedia account and have looked up this page. I have several "issues" with it but I do not know how to change some of the stuff/don't know if my edits would be controversial.

There is one image featured in the article that shows a group dancing. My grandparents are from the Kastoria/Florina region and I am familiar with allot of the dances of Greek Macedonia, I however do not know this dance. As well as that the picture depicts a vergina sun on a red background. This alludes to the "Flag of Sovereign "Macedonia" (FYROM)" I find this quite offensive and incorrect to be portrayed as a banner at a Greek festival. Seeing as the flag for the region of Greek Macedonia is the vergina sun on a blue background. Also in the information box on the right, under the flag of FYROM it says "Macedonia" I don't believe that to be okay as the article is on Greek Macedonia and is quite offensive to refer to FYROM as solely Macedonia.

Please someone help me to edit this page legitimately. DarkLordAjuntaPall (talk) 03:45, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Macedonia is not called "FYROM" in Wikipedia, it is called by its own name, "Macedonia". Please read WP:MOSMAC before you get yourself into trouble with your politics. --Taivo (talk) 09:53, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Okay politics being put aside, there is one change I would like to make about the language itself. I have been brought up listening to Greek Macedonian and arguably it could be my first language. To distinguish it from other Slavic languages I would like to add a section that explains its roots in Doric (Ancient Greek) I have an example however I am not sure how to source it.

e.g. In Greek Macedonian the word wolf is pronounced "lysitsa" whereas in other Slavic languages it is "volk" and the Ancient Greek term is lycan or lycern. (Hence the name of the mountain in Athens lykavittos mountain or "the mountain of wolves"). DarkLordAjuntaPall (talk) 23:31, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

DarkLord, you have found a borrowed word in Greek Macedonian. There are hundreds of borrowed words in every language on the planet. That does not give Greek Macedonian "roots in Doric". It is a dialect of Macedonian, a Slavic language. If you want to provide a selection of borrowed words, then you need to find a reliable source on Greek Macedonian that discusses borrowed words. --Taivo (talk) 00:31, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Funniest thing

is, that all of them (slavic speakers in greek Macedonia) are originaly Serbs, All that lands were part of former serbina lands empire, kingdoms and dukes before Maritsa 1371 and Kosovo 1389 and Ottoman turkish ocupation. Noumerous monasteries are made or renovated by rullers from Nemanjić dynasty like monasteries near Kastoria or Florina...Over centuries and main influence of Constantinople patriarchy church, helenization was in progress. As witness of that are noumerous villages with slavic (serbian) names which are renamed in after ww1 period in greek way as common translation or renamed with names of greek historical persons from mithology to Macedonian struglle till 1912. "Bulgary" in Egeian Macedonia are just historical sadness and heavy life of people there under Turks. Instead of turkish government and greek popes, they try to find a peace of freedom, over good wishes from Bulgaria over churches (egyarchy schizm) and schools with favorite slavic language and lithurgy after centirues, but then bulgarization started even whole world knows how many conection name bulgar, bolgar, volgar or vulgar have with anything which is slavic. Another mess made newdays state of Macedonia with "macedonians by nation" splited by horrible neighbours Serbs, Bulgars and Greeks, propaganda with hugh comunist help over 50 years...That is terrible history of this losted people called by every different names exept the right one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.245.147.51 (talk) 02:42, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Split proposal

I think that this article would almost necessary require splitting, because it has a large proportion of material, in terms of content, piled up in it. It would seem very much reasonable that it would be given a change to be split in the form of other “sister articles”, as the ones mentioned, in order for the content to evolve, because it surely has its notability. In that way, the neutrality of the article would come to a right balance, taking in fact that the different articles would cultivate different areas of official opinion(s). Nemojda (talk) 13:02, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Your proposal to have one article on Macedonians and one article on Bulgarians is ridiculous. There is only one Slavic language spoken in Greece, not two, and the ethnic identifiers within the borders of Greece for people who speak one language, are far from NPOV. --Taivo (talk) 16:05, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

You must understand that I'm proposing a split to create separate "sister articles" to this one, one about Greek citizen that identify as Macedonians, and the other about Greek citizens that identify as Bulgarian, to work on themes like their settlements, organizations, culture, etc. I didn't specify anything about the usage of language. Nemojda (talk) 18:08, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I oppose. This proposal is not constructive. Jingiby (talk) 18:11, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Mmm. Can you specify a reason? Nemojda (talk) 18:13, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Because it starts from an incorrect presumption that those people can be conveniently classified into "Macedonian", "Bulgarian" and "Slavophone Greek" drawers, then counted, then a separate article about each group can be written. In reality, such classification does not exist, because it is personal and cultural, and borders are blurred, even on an individual level. Taken one by one, many people who are subject of the article will have Greek ethnic affiliation, many Macedonian, yet others Bulgarian, and some would be just Slavic... and many of those would be all of that at the same time. I fail to see necessity for split along these lines. A case could be made for splitting the history per WP:SS, but I don't think it is currently too long to present an obstacle for navigation. No such user (talk) 11:47, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I think it’s pretty much as constructive as it gets. It would devote and split contradicting positions in this article to different related articles to this one thus this article wouldn’t have a problem being neutral. Nemojda (talk) 18:16, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Plus, it would give a chance for the opposing contexts to evolve and upgrade in their separate articles. Nemojda (talk) 18:20, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

This article is close to NPOV. The eventual split will give a good chance for biased POV. Jingiby (talk) 18:50, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Apparently I'm not suggesting a complete split, but the titles already mentioned. These articles would have the role of reinforcing the material of this article. Thus this article's NPOV would remain intact, but on the contrary it would have a larger support on the context. In my opinion. Nemojda (talk) 19:49, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

If there are Greeks that don't speak a Slavic language, then they don't belong in this article anyway--whether their ancestors are ethnically Slavic or not. Notice the title of the article: Slavic speakers. It's not about anyone who speaks Greek as their first language. It's only about the people who speak the one Slavic language spoken in Greek Macedonia. --Taivo (talk) 22:07, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

That's exactly the reason I proposed of creating separate articles about Greek people with ethnic Slavic (Macedonian/Bulgarian) descent. You proved my point. Nemojda (talk) 09:11, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Setting up a new article for Greek speakers of Slavic ethnicity is different than splitting this article. This article is about people in Greece who still speak Slavic and their history in the country. So you still don't understand the point--this article isn't about people named Stepanovich who speak Greek. It's about people who speak Macedonian who live in Greece. --Taivo (talk) 17:47, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Then, why isn't it called Macedonian-speakers of Greek Macedonia rather than Slavic speakers? Nemojda (talk) 18:46, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Because in Greece, Macedonian is called "Slavic", not "Macedonian". It is the result of a consensus a couple of years ago. --Taivo (talk) 20:34, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

It is quite confusing, though. The world isn't Greece. Silesian is a "Slavic dialect", but that's not what we're talking about. In the box, "Slavic dialects" should be changed to "Macedonian" (or "Slavic Macedonian" or whatever), with an appropriate link, and in the very first line "Slavic" should be defined, so people aren't under the impression that it means "Slavic". — kwami (talk) 02:20, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

That's the whole problem, though, Kwami, and it's been discussed here before. Macedonian speakers are called "Slavic" in Greece. The lead probably does, however, need to make that clear. --Taivo (talk) 16:48, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Bulgarian diaspora

@Tonimicho: You seem to have misunderstood the scope of this article. If you read it carefully (and also take a look at the talk page), you will see that it is an article about a Slavic-speaking indigenous linguistic/ethnic population group. They are or have been called Bulgarian, Macedonian, Slavomacedonian, Slavic or, most commonly, just "local". For lack of a better name (or rather: for lack of consensus about a better name), they are in Wikipedia called "Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia". That is "of", not "in", since it covers a group that is indigenous of Greek Macedonia. It does not cover other Slavic speakers in Greece, like the Pomaks, and it does not cover the 43 981 Bulgarians (not "declared Bulgarians", but registered citizens of Bulgaria)) who live and work all over Greece, not only in Macedonia. Bulgarian diaspora is therefore not relevant to this article. Regards! --T*U (talk) 10:55, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Who are really that slavic macedonians by documents (Historical facts with references)

1) Around 950,Byzantine Emperor Constantin Porphyrogenitos stated that city of “Ta Serbia” situated north-western from Thesaloniki,has it’s name from its Serbian founders (around early 7th century A.D.) and in 10th century that same city is mentioned as “Srpchishte” in the manuscript by the Byzantine author John Zonara.

Constantin Porphyrogenitos “De Administrando Imperio” cap.32, pp.152 ed.Bonn, “Starine” 14,1882 pp.16

2) In the year 680 in Bythinia, city of Gordoservon is mentioned whose name is derived from the Serbs resettled in Asia Minor by Byzantine Emperor Constance II from the areas around river Vardar (FYROM) . Isidor,the Episcop of Gordoservon is mentioned in 680/681 and the fact that this town was Episcopal Center gives ground to the thesis that it had large Serbian population. Around year 1200 this city is mentioned as Servochoria (Serbian Habitation) . Constantin Porfyrogenitus “De Administrando Imperio” Erdeljanovich.J. “O naseljavanju Slovena u Maloj Aziji i Siriji od VII do X veka” Glasnik geografskog drushtva vol. VI 1921 pp.189 Lequen,M. “Oriens Christianus” I, 1740, pp.659-660 Micotky,J.”Otiorum Chroate”, Vol. I ,Budapest, 1806, pp.89-112 Niederle,L. “Slovanske starozhitnosti” Dilu II,Svazek pp.389-399; pp. 444-446 Ostrogorski,G.”Bizantisko-Juzhnoslovenski odnosi”,Enciklopedija Jugoslavije 1,Zagreb 1955,pp. 591-599 Ramsay,W.M. “The Historical Geography Of Asia Minor”, London, 1890, pp.183, pp.210

3) Around 1229/1230 Bulgarian Emperor John Asen II wrote an inscription in Trnovo:”I have took the land from Adrianopolis to Drach,Greek,Albanian and also Serbian”.Since Serbian states were situated far north from the line outlined in this commemorative text,it is not unlikely that “Serbian” means an ethnically Serbian enclave,situated much more southerly than political borders of Serbia. Daskalov,H.S. “Otkritija v drevnei stolicji Bolgarskoi,Ternovo”Moskva, 1859 pp.18-19 Dujchev,I. “Car Ivan Asen II” Sofija, 1941 pp.23-24 Makushev,V “Bolgarija v’ koncjah XII i v pervoi polovini XIII veka” ,1872 pp.56-57

4) In the Law of Serbian Emperor Stephan Dushan (Dushanov Zakonik) issued 1349-1354 in Skoplje and Seress following peoples are mentioned in Serbia:Serbs,Greeks,Albanians (Arbanasi) (art.77,82) , Aromanians (Vlasi) (art.32,77,82) , Saxons (Sasi) (art.123) .

Novakovich,S. “Zakonik Stefana Dushana Cara Srpskog 1349-1354″ Beograd 1898

5) Despot Ugljesha in the 1366 letter written and confirmed in Skoplje stated that he is the master of Serbian land,Greece and Pomorje.

Novakovich,S. “Zakonski spomenici Srpskih drzhava srednjeg veka”, 1912, pp.509

6) Patriarch of Constantinople mentioned master of Serbia,Ugljesha in a letter from 1371. Ugljesha’s state was around Lower Struma.

Mikloshich,F & Muller,J. “Acta et diplomata” I, 1860, pp.571

7) The place of 1371 battle at Marica,when Kings Vukashin and Ugljesha, leading armies from their provinces in Old Serbia ,clashed with the Turks, was named “Sirf-Sindughi”-”Serbian defeat”.

Jorga,N. “Geschiste des Osmanischen Reiches” Vol.I, cap IV,pp241

8) In the second half of 14th century, monk Isaiah said that Ugljesha has risen Serbian and Greek army (Srbskija i Grchskiija voiska) and his brother Vukashin,and with that army they confronted the invading Turks. Novakovich,S. “Srbi i Turci XIV i XV veka , 1893,pp.184, Mikloshich ,F. “S.Joannis Chrystostomi homilia in ramos palmarum”, 1845, pp.71 Mikloshich,F. “Chrestomatia Paleoslovenica”, 1861, pp 41

9) In 1395 Mihael Paleologos and his wife Helena established estate to Helena’s father,Master of Serbia,Konstantin Dejanovich.Konstantin’s state was around river Struma.

Mikloshich,F. & Joseph,M. “Acta et dipolomata”,1862, pp.260

10) A 1401 remark from government of Venice says about the envoy of “Konstatntin,master of Serbia,which is around our Drach area” (Constantini domini Servie teritorii,quod est circa teritorium nostrum Durachii) .

Ljubich,S. “Listine” 4,1874, pp.437

11) Sometimes in the beginning of 15th century Bulgarian chronicles are written,where remark that Turkish Sultan Murat had went to conquer either Bulgars or Ugljesha.Ugljesha and King Vukashin gathered a great Serbian army (Sobra sja mnozhestvo voisk Serbskih) .

Bogdan,J. “Archiv fur Slavische philologie” 13, 1891,pp.481; pp.493

12) Dimitar,writer from Kratovo in 1446 said that he begin to translate “Law” for the Archbishoprics of Ohrid from Greek language into Serbian (v ezhe sastaviti mi pisaniem srbskoga ezika sochinenie, rekshe knigu imenuemu zakonik) under order of Ohrid Archbishop Dorotej,who visited him in Kratovo,because Congregational Church in Ohrid did not had that book in Serbian language (po eziku srbskom) but only in Greek.

Kachanovski,V. “Starine” 12,1880 ,pp.255

13) Remains of John Rilski are transferred from Trnovo in the Monastery of Rila.That was described by Vladislav Gramatik,in 1469,who also mentioned Serbian soldiers (Srbskiie voje) in the 1371 Marica battle.

Novakovich,S, “Glasnik Srpskog uchenog drushtva” 22,1867,pp.287

14) Sometime at the end of 15th century Hungarian historian Bonfini wrote about “Macedonia,which is now called Serbia” (“Macedoniam quam Serbua nunc appelant”) .

Ant.Bonfini “Rerum Hungarii Indec.” II lib IX,Viennae, 1774 pp.248a

15) In the year 1515 Gjuragj Kratovian was burnt.In his biography stands:…From the Serbian root and guided by Holy Spirit you have left fatherland and relatives in Kratovo and moved to the Sardakian City (Ot korene srpskago i douhom svetim vodimi ostavil jesi otachastvo i srodniki izhe v’ Kratovja, prishel jesi k’ Gradou Sardaskomu) .

Novakovich.S. “Glasnik Srpskog uchenog drushtva” 21,1867, pp.154

16) Stephan Gerlach wrote in 1574 that relative of Mehmed Pasha “Became Archbishop in Bulgaria,and his seat is ten days away from Adrianopolis in the city of Ohrid,on the border between Epirus and Serbia” (Zu eineim Erz-bischopff in der Bulgarey gemacht worden,hat seinen Sitz zehn Tagreiss von Adrianopol,in der Stadt Ochrida,in der Grantzen Epiri und Servien) .

Gerlach,S. “Tage-Buch”,Frankfurt,1674, pp.64a

17) Jakov Soranzzo from Venice arrives in Skoplje,in the province of Serbia, in the year 1575.

Matkovich.P.”Rad. Jugosl. Akad.” 124,1895, pp.131

18) In Kraljevo (Romania) ,priest John has written in 1580 that he is a Serb from Kratovo (Srbin od mjasta Kratova) .

Stojanovich,Lj.”Stari Srpski zapisi i natpisi” I,1902 ,pp.752

19) ) Martin Crusius in his book mentions”Vscopia, or Scopia, a great and populous City of Turkey in the K. of Servia”.

Crusius, M. “Turcogreciae libri octo”, 1584, pp.5

20) In the year 1584 Alexander Komulovich mentioned that in Serbia (Servia) ,Skoplje is principal city (Scopia principale citta) and that it is situated in the middle of the province (nel mezzo della provincia) .

Fermendzhin,E. “Acta Bosniae” “Monum. Slav. Mer. XXIII 1892 pp.39

21) In 17th Century,Hadji Kalpha,a Turkish geographer recorded that mountains of the Castoria district are peopled by Serbs and Aromanians.He also mentions that on the bank of the lake between Seres,Thesaloniki and Siderocaps there is a village inhabited by Greeks,Serbs and Aromanians.

“Rumeli und Bosna,Geographisch beschrieben von Mustapha Ben Abdalaih Hadschi Chalfa aus dem turkischen ubersetzt von J. von Hammer” Wien 1812 pp.80; pp.97

22) Mitropolit Jeremiah from the City of “Pelagon” (Bitolj) went to Russia in 1603 saying that he arrived from Serbian land.

Archive of the Russian Ministry For Foreign Affairs, Year 7112,Dec.19

23) In the October of 1605 delegation of monks went in Russia and among them was Diakon Avksentij from the Serbian land, Nicholas Monastery in Strumica (Serbskoi zemli nikolskoga monastira chto na Strumicja,Diakon Avksentii) .

“Snoshenia Rossii po djelam cerkovnim” ,I,1858

24) In 1609,in the archive of Vatican,catholic church in Skoplje Serbia is mentioned (La chiesa di Scopia in Servia) .

Horvat,K. “Glasnik zemaljskog muzeja u Bosni i Hercegovini” XXI,1909

25) Mitropolit Sergius said in Russia that he was appointed as Mitropolit in Greven by Archbishop of Ohrid,Nectarij of Serbian land (Posvjashchen on na mitropoliju grevenskuju arhiepiskop ohridskim ,Nektariem serbskoi zemli) .

“Snoshenia Rossii po djelam cerkovnim” II, 1860 pp.29

26) Comment by Dominican Nicolo Longi from Dubrovnik states that “it is useful to send 3-4 Serbian priest in Serbia, because in Nish, Kragujevac, Jagodina, Crna Gora (Skopska Crna Gora-I.M) and Kratovo Serbian is spoken”

Acta. S. Congr. Vol.3. Fol.24 A D Congr. diie 20 decembris 1622

27) A part of Matija Masarek’s report based on a visit throughout the Serbian dioceze in 1623-1624 ,reflecting the ethnicity of Kratovo.

“Cratovo, dove saranno 40 fouchi di Catolici….habitata da Turchi di qualita, Serviani , et 160 anime piu Catoliche”

Visite e Colllegi, Vo.1 f66r-82r

28) Congregation approves purchase of a house in Skoplje ( ” della Casa in Scopie ” ) in which four or five young Serbs (“4, o 5 giovani Servian”) are to be trained and send into the Illyrian College in Loretto ( ” Collego Illirico di Loreto ” )

Roma, 25 marzo 1628

Lettere, vol. 7, f.36v-37r

29) Archbishop Bianki of Bar divided Serbia into upper and lower.In the area of Upper, he sorted Prokuplje, Novo Brdo, Trepcha, Janjevo, Skopska Crna Gora, Skoplje and Kratovo,places where “all Catholics are of Serbian speech”.In Lower Serbia’s domain Prizren, Guri and Shegec were included by him.

“Arch. S. Congr. Visitte.Vol 16. Fol. 239.

30) Archbishop Bianki mentiones an epidemic of plague in Serbia and the newly appeared disease in Skoplje, Janjevo and Novo Brdo.

“Va p doi mesi cheo mi trovo in Servia visitando queste vile contorno Prisren che e Servia Inferiore, che la Servia Superore questa esta passat e stata gran mortalita della pesta, e che p alcuni mesie stata cessata.Hora di novo si trovano loughli infetati Scopia,Jagnevo, e Montenevo”…

….Prisren, il di 29 ottobre…

…Giorgio Bjanchi, Arciv d’ Antivari et Primate di Servia.

SOCG, Vol 60f. 176r-177v.

31) Archbishop of Ohrid Avram in 1634 arrived in Russia with escort.When asked,they said they were Greeks from the Serbian land of Ohrid (Grechane Serpskie zemli iz Ahridona Goroda) .

Archive of the Russian Ministry Of Foreign Affairs, Year 7142,No 8

32) Addressing the Russian Emperor Mihail in 1641, Mitropolit of Skoplje said that he is from Serbian land (Serbskie zemli Semion mitropolit) .

Dimitrijevich.S. “Spom. Srp. Kralj. Akad.” 38, 1908 pp.60a, pp 60b

33) In 1644 a Serb,Dimitrije Nikolajev (Serbjanin’ Dmitrei Nikolaev) from Kastoria, arrived in Russia.

Archive of the Russian Ministry For Foreign Affairs,Year 7156

34) Petar Bogdani had wrote in 1650 a letter of recommendation for his relative Andria Bogdani from Albania ,saying about him that he is recommended for Archbishopric of Ohrid in Serbia (Proposto per L’Archivescovato d’ Ochrida su in confini della Servia) .

Fermendzhin,E. “Starine” 25,1892, pp.172

35) in 1651 Mitropolit of Kratovo wrote to Russian Emperor “My forefathers and ancestors are lords of the Serbian land of Kratovo”.

Dimitrijevich,S. “Glasnik Srpske kraljevske akademije”, 58,1900.

36) 1652 In the documents of Russian Imperial House,it is recorded that Serbian Mitropolit Mihailo (Serbskii Mitropolit Mihailo) had dinner with the Russian Emperor.He is the same person from reference above.

“Filologicheskaja nabljudenija A.H. Vostokova”.1865, pp.184

37) 1653 Jeromonah Damaskin,wrote a letter to his cousin,mitropolit Mihailo of Kratovo,in which there is a statement about mercy of the Russian Emperor towards our Serbian language (Jeziku nashemu Srbskom) .

Stanojevich,Lj “Stari Srpski zapisi i natpisi”, I,1902.No 1547,No 1562

38) Catholic missionaries in Serbia (Servia) are mentioned and among them mr.Stefan Kratovian (In Cratovo d.Stefano da Cratovo) .

Fermendzhin,E. “Starine” 25,1892, pp.194

39) In an inscription from 1659 stands:”Mihail Mitropit, visitor of Holy God’s Grave in the Holy Jerusalem, from the Serbian land city of Kratovo” (Mihail Mitropolit,poklonik bozhia groba svetago Ierusalima ot Srbskie zemli grada Kratova) .

“Chtenija v imperatorskom’ obshtesvja istorii i drevnosti Rossiiskih pri Moskovskom univerziteta” Moskva 1896 II 5th part pp.4a

40) In 1665 Archbishop Petar of Sophia wrote that:”Now in this Kingdom of Serbia there is one Metropolitan church,that of Skoplje”(Al presente si trovano in cotesto regno di Servia una chiesa Metropolitana,cioe,Scopia) ,than saying that Pope Urban VIII in his declaration on foundation of “del collegio Illyrico” says that there are three Biscopates in Serbia :those of Skoplje,Justinijana called Prizren ,and Nish (Che sono del regno di Servia tre vescovati:cioe Scupi,ovvero Scopia,Justiniana detta Prisren,et anche Nissa) .

Fermendzhin,E. “Starine” 25 ,pp18

41) Peter Heylin,English geographer writes under the word “Servia”: Principal towns hereof : 1.Nissa 2.Vidina (by the Turks called Kiratow) 3.Cratova……..9.Scopi,by Ptolemy called Scupi.

Heylin,P. “Cosmographie in four books” London,1666

42) In 1666 Mitropolit Ananije of Cratovo wrote to Russian Emperor, mentioning “Mihailo,Mitropolit of Serbs” (Mihaila Mitropolita Srbian) .

Dimitrijevich,S. “Spomenica Srpske kraljevske akademije”,38,1900 pp.64b

43) 1667 Emperor Leopold gave some privileges to the Greeks (Graeci) and Serbs (Rasciani) who emigrated toward Northern Hungary and most of them arrived from Macedonia (Praesertim autem ex Macedonia adventum) .

Vitkovich,G “Glasnik Srpskog uchenog drushtva”,67,1887,pp.128;pp.131

44) It is stated in the “Report about Serbian or Skopje’s Diocese” ( Relazione della diocesi di Servia o Skopia ) about “Main places in Serbia : Prizren , Skoplje….” (” Li loughi principali della Servia: Prisren, Scopia ….”)

Fermendzhin E., “Starine” 25, 1892. pp. 195-196

45) 1676 Secretary of the society “De Propaganda Fide” wrote a report to Pope Inocentius about Catholic Church in Bosnia and neighboring countries, in which Biscop of Skoplje,Andrea Bogdani in Serbia (Servia) is mentioned.

Horvat,K. “Glasnik Zemaljskog Muzeja Bosne i Hercegovine” XXI,1909,pp.393

46) Around 1680 Urban Cerri mentioned in his report to Pope Inocentius XI archbiscop of Skoplje in Serbia.

Theiner,A.” Vetera. Monum. Slav. Mer. Histor. Ill.” II, 1875,pp 213

47) Archbishop of Skoplje writes about Serbia and says that Skoplje is capital city in Serbia (Scopia….metropolli di Servia) .Further,He mentions that Orthodox houses in Skoplje are Greek and Serbian (Case Greche e Serviane) .

Theiner,A. ibidem, pp. 220

48) Canonical Visit by Archbishop of Skoplje Peter Bogdani in 1680 indicated that inhabitans of Skoplje are “Greeks, Serbs, Jews, Armenians”. “Scritture orig. rif. nelle. congr. gen. vol. 482 ad congr. die 5 maii 1681 Nro 24″

49) In 1685 Catholic Archbishop of Skoplje Petar Bogdani wrote to Cardinal Cibo saying that Turks had thrown him into exile from entire Serbia (da tutta la Servia) .

Horvat,K. “Glasnik zemaljskog muzeja u Bosni i Hercegovini” XXI, 1909, pp. 403

50) Mitropolit Jevtimije from Serbian land of Skoplje (Serbskija zemli goroda Skopija) arrived in Russia in 1687 where he delivered a request in which he says that he is Mitropolit of Serbian land of Skoplje (Mitropolit Serbskije zemli Skopskie Crkve) .

Dimitrijevich,S. “Glasnik Srpske Kraljevske Akademije” 60, 1901 pp.154

51) In 1690 Catholic Bishop of Cotor, Marin Drago,reports that “Skoplje is inhabited with Turks, Serbs of Greek Rite and Catholics”,

“Scritture riferite nei congressi – Servia.Vol. I, Fol. 120″

52) Austrian Emperor Leopold proclaimed Jovan Monastirlija from Bitolj a Vojvoda (Military chieftain) of the Serbian nation in Austria in 1691.

Trifunoski,F.J. “Makedoniziranje Juzhne Srbije” Beograd 1995 pp.24

53) Bratan Ivanov,a Serb from Macedonian land arrived in Russia (Makedonskie zemli Serbin’ Bratan’ Ivanov) in the year 1704. Archive of the Russian Ministry For Foreign Affairs,Year 1704 Kapterev,N.A. “Harakter otnoshenii Rossii k Pravoslavnomu Vostoku v XVI i XVII stoletija” 1914 pp.348

54) Dimitrije Petrov from Kichevo arrived in Russia to collect funds for building church dedicated to St. Demetrius in Kichevo.He declared himself as coming from the Serbian land of Kichevo (Serbskie zemli goroda Karacheva) .The arrival is recorded as being by the: “(From) Serbian land (from) Ohrid’s Eparchy (of the) Krachevite city Serb Dmitrei Petrov”: “Serbskie zemli Arhidonskija Eparhi Krachevskogo goroda Serbjanin Dmitrei Petrov”.

Archive of the Russian Ministry For Foreign Affairs,Year 1706, No. 7

55) Archbishop of Bar, Vichentije Zmajevich mentiones that “main places in Serbia are: Belgrade, Smederevo, Nish, Skoplje, Prokuplje, Novo Brdo, Prishtina, Trepcha, Prizren and Pech, and forts Kachanik, Tetovo, Janjevo, Vuchitrn, Mitrovica, Djakovica and Novi Pazar” “Scritture riferite nei congressi – Albania. Vol. V, Fol. 175″

56) In 1723 Gerard Cornelius von Driesch,secretary of the Austrian delegation heading for Constantinople, mentioned that in Pirot there are “Greeks and Serbs in those lands” (Grichen oder Raitzen dieses landes) .He also mentioned place named Grobblian located eastern of Sofia saying that the greater part of its inhabitants are Serbs (Raitzen) .

Cornelius,G.V.D. “Historische nachricht von der Rom. Kayser.Gross-Botschaft nacht Konstantinopol” Nurnberg 1723 pp.84; pp.102

57) The Urgent Congregation of Roman Catholic Church in 1742 issued an report which states that “Serbs of Greek Rite” are peopling Croatia,Slavonia,Hungary,Serbia,Thrace,Macedonia,Albania and Montenegro.

Archivum Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide.”Congregazioni Particolari”Vol.106.Fol.1

58) In the year 1744 Russian Empress Elisabeth addressed the “Noble and honest lords of Serbian lands in Macedonia,Skandaria,Montenegro and Primorje of Montenegrin people,to the governors , dukes, princess and captains as well as their spiritual and secular masters”.

Milutinovich,S.”Istorija Crne Gore”,1835

59) In a 1756 letter main cities in Serbia (La Servie) are mentioned, and among them Skoplje ,where Serbian Archbishop reside; Cratovo,by which province is named (Scopia, ou reside Archeveque Rascien; Cratovo, qui donne son nom au Gouvernement) .

“Le Voyager francois, ou la connoissance de l’ ancien et du noveau monde mis au jour par M. l’ Abbe Delaporte”, tome XXIII, Paris,1777

60) Catholic Archbishop of Skoplje Matija Masarek, an Albanian, reported that the city as inhabited with “Grece, scismatici Serviani, Ebrei et Armeni” in a report written c.1770.

In 1790 he mentioned in his report that Turks are suspicious of Greeks and Serbs of Skoplje because they have sent letters to Russia. “Scritture rif. nei congressi – Servia. Vol. III”, marzo 1790

61) A group of French staff officers in 1807,with the permission of the Turks, traveled around Macedonia compiling a statistical survey of the population. Apart from Greeks,Turks,Albanians and Aromanians they found only Serbs.

Slijepchevich, Dj. “The Macedonian Question”,The American Institute For Balkan Affairs, Chicago,1958

62) Correspondence by the Czech philologist Dobrovski to a Slovenian colleague B. Kopitar between 1809-1810 contains this opinion by Dobrovski: “I have little regard for geographical names.Dubrovnikers, Macedonians, Bosnians are nevertheless Serbs” : “Die geographischen Benennungen kummern mich wenig. Ragusiner, Macedonier, Bosnien sind doch Serben”. Jagich, V. “Briefwechsel zwischen Dobrowsky und Kopitar” Berlin, 1885 pp.34

63) A statement by Joseph Muller, Austrian, Medical officer in Turkish Army in early 19th century, who worked in Albania about Slavs in neighboring countries that were visited by him.Dr. Muller was a fluent speaker of the Serbian language. “Together with Slavic community of Spiz on Triplex confinium and smaller communities in Skadar,Podgorica and Spuzh,Serbian tribes live in eastern mountains Altin-Ili in Dibr-Sipre in the area of Struga as well as in eastern coast of the Ohrid Lake, further in the valleys of Rezna and Prespa in the city of Monastir and its northeastern surrounding, in the valley Srebrnica,and by name on communities of Optorosh,Shrbica,Mahmusha,Mrtvuca,along the left, eastern coast of White Drim in communities of Kremovik, Mirozhizh, Cuprevo, Grebnik, Zlokuche.” Joseph Muller, “Albanien,Rumelien und die Osterreichisch-Montenegrinische Grenze”,Prague,1844

64) “The Serbian pastoral tribes are separated from the Bulgarian agrarian population of Macedonia by the Greeks, who inhabit the central and coastal regions of this great land”. Cyprian Robert, “Les Slaves de Turque” Paris, 1844, Vol. II pp.234

65) “Serbian branch includes, with the exception of Serbian Principate, Montenegro, Bosnia, also many other enclaves in Albania and Macedonia” Cyprian Robert, “Die Slaven der Turkei” Stuttgart, vol.II pp. 278

66) Edmund Spencer’s comment about ethnicity of peoples in the region of Macedonia, visited by him in the mid-19th century: “The inhabitants are for the most part composed of Rayahs, a mixed race of Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbians, who, it cannot be doubted, would join to the man their brethren in faith of Serbia and Upper Moesia.It must therefore be evident that the great danger to be apprehended to the rule of the Osmanli in these provinces, is the successful inroad of the Serbian nationality into Macedonia; with this people they have the tradition of right, and their former greatness, aided by the powerful ties of race and creed” Edmund Spencer, “Travels in European Turkey”, vol. II , London, 1851, pp. 30

67) “Serbian tribes are by language and according to origin in possession of the greatest part of western part of European Turkey.At east they are distributed up to Nishava and Struma, Strumion of the Ancients, which goes in the Gulf of Orpheus.From southern to the northern border of Greek language, they inhabit Bosnia, Herzegovina, Old Macedonia.Montenegrins and Dalmatians, although not subjected by the Turks, are of Serbian tribe” Ruestow, W “Der Krieg in der Tuerkey 1875-1876″, Zurich, 1876

68) From 1880 to 1881 the Serbian Brsjaci Revolt (Brsjachka Buna) was fought in the areas of Demir-Hisar,Porech and Kichevo.The leaders of this uprising were local Chetniks:Ilija Delija,Rista Kostadinovich,Micko Krstich and Andjelko Tanasovich. Veselinovich,V.M. “Brsjachka Buna” Beograd 1905

69) A 1854 request of the inhabitants of village Selce near Debar to HRM King Alexander Karadjordjevich. 22 Oktovra Arsenije Janovich,Gavril Janovich,Damjan Markovich, Vasil Milich, Tane Ninovich, Trifun Grujovich, Stanisha Nikolich, Cvetko Damjanovich, Despot Potnikovich, Gligorije Naumovich i Filip Aleksich proshenijem od 21 t.m. mole Knjaza da bi se obshtini ninoi Selachkoi u Albaniji za Crkvu shtogod knjiga pravitelstvom srpskim za sirotinske crkve u Turskoj nabavljeni podarilo. Djambazovski, K. et al. “Arhivska Gragja za istorijata na Makedonskiot narod” Beograd 1979 vol I, book 2, pp. 235

70) On the basis of the Priviligies by Rudolph II many thousands Serbian familes emigrated from Bosnia and Macedonia under the Dukes Vukovich and Pjasonich.

Czoernig, von Carl “Ethnographie der oesterrichischem Monarchie”, Wien, 1885, Vol II pp.169

71) “It is understandable that the Turks preferred the patient and submissive Bulgar to the rebellious Serb or Greek. Since the Serbian principality had gained its freedom, the Turks regarded every Serb who declared himself to be such as a rebellious conspirator against the Turkish regime.

This circumstance was widely exploited by the Bulgars in order to spread their propaganda among the Serbs outside the principality. Whoever was reluctant to become a Bulgar and persisted in calling himself a Serb was denounced to the Turks as conspiring with Serbia, and could expect severe punishment. Serbian priests were maltreated; permission was refused to open Serbian schools and those that were already in existence were closed; Serbian monasteries were destroyed.

In order to avoid persecution, the population renounced its nationality and called itself Bulgarian……..during the last thirty or forty years, propaganda has been rife in which the Bulgars have encouraged the Turks to act against Serbs and Greeks. Hence, throughout Macedonia, Thrace and Dardania, Slavs are considered to be Bulgars, which is quite incorrect. On the contrary, the Slavs in Macedonia are incapable of understanding a Bulgar from Jantra.

If it is desired to designate these Slavs correctly, than they must be considered as Serbs, for the Serbian name is so popular among them that for example male children are sometimes christened “Srbin” [Serb]*. the Serbian hero of the folk poems, Marko Kraljevich is obviously the Serbian ruler in Macedonia.”

Alexander von Heksch “Die Donau von ihrem Ursprung bis an die Mundung”,Leipzig,1885,pp.63

• On the subject of appearance of the male name “Srbin” (a Serb) ,see:

“Licno ime Srbin u krajevima danasnje BJRM (“male name Srbin in the areas of todays FYROM”) “,pp.41-44 in: Jovan F. Trifunoski “Makedoniziranje Juzne Srbije”, Beograd, 1995

72) In 1886 Russian publicist I.S. Jastrebov published his book “Obichai i pesni tureckih serbov v Prizren,Ipek,Morava,i Dibra” (“Customs and songs of the Turkish Serbs in Prizren,Pech,Morava and Debar) in which the following reference to the important Serb custom of “Slava” is found: “Slava is celebrated by Serbs not only in Serbia,in Austria,Hungary,Bosnia,Montenegro,Kosovo,Morava and area of Prizren,but also in the areas of Skopje,Veles,Prilep,Bitola and Ohrid,including also Debar and the area of Tetovo.All inhabitants in the mentioned area who speak with the Slavo-Serbian dialect keep that custom holy.”

Jastrebov,I.S. “Obichai i Pesni tureckih serbov v Prizren,Ipek,Morava i Dibra”,1886,pp.1-2

73) “Divided by faith on three parts, divided out of political destiny, under various jurisdictions, Serbian race has the missfortune to be dispersed over various provinces, names of which hinther its unity.Serbia, Old Serbia, (in today’s Turkish vilayets of Kosovo and Sandjak) , Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dalmatia, with Dubrovnik, southern parts of Hungary (Bachka, Srem, Baranja) , Slavonia, Croatia”

Dozon,A. “L’ Europee Serbe, chants popularies heroiques (Serbie, Bosnie et Herzegovine, Croatie, Dalmatie, Montenegro”, Paris, 1888, pp.15-16

74) An observation by the Austro-Hungarian Field Marshal Anton Tuma von Waldkampf: “In Macedonia Serbs are living, partly in the great plain of Bitolj,partly in Vardar plain and are particularly compact in the valley of Tetovo” Anton Tuma von Waldkampf “Griechland,Makedonien und Sudalbanien”,Leipzig, 1897 pp-214-215

75) A conclusion by the linguist Petar Draganov about the songs of “Macedonian Slavs”:”It is a strikingly obvious that within the circle of Cars,Kings,dukes,heroes and other individuals of these songs one can find only persons and significant events from the medieval,new and latest Serbian history”.

P.Draganov “Makedonsko-Slavjanskii Sbornik” pp.VIII (n.d.)

76) “Serbs are in the south of Dalmatia, in the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia, at the south of the Kingdom of Hungary,in Macedonia” Henry, Rene “Questions d’ Autriche-Hongrie et Question d’ Orient” Paris, 1905, pp.207

77) Remark of Dr. Karl Oestreich about Skoplje: “The city’s population consist of all possible elements-some of whom have come out in favor of the Bulgarian Exarchate and call themselves ‘Bulgars’-and Albanians or Mohammedanized Serbs. Although it is situated south of Sar-planina, Skoplje is the chief city of Old Serbia…..the rural population, although it is Serbian in origin, has for the most parts given its support to the Exarchate, since a Bulgarian bishop is for them more acceptable than a Greek bishop of the Ecumenical Church to which they formerly belonged. This is how the rural population around Skoplje has today come to be mostly Bulgarian; the same is true of the purely Serbian Tetovo”.

Karl Oestreich “Makedonien” Geographische Zeitschrift, Vol.X, No.1, 1904,pp 198-199

78) Referring to the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate in Macedonia,Karl Oestreich noted: “A considerable part of the rural population, although it then felt to be Serbian, seized the first opportunity of obtaining Slavic priests and so declared itself to be Bulgarian ……Whoever joined the Bulgarian Exarchate was registered in the Turkish population records as “bulgari-milet” and to the world as large was a Bulgar”.

Karl Oestreich “Die Bevolkerung von Makedonien”,Geographische Zeitschrift,Vol. XI, No.1,1905,pp.291

79) Theodor von Sosnosky wrote about Bulgarian Propaganda in Macedonia: “What this methods were the Greeks, Serbs and Turks of this unhappy land felt on their own backs. By plunder and arson, rape and murder, armed bands tried to make them come to the Bulgarian side”. Theodor von Sosnosky “Die Balkanpolitik Osterreich-Ungars seit 1886,Stuttgart-Berlin,1914, Vol.II,pp.129

80) During World War I, the Bulgarian troops under the command of first lieutenant Alexander Protogerov (a high-ranking VMRO member) were ordered to inflict reprisals upon the population east of Kumanovo for an attack made on some Bulgarian troops .Before the reprisal measures were begun, the entire population declared that it was Bulgarian, purely in order to avoid being punished.Protogerov was greatly perplexed. Here is a quote by Gilbert in der Maur regarding this event: “Then Protogerov’s aides had an idea: they asked who celebrated the ‘slava’.Those who did so were shot, since the celebration of the ‘slava’ is a sign that one is a Serb:it is a custom which the Bulgarians do not have”. Gilbert in der Maur “Jugoslawien einst und jetz” Leipzig-Vienna, 1936,pp.330

81) “Although the Serbian national epic found its fullest realization in the regions of the northwest, nevertheless a considerable part of its material was taken from Southern Serbia.And Vice Versa: many poems which originated elsewhere found their way to Southern Serbia, were sung here and inherited”. Alois Schmaus, “Dichtung”,”Mazedonien: Leben und Gestalt einer Landschaft”,Berlin,1940 pp.106

82) A List of topographical names in Old Serbia (FYROM) with the characteristic Serbian root “Srb-”: Srbinovo, near Tetovo; Srbica, Srbjani , Srbjan Dolence in the Area of Bitolj (Bitola,Monastiri) ;Srbce and Srbci south from Bitolj;Srbinovo in the area of Gorna Dzhumaja (Pirin area in Bulgaria) ;Srbinica,river source near the village of Podles. V.K’nchov “Makedonija” ,Sofia,1900 pp.256 M.A. Vujucic “Recnik mesta u oslobodjenoj oblasti Stare Srbije”,1914,pp.241 V.K’nchov Ibidem pp.191 V. K’nchov Ibidem pp. 238 V. Radovanovic: “Tikves i Rajec”, Etnogr. Zbornik XXIX pp.457 J.F. Trifunoski “Makedoniziranje Juzne Srbije”,Beograd,1995,pp.33 --Boris Godunov (talk) 03:32, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Macedonian speakers or Macedonian/Bulgarian speakers

The long-term consensus on this article is that the Greek Slavic-speakers speak Macedonian. User:Yogisenact is trying to push through a change to that without discussing here on the Talk Page. He is invited to present his evidence and arguments here in order to build a new WP:CONSENSUS if possible. --Taivo (talk) 20:45, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Notable persons - specification

A question has arisen about specifying notable persons who are Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia. Should they be identified as "Bulgarian"? I say "no". The long-standing general consensus on this page is that these Greco-Slavs are Macedonian and that we don't pick and choose who is Macedonian and who is Bulgarian. --Taivo (talk) 19:25, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Taivo, I'm not quite sure that this was the best way to refactor the page and summarize the question. That summary actually seems to miss the point. The question (which - for those interested - arose here in connection with this edit), actually is not whether all Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia should be identified as Bulgarians, but rather whether the following three individuals included in the Notable persons section: Lyubka Rondova, Atanas Dalchev, and Hristo Smirnenski should be identified as such. As far as I know, there is no contention about them being Bulgarian. Tropcho (talk) 19:55, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't agree with putting the ethnicity of anyone listed in that section as it's not very relevant. The only thing that should be there is their reason for notability (i.e. "Atanas Dalchev, poet, critic and translator"). --Local hero ^talk 14:49, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

What is your reason to say that the ethnic affiliation is not relevant? And what would be the downside of including it? Tropcho (talk) 23:36, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I just read the article and seems to lead the reader towards the conclusion that the subject of the article is in fact more or less ethnic Macedonians. I see how the reader could be confused, when reading an entire article, and then finding out that most of the prominent representatives of the group were not ethnic Macedonians. Is this why ethnicity is not applicable? I mean, it is generally used in articles about ethnically diverse regions etc. Why not use it when describing a group that is not ethnically homogeneous? --Laveol ^T 23:51, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

With this particular group, there are not "multiple ethnicities" involved. This is a single ethnic group that speaks a single language. It is, indeed, ethnically homogenous. While the majority of evidence points to Macedonian, there is some small number of linguistics who prefer to point toward Bulgaria. The majority view is to include these Greek Slavic speakers with Macedonian. --Taivo (talk) 00:39, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

So, we should proceed with removing non-ethnic Macedonians from the list. It is as simple as that. Otherwise, we get an article that contradicts itself. --Laveol ^T 01:12, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Come to think of it again, why even include people who never self-identified as "Slavic Speakers of Greek Macedonia" or even as "Slavic Speakers" etc? Not to mention the fact that most of them had already passed away before the term was coined. --Laveol ^T 01:17, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't find ethnicity relevant because it has nothing to do with the individuals' inclusion in the list. All they need to be is Slavic-speaking from this part of Macedonia and notable. If this article is to cover all Slavic-speakers from Aegean Macedonia, we shouldn't remove the Bulgarians from the list. I haven't read the entirety of the article, but if it does mostly discuss ethnic Macedonians and is contradictory in including notable Bulgarians, should a separate article for Bulgarians in Greece be created? --Local hero ^talk 03:28, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I think we might be touching on the very sensitive topic of why this article is here in the first place. And I'm not sure we're able to tackle this question right now. I am starting to have more and more doubts, every time I come back and start reading the article and the talkpage. The very lead says they are a linguistic minority living in Greece. The people on the list were definitely not living in Greece (in their majority) and they were not an exclusively linguistic minority - as part of the Empire they were a religious minority, too. And I'm not even touching on the issue on whether they were speaking Macedonian. Currently the article about Bulgarians in Greece redirects here. God knows why Bulgarians are not discussed. I do not mean the old Macedonians or Bulgarians question, I mean the sizeable Bulgarian minority of economic immigrants to Greece. It increasingly looks like we've made a huge botch of the article by merging them (or possibly by removing all trace of the Bulgarians that are actually Slavic speakers and live in Greece). --Laveol ^T 06:43, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

There is some confusion here. This article is not about all Slavic speakers living in Greek Macedonia regardless of why they are living there or when they came. It is not about Bulgarian economic immigrants to Greece. It is about the historic population of Slavic speakers who live there. As such, they speak a single dialect/variety of the Macedonian language. --Taivo (talk) 07:24, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what the article says. And that's why I'm surprised that Bulgarians in Greece redirects here. And that a big portion of the notable people listed here have never actually spoken Macedonian. Sounds like a huge POV fork to me, at least at its present state.--Laveol ^T 07:40, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

One of the problems that make this messy is that there are Bulgarian nationalists who claim that the Slavic language historically spoken in Greece is Bulgarian and not Macedonian. The majority of linguists place it with Macedonian, but the minority who place it with Bulgarian are vocal. --Taivo (talk) 07:45, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I feel like we are talking in different languages here. My question concerns the people listed here who have never spoken this language, since it is the language that defines the subject of the article. And to what article should they belong to? They were Slavic speakers, that is for sure. They originate from what is now Greek Macedonia. But they are not within the group that is discussed here. So, should we remove them? Or should we explain the situation? --Laveol ^T 23:00, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

We're not actually talking different languages. When it comes to those three individuals, we have to ask these questions: 1) Are they natives of Greek Macedonia? 2) Do they speak the Slavic language of Greek Macedonia as their first language? 3) Do they identify with Greek Macedonia as their "motherland"? If the answer to these questions is "Yes", then they should be listed, but without the "Bulgarian" label. They are not "Bulgarian", they are Slavs of Greek Macedonia. In Wikipedia, we regard them as nominally "Macedonian" by consensus. That way we don't get into the political circus of "Are they Macedonian or are they Bulgarian?" However, if we answer "No" to one of more of these questions, then they should not be included here, since they aren't therefore "Slavs of Greek Macedonia". --Taivo (talk) 01:21, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I tend to agree with User:Local_hero that if the article is to cover all Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia (as the title warrants), then the historical Bulgarian population of the region (not recent immigrants) should also be included, given that Bulgarian is a Slavic language. In fact, as far as I can tell (I have not read the article in detail), the article already discusses the struggles for ecclesiastical and educational independence of the local Bulgarian communities in the 19th century, and the later political struggles (IMRO). Laveol?

Taivo, do I understand correctly that you are suggesting that we should identify as "Macedonians" or "Slavs of Greek Macedonia" even those of the Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia who self-identified as Bulgarians and who considered the Slavic language of Greek Macedonia to be a dialect of Bulgarian? Could you show me where consensus was reached about that? Tropcho (talk) 20:27, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

And another question(@Local hero): I agree that ethnicity or language are not of primary importance, but isn't it natural when one sees in the list e.g. "Atanas Dalchev, poet", to ask in what language he wrote, or, in the case of e.g. "Anton Yugov, politician" to know in what country he was active (Yugov was Prime Mininster of Bulgaria, 1956- 1962)? We are dealing with a multiethnic region after all. In that sense, it seems to me that it's only added value if we specify the ethnic or language affiliation. What would be a downside of specifying that? Tropcho (talk) 20:36, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Read back through the archives, Tropcho. It has been discussed on numerous occasions and the resulting consensus on what to call these native Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia has always been to call their language "Macedonian" even though Bulgarian linguists often call it "Bulgarian". Otherwise, one is forced to draw a non-existent line between the speakers who call their Slavic language "Macedonian" and the speakers who call their Slavic language "Bulgarian" even though it's the same language in Greek Macedonia. The "Macedonian" and "Bulgarian" labels in that part of Greece have nothing to do with ethnicity or language and everything to do with political affiliation. That's why the Wikipedia consensus in this article is to keep out of the political fray and to not label individuals as "Macedonian" or "Bulgarian". --Taivo (talk) 21:23, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I can't seem to find where this particular point (how we should refer to people from that region who explicitly self-identified as Bulgarian) was discussed and consensus reached. Could you please provide a link? Furthermore, if we assume that a line indeed does have to be drawn, and if one adopts the approach suggested in your last comment, one would still have to draw that non-existent line between Bulgarian and Macedonian, albeit elsewhere, isn't this correct? Also, what is the presumption that a line has to be drawn based on? Isn't it possible that people with different self-identification live (or lived; it's important to acknowledge the complicated population dynamics of the region) side by side in the same area? Tropcho (talk) 12:58, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

You still completely and totally miss the point. The Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia are not two groups of people who self-identify differently. It is one group of people--ethnically, linguistically, and historically. Other Slavs who have migrated into Greek Macedonia (for jobs, etc.) are not included in this article. I assume that all you did was scan the section titles in the archives. You need to read the entire text to find the discussions. They were never neatly wrapped in a bow with a clear title for you. If a person needs to be specifically identified as a "Bulgarian" or "Macedonian", then they don't belong in this list. If you want them to be overtly called "Bulgarians", then put them in the list at "Bulgarian people" (assuming such an article exists). --Taivo (talk) 17:27, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Your assumption is wrong. I read through different sections and searched for some key phrases that I would expect to be part of such a discussion about Slavs from Greek Macedonia who self-identify as Bulgarians. I only found a partially relevant but not very conclusive discussion from 2009. I believe that it is up to the person making a claim about existing consensus to substantiate it. (And this should be easy to do, if such a discussion did really take place.) Your evasiveness over such a minor point doesn't really lend credibility to your claims.

Second, your statement about Slavic speakers not being two groups seems to contradict some of the facts. E.g. according to your three step procedure, Lyubka Rondova would qualify as a "Slavic speaker" and a "nominal Macedonian". However, she self-identifies as Bulgarian, unlike other Slavic speakers from the same region who feel they are ethnic Macedonians. This is just one example. The same could be said about a large number of people presently on the Notables list, e.g. Vasil Chakalarov, Atanas Dalchev, Gotse Delchev, Blagoy Shklifov.

And just to get this straight, in your opinion, have any native Bulgarian communities existed in Aegean Macedonia in the last 200 years? Tropcho (talk) 00:56, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

The issue has been stable and non-controversial since the last discussion in the 2009s or 2008s. You are the one stirring up controversy where none has existed for years. The point is that the native Slavic community of Greek Macedonia is not Bulgarian. That is a political POV that is not valid. We don't overtly call them "Macedonian" either, but they are "Macedonian" in the sense that they live in Greek Macedonia. The way you have marked them as of this writing ("an officer in the Bulgarian army", e.g.) is not a problem. It doesn't label X, Y or Z as "Bulgarian". You are still fixated on labeling of this ethnic group as "Bulgarian", which they are not. --Taivo (talk) 02:25, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

First of all, it is quite possible (especially with a subject as complex as this one) that consensus would shift as more relevant information and sources are brought in by editors, and as new aspects of the subject discussed. I have actually been reading through the discussions, and it is becoming clear that the particular question I am raising has not been discussed. Also, if what you say about the issue being stable since 2008 or 2009 is true, then the stable version included Bulgarian in the infobox as late as May 2010. (It was removed only then, and without any discussion whatsoever; it seems that at that time Slavic dialects of Greece pointed to another page, which is probably why no one objected to the removal).

Second, I'm not labeling an ethnic group as Bulgarian. I'm saying that historically a significant portion of the Slavic speakers of Aegean (i.e. Greek) Macedonia, including the notable persons mentioned above, have self-identified as Bulgarians. This is a well documented fact. To deny that would imply rather poor familiarity with the subject. Would you like to consider some sources? Also, if we have to care about the opinion of scholars like Danforth and Karakasidou, the kind of simplified narrative about a single, homogeneous ethnic group, which your comments seem to promote, is typical of nationalists - be they Bulgarian, Greek, or Macedonian. Tropcho (talk) 02:59, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

The easiest way to deal with this, if you think that consensus has shifted, is to initiate an official RfC, which would elicit comments from interested editors who might not be reading this thread, but would still have an informed opinion on the issue. --Taivo (talk) 11:39, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. This might indeed be a good idea. I'll think about it. And by the way, to make sure my position is clear: I don't think that consensus has already shifted. But I'm not quite sure that your claims that this kind of consensus ever existed are correct. Tropcho (talk) 01:24, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Request for comment

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Is it permissible to specify the linguistic/ethnic affiliation of persons mentioned in the "Notable persons" section of the article, in the same manner as this is done on other pages, such as Lausanne#Notable_people? E.g. Dimitar Dimitrov, Macedonian writer and politician; Andrew Rossos, Canadian Macedonian historian; Atanas Dalchev, Bulgarian poet; etc. 17:22, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

• Obviously yes, if this is standard practice in other articles. If it's controversial there, it is here, too. That said, the article title is terribly confusing. "Slavic" is an ethnicity, an the "of" constructions implies "X speakers of Y language". I'm proposing a rename below.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:20, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
• I would also think that this article shouldn't be an exception. Tropcho (talk) 21:03, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
• Jumping on the bandwagon here, I would say that yes, this is appropriate. The only concern is that the ethnic identity of the person should not be indicated unless we have an explicit reliable source about their ethnic identity specifically. It is insufficient to rely on birth location, or even parentage to establish ethnicity; it has to be explicitly said "Macedonian writer X" by a reliable secondary source. VanIsaac_WS^cont 01:04, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
• No. The problem here is that this is one community speaking one language--so trying to find whether X, Y, or Z labels themselves as "Macedonian" or "Bulgarian" is going to lead to far more problems than it solves. The only reason to label individuals as "Bulgarian" or "Macedonian" is to push a divisive political agenda. What to call this one language is a different issue. But labeling individuals as either "Bulgarian" or "Macedonian" is divisive and highly charged. --Taivo (talk) 02:00, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

It is a fact that people from the region self-identify differently. Faithfully reporting the situation on the ground (on the basis of reliable sources, of course) is therefore another good reason (at least as good as the one you provided) to specify individuals self-identification, I think. I'm curious to know, what kind of problems do you think this is going to lead to? Tropcho (talk) 03:01, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

The problem should be self-evident: Readers will be confused and think that we are talking about two different groups of people rather than a single group speaking a single language. I work with a Native American tribe professionally. Their language has a linguistic label that distinguishes them from the neighboring languages. Their official federal name also distinguishes them. But if you ask them what language they speak, they call their language by the name of the neighboring language. Wikipedia, if it followed your precedent here, would then incorrectly label them by the name of the neighboring tribe. --Taivo (talk) 09:40, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Your concern has been addressed in this comment. In short, ethnic self-identification and language are two separate matters + there's nothing confusing if explained properly. Tropcho (talk) 23:16, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

• Only if they a) unambiguously (and verifiably, of course) stated it themselves or b) moved to Bulgaria or Macedonia during their life and worked there (in which case we can use these attributes as conveniently ambiguous as to whether they specify nationality or ethnicity). No such user (talk) 16:14, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
• Bad idea It seems most inadvisable. See the RM below; these are speakers of the same language, however they identify themselves - and trying to label them will collect ideological identifications by other people who happen to have spoken about X or Y as "Macedonian" or "Bulgarian" or possibly even "Greek" or "Serb". Which identifications show up for which person will be random.

No such user's test has the problem of the (forced) population exchange after WWI, which moved many of these people to Bulgaria.

If a person was a leader of a Bulgarian or Macedonian ethnic movement - and for some of the history involved these would be the same thing - that's a biographical fact. Include, and source. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:23, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Do I understand correctly that your concern is mostly related to a possible lack of reliable information regarding the self-identification of specific individuals on the list? I would agree that in cases where no reliable information of that kind can be found, it's better to avoid a specification. How about cases where such information is available? Tropcho (talk) 23:32, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

No, you do not; most identifications are likely to be not self-identifications, but polemics by others. Even self-identification may be less than meaningful, since there are several possible terms which all mean "member of this group", and the same person may use different terms in the effort to say something to the vast English-speaking ignorance about the politics of the Balkans. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:15, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

OK, your first sentence actually confirms my understanding that you're concerned about unreliable self-identification. There are, however cases where we have unambiguous, reliable information. What is the problem in these cases? Could you also provide examples of the confusing terms that you mention?Tropcho (talk) 23:20, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Your previous post asked whether I was chiefly concerned about self-identification. I said no, and you insist that I must mean what I deny. I see no reason to answer any further questions if you're going to ignore the answers. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:28, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps I misinterpreted the first part of your comment because it came as a reply to my question about self-identifications. In any case, the question stands: do you think there's a problem with those cases where we have reliable, unambiguous information? And also please give examples/clarify your remark about the several possible terms, etc. Tropcho (talk) 11:44, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

• In general no, with exceptions for those where that ethnicity is a significant part of their notability (activist, researcher specifically in ethnicity, etc), and only where such identification has been either made reliably by themselves, or by notable and reliable sources (not random gossip blogs, or "yay team" activist sites. Gaijin42 (talk) 01:08, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Recent edits: have there been Bulgarians in Macedonia?

User:Taivo, please share your concerns about this edit. Thanks! By the way, I think some of your comments and this recent edit betray either a rather poor familiarity with the subject or an inability to maintain a neutral point of view. The sources provided speak of Bulgarians, not "Slavic Macedonians". I believe that it is not up to wiki editors to arbitrarily substitute these terms, especially when one of the main purposes of this term historically has been to conceal the fact that there have been Bulgarians in Macedonia. A fact, which your recent comments and edits seem to ignore. To quote the Carnegie Commission report: "... their (the Serbians') facile generosity impelled them to share with the Greeks the population described on their maps as "Slav-Macedonian" — a euphemism designed to conceal the existence of Bulgarians in Macedonia." (P. 158) Tropcho (talk) 10:02, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

This is the problem here. This is an article about Slavic-speaking Greek Macedonians. Throughout the article, they are called either "Macedonians" or "Slavic Macedonians" or some-such. There has been a long-standing consensus that these native Greek (not immigrant), Slavic-speaking Macedonians were not to be called "Bulgarians", but "Macedonians". This has been a stable consensus for several years here. It's not about what a blind allegiance to your Bulgarian sources say because there are other sources that call these people "Macedonians". If you think that another consensus-building process is warranted, then by all means initiate one with a formal Request for Comment. If a new consensus emerges, then the article can be changed, but a long-standing, stable article, especially in an area of the world that is so readily subject to POV-pushing, should not be changed at the drop of a hat. Initiate a formal Request for Comment. --Taivo (talk) 11:32, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

The problem here is that there is no "long-standing consensus" on this issue. Just judging from the edit history and the talk-page, there has never been consensus on anything this article has to offer. Why does a simple introduction of sourced content require a WP:RC when the alleged long-term consensus was not achieved via a WP:RS? It seems like you have assumed ownership of the article and, instead of actually answering any question or engaging in constructive discussion, you simply avoid every topic by claiming the article is in some perfect state. What is more, you dismiss neutral third-party sources as "Bulgarian"? Why, when there was a single Bulgarian source amongst four other all coming from reputable scholars? I looked at the content Tropcho added and it is evidently supported by neutral sources. Yet, you claim those are "Bulgarian sources," evidently in an attempt to switch the focus of the discussion. I will go ahead and revert what seems like a blind revert on your part.

If indeed such consensus exists, could you kindly direct us to the discussion that led to it? I have been here for many years now and I do not remember us reaching any form of consensus on this topic. That said, I have taken long wiki-breaks in the past and I might have missed something. Although I can't seem to locate it anywhere on the talkpage. --Laveol ^T 20:51, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

This has been discussed in the archives, as I recall the current consensus was reached while I was living in Ukraine in 2008 or shortly thereafter. Perhaps Future Perfect at Sunrise remembers more accurately. He was heavily involved in the discussions as I recall. --Taivo (talk) 21:39, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Let me begin by saying that Taivo's "blind allegiance" remark was quite misguided, given that the two Bulgarian sources (out of 6 total) supported a minor point - the number of Bulgarian schools in Macedonia on the eve of the First Balkan War and the year when the first Bulgarian school opened in Kukush. Or was the intent to really challenge these data?

Then, let me point out that there's a "Neutrality disputed" template in the section I edited. I wonder why this template is there, if consensus has existed for so long.

Third, I read through quite a bit of the archives already and couldn't find that alleged consensus. On the contrary, as mentioned above in another discussion, Bulgarian and Macedonian featured together in the infobox until 2010 when they were replaced without any discussion by a link to Slavic dialects of Greece, which (at the present moment) redirects to this page. (This was later replaced with a link to Macedonian language). So if consensus about this truly existed as early 2008 or 2009, then it appears that this consensus didn't involve referring to the language of Slav speakers in Greece as Macedonian (as Taivo claimed above).

Fourth, we now have two relatively reliable sources (Loring Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict, Princeton University Press, 1997, and Chambers and Trudgill, Dialectology, Cambridge University Press 1998) which agree that the decision whether these dialects are Bulgarian or Macedonian is a political one, and cannot be based on linguistic criteria. See the quotes provided with the citations here. We also have sources (Karakasidou. Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood, Chicago UP, 1997. and The Carnegie Commission Report on the Cause and Conduct of the Balkan Wars, 1914) which point out that terms such as "Slav Macedonians" and "Macedonians" are not neutral. We also have sources (Raymond Detrez, Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria, 2006. and the Carnegie Commission Report) which refer to the refugees as Bulgarians. Another source (Karakasidou 1997) states that a significant part of the Slavic population of Greek Macedonia left for Bulgaria after WWI declaring that it "felt Bulgarian". These are (by far) not the only (non-Bulgarian) sources which speak of Bulgarians in Macedonia (and Greek Macedonia in particular).

This leads to some important questions: were these sources considered at the time consensus was built? And also: what were the sources considered? If we know the answers to these questions, we don't really need to dig up the old discussions.

Finally, as you all probably know (if not, scroll up), there is already an RfC going on, which is quite likely to touch upon the issues we're discussing presently. Tropcho (talk) 09:33, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Other than the Chambers and Trudgill book above, Tropcho has no linguistic references, so all his other references are immaterial. According to Ethnologue, this Slavic language of Greek Macedonia is called "Slavic" in Greece and is included in the entry for "Macedonian" ([12], not "Bulgarian". According to Ethnologue the only only "Bulgarian" speakers in Greece are the Muslim Pomaks. Chambers and Trudgill are indeed correct, there is a political element to whether this Greek Macedonian language is Macedonian or Bulgarian, so any political reference is invalid. We have to rely solely on linguistic references--Ethnologue includes this dialect as "Macedonian", as does Linguasphere. Victor A. Friedman, "Macedonian," The Slavonic Languages (1993, Routledge) also includes this dialect in Macedonian, while Ernest A. Scatton, "Bulgarian," in the same volume does not include it in Bulgarian. Voegelin and Voegelin also include it in Macedonian and not Bulgarian. These are all reliable linguistic sources exclusive of any discussion of perceived ethnicity or political affiliation. And Tropcho complains that this article is somehow unstable because the infobox was changed in 2010. That's five years ago. That's stability in Wikipedia. --Taivo (talk) 16:07, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Probably it is exactly because Danforth is not a linguist that he prefers not to give us his own opinion, but to rely on experts. Quote: Sociolinguists agree that in such situations the decision as to whether a particular variety of speech constitutes a language or a dialect is always based on political, rather than linguistic criteria.

Second, even linguists tend to have political preferences, so it's quite natural that some would classify these dialects as Macedonian. The essential point is that there is no rigid linguistic criterion to decide, which you have conceded. Unless the authors you refer to have provided such a criterion, we may conclude that they have made their choice on political grounds. For example Prof. Friedman (who is apparently also the editor of the Routledge volume you mention) has specialised in Skopje and has ongoing collaborations there, which puts him in a conflict of interest (his cv).

Ethnologue is a tertiary source and we have no idea what sources it relies on, so I'm not sure it's a good reference for our purposes. For instance, it says that population for Slavic speakers in Greece is very difficult to find. This is basically an euphemism for "We don't know". Can you provide a link to Linguasphere and more detailed reference information about Voegelin?

Also let me add that two of the sources (Detrez and Carnegie Commission) have no bearing on the linguistic dispute, but rather deal with the ethnic affiliation of the refugees. I don't see why they should not be trusted on that.

P.S. I think it's not such a good idea to assume that an edit that slipped unnoticed without discussion in the middle of an edit war gains legitimacy merely by the passage of time. Tropcho (talk) 20:47, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Also, I think that Fut. Perf.'s comment under the move proposal below contains some valid points worth stressing, including 1. complexity and 2. conflicting self-identifications of people within the group. Taivo, compare his comment with your comments above, where it is implied that only the Bulgarian nationalists and Bulgarian linguists consider the language of Slavs in Greece to be Bulgarian. In fact many members of that group have self-identified as Bulgarians and a large number of people that would probably qualify as Bulgarian nationalists according to your criteria come from the region we're discussing (this is neatly illustrated by the first of these two maps, prepared by some Bulgarian enthusiast with roots from Macedonia. It provides links to documents about Macedonia written by people born in Macedonia.) Tropcho (talk) 20:55, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Friedman did not edit the volume on Slavonic languages, it was edited by Bernard Comrie. Linguasphere is a book as is the Voegelin and Voegelin volume (Classification and Index of the World's Languages). The point is that every linguistic reference in my library calls these dialects "Macedonian". But Future Perfect's comment below indicates that a non-controversial label is "Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia", not "Bulgarian" or "Macedonian". You can't use his comment to push your own position to label some Bulgarians and some Macedonians. --Taivo (talk) 23:45, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it seems that Amazon lists Grenoble and Friedman as editors for some reason, whereas on the book itself it says Comrie and Corbett. I agree that when we want to refer to the whole group, "Slavic speakers" or "Slavophones" would be the appropriate terms, but this does not mean that we should ignore or conceal the fact that members of this group have identified variously as Bulgarians, Greeks, and Macedonians, and that they have used different labels (including "Macedonian" and "Bulgarian") to designate their language. Thus if we have good reason (i.e. reliable sources) to believe that a certain subgroup self-identified in a particular way, I see no reason to avoid stating that. Let's not forget that neutrality on wikipedia does not mean trying to find some imagined "neutral" point of view, nor trying to simplify or obscure reality. Rather, it means mentioning all the significant points of view.

And let me here once again emphasize that not only have there been a large number of foreign authors that have acknowledged the existence of Bulgarians in Macedonia, but the Macedonian Bulgarians themselves (including those from Aegean Macedonia) have been quite vocal and have left a rather rich documentary heritage which testifies to their feelings and aspirations. After all, we are talking of of hundreds of thousands of people here (Crampton, p 225 and Chris Kostov, p 85 estimate the number of refugees from Macedonia to Bulgaria at half a million), many of whom were embittered by injustice and therefore all the more motivated to speak up for themselves. Tropcho (talk) 00:58, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

You continue to confuse ethnic identity with linguistic identity. It doesn't matter what these people want to call themselves, it matters what the linguistic literature (and the linguistic literature only) calls this language. It is consistently included within "Macedonian" linguistically. Trying to split this community into two groups with two labels based on politics is a lie and a disservice to our readers. This is one community with one language. --Taivo (talk) 02:04, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

If you don't like the label "Macedonian", then we can find something more neutral (the language is called "Slavic" in Greece). But we have to consistently use one label and one label only through the article to avoid giving the impression that this is two different communities with two different languages. --Taivo (talk) 02:09, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Whether we like it or not, the community is split in (more than) two groups with different self-identifications already. This is a documented fact, evidenced by the sourced additions which you just removed without consensus. Sociolinguists agree that the dialects can be classified linguistically as either Bulgarian or Macedonian. Speakers, as well as linguists, give this group of dialects different names. Another documented fact. There is nothing confusing about this. What part of this is difficult to understand? If reality (i.e. reliable sources) does not conform to your ideas of what reality should be, your ideas should change, I think. Tropcho (talk) 02:47, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

By the way, your invitation to find something "more neutral" indicates a misunderstanding of the wikipedia neutral point of view policy. Please do read my comment about what neutrality is (above). Or read WP:NPOV. Tropcho (talk) 02:52, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

You have misunderstood the sociolinguistic comment. The majority of linguistic sources place these dialects with Macedonian (although you have correctly noted that Pomak is often placed with Bulgarian). Speakers are often the least reliable people to tell you what language they speak (I've provided an actual example above). If you ask speakers in the former Yugoslavia what language they speak, the response from next-door neighbors, whose speech is indistinguishable from one another, will be based on religion and not on actual linguistic fact. Wikipedia has to take a neutral, linguistically-accurate position of calling that speech "Serbo-Croatian" even though none of its speakers will use that term. Using speakers' labels is unscientific. --Taivo (talk) 09:46, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

There is hardly anything to misunderstand about the comment. It is clear: whether standard Bulgarian and Macedonian are distinct languages or dialects of a single language is not a question that can be solved on the basis of linguistic criteria. The same statement can be found elsewhere. E.g. (quoting The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, 2nd ed. (p. 25)): "Arguments over language names often reduce to arguments of a political nature, especially when there is a dispute over national boundaries. For example, in the South Slavic continuum, varieties spoken on the western side of the Border between the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria are called dialects of Macedonian by the former country, but dialects of Bulgarian by the latter – reflecting a claim to the territory. However, because there is a dialect chain in the area, linguistic criteria will never be able to solve conflicts of this kind."

In light of this, the fact that linguistic sources place these dialects with Macedonian reflects either a convention or a political preference, not a linguistic reality.

To take up your analogy with Serbo-Croation here, perhaps the most accurate way to describe the situation would be to say that these dialects belong to a Macedono-Bulgarian dialect continuum, as indeed some linguists have done (e.g. fr:André_Mazon and André Vaillant, L'evangelieaire de Kulakia: un parler slave du Bas-Vardar, (1937)), including linguists from the region we are speaking of (e.g. see Blagoy Shklifov's Bulgarian Dialect Texts from Aegean Macedonia/Български диалектни текстове от Егейска Македония (2003), or Dimitar Ivanov (from Gevgelija), The Speech of Gevgelija/Гевгелийският говор (1932)). All these have adopted the view that the Slavic dialects of Greece (as well as all other Slavic dialects of Macedonia) belong to a Bulgaro-Macedonian dialect group, and that there are certain characteristics (e.g. lack of noun cases, existence of a definite article, formation of comparative forms of adjectives with the prefix по-, lack of verb infinitive, tense system) which set apart this Bulgaro-Macedonian dialect continuum from the other speech varieties in the wider South-Slavic continuum. Tropcho (talk) 01:18, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

So you have simply proven my point--that labeling some of these individuals as Bulgarians and some as Macedonians makes no sense and is simply confusing to readers. This is one language, not two langauges depending on which speaker you talk to. --Taivo (talk) 05:04, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Now this (that it makes no sense to label some individuals as Bulgarians and others as Macedonians, and that it is confusing to do so) is a very interesting conclusion to draw from my last comment, but it is not a conclusion that can legitimately be drawn from it. Your comment confuses the two distinct questions we are discussing:

1. The self-identification of members of the Slavic community of the region;
2. The dialects that are spoken by members of this community and their relationship to Bulgarian and Macedonian.

My last comment addresses only the second, linguistic, point, and has little bearing on the first one. The flaw in your argument is, I think, the assumption that if (a) the Slavs in Macedonia speak a single language, then (b) it is confusing to say that they have different self-identifications. I think we can agree on (a) (actually, it seems to me that it's more accurate to say that Slavs in Greece speak a number of dialects of a single language), but I don't see why (b) should follow from that. Furthermore, even if it were confusing (life is sometimes complex), it would be our job to convey the complexity of the subject, instead of judging our readers too stupid to understand and offering them a dumbed-down version of reality. It is a well documented fact that members of this community have identified differently. It is not acceptable to conceal that. Concealing that would comprise a major departure from core wikipedia policies, such as WP:NPOV and WP:OR. This was already discussed enough, I think.

Finally, you reverted my edit, but from your comment it's not clear what your particular objection is. Please clarify that. Tropcho (talk) 00:27, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

User:Taivo, this is a second invitation to detail your objection regarding this (reverted again here). Merely saying "there's no consensus" is not sufficient. Thanks! Tropcho (talk) 23:04, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

You are simply in denial, Tropcho. The majority of linguistic treatises that are linguistic in nature state that the Greek dialects pattern with Macedonian. That's what the older text here says--most linguistic sources. You can find one or two sources that place it with Bulgarian, but you are still left with the majority placing these dialects with Macedonian. You can complain all you want, but the linguistic facts and the sources are quite clear about it. --Taivo (talk) 23:43, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

The claim that I'm in denial is a bit ridiculous, given that one of my comments above addressed that point. Just as a reminder, the question whether Bulgarian and Macedonian, which form a dialect continuum, are separate languages or dialects of a single language is not decidable on the basis of purely linguistic criteria (The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, 2nd ed. (p. 25) and Chambers and Trudgill, Dialectology, Cambridge UP 1998). In light of this fact (please let me know if you're contesting this), it is quite reasonable to conclude that the references you mention place these dialects with Macedonian as a matter of convention, and not on the basis of linguistic criteria. Have your sources provided a linguistic criterion to decide this matter? If yes, please share it with us. Otherwise we'll have to conclude that their classification is merely conventional. In any case, to keep the text in the article as it is (not mentioning the proximity to Bulgarian) is far from neutral, I think. Even more so, given that a number of Slavists (Shklifov, Dimitar Ivanov, Andre Mazon, Andre Vaillant) consider these dialects as belonging to Bulgarian. Tropcho (talk) 00:19, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

And by the way, the very source you were referring to (Scatton in The Slavonic Languages (1993)), points out that the geographical extent of Bulgarian dialects is controversial. "On the level of local dialects there is no sharp boundary between the speech of western Bulgaria and that of eastern Serbia, former Yugoslav Macedonia and areas of Greece and Turkey contiguous to Bulgaria in which Slavonic dialects are still spoken." (p. 247). Tropcho (talk) 00:23, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

The question is not whether there is some hidebound standard for placing these dialects as X, Y, or X/Y, but what do the majority of reliable sources say? And the majority of reliable sources place this Greek Macedonian dialect in Macedonian. --Taivo (talk) 01:09, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

There are a number of problems with your position.

First, it's missing the point of NPOV. We're supposed to explain the situation, representing all significant points of view, not simply (and superficially) stating what you call the majority point of view. Doing this here would be misleading.

Also, from what we've seen so far in terms of sources, I think there's no clear majority. If I'm not mistaken, you have cited three tertiary sources (Ethnologue, Linguasphere, and Voegelin and Voegelin). These might as well be relying on the same secondary source(s) (i.e. actual linguistic studies of these dialects by Slavists). This should be taken into consideration when determining what the majority view is. And we have Comrie and Greville's volume, which states that the southwestern boundary of Bulgarian dialects is controversial. Now we also have Shklifov, Ivanov, Mazon and Vaillant, four actual Slavists, who either consider these to be Bulgarian dialects or speak of a Bulgaro-Macedonian dialect continuum analogous to the Serbo-Croatian continuum. Shklifov and Ivanov are from the region itself. Ivanov's work on the dialects of Gevgelia is considered by Vaillant ("Le probleme du slave macedonien", Bulletin de la Societe Linguistique de Paris, 39 (1938), p. 196) to be one of the most important monographs in the field.

We also have (from RGA de Bray's Guide to the South Slavonic Languages (1980)): "In this brief survey we do not take into account the dialects of Greek and Yugoslav Macedonia, which are closely allied to Bulgarian and are briefly described in our separate chapter on Macedonian. These Macedonian dialects have many features which also occur in various Bulgarian dialects, but mostly not in literary Bulgarian, from which they are sharply differentiated, particularly by accent and phonetic system." (p. 87, in section The Bulgarian Dialects).

Second, if we really want to write that these dialects are "classified linguistically" as dialects of Macedonian (which is what the current version states), don't you think that it should concern us whether there are linguistic criteria (hidebound or other) for placing these dialects with Macedonian or Bulgarian? And don't you think that in our case we have quite a few good reasons to believe that there aren't such criteria, and that the grouping is a result of convention and/or reflects a political reality more than a linguistic fact? And, given the facts, do you really think that it's not relevant to mention the proximity to Bulgarian? Tropcho (talk) 01:20, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

You still missed the point of my post: The text as shown in the article is 100% accurate: The majority of sources place these dialects with Macedonian. That is still the fact. If you want to add some text later in the paragraph that some sources place these with Bulgarian, then fine, but the majority of sources either openly call these dialects Macedonian or discuss them as part of their section on Macedonian. --Taivo (talk) 02:56, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

The identification of these people, as with the Slavic-speaking inhabitants of the Republic of Macedonian to the north and west, as Macedonian, Serbian, or Bulgarian is entirely political. Some linguists, largely working in Bulgaria, have identified the dialects here as West or South Bulgarian; it might be useful to add both these facts in the same paragraph. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:22, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

@Taivo, I think that it's unjustified and dishonest to claim that I missed the point, when my previous comment actually takes the point straight on (both with respect to its alleged majority aspect and to how far the classification is linguistic or conventional). Let's not forget that dishonesty is not civil. If you can address the points in my comment, please do so. Tropcho (talk) 11:48, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Tropcho, I am not being dishonest at all. The problem is that your comments keep veering off into the details of "how" determinations are made, and whether or not these reliable sources are correct or not, rather than my point that the simple fact is that the majority of reliable sources place these dialects within what they call "Macedonian". Yes, some of them quibble, but at the end of the day they still placed X in Y and not Z. Yes, Pmanderson, the second sentence of the paragraph should be a note that the demarcation between Macedonian and Bulgarian isn't clear-cut and is fraught with political overtones. --Taivo (talk) 12:51, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

In my view, the two most likely reasons for comments like yours are dishonesty and an inability to understand the argument. And my argument isn't too difficult to grasp, I think. Your last comment displays this same trend of misinterpretation. In particular, my comments neither "keep veering off into details" nor are they challenging the sources. I'm questioning your interpretation of them. Don't you think that interpreting sources is not a mechanical process and requires some discretion? In our case, it may be correct that the linguistic sources you mention list these dialects with Macedonian. However, especially in this case, where some linguists have considered Macedonian and Bulgarian as dialects of a single language, insofar as the sources don't comment on the reasons for that classification, we can't be sure whether the classification is linguistic or conventional/political.

In fact, what most sources do is mention the proximity between Macedonian and Bulgarian, which I believe we should do too. Don't you think that the situation is similar to that described in your comment about Serbo-Croatian, next-door neighbors, etc? Tropcho (talk) 23:11, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Stop the accusations of dishonesty, Tropcho. Accusing me of dishonesty is utter nonsense if you want to have a discussion. I understand your argument and your tactics perfectly well--you simply want to avoid the fundamental issue of sources that say something you don't like so you muddy the discussion. I have been crystal clear throughout this discussion--the majority of linguistic sources place these Greek Macedonian dialects in the basket labelled "Macedonian". So that must be the first sentence of the paragraph in question. We don't get to "interpret" the sources any which way we want based on your personal point-of-view. If you had actually read my comments thoroughly you would have noted that I then said that the second sentence should be about the problems with drawing a hard line between Macedonian and Bulgarian. That's the second sentence. Then we need, at the end of the second sentence or in a third sentence, to mention the fact that Greeks don't use either term, but simply call these dialects "Slavic". --Taivo (talk) 01:21, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Your approach is rather peculiar, I think. First call for no personal attacks, then throw a baseless accusation about "my tactics". If I were in your shoes, after such a comment, I wouldn't blame people if they considered some of my remarks lacking in sincerity and/or logical consistency. Furthermore, your understanding of WP:NPA is mistaken, I think. An accusation that lacks evidence would indeed be a personal attack. In this case I believe my comment was justified. Maybe it's dishonesty, maybe it's a failure to understand. In any case, it is incorrect and it is an effective refusal to answer my questions.

I want to assume good faith, but it seems that stuff of that kind has been piling up. Just to refresh your memory: this refactoring, the removal of the link to your talk page with the claim that one should not link to "personal" talk pages (?!), claims [13] about some alleged consensus going back to 2008 (which never materialized and were contradicted by e.g. this and numerous intervening changes, edit wars, e.g. June - August 2011) + claims that Slavic speakers in Greek M. were one group historically, ethnically, linguistically, and that they are not Bulgarian (these claims contradict most of the literature and the article itself). Your last remark about interpretations based on my "personal point of view" seems to completely ignore the fact that it's not about my point of view, but that there are a number of linguists who consider Macedonian and Bulgarian as dialects of a single language and others who state that the question whether M. and B. are distinct languages cannot be decided on a linguistic basis. What should one think of all this? I feel some of these claims are rather bad and this is getting a bit disruptive.

Back to content: to establish WP:RS#Academic_consensus we actually need an academic source that says that the majority view is such and such. Do we have such a source? Otherwise stating that the majority view is this or that would be WP:OR. In fact, we can be fairly confident that even those linguists who consider Macedonian and Bulgarian to be a single language would classify most Macedonian dialects together. The essential point is that Macedonian and Bulgarian are closely related, and form a dialect continuum, pretty much like Serbian and Croatian, and we should mention that. Tropcho (talk) 02:11, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

You just seem to be addicted to the personal attacks and you certainly don't assume any good will. It's also clear that you don't understand the dynamics or procedures of Wikipedia discussions. Too bad for you. Did you read what I wrote? I don't think so. Go back to the last part of what I wrote above. Read it carefully. You will see that it addresses your concerns about the difficulties of dividing Macedonian from Bulgarian. But the first sentence is still quite accurate--the majority of sources end up placing the Greek complex in the Macedonian basket. No matter how much you might not like that, it's the simple fact. --Taivo (talk) 03:17, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

What is this? Did you read WP:NPA, WP:RS#Academic_consensus, or my comment? I'll let other editors judge the value of your remarks regarding my "addiction to personal attacks", which speak for themselves. Your point about the majority view may well be correct, but unless we find a source that says explicitly that Macedonian dialects are usually classified linguistically as dialects of Macedonian, it's just our pretty piece of WP:OR. Also, as I mentioned, whether they are classified as Macedonian is a secondary point. Even Bulgarian linguists group most Macedonian dialects together (except south-eastern ones). The point is the proximity between Bulgarian and Macedonian and that from a strictly linguistic point of view there is no way to decide whether they are distinct languages (and we have a source that explicitly states that this is the majority view of sociolinguists). Coming back to your Serbo-Croatian example, our case is comparable to saying that some shtokavian dialects are classified as dialects of Croatian, without mentioning the proximity between Serbian and Croatian, which, as you said, wouldn't be acceptable. Tropcho (talk) 12:23, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

PS. I did read your comments, and am glad to see that the lack of a sharp boundary between Bulgarian and Macedonian dialects is acknowledged. Tropcho (talk) 12:35, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

So can we assume that from my proposed second sentence on we are in agreement? Sentence 2 says that it's hard to draw a hard and fast line, sentence 3 says that the Greeks just call them "Slavic", and then the enumeration of the dialects more or less as it already stands. The disagreement is over the first sentence. The first sentence is not OR, it is simply a typical Wikipedia statement of fact that the majority of sources (no matter the difficulty in doing so) simply place these dialects as "Macedonian". It's OR or improper synthesis to try to claim anything otherwise. --Taivo (talk) 13:05, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

WP:RS#Academic_consensus: Editors should avoid original research especially with regard to making blanket statements based on novel syntheses of disparate material. Stated simply, any statement in Wikipedia that academic consensus exists on a topic must be sourced rather than being based on the opinion or assessment of editors. Perhaps you WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT, but the rule is clear. If there's a source that says usually, or frequently, etc., fine. There may well be one. But I think we have not seen it yet. On the other hand, we have seen a source state that there's consensus among sociolinguists that it's impossible to decide on a linguistic basis whether Bulgarian and Macedonian are distinct languages. Tropcho (talk) 03:07, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

One sociolinguistic source that says it's hard to separate M & B does not constitute a basis for mixing them here when virtually every other linguist source treats them as separate languages. I have repeatedly said here that the second sentence should say that it's hard to separate the two languages, but most linguistic sources still separate them. You complain about summarizing academic consensus, but you yourself stubbornly practice I didn't hear that. --Taivo (talk) 03:32, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

It's not one. So far we have mentioned two: David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, 2nd ed. (p. 25) and Chambers and Trudgill, Dialectology, Cambridge UP 1998. Furthermore, we have Danforth state that there's consensus among sociolinguists about that. In addition, there are linguists, Mazon, Vaillant, Ivanov (cited by Vaillant as one of the most important works on these dialects) mentioned earlier, which consider these dialects as a part of a single Bulgaro-Macedonian language. We also have Trudgill's quote in the article which says that the question is "very interesting", which appears to indicate that he didn't see consensus on this either way. We have Victor Friedman remark in a 1985 article (in The Scope of Slavic Aspect, eds. Flier and Timberlake) that some scholars treat Bulgarian and Macedonian as "identical linguistic systems". And in addition one can find quite a few others, which state either that Bulgarian and Macedonian can be considered dialects of a single language or that some linguists consider them as such, e.g. Kenneth Katzner, The Languages of the World, Routlege (2002), J. Henniger in The Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Pergamon (1992), nl:Nicolaas van Wijk in Les langues slaves (2nd ed., 1956). And by the way, I noticed that Linguasphere groups them under the same "outer language", denoted by Bulgarski+Makedonski, just as Serbian and Croatian are grouped under Srpski+Hrvatski. I heard your argument. The answer is that 1) by now we have quite a few sources that don't separate them 2) WP:RS#Academic_consensus requires us to find a source that makes a statement about the academic consensus. We have one, and it says that the consensus is that the question is not decidable linguistically.

I think we should mention that these dialects are closely related to both B and M , that they have been classified as both B and M, that the issue has been controversial, and that - since there's no sharp boundary between B and M dialects on a local level - the question cannot be decided on a purely linguistic basis. If there's a source that says that they are usually classified as M, fine, we include that too. Tropcho (talk) 04:17, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

You just want to ignore the fact that while you desperately want to have a "Macedonian-Bulgarian" language in Wikipedia, that simply isn't the case. At this point you have to recognize the fact that Wikipedia distinguishes between the two. If you want to go to those articles and begin a process that will combine them, then by all means do so, but that's not relevant for this article. (See, for example, the way that the East Slavic languages are handled at Ukrainian language, etc.) But until you have combined those two languages into one on a Wikipedia-wide basis (as was done with Serbo-Croatian), then you simply have to live for now with two defined languages. So we have sources that say 1) Macedonian and Bulgarian are one language, 2) that drawing the line between Macedonian and Bulgarian is hard, and 3) that these Greek dialects go with Macedonian. So that comes back to the way I have proposed having the paragraph in question written: 1) most surveys of languages place these dialects in Macedonian, 2) sociolinguists recognize the difficulty of drawing lines, 3) in Greece they are simply called "Slavic". The issue of whether Macedonian and Bulgarian are one language or two is not a relevant issue for this article--that needs to be discussed elsewhere. --Taivo (talk) 05:13, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Actually since the current war in Ukraine began, the original paragraph about "one language or more" for East Slavic that was at Ukrainian language has been radically altered. The older comment is still located at Belarusian language. --Taivo (talk) 05:20, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Parts of your comment are perhaps based on a misunderstanding of my remark about Linguasphere's grouping M&B together. We don't need to prove that M and B are one language, or to say anything of a Macedonian-Bulgarian language here, and it's not a problem if on wiki the two are considered distinct (perhaps adding a note in the spirit of the comments on Ukrainian and Belorussian to the respective articles wouldn't be such a bad idea). We just have to say that these dialects have been classified both as Bulgarian and Macedonian, which by now we have established as a fact.

The only contentious point that I see at this point is whether your claim about "most surveys" is correct. I have not yet seen you give a reason why we should not follow WP:RS#academic_consensus and, from the sources we've discussed so far, it seems that we can't draw that conclusion either. Also, somehow you don't seem to believe that there is consensus that M and B's distinctiveness is not decidable on a purely linguistic basis. I think we have good reason to believe that (two Cambridge UP publications on linguistics + an explicit statement in Danforth about consensus) and we should accept it. Tropcho (talk) 00:38, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 6 January 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. The two oppose votes make a compelling argument as to why the article is at the current title. (non-admin closure)  — Amakuru (talk) 21:57, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

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Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia → Speakers of Slavic languages in Greek Macedonia – The current name is hopelessly ambiguous and confusing. Its construction implies "[Population] speakers of [language]" but the meaning is the exact opposite. This is especially bad in this case because "Slavic" is an ethnicity as well as a language group, so many readers will misapprehend what "Slavic" refers to here. "Of" should be "in" here; we are not addressing languages intrinsic to Greek Macedonia, but speakers of these language who happen to be (or had been) living there. The current title also implies Slavic is a specific language, which it's not. So, it fails on three distinct levels.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:34, 6 January 2015 (UTC) PS: I tend to wonder why this article exists. We have no comparable article I can find, e.g. "Speakers of Turkic languages in Western Armenia", "Speakers of Romance languages in North America", or whatever (and if we did, we'd never call them "Turkic speakers of Western Armenia", "Romance speakers of North America", etc.). It appears to be a trivial intersection of factoids. But that's an AFD matter not an RM matter.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:34, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Oppose: SMcCandlish misunderstands the point of this article and who it is about. It is not about speakers of any Slavic language who happen to live in Greek Macedonia. It does not include Russian speakers or Polish speakers, etc. It is specifically about a native, non-immigrant population of people in Greek Macedonia who speak a single Slavic language. That language, depending on the political bent of the author describing it, is called either "Bulgarian" or "Macedonian". It is not two languages, but one. In Greece, that language is called "Slavic" [14] and is included in Macedonian by Ethnologue. The title is awkward, but was the result of some discussion back in 2008 or 2009. "Macedonian" could not be used because it was politically charged and was not a linguistic label used in Greece for this language. "Bulgarian" has the same problem. And, as stated above, this article is not about any other Slavic group. --Taivo (talk) 15:51, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. The article is at its current title because that's the best title available for this particularly complex topic, where the very definition of the topic is fraught with NPOV problems. Yes, the title is somewhat vague, but that's a blessing: it has to be, because the contentious nature of the issues forces it. We are dealing with one specific minority group, who speak one particular language – but neither do the members of this group agree among themselves what kind of a group they are (national, ethnic, linguistic minority?), nor do they agree on what the name of their language is. The article does not deal with just any speakers of any Slavic language who happen to live in that area (e.g. recent Russian or Polish immigrants); it deals with the local autochthonous minority. We can't simply call them "ethnic Macedonians", because few of them identify as that. We can't call them "Macedonian-speakers", because some dispute that linguistic label too. We can't call them "speakers of Macedonian or Bulgarian", because that would imply two distinct languages, when in reality it's just a single local dialect (which happens to have been described variously as part as either one or the other in the past). We can't call them "speakers of Slavic languages", because that, too, would imply several distinct languages. Calling them by the intentionally vague label "Slavic-speakers" or "Slavophones" has been a sensible and remarkably stable compromise, and it is in keeping with Wikipedia policies, because – surprise, surprise! – that's what a good part of the literature does. As for your grammatical claim that "X speakers of Y" can only be read properly if "Y" is a language name, I would contest that: "[people] of Y" can of course also mean a group that lives in Y. There's no ambiguity in that respect, because it is plainly obvious in this case that "Y" is a geographical name, not a language name here. I would also prefer "of Macedonia" to "in Macedonia", insofar as "of" correctly implies that it's a group specifically defined by their location in this region, while "in" might imply a mere intersection (those members of a larger group X who happen to live in Y). Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:54, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

First Sentence of Education and Language

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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There are two competing options for the first sentence of the section "Education and Language". 1) State that the dialects are usually classified as Macedonian. (The second sentence then will explain that it is difficult to draw a firm boundary between Macedonian and Bulgarian). 2) State that the dialects are sometimes classified as Macedonian and sometimes as Bulgarian. (The second sentence will then proceed as above). --Taivo (talk) 06:14, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

• #1--Macedonian. In nearly every modern summary that specifies where dialects are located, whether overall surveys of Slavic or of the world's languages, the Slavic dialects of Greek Macedonia are placed in the "Macedonian" basket. The sources often admit that it's hard to decide sometimes, but in the end they are regularly placed in Macedonian. --Taivo (talk) 06:14, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
• #2 There are good reasons to mention both. There are a number of neutral sources that either a) consider Macedonian and Bulgarian to be dialects of a single language; or b) point out that all Macedonian dialects (including these spoken in northern Greece) have sometimes been classified as dialects of Bulgarian; or c) state that there is no sharp boundary on a local level between Bulgarian and Macedonian and that therefore the extent of the two languages is controversial d) state that from a strictly linguistic point of view the question whether Macedonian and Bulgarian are distinct languages or dialects of each other cannot be decided (D. Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, 2nd ed., and Chambers and Trudgill, Dialectology, Cambridge UP, 1998). According to L. Danforth (The Macedonian Conflict, Princeton University Press 1997), there is consensus among sociolinguists about point (d) (i.e. the question whether M and B are distinct languages is not decidable on the basis of strictly linguistic criteria). Thus in any case it seems justified to mention both.

Furthermore, WP:RS#Academic_consensus requires us to find sources that explicitly support blanket statements such as "these dialects are usually classified as such and such". Such a source has not been presented on this talk page yet. It may well exist (in which case we can safely make such a statement), but given that from a strictly linguistic point of view it cannot be decided whether Macedonian and Bulgarian are distinct languages, it would not be surprising if such a statement actually has not appeared in the scholarly literature (since it's a bit meaningless to emphasize that some dialects are usually classified as A and not B, if there is consensus among sociolinguists that A and B are so closely related as to not be distinguishable on a purely linguistic basis.) Tropcho (talk) 11:09, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

This is a reply to a comment that was withdrawn with a peculiar edit summary. The WP:RS#Academic_consensus point has not been addressed with anything else but "it is simply a typical Wikipedia statement of fact that the majority of sources (no matter the difficulty in doing so) simply place these dialects as "Macedonian"". This is reminiscent of WP:OTHERSTUFF, but it flies in the face of policy. And in this case, Taivo's proposed synthesis also flies in the face of academic consensus that M and B are not distinct from a purely linguistic perspective. And looking at the sources we've discussed, it appears that there's no clear majority. Has this point been addressed? So I'm not sure who's ignoring arguments here. Tropcho (talk) 12:34, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Taivo, please don't delete my comments. It's worth mentioning that these points have not been addressed. Tropcho (talk) 12:42, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

(Note: Tropcho's response above is to a comment that I posted and then immediately deleted.) Tropcho continues to muddy the waters with irrelevant information. The question at hand is whether most sources place these dialects in a basket labelled "Macedonian" or in a basket labelled "Bulgarian". Wikipedia divides these into two languages, so only those sources which clearly distinguish between these two are relevant. If a source doesn't distinguish between these two languages in some concrete way, then it doesn't count. The proposed second sentence of this paragraph will cover the difficulty of distinguishing between these two languages, so half of Tropcho's comment is irrelevant in this context (as well as most of his previously posted sources). He may want to combine these languages, but Wikipedia does not. If he wishes, that is a discussion to be conducted elsewhere. Until Wikipedia joins them, then those "it's hard" arguments that he makes aren't relevant. The only question here is whether the majority of sources that distinguish Bulgarian from Macedonian place these in the "Macedonian" basket or in the "Bulgarian" basket. --Taivo (talk) 12:37, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I think that the argument in Taivo's note is flawed for two main reasons: 1) It is based on a straw man. (No one here is suggesting that we should write in this article that B and M are a single language.) 2) It suggests that we should disregard some sources because they are - allegedly - at variance with what's on wikipedia (they are not, I think, and even if they were, the argument would be invalid, as wikipedia content is expected to follow reliable sources, not the other way around). Tropcho (talk) 15:47, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

No, Tropcho, my argument is not "flawed". It is very specific--if a source does not make a distinction between Macedonian and Bulgarian dialects, and treats them as a continuum without assigning them into either "Macedonian" or "Bulgarian", then they are irrelevant for this RfC. It doesn't mean that they are irrelevant for the article in terms of a later sentence that says there are difficulties in drawing lines. You keep trying to make this discussion about more than it is in order to confuse the issue of this RfC. It's a very simple issue. --Taivo (talk) 16:29, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

You probably realise that just because an argument is specific does not mean it's not flawed. I think the flaw is that the argument is based on a false dilemma. The underlying assumption is that we have to decide between the two choices in the RfC, so if a source states that B and M dialects form a single language, but refers to that language as Macedo-Bulgarian or Bulgaro-Macedonian (as e.g. Linguasphere or Vaillant and Mazon do) then we should ignore it. I think that the assumption is wrong. We can (should?) be flexible and if there are sources that consider these dialects as a part of a dialect continuum, why not mention it? Furthermore, such sources do not contradict what's in the article on Macedonian, where - by the way - the fact that these dialects have been classified as Bulgarian is also mentioned, as well as the fact that B and M form a dialect continuum. Tropcho (talk) 23:07, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Your understanding of Linguasphere is also flawed. While Linguasphere combines Macedonian and Bulgarian into one outer language, it very clearly and unambiguously divides the dialects into two inner languages--Macedonian and Bulgarian--and then just as clearly places the Greek dialects into the Macedonian basket. But you also miss the point completely in your continual attempts to cloud the issue. I am quite willing and have proposed ways to include the uncertainty in the paragraph, just not in the first sentence. Wikipedia has divided this East South Slavic complex into two languages for now. And when we deal with the Balkans, we try especially hard to be consistent in our approach across articles (so that WP:OTHERSTUFF doesn't actually apply within the group of articles). See the hard work that has gone into the Serbo-Croatian complex for an example. So your desire to provide murk in the first sentence goes against the way that Balkans editors in Wikipedia have structured this area. If you want to combine Macedonian and Bulgarian, then go to one of those talk pages and work it out with the editors who are interested. This is not the article to muddy the waters. There is a possible compromise that has been used in the title--the Greek compromise to simply call these dialects "Slavic" or "Greek Slavic". But trying to treat Macedonian and Bulgarian as one language here goes against the choices and consensuses that Wikipedia editors have reached in dealing with Macedonian and Bulgarian. All of your issues I have proposed to deal with in subsequent text in the paragraph, but that first sentence is the only issue here--and most classifications of the dialects of Greece have placed these dialects in the Macedonian basket. That should be the first sentence of the paragraph. Then you can talk about problems and exceptions after that. --Taivo (talk) 23:33, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I think that the issue is indeed simple, and I'm not the one "muddying the waters" and "making the discussion about more than it is". Is stating what the sources say "adding murk"? It's our job to say what the sources say and represent all significant points of view. Are there sources that say that these dialects have been classified as Macedonian? Yes. As Bulgarian? Yes. Is there a source making a statement about them usually being classified as Macedonian? Maybe, (probably?) but we don't know yet. Maybe there's a reason why we haven't seen such as statement yet? In any case, you have not yet addressed WP:RS/AC, and you are bringing in some extraneous stuff. It seems to me that it's as simple as that. And what is more, the article about Macedonian already states that these dialects have been classified as Bulgarian, so there will be nothing too revolutionary about stating it here as well (it doesn't have to be the first sentence, but it only makes sense to say that in a single sentence, e.g. "they have been classified as such and such, and, especially by such linguists, as such"). Also, Trudgill's quote in the article clearly indicates that the alleged consensus ("usually classified as") does not yet exist (or Trudgill doesn't know about it). This is not the same as discussing dialects spoken in B and Rep. of M. Also, what is the continuation that you propose for that paragraph? Tropcho (talk) 00:18, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

By the way, regarding Linguasphere, their three level classification (outer language-inner language-dialect) is meant to be the English-language analogue of the French/German langue-dialecte-parler/Sprache-Dialekt-Mundart. So correct me if I'm wrong, but, as far as I can tell, my interpretation of Linguasphere classification comes quite close to yours at the time you made this edit. Tropcho (talk) 02:04, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

You missed the point again. The point I am making here is that Linguasphere, even though it groups Macedonian and Bulgarian into a single outer language, still divides the outer language into a Macedonian inner language and a Bulgarian inner language and puts the Greek dialects in the Macedonian part of the scheme, not in the Bulgarian part of the scheme. That distinction was irrelevant to the Ukrainian discussion. The point that I'm making here is that authors who have two "baskets" almost always place the Greek dialects in the Macedonian basket. Authors that don't make a distinction between Macedonian dialects and Bulgarian dialects are the ones that have no relevance to the question at hand (which only relates to the first sentence). --Taivo (talk) 02:49, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

If you scroll up a ways, you will see what I propose as a structure for this paragraph as a whole. But tomorrow when I have a little more time, I will write up a sample and post here.

Well, since we want to make a general statement about how these dialects are usually classified, as opposed to how they are usually classified by linguists who consider Bulgarian and Macedonian to be distinct languages (which is a more specific statement), it seems to me that these sources are still relevant. Actually, even if we consider only these linguists, I think there might still be a problem. The eastern dialects of Greek Macedonia (the Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop dialect) have been classified as Bulgarian even by such linguists. E.g. Roland Schmieger writes that the dialects around Kavala and east of Drama belong to Bulgarian (International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 1998, Vol.131, pp.125-55). Tropcho (talk) 01:37, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

P.S. looking forward to that sample. Tropcho (talk) 01:40, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

My apologies for not getting that sample cranked out. I had to deal with some technical issues with the MidTerm Exam in History of English that I'm giving this week. They're all electronic and posted on-line, but that doesn't mean that the technology is always up to the task. I've got a large block of time tomorrow. --Taivo (talk) 03:18, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

• Option #2' is more informative and more neutral. This article is already confusing and the subject of POV-related complaints (see previous RM discussion), so this seems like a sensible change toward increased neutrality and clarity.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:13, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
• Comment Both options have their faults. It seems that this question is complex enough that it deserves its own paragraph. This avoids trying to squeeze it into subsidiary phrases in the first paragraph. Readers might find it easier to first get the big picture (that the dialects belong to the Slavic language family) and then follow the issues of classification. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 13:26, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Can you specify these faults? I'm having a hard time distinguishing between your suggestion and option #2 in the RfC. I.e., we should explain the situation for our readers, not favor one interpretation over the other. I'm not invested in any exact approach to doing so, but option #1 seems like a PoV problem.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:50, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Option #2 in the RFC proposes to mention the two sub-families in the second sentence. My proposal is to do this in the second paragraph. The two sides of the debate above have already pointed out the faults in their opponents' proposals. In addition to that, it makes for really clumsy and confusing prose to try to shoehorn this question into either the first or second sentence. In my opinion, each paragraph should be devoted to one topic. The topic for an opening paragraph on "Education and language" is to set the scene. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 14:59, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

• Third-ish position: I would start the paragraph describing the language as any other (with such material) and then say that the official Greek and Bulgarian position is that there is no Macedonian language, but rather that is a dialect of Bulgarian.[15]. Then continue normally. --Precision123 (talk) 17:41, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Interesting. That sounds like a sentence for my proposed second paragraph. In other words, first (para 1) we describe what people speak, and how they are educated. Then (para 2) we talk about how different authorities classify or label it. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 20:44, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

That seems reasonable to me, Hroðulf. You can use the sources I posted (if needed) to help keep it NPOV. --Precision123 (talk) 17:19, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I also think that some extra explaining about the characteristics of these dialects might benefit the article. By the way, Precision123, note that the second reference you provided isn't unbiased (by the Shea's own admission) nor very factually accurate (see Duncan Perry's review of the book in Slavic Review, Vol. 58, No. 3, Autumn, 1999, pp. 680-681). Shea represents basically what is the nationalistic Macedonian POV. Friedman (the author of the article in the Concise Encyclopedia) also generally leans towards Macedonian views, and is a self-declared defender of the distinctness of Macedonian (see e.g. here), which incidentally puts him at variance with those (seemingly the majority of sociolinguists, if we are to believe Loring Danforth) who think that the question whether Bulgarian and Macedonian are distinct languages is not decidable on the basis of purely linguistic criteria. In general biased sources are fine, because they provide one of the points of view. We will need to take into account other sources as well, though. So far about a dozen have been discussed on this talk page (see my comment #2 and the longish discussion between Taivo and myself that led to this RfC). Tropcho (talk) 01:31, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

@Tropcho: I don't think Friedman is really at odds with Danforth. The view that "the question whether Bulgarian and Macedonian are distinct languages is not decidable on the basis of purely linguistic criteria" is a fairly standard response from linguists when referring to two groups of speakers whose languages are neighbours on a dialect continuum. Exactly the same is said, for example, about Scots and Ulster Scots, or Valencian and Catalan. If I understand correctly, it is a way of saying that linguists aren't interested in dictating to communities a distinction between a language and a dialect. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 09:38, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Exactly, linguists aren't interested in doing that, whereas in the interview I linked to, Friedman states (I'm paraphrasing) that the "scientific truth" is that B and M are distinct languages. Tropcho (talk) 10:55, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

In fact, it seems to me that Hroðulf's point is quite significant for this RfC. If linguists aren't interested in doing that, I think it's reasonable to use the same approach here, given that there are people from the region who consider themselves Macedonians, and others who consider themselves Bulgarians (and these groups would usually call their language Macedonian or Bulgarian, respectively - although it's the same language).

In other words, I suggest we proceed as follows:

1. Describe the general characteristics of the dialects, i.e. state that they belong to the eastern group of South Slavic (comprising Macedonian and Bulgarian) and have all the characteristics that set apart this group from other Slavic languages (no cases, existence of a definite article, lack of infinitive, narrative mood, comparative forms with prefix po-, future tense formed by present form of the verb preceded by ќе/ще (I'm following Nicolaas van Wijk here)).
2. State that speakers have referred to their dialects in various ways (most notably Macedonian and Bulgarian).
3. Linguists have also classified them as either M or B (we might also want to mention that some of these dialects have characteristics that bring them closer to standard Macedonian, while others (e.g. Ser-Drama-Lagadin dialect) are closer to standard Bulgarian/eastern Bulgarian dialects).
4. State that strictly speaking there's no hard and fast rule to decide which one of these two groups is right. Tropcho (talk) 09:42, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

User:Local hero, User:Laveol, would you guys comment? Tropcho (talk) 23:46, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Hroðulf, Precision123, SMcCandlish ☺, any final comments? Tropcho (talk) 18:33, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

User:Tropcho you should not be closing this. It should be closed by an uninvolved, neutral admin since you and I do not agree. --Taivo (talk) 18:43, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Of course. What made you think I was intending to close it myself? Tropcho (talk) 20:33, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Works for me, other than that fourth point. Asserting in WP's voice that the question is intractable is original research. For all we know, this question could be linguistically settled next week. Just let the sourced facts speak for themselves without editorializing about them.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:05, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

 Comment: For the benefit of people commenting, I've tried to put together a table that provides something of an overview of the sources mentioned in the discussions preceding this RfC. (Note added later: other editors please feel free to add/correct content if you notice inaccuracies or omissions. If you do edit the table, perhaps also add a note below it stating that you've done so (for clarity).)

Author	Title	Year	Publisher	Summary and/or Quote(s)
David Crystal	The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, 2nd ed.	1997	Cambridge University Press	"Arguments over language names often reduce to arguments of a political nature, especially when there is a dispute over national boundaries. For example, in the South Slavic continuum, varieties spoken on the western side of the Border between the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria are called dialects of Macedonian by the former country, but dialects of Bulgarian by the latter – reflecting a claim to the territory. However, because there is a dialect chain in the area, linguistic criteria will never be able to solve conflicts of this kind."
Chambers and Trudgill	Dialectology, 2nd ed.	1998	Cambridge University Press	"Similarly, Bulgarian politicians often argue that Macedonian is simply a dialect of Bulgarian - which is really a way of saying, of course, that they feel Macedonia ought to be part of Bulgaria. From a purely linguistic point of view, however, such arguments are not resolvable, since dialect continua admit of more-or-less but not either-or judgements."
Loring M. Danforth	The Macedonian Conflict	1997	Princeton University Press	"There's consensus among sociolinguists that in such situations it cannot be decided on a purely linguistic basis whether a certain speech variety constitutes a language or is merely a dialect."
Kenneth Katzner	The Languages of the World, 3rd ed.	2002	Routlege	"Macedonian is closely related to Bulgarian and is considered by some to be merely a dialect of that language." (p. 96)
J. Henniger (contributor), RE Asher (editor)	"Bulgarian and Macedonian" in The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, vol. 1	1992	Oxford: Pergamon Press	"From a strictly linguistic point of view Macedonian can be called a Bulgarian dialect, as structurally it is most similar to Bulgarian."
David Dalby (ed.)	Linguasphere	1999/2000	Linguasphere Observatory	Bulgarian and Macedonian listed as "inner languages" (dialects) within a single "outer language" (language) "Bulgarski+Makedonski". All Slavic dialects of Greek Macedonia are included as sub-dialects of the Macedonian inner language. (For comparison, Linguasphere classifies Serbian and Croatian as inner languages of the same outer language "Srpski+Hrvatski".)
RGA de Bray	Guide to the South Slavic Languages	1980	Slavica Publishers	Separate chapters for Bulgarian and Macedonian. Quote from the Dialects section in the chapter on Bulgarian: "In this brief survey we do not take into account the dialects of Greek and Yugoslav Macedonia, which are closely allied to Bulgarian and are briefly described in our separate chapter on Macedonian. These Macedonian dialects have many features which also occur in various Bulgarian dialects, but mostly not in literary Bulgarian, from which they are sharply differentiated, particularly by accent and phonetic system." The Slavic dialects of Greece, as well as the dialects of Pirin Macedonia (in Bulgaria), are discussed in the chapter on Macedonian.
Bernard Comrie and G. Corbett (eds.)	The Slavonic Languages	1993	Routlege	In the chapter on Macedonian, the map of Macedonian dialects includes all South-East Slavic dialects in Greece and southwestern Bulgaria. Quote from the chapter on Bulgarian: "The geographical extent of Bulgarian dialects is controversial. On the level of local dialects there is no sharp boundary between the speech of western Bulgaria and that of eastern Serbia, former Yugoslav Macedonia and areas of Greece and Turkey contiguous to Bulgaria in which Slavonic dialects are still spoken. The official Bulgarian position, with respect to dialects and earlier historical periods, has been that eastern Serbian dialects, all Macedonian dialects in former Yugoslavia and Slavonic dialects in Turkey and Greece are dialects of Bulgarian."
nl:Nicolaas van Wijk	Les Langues Slaves (2nd ed.)	1956	Mouton & Co - 's-Gravenhage	Speaks of three languages in the South-Slavic area: Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian.
Andre Vaillant	Le probleme du slave macedonien	1938	Bulletin de la Societe Linguistique de Paris 39, 195 - 210	From the abstract: "Macedonian speech varieties (fr: parlers) form a part of a Bulgaro-Macedonian linguistic group"; About the eastern Macedonian dialects (east of Salonika in Greek Macedonia): "les parlers de la region de Suho a l'est de Salonique vers Seres, que la geographie historique attribue a la Macedoine, mais qui se rattachent aussi bien aux parlers bulgares des Rhodopes." (i.e. they may as well be classified as belonging to the south-eastern group of Bulgarian dialects).
Voegelin and Voegelin	Classification and Index of the World's Languages	1997		Bulgarian and Macedonian treated as distinct languages. Dialects of Greece included in Macedonian.
Dimitar Ivanov (b. in Gevgelija)	The Speech of Gevgelija (quoted by Vaillant (1938))	1932	Macedonian Scientific Institute	Dialects of the region considered Bulgarian.
Ethnologue, 18th edition	Macedonian and Bulgarian and language map of Greece/Macedonian	2015	Summer Institute of Linguistics	Dialects of Greece, with the exception of Pomak, are considered Macedonian. Pomak is considered Bulgarian. Map of Greece/Macedonia labels Greek Slavic dialects as "Slavic".
Blagoy Shklifov (b. near Vitsi, Greek Macedonia)	Bulgarian Dialect Texts from Aegean Macedonia	2003	Bulgarian Academy of Sciences	Slav dialects of Greece considered Bulgarian (as all other Macedonian Slavic dialects).
Andre Mazon, Andre Vaillant	L'evangelieaire de Kulakia: un parler slave du Bas-Vardar	1938	Librairie Droz (Paris)	Consider all Bulgarian and Macedonian dialects as a part of a Bulgaro-Macedonian group distinct from the neighbouring Serbo-Croatian.

Tropcho (talk) 13:06, 11 March 2015 (UTC), edited by --Taivo (talk) 22:53, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

• Comment. In reading through these references there are only two positions espoused by all but one of the sources: 1) These dialects are Macedonian; 2) Macedonian and Bulgarian are one language. Only one source lists these dialects as Bulgarian. Therefore there are only two options here: 1) treating these dialects as Macedonian in the first sentence with further clarification that some sources classify M & B as one language (not "Bulgarian", but something else); 2) treating Macedonian and Bulgarian as one language (not called "Bulgarian"). Wikipedia separates these two languages and doesn't treat them as a single language. (If you want to change that, then you need to leave this page and work that out at Macedonian language and Bulgarian language.) So the first sentence as currently written is still accurate since nearly every source that divides M & B into two languages places these Greek Slavic dialects into Macedonian and not into Bulgarian. --Taivo (talk) 16:04, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

No, it is not accurate. It would be more accurate if it read something like "these dialects are usually classified as M by linguists that consider M & B to be distinct languages", which is quite different from the version you propose (the addition is significant). Even this more accurate version would constitute novel synthesis of disparate material, which goes against the WP policy on academic consensus plus it would belie the consensus that exists among linguists that, strictly speaking, M and B can be considered to be a single language.

I think it should be clear by now that both views (i.e. that these dialects are Bulgarian or Macedonian) are valid from a linguistic perspective, and both are notable enough to be mentioned. Mentioning one without the other wouldn't be neutral. Tropcho (talk) 01:00, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

I have no problem in the first sentence adding the phrase "among linguists who separate M & B into two languages or two distinct dialect groups in a single larger language." If you notice the second sentence in my proposed paragraph below, I mention the difficulty of drawing distinct language boundaries. And you don't seem to understand what "synthesis" is in a Wikipedia sense. Wikipedia editors always have to look at the sources, weigh them, and write a summary of the facts. If you want to call that "synthesis", then you can, but that's not considered to be inappropriate synthesis in a Wikipedia sense. The facts of the matter are precisely what I have outlined--there are two groups of sources--those that separate M & B (in which case the Greek dialects are included in M in all but one case) and those that combine B & M (in which case the Greek dialects are included in the larger whole). Only one source separates B & M and places the dialects in B. With the addition of the above clause, the proposed paragraph is, indeed, accurate. --Taivo (talk) 01:43, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

I think that the claim that this is not unacceptable synthesis is not correct. WP:RS/AC explicitly refers to this type of situation. Quote: "The statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view."

Your synthesis rests on a dozen sources or so. There are many more, as you probably can guess. Before anyone makes a blanket statement, they should be familiar with most sources. That's why synthesis is left to experts.

Also, do I understand correctly that you absolutely don't want Bulgarian mentioned in the first sentence? Per WP:NPOV, I think we should mention both points of view, as neither one is fringe. Tropcho (talk) 08:04, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Tropcho, there is no version of NPOV based on these sources which will include Bulgarian in the first sentence. Read the sources--they either 1) place these dialects in Macedonian or 2) place these dialects in a common Macedonian-Bulgarian language. There is no version of NPOV which gives Bulgarian equal stance with Macedonian in this case. There are political sources, but not neutral linguistic sources which do that. All the objective linguistic sources either place these dialects in Macedonian or they place them in a common Macedonian-Bulgarian language. Neutral linguistic sources do not place them in Bulgarian. You keep trying to push a Bulgarian POV that is simply not found in linguistic sources. --Taivo (talk) 13:51, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Labelling sources we don't like as "political" and "not linguistic" is convenient and can be quite tempting. However, per WP:BIASED, biases sources are not inherently disallowed and in fact can be excellent sources about the different viewpoints on a subject. Furthermore, in this particular case, the claim that those sources are not linguistic, but political is unfounded. Really, on what is this claim based, please? Sources 1-3 in the table (Crystal, Chambers & Trudgill, and Danforth) make it clear that both points of view are equally valid (or invalid, if you wish), from a strictly linguistic point of view. There's a dialect chain in the area and it is thus impossible to draw the line between B and M on the basis of linguistic criteria alone. That is why Comrie and Corbett, as well as Schmieger (among others), state that the extent of Bulgarian dialects to the southwest is controversial. Also, you seem not to have noticed that some of the sources above state that Macedonian can be considered a dialect of Bulgarian (not merely of a common Bulgaro-Macedonian language, as you present it); this of course applies equally well to the group of dialects we're discussing. It's quite clear from the above discussion that my proposal involves presenting both points of view. That's the essence of wikipedia's NPOV policy. On the other hand, you are suggesting presenting just one of the points of view, which is basically the Macedonian nationalistic POV. Tropcho (talk) 00:33, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Labelling a single Macedonian-Bulgarian language as "Bulgarian" is highly POV and unacceptable to Wikipedia, so calling these dialects of Greece "Bulgarian" because that is the label used by POV sources that include Macedonian as a dialect of Bulgarian is not neutral--it is pushing a strictly Bulgarian POV. The sources above are very, very clear--there are only two options that nearly all of the sources fall into (the remaining one can be considered fringe therefore): 1) The Slavic dialects of Greece are part of the Macedonian language or bundle of dialects, or 2) Macedonian and Bulgarian (and therefore all the Slavic dialects of Greece) are a single Macedo-Bulgarian language. And, you have completely misrepresented the sociolinguistic sources that mention politics. There is no "political" measure that is a valid linguistic determinant. Indeed, it is very easy to remove the political judgments--simply don't include any sources written in Macedonian or Bulgarian. Yes, it is sometimes difficult to draw clear linguistic lines, but when those lines are drawn, the Greek Slavic dialects almost always fall on the Macedonian side of the line. You simply can't get around that. When the lines are not drawn, then we are not talking about "Bulgarian", we are taking about a "Macedo-Bulgarian" dialect chain or single language. You simply don't have the sources to back up your determination to put the word "Bulgarian" in the first sentence as if the sources give it equal weight. The only linguistic evidence is for either "Macedonian" or "Macedo-Bulgarian" as the term to cover the language that these Slavic dialects of Greece belong to. --Taivo (talk) 01:36, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

It's somewhat naive to claim that excluding Macedonian or Bulgarian sources will remove political judgments. See e.g. the review of John Shea's book mentioned above, or Victor Friedman's interview (linked to above). Also, I think your suggestion to exclude some sources, as well as your statement that POVs (and "POV sources") are unacceptable, is based on a misunderstanding of wikipedia's NPOV and reliable sources policy. It is correct that calling Bulgaro-Macedonian dialects "Bulgarian dialects" is a POV. However, mentioning that POV in the article is not a problem on wikipedia per se, unless it's a fringe POV, which it is not (evident from the sources, e.g. Henniger, van Wijk, Ivanov, Shklifov (the last two originate from the region whose dialects we're discussing), as well as Katzner and Comrie & Corbett, who mention that some hold that view). Perhaps reading WP:NPOV and WP:BIASED again could help. Also, read again the first three sources. There's no linguistic criterion to decide where to draw the line in a dialect continuum, nor indeed whether such a line should be drawn (as long as all dialects in the continuum are mutually intelligible to a high degree). Thus, saying that once the line is drawn "the Greek Slavic dialects almost always fall on the Macedonian side of the line" is incorrect. If it were true that they almost always fall on the Macedonian side of the line, why would e.g. Comrie & Corbett and Schmieger state that the extent of Bulgarian and Macedonian dialects is controversial? Tropcho (talk) 21:01, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposed Rewrite of Education and Language section's first paragraph

• Various Slavic dialects are spoken across Northern Greece. These are usually classified as dialects of Macedonian by linguists who separate Macedonian and Bulgarian into two languages or two distinct dialect groups in a single larger language (variously called "Macedo-Bulgarian", "East South Slavic", "Bulgarian-Macedonian", etc.) However, linguists have often commented on how difficult it is to draw a clear line of demarcation between Macedonian dialects and Bulgarian dialects and the issue is clouded by national and political considerations. In Greece, the dialect chain is simply referred to as "Slavic". These dialects include the Upper and Lower Prespa dialects, the Kostur, Nestram-Kostenar, and Solun-Voden dialects. The Prilep-Bitola dialect is widely spoken in the Florina region, and forms the basis of the Standard Macedonian language. The Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop dialect is considered to be transitional between Macedonian and Bulgarian. The Pomak dialect is usually classified as Bulgarian. The majority of the speakers also speak Greek, this trend is more pronounced amongst younger persons.

This is the text which I propose as replacing the current first paragraph of the Education and Language section. --Taivo (talk) 20:26, 11 February 2015 (UTC). Edited per discussion above. --Taivo (talk) 01:40, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! Even if we say that they are usually classified as X., it still makes sense to say what the alternative classification is - unless it's fringe. In our case, sources frequently mention the fact that Macedonian dialects have been classified as Bulgarian, so it doesn't sound like fringe. Furthermore, it seems to me that this does not address my comment about Roland Schmieger above. Tropcho (talk) 23:45, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

There's one hell of a lot of "above". Please give a brief summary of whatever you thing "Roland Schmieger" has to do with this issue. --Taivo (talk) 00:52, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Your browser's search function would have allowed to find the relevant passage (close to the end of the RfC you started). I pointed out Schmieger as an author who considers Macedonian and Bulgarian to be distinct languages and nevertheless classifies dialects in eastern Greek Macedonia (Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop dialect) as belonging to Bulgarian. Vaillant also says that in spite of being geographically part of Macedonia, this dialect may as well be classified as belonging to the Rhodope group of Bulgarian dialects. There's a relatively simple geographical explanation for that (which I also got from Vaillant, if I remember correctly): there's a patch of high ground (around Kukush) separating the the valleys of the rivers Struma (in the east) and Vardar (to the west). Serbian linguistic influences propagated more easily from the north along the Vardar valley, than across the higher ground and into the neighboring valley. This is more or less where the eastern dialects of Greek Macedonia begin. The the table here illustrates the differences, and compares with the standard varieties. Tropcho (talk) 01:09, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Look at my comment above, below the table. Nearly all of the references that clearly divide Macedonian and Bulgarian into two languages (rather than quibbling over how hard that is or that M & B are really one language) place these dialects in Macedonian. That fulfills the definition of "usually" as I've proposed above. --Taivo (talk) 16:08, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Badly written POV

The latter part of this article is done in an obviously POV manner. It should be deleted or written from the beginning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.49.49.162 (talk) 20:53, 18 February 2015 (UTC)