Talk:Old Church Slavonic/Archive 1

Old Macedonian ?!?!? are you joking

How could OCS be called old macedonian when the Macedonian nation was created after WWII and the political state was formed just several years ago? It is still debatable whether we have a well defined macedonian ethnos yet (with most of the debaters firmly concluding - no) and this article talks about "Old Macedonian" ?! So it seems that despite the fact that the Macedonian nation did not exist yet (and would not come to existence in the next ~12 centuries) it already had a language... Please consider revising the first sentence of that article as the absurd here is rather preposterous.

Old Bulgarian, Slavic Macedonian

There is no such thing as Macedonian recension of Old Church Slavonic. Macedonian did not come into existence as a separate language until the 20th century - at least five centuries after Old Church Slavonic was no longer in use. The Western Bulgarian recension of OCS was widely used in all western Bulgarian provinces, not just in the region of slavic Macedonia. [Th.A.]

---

It should be noted, however that the Old Church Slavonic language is in fact Old Bulgarian.

Yes, the language was closely related to Old Bulgarian, but there is still a controversy about the fact that it was actually Old Bulgarian. Probably the differences were just like between Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin. Bogdan 12:23, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I just looked once again on the page and it actually writes this: Bogdan 12:25, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Cyril and Methodius hailed from Thessaloniki and based the Old Church Slavonic on the Slavic (Macedonian) dialect used by intellectuals of the Thessaloniki region of the Byzantine Empire.

---

What is that awful sentence about St. Cyril and St. Methodius hailing from Thessaloniki? Did they besides the two alphabets that they created also produced a new language called Old Church Slavonic? Then this would be the first sinthetic language in the history.

The students of the saints actually produced the first texts in Old Church Slavonic and that was done in the borders of the Bulgarian Kingdom. This is the reason to consider that the Old Church Slavonic and the Old Bulgarian language are the same.

Which speaks of an early and unprecedented institutionalisation of this language through the Bulgarian state and church. The Slavic nations that were to emerge later on were in a sense all "cultured" by Bulgaria - they received the Orthodoxy and a written language.

---

My guess is that it is a typo and that it should be "sailed". This is probably incorrect anyway.

As for Old Bulgarian, it is actually controversial whether Old Bulgarian existed at all. Nikola 22:08, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Creation, Macedonia, Old Bulgarian

About the changes:

• "create" is not a good word with regard to languages, Esperanto was "created" and that is certainly not the case with Old Slavonic. If someone has a better word than "standardise", please name it.

• what is that claim that "the apostles went to Macedonia and from there they spread the language to Bulgaria and the other east Slavic countries"?????

1. Macedonia was part of Bulgaria then. 2. They didn't just come and started teaching the language because they wanted to - just look at what happened in Great Moravia. It is quite obvious that without the sanction and support of the state, the academy in Ohrid would never have been created. The disciples were invited by the Bulgarian king as the state was threatened by Hellenification and incorporation into Byzantium (all teaching and religious ceremonies were in Greek). 3. The academies were two - Climent worked in Ohrid, whereas Naum worked in Preslav - which was the capital of Bulgaria then. The phrase "the apostles went to to Macedonia and from there they spread the language to Bulgaria" is therefore completely incorrect and misleading.

• Old Bulgarian is equal to Old Slavonic. In Bulgarian literature only the appelation Old Bulgarian is used.

• Looking forward to see any constructive comments written in decent English. The previous ones fall certainly short of those criteria and I'll keep erasing them.

______

• "create" is not a good word with regard to languages, Esperanto was "created" and that is certainly not the case with Old Slavonic. If someone has a better word than "standardise", please name it.
  • That's no problem. I forgot to change that.

• what is that claim that "the apostles went to Macedonia and from there they spread the language to Bulgaria and the other east Slavic countries"?????
  • The story in the texts from that time says that - besides those who were possibly sold as slaves - they went to the Ohrid lake first, founded there an academy and only from there they went to present-day Bulgaria. If I write present-day Macedonia (at that time Bulgaria) then the point is to enable the reader to find it on the map. A second reason is that a Macedonian and Bulgarian dialect is distinguished for that time by most linguists, therefore it makes sense to give a precise geographic region.

1. Macedonia was part of Bulgaria then.

see above - it was in text

2. They didn't just come and started teaching the language because they wanted to - just look at what happened in Great Moravia. It is quite obvious that without the sanction and support of the state, the academy in Ohrid would never have been created. The disciples were invited by the Bulgarian king as the state was threatened by Hellenification and incorporation into Byzantium (all teaching and religious ceremonies were in Greek).

I do not see any contradiction with my text.

3. The academies were two - Climent worked in Ohrid, whereas Naum worked in Preslav - which was the capital of Bulgaria then. The phrase "the apostles went to to Macedonia and from there they spread the language to Bulgaria" is therefore completely incorrect and misleading.

I meant PRESENT-DAY Bulgaria, of course. The text recquires much more changes, but I did not and do not have the time right now.

• Old Bulgarian is equal to Old Slavonic. In Bulgarian literature only the appelation Old Bulgarian is used.

It is used in Bulgarian literature only. That's the point. And this is not the Bulgarian Wikipedia, but the English wikipedia, where the term Old Bulgarian is not used. In other words Old Bulgarian is not an English expression. Therefore it should not be right in the title in the first place.

• Looking forward to see any constructive comments written in decent English. The previous ones fall certainly short of those criteria and I'll keep erasing them.

And now my points. 1. Every serious linguistics text (German, English, Czech, Slovak etc. ) says that the language was a Macedonian dialect (or at worse, a South Slavic dialect, but never Bulgarian). I have nothing against Bulgaria, nor against Macedonia, or vice versa, but that is simply a fact. But I can imagine that the Bulgarians call it Old Bulgarian (very scientific)- there have been attempts to make such changes in other Wikis as well.

2. Bulgaria was NOT the first country, in which the language was used as a literary language. The first country in which the Bible translation was finished, the first Slavic Code was written, the first Slavic poems etc. were written and were the language was used even in the church and in the state administration was Great Moravia - the country for which the language was "standardized". So that is definitely not the correct reason (just as any other reason) to call it Old Bulgarian.

3. You have left out the part on Great Moravia without giving any reason. I will restore it. If you do not like the language used, you are free to correct the language, but not the content, because the content is correct.

4. In general, it is very suspicious that you have problems with any fact bringing the language in connection with territories outside present-day Bulgaria (present-day Macedonia, Great Moravia, you left out Croatia, Bohemia etc. ). That is inacceptable in the Wikipedia.

5. I hope I-or someone else- will find the time for a detailed article one day. It makes no sense to discuss at this superficial level.

Juro 00:18, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

---VMORO:

1. Every serious linguistics text (German, English, Czech, Slovak etc. ) says that the language was a Macedonian dialect (or at worse, a South Slavic dialect, but never Bulgarian). I have nothing against Bulgaria, nor against Macedonia, or vice versa, but that is simply a fact. But I can imagine that the Bulgarians call it Old Bulgarian (very scientific)- there have been attempts to make such changes in other Wikis as well

- I would like you to point me one serious Slavist, who sees a distinction between Bulgarian and Macedonian dialects in the 9th century, especially if we bear in mind that Macedonian as a literary language exists from 1945. And that dialects are a form of the oral, not of the written language (and this is certainly not folklore we are talking about here). There is a difference between texts written in Ohrid and Pliska (afterwards Preslav) showing minor differences between the vernacular in then-western and then-eastern Bulgaria. This, however, is no ground for declaring that Old Slavonic is based on a Macedonian dialect. No linguist has ever spoken about the Macedonian language until the beginning of the 20th century but you find a dialect of that language as early as the 9th century - that's really bizarre?? Old Slavonic is based on A SLAVIC DIALECT SPOKEN IN THE REGION OF THESSALONIKI, and that is EXACTLY what I wrote. I have never claimed that it was a BULGARIAN dialect as the BULGAR language still existed at that time and there is possibility for confusion.

(1) I hope you are not even trying to suggest that there was no Macedonian dialect at that time. I do not know whether the term is related to the present-day Macedonian language or not, but it exists.

(2) These are the facts generally accepted by the Slavists outside Bulgaria (although I am sure there are other views): The Slavic language used in Solun was a Macedonian dialect (according some texts even the Macedonian language). Then the texts written in Great Moravia (the so-called Great Moravian redaction) and/or by Great Moravian disciples contain elements of the (great)moravian dialect . Then the texts written in Ohrid, Preslav etc contain elements of the Bulgarian and of the Macedonian dialect (the so-called Bulgarian-Macedonian redaction). I do not speak those two languages, so I assume what you call a West Bulgarian dialect here is what others call the Macedonian dialect. If the Bulgarian linguists deny this we can write "MAcedonian dialect, but the Bulgarians call it West Bulgarian " or so. Analogously, there is a Russian redaction, a Bohemian redaction, a Croatian redaction etc.

(3)"a SLAVIC DIALECT SPOKEN IN THE REGION OF THESSALONIKI, and that is EXACTLY what I wrote": you left out the word Macedonian.

2. Bulgaria was NOT the first country, in which the language was used as a literary language. The first country in which the Bible translation was finished, the first Slavic Code was written, the first Slavic poems etc. were written and were the language was used even in the church and in the state administration was Great Moravia - the country for which the language was "standardized". So that is definitely not the correct reason (just as any other reason) to call it Old Bulgarian.

- My mistake

3. You have left out the part on Great Moravia without giving any reason. I will restore it. If you do not like the language used, you are free to correct the language, but not the content, because the content is correct.

- I have not done that, you are mistaken here, please check. The Great Moravian period is as important as the Bulgarian one, this was what I meant.

You left out the part that the textsa there had elements of the local dialects

4. In general, it is very suspicious that you have problems with any fact bringing the language in connection with territories outside present-day Bulgaria (present-day Macedonia, Great Moravia, you left out Croatia, Bohemia etc. ). That is inacceptable in the Wikipedia.

- You are wrong. If you talk about history, please include your comments about present-day or then- or whatever. Because if you don't, it is understated that you talk about then and not about present day- . With regard to the statement that from Macedonia the language spread to Bulgaria, etc., etc. I have had the absolute right to correct your article as it literally claimed that "from the state of Macedonia, the language spread to the state of Bulgaria, etc. etc. I think it is very suspicious of you to make such "accidental" mistakes.

(1) That was simply a mistake. And I did not write "the state of", that is your invention. But for your information, for example, if you open the German huge encyclopeadia of medieval times they distinguish there Macedonia and Bulgaria for that time, without any attributes - i.e. they mean it as geographical terms. This is quite frequent.

(2) Of course you have the right to correct - why did not you add "present-day" instead of deleting whole sentences then?

Besides, I think spread is very out of place here as the language was spoken in all countries it "spread". "started to use" or "adopted" would be much better here.

You do not have to ask to make such minor corrections... The correct expression is "the use of the language spred".

5. I repeat you miss the point of why the academies in Ohrid and Pliska/Preslav were created. The way you had put it, it sounds that they were some sort of refugees who "fled" to the "ohrid's lake" and started teaching. Why did they teach? Who allowed them? Who did they teach it to? These are all questions you have not even hinted the answer of and that's not the way an article should be written/edited, either in Wikipedia or anywhere else. As for the order of the academies: the one in Ohrid was the first one followed immediately by another one in Pliska, which was later moved to Preslav in 893/894. However, that is inconsequential as: In Bulgaria at that time the clergy was Byzantine and it preached in Greek, the academies were created to prepare a Slavic clergy, which was to replace the Greek one. That's what matters, buddy, take care.

By the way, I checked: the biography of St. Kliment of Ohrid by St. Teophylact of Ohrid clearly says that the disciples were called to meet Boris I upon their arrival and he commissioned them to teach Old Slavonic. ---VMORO:

(1)The details of the expulsion of the disciple from Great Moravia are disputed, because the Old Church Slavonic texts contradict each other in details. Even the exact year 885/886 is disputed and especially the fact whether some of them were sold as Slaves or not etc. According to some texts they spread from Great Moravia directly to Croatia, Bulgaria, Wislania etc, acording to other texts they went to Ohrid first and from there to Preslav, Coratia etc. And there are other versions as well. The Ohrid version, however, seems to be the generally accepted one. You, of course, prefer the view that they all went to Bulgaria and from there spread to other territories. If we want to go into details, I do not know how to solve this problem(,buddy) ...

(2)This artile is too short now go into details on who invited them etc. (because we would have to add the details on other countiers as well then) and those thinks are treated below Glagolitic, where you have added your comments already.

Juro 12:39, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

---

VMORO:

1. Some scholars are of the opinion that the language was at least to some extent first adopted in Croatia, before Great Moravia and Bulgaria, probably 1. brought by Cyril and Methodius themselves on their way to Panonia 2. under influence from Panonia 3. (this is after Great Moravia) brought by Gorazd after the dissolution of the Moravian academy. I think if you want to be exact, you have to include that, as well, in the article.

(A) Maybe you wrote this paragraph too quickly, because I can only guess what you are trying to say.

(B) If I wanted to be exact the article would be 10 pages long.

(C)If you can name the linguists and they are serious linguists, you can add what you write about Croatia. I have never heard that, and must admit that I can hardly believe you that.

(D)As for Pannonia, I am an expert on that, and you seem to be completely confusing the territories of Great Moravia, the Balaton principality and the whole political structure there, which however is not rare in the world. Basically,Pannonia was part of Great Moravia. But as I already mentionned, these things would reyquire a much longer article and preparation.

2. The influence and importance of Bulgaria for the development and spread of the Slavonic language is crucial and indisputable and under no circumstances should be left with that short note of "... fled to the Ohrid's lake...".

It is not there anymore, so what?

3. Old Slavonic is referred to as "Old Bulgarian" (Altbulgarisch) as early as the mid-19th century by scholars like A.Schleicher, M.Hatala and L.Geitler as the earliest Slavic manuscripts bear the phonetic characteristics of Bulgarian and include loanwords from vulgar Greek. Outdated or not, this 1. deserves mentioning 2. completely clashes with your statement that Old Bulgarian is an appelation used solely by Bulgarian linguists.

It is an appelation used only by Bulgarian linguists TODAY. There is progress even in the field of slavistics. As for "as the earliest Slavic manuscripts bear the phonetic characteristics of Bulgarian" - see my explanations about waht can be GENERALLY found in present-day expert texts on Old Slavic

4. Contraty to what you might think, I don't really care about the way the article is constructed (I think Croatia should be included) as long as the Bulgarian contribution is recognised. Evident distortions of historical evidence such as that Old Slavonic is based on Macedonian are, however, fully out of place here.

I really do not know if this is a general problem in Bulgaria or only yours, but outside Bulgaria the Macedonian dialect is mentioned everywhere. I cannot say whether it is wrong or not, but it must be mentioned in the article, because there is something like NPOV in the wikipedia. It is really not enough, if YOU say, that something is wrong, if most sources state the opposite. I suggest the problem is that the Bulgarian and Macedonian languages are too close to each other, so that the Bulgarians consider them both as Bulgarian language?? - If it is so, you should add a comment on that. There is enough space to mention all points of view, but just saying "..Macedonian is out of place" is not a sufficient argument.

5. The details about the purpose of teaching Old Slavonic in Great Moravia are properly explained. However, you deem a similar explanation about Bulgaria superfluous and unnecessary. Can you explain to me why?

You are confusing this short article with the long article on Glagolithic alphabet. Maybe you should copy the whole history part from there to this article and add the present few sentences in this article.

---

VMORO

Whatever. I am gonna provide you with the details about Croatia as soon as I have the time.

Linguistics until the middle of the 20th century NEVER speaks about Macedonian dialects (meaning dialects of the Macedonian language), it speaks most often about Bulgarian dialects in Macedonia, though some scholars find them Serbian. Check old sources or if you want - or don't check if you don't want, in the second case I'll just erase that sentence again. Because: therewith you imply that there was a linguistic difference at the time indicating 1. that there were two languages: Macedonian and Bulgarian or 2. that these dialects were to soon take form of two languages: Macedonian and Bulgarian.

This is wrong as the Macedonian language was standardised as late as 1945 on the basis of dialects previously defined as Bulgarian (or sometimes as Serbian)(by Selishev, Weigand, Boue, Lejean, Zarenko, Verkovic, Safarik, Hahn and MANY others). As far as the dialectal differences between texts from the two academies are concerned, they represent the general division between dialects in eastern Bulgaria and dialects in western Bulgaria and persent day - FYR of Macedonia, differences, which exist nowadays, as well.

The boldest politically unbiased modern texts about the Macedonian language state that texts written in the vernacular in Macedonia appeared as early as the 18th century - and afterwards they leap to the standartisation of the Macedonian language in 1945. Evidently you choose politically biased texts to influence your judgement, which is fine with me, but is totally unacceptable here.

So Selishev, Weigand, Boue, Lejean, Zarenko, Verkovic, Safarik, Hahn and the many others giving ethnographic and linguistic information about Macedonia in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century are untrustworthy

And no, I am not confusing this article with the article about the Glagolitic alphabet, you tried to expunge everything about Bulgaria during your editions. Why you have a problem with Bulgaria and why you want the articles to contain information only about Great Moravia is of no concern for me but that's unacceptable here.

---VMORO

So this is what www.infoplease.com (http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0812207.html) has to say about Old Church Slavonic:

Church Slavonic, language belonging to the South Slavic group of the Slavic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Slavic languages). Although it is still the liturgical language of most branches of the Orthodox Eastern Church, Church Slavonic is extinct today as a spoken tongue. In its earliest period, from the 9th to 11th cent. A.D., this language is variously termed Old Church Slavonic, Old Church Slavic, or Old Bulgarian. The year 1100 is the conventional dividing line between the ancestor, Old Church Slavonic, and its descendant, the later Church Slavonic, which flourished as the literary language of a number of Slavic peoples before the 18th cent. Old Church Slavonic was created in the 9th cent. by St. Cyril and St. Methodius for their translation of the Gospels and other religious texts. Scholars disagree as to which spoken Slavic dialect was chosen by the two saints as the basis for the language of their translations. In any case, because this dialect was inadequate for their purpose, they had to enrich and transform it, drawing on the vocabulary and syntax of Greek. Old Church Slavonic is the first Slavic language known to have been recorded in writing. Two alphabets were devised for it, the Glagolitic and the Cyrillic. Tradition makes St. Cyril the inventor of both, although this view has been questioned; and both alphabets are said to have been derived in part from the Greek. The earliest suriving documents in Old Church Slavonic date from the 10th and 11th cent. In time, as the South and East Slavic tongues influenced this literary language in their respective regions, three major forms of the later Church Slavonic arose: Bulgarian, Serbian, and Russian. For various historical reasons, Russian Church Slavonic eventually became the dominant form. The Western Slavs were not caught up in this development, since they came under the domination of the Roman Catholic Church after the 11th cent. At first employed for religious writings, Church Slavonic later came to be used in secular compositions as well. Today it is written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

This is the opinion of www.omniglot.com (http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ocslavonic.htm)

Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavonic is a literary language which developed from the language used by St Cyril and St Methodius, 9th century missionaries from Byzantium, to translate the bible and other religious works. Cyril and Methodius based their translations on a Slavonic dialect of the Thessalonika area and invented a new alphabet, Glagolitic, in order to write them.

Sometime during the 10th century AD a new alphabet appeared which was known as Cyrillic and named after St Cyril. It was possibly invented by St Kliment of Ohrid, a missionary in Bulgaria. The Cyrillic alphabet was used to write the Old Church Slavonic language and was later adapated to write many other languages.

Old Church Slavonic was used as the liturgical language of the Russian Orthodox church between the 9th and 12th centuries. A more modern form of the language, known as Church Slavonic, appeared during the 14th century and is still used in the Russian Orthodox church.

this is the opinion of NationMaster (wherefrom this article was taken in the first place) (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Old-Slavonic-language):

Old Church Slavonic (or Old Slavonic, or Old Slavic, Russian старославя́нский язы́к, Slovene starocerkvenoslovan

čina) is the first literary and liturgical Slavic language taken over (or developed, depending on the point of view) by the 9th century missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius. It was used by them for translation of the Bible and other church books from Greek. It is important in Eastern Orthodoxy and in most countries of the Slavic peoples. (See also liturgical language.) Cyril and Methodius hailed from Solun (modern Thessaloniki) and based the Old Church Slavonic on the Slavic dialect used by intellectuals of the Solun (Thessaloniki) region of the Byzantine Empire. Bulgarian scholars consider Old Church Slavonic an Old Bulgarian dialect and call it Old Bulgarian. It has many South Slavic word forms.

A redaction of Old Church Slavonic, made much later, is known Church Slavonic (ru: церковнославя́нский язы́к), but these terms are often confused.

Church Slavonic maintained a prestige status, particularly in Russia, for many centuries — among Slavs in the East it had a status analogous to that of the Latin language in western Europe, but had the advantage of being less divergent from the vernacular tongues of average parishioners.

Some Eastern Orthodox churches, such as the Russian and Serbian churches, still use Church Slavonic in their services and chants.

Additionally, several Eastern Rite Catholic churches use Church Slavonic.

Initially Old Church Slavonic language was written with the Glagolitic alphabet, but later it was superseded by the Cyrillic alphabet.

These are the first three encyclopedia articles about Old Church Slavonic that I found when i made a search with "Old Church Slavonic" in Google. Macedonia and macedonian vernacular is nowhere to be found, the same with Great Moravia. Old Bulgarian is given as an alternate name of the language in two of them. I don't care whether you are a Slovak who desperately has to include every single fact about Great Moravia in all articles bearing reference to Old Slavonic but if you keep on with this narrow and partisan attitude with regard to Great Moravia and Macedonia, I'll just erase this article and will place the original one.

What I have presented to you are informations from professional linguistic and medieval encyclopaedias. The text that you present here are so ridiculous that I even hesitate to answer. The last encyclopeadia that you present is a mirror of the wikipedia (not vice versa) and the central part of the text was largely written by ME (some of us are here for a much longer time). And as you can see, it did not contain anything about Great Moravia. The remaining two sources do not contradict what I am saying, they simply do not go into details. In addition, the infolpease page is a ridiculous internet encyclopaedia as well. I did not plan to deal with this topic, but I see that I will have to do this, since no serious linguist seems to react here. In addition, if you do not believe me, I will ask a professor of slavistics to write to you in September or so - I hope he speaks English. I will not let you turn the old language of all Slavs into Bulgarian language as you did it in the Bulgarian language page, which I will not correct, so that everybody can see what the aim of your edits is. And ... do you really think that I have nothing better to do than to invent a Macedonian dialect in order to quarrel with a Wikipedia editor? Why should I do that? Juro 14:26, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

First of all, the mention about Bulgarian being the oldest Slavic language in the article about Bulgarian language has not been made by me. If you really wanted to make any sensible comment about my edits, you would have checked - but evidently you prefer to throw around accusations?! The last text is indeed the worst of the three - including some unintelligible English and some incorrect claims like "Bulgarian scholars consider Old Church Slavonic an Old Bulgarian dialect and call it Old Bulgarian". Where did you read that??? What I said and what the truth is that "Bulgarian scholars call Old Church Slavonic Old Bulgarian". Whether you wrote that text or not is no concern of mine - the fact is that third text does not contain the claims about "the students of Cyril and Methodius fleeing to the Ohrid's lake" and "Old Church Slavonic is based on the Macedonian vernacular", which makes it, though not brilliant, acceptable. If you are indeed a linguist, you should at least know that the present Macedonian language is based on the western Bitola dialect. The dialect in eastern FYROM is identical to the dialect in Pirin Macedonia and the one around Sofia. The Salonica dialect (this is all beginning of the 20th century dialectology) differs from both of them with its archaisms + some traits typical for the eastern Bulgarian dialects. And on top of it you talk about a language standardised in the 9th century on the basis of the Macedonian vernacular??! Which vernacular exactly? The vernacular in FYROM? The "Macedonian" vernacular in the 9th century? When the Slavs were still divided in tribes? A language standardised in the 9th century is based on a language standardised in the 20th? Whatever...

Maybe you did not know that the term Macedonia was widely used for (approximately) present-day Macedonia and present-day northern Greece at that time, even if the territory was part of other states, and that the term did not arise in the 20th century. I see that you simply deny the existence of term "Macedonian" for that time for nationalist reasons, although all texts that I have call, what you would call the "Bulgarian language", the "Macedo-Bulgarian" version/redaction etc. - in other words the term Bulgarian vernacular is not even used for the period after 885. In addition, I have even found the name "Old Macedonian" for Old Slavic. This is not my invention, but a quote. You are not even willing to admit that linguists ouside Bulgaria use the term. But actually, if I consider what you have done in the Bulgarian language article, then I think that any serious discussion makes no sense for the time being.

But, as I already mentioned, I will come back to this.Juro 21:24, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Implying that I do not know the borders of historical Macedonia (considering that my mother is from Greek Macedonia) is ridiculous and rather insolent. Even more the implication that I "deny" the existence of the term "Macedonian". No, buddy, I don't deny it, I know how to use it - something which cannot be said about you. Before 1944, the name has had a purely geographical conotation, i.e. of the region of Macedonia. After the establishment of the Republic of Macedonia within Yugoslavia, "Macedonian" is used as a name defining a people and a language.

This is a fact you can easily check by looking at the online edition of Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 (www.1911encyclopedia.org) and any other linguistic or ethnographic text published before the 1940's. As I can clearly see (as things start to take a rather personal turn for you), you won't do it - what you really want to do is try dig any bollocks whatsoever on the net, including the name "Macedonian". As I can easily find someone delivering an opinion about that Slovak is a dialect of Czech and vice versa. If that's the professional way a linguist works - well, way to go, buddy!-:))

By the way, I still haven't heard from you the name of even one linguist speaking about dialects of the Macedonian language or about a Macedonian language before 1944. I can help you out with one name: Jovan Cviic regarding Slavs in northern Macedonia as Serbs and the ones in southern Macedonia as an amorphous Slavic mass (whatever that means). Please find me significant evidence about other linguists or ethnographs talking about dialects of the Macedonian language or about a Macedonian language before 1944. And after you explain to me how (because you won't find) a group of dialects referred to for centuries as Serbian or Bulgarian can give rise to a written language in the 9th century, then try to scare me with some "respectable" linguist who is supposed to scold me and box my ears.

And tell me what I have done in the section about Bulgarian language because apart from adding sections about grammar and alphabet, my memory eludes me to have done anything else.

---

VMORO

By the way, I forgot to tell you that "Old Macedonian" is a term usually used to define the language of the ancient (not Slav) Macedonians. I suggest that you start searching for another title to your "linguistic" experiments. And smth else: considering the contents of your edits the claim that you use "professional linguistic and medieval encyclopaedias" rings quite hollow. Cheers, man

(1)Look, I know that I am right because I simply did not invent what I am claiming here and I have absolutely no reason to do so. I can only repeat that I do not claim that the term Macedonian is correct, but it is used, so it must be mentioned here, if the article is supposed to be longer one day (because presently it is only "OK", because it does not contain much information, so that everybody is satisfied). An encyclopedia is supposed to reflect several views and not only one (namely Yours).

- This opinion is shared by an isolated minority of scholars from FYROM (and several others from former Yugoslavia). An encyclopedia should generally reflect FACTS, not CLAIMS. But if you decide to include all CLAIMS like this one, go ahead and do it. Some Bulgarian linguists CLAIM that Cyrill and Methodius went to Great Moravia by commission from Boris and that they were Bulgarian, according to your logic, you have to include THAT CLAIM, as well. Serious linguists generally are reluctant to write too much about Macedonian as factual evidence is scanty and rather dubious but since you are so bold, go ahead and make a revolution.

(2)Now you are even denying that the term XY vernacular can refer to a geographical territory XY (like Macedonia) rather than to a political entity (e.g. a country). Very "interesting", because the opposite is true. Otherwise the number of languages/dialects would be as high as the number of countries.

- Looks like you haven't read at all what I wrote. The name can be referred to a geographical region but the name Macedonian refers to both and there is a danger of confusing the ethnic and the geographical appelation. BUT Macedonia until the 12th century was the name of the region of WESTERN THRACE AND THE EASTERN RHODOPES, UNDER THIS NAME MACEDONIA WAS A PROVINCE IN BYZANTIUM FOR MORE THAN THREE CENTURIES, WHEREAS MODERN MACEDONIA (at least the western part) WAS CALLED KUTMICHEVICA BY THE SLAVS AND BULGARIA BY BYZANTIUM. Looks like you didn't wrote your homework again as you make the usual hotchpotch of historical facts and pure fiction. By the way, you haven't quoted yet your sources about Kliment, Naum and Angelarius, different from St. Teophylact, I am waiting for them.

(3) And finally, everybody who reads this lenghty discussion can see who is the one for whom things are turning personal. I have been constantly ignoring your repeated personal attacks (starting with "take care, buddy", "decent English" etc.), because I know this "game", since I have been with the Wikipedia for a quit long time. I will not fall to this level,"buddy".\

- Yes, the article is available for everyone and they can see who's personal and who's not. Threatening to dig up anything about Macedonian (just as long as it is about Macedonian) is certainly very "professional" and "impersonal".

(4) As I alredy mentioned, I will come back to this after having collected more evidence - certainly not from the internet (like you). That can take one month or more, because there are other articles I have promised to deal with.

- Do whatever you feel like. I know how to defend my views. Who was personal with that (like you), you or me?

(5): Finally, your problem with the Macedonians is excellently explained below Macedonian language. I wonder why I did not look into the article earlier. And I was right, the problem here is pure nationalism.

- Nope, my problem is historical evidence and its abuse by certain people. As you don't seem to be able to quote any reliable source to defend your position, the easiest thing is to blame me for being nationalistic. By the way, can you tell me when you don't speak Macedonian or Bulgarian, how will you be able to conduct any decent research into the matter?

I haven't heard an appology yet for the accusation that I wrote that Bulgarian was the oldest written Slavic language. (Not that this claim doesn't make sense when Old Bulgarian is used as a synonym for Old Church Slavonic). When I make mistakes here, I appologise, you don't seem to be in that habit.

It makes no sense to continue this discussion now that I plan to go into details in one month or so, because othewise we would have to repeat it then. I just repeat: Everybody (not even a minority) outside Bulgaria calls the language a Macedonian dialect. And there are other Slavic countries outside Bulgaria. And since the language was no Bulgarian language, they are as able to analyze it as you. Welcome to the world outside Bulgaria! See the Talk page Bulgarian language. I have offered you (several times) the opportunity to present the Bulgarian point of view as an alternative. Since you are not even able to accept this, you will get the international point of view. And don't be afraid, quotes will follow as I promised. This is my last statement on this topic for the time being.Juro 19:57, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ah yes, as for the apology - you were editing the text around the sentence and you just happened not to change it (if you claim that you do not agree with it.)...

In a month or so or whenever, I'll be prepared. As to what I am gonna "get", I'll remind you that this website is free to edit by anyone, i.e. anyone can write pretty much anything here (both solid scientific evidence and just crap) and anyone can make edits to those edits. And I'll make sure that this encyclopedia gets a truly international content and doesn't limit to your one-sided treatment of the problem.

These FYROMian pseudo-historians or just plain liars are getting quite annoying. The western Bulgarian with all of it's features is still spoken in eastern Serbia, from the Moravija region to Vojvodina. So, western Bulgarian is NOT "Macedonian". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.202.248.68 (talk) 16:21, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Recent edits

I don't see the point of including Cyril and Methodius in the authors' section, since none of the manuscripts that have come down are in their hand. In fact, I don't see the point of an authors' section in general, since the vast majority of texts are translations of existing Greek works and anonymously-penned.

No, this is not really true, the ones quoted have produced original texts, as well VMORO

Also, Juro, if you are not a native English speaker as is suggested by the grammar of your posts, please do not debate the meaning of English-language terminology, just like I wouldn't go to a foreign Wikipedia and complain about their editing. Non-native speakers have long created unnecessary annoyance in English-language Slavonic studies, like when Russians et al., inspired by their own word "staroslavjanskij jazyk" or similar, rail against the word "Church" in the English term. Crculver 02:02, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Whoops, mistaked you for another editor. My apologies. Crculver 02:17, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If there is an authors' section (which was not added by me), I will re-include Cyril and Methodius. For a list of Cyril's works see e.g. the article on Konstantin in the German Wikipedia. It is not true that the "vast majority" is translated from Greek. And by the way, the translation of the Bible, the first Slavic poem and the first Slavic Civil Code written by them would be enough to include them as the most important authors...And as for the Bulgarian dialect (which was the original version of this article months ago), as far as I remember, VMORO himself was wondering here saying something like "where did you hear that?". Also, given the historical cicrumstances, it is simply impossible that the dialect of Thessaloniki before 860 was a Bulgarian dialect, but I really do not have the time to save the whole Wikipedia - write what you want...Juro 16:58, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Ok, so let's see...

Old Slavic combinations tj and dj are transformed into sht and jd in Old Church Slavonic. I followed your lengthy (and a bit meaningless) debate with VMORO, so I guess you're of the opinion that it was a Macedonian dialect. But Old Slavic tj and dj have turned into soft (palatal) k and g in Macedonian, whereas in Bulgarian they are again sht and jd (as in Old Church Slavonic). That's my reasoning and no, you are not right to say that "I can write what I want", we should all try to make edits which are based on evidence, at least that's what I am led by when I make contributions here. Birkemaal

I want to get an explanation from Juro as to why it is impossible for the dialect of Thessaloniki to be a Bulgarian dialect. Because that was exactly what it was: the dialect of the Bulgarian Slavs living in the area. Juro thinks that if he disparages everything Bulgarian, Great Moravia will shine even brighter in the sky of Slavistics. The sentence about Cyril and Methodius is there only so that we can here (yet again) the word Great Moravia. ~~VMORO

VMORO, the vast majority of scholarship on OCS in English refers to it as based on a Macedonian dialect (with considerable Moravian innovations absorbed into it). See the grammars of Comrie, Lunt, Schlamstieg, Nandris, etc. Therefore, I will continue to support its mention here, because that is what reputable linguists write. Please stop trying to go against 99% of scholars and just accept that what you are pushing is nationalist claptrap that has no place in a scholarly article. Crculver 21:09, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Don't try to qualify my edits, Crculver, it doesn't really suit your claims of "elevated professional English and scholarliness". And don't attempt to tell me what I should do or not do, keep that for your wife.

It is very interesting to me how these grammars explain what Birkemaal pointed out earlier. I also want to know how they distinguish between Bulgarian and Macedonian dialects in the 9th century, especially since the Slavs of Macedonia referred to themselves as Bugari and their language as bugarski until the beginning of the 20th century. So if one part of them has chosen to refer to themselves as Macedonians, this goes retroactively to the 9th century or what? If that is the case, your "respectable scholars" are neither respectable, nor scholars. And why do you always refer to a grammar, can't you ever produce an original argument? ~~VMORO

Because Wikipedia is not a place for original arguments. We are here to present scholarship to laymen, not produce it outselves. Furthermore, I would like a citation to show that the Slavs of 9th century Thessaloniki (any other epoch is not pertinent to the article) actually called themselves Bulghars. Crculver 02:00, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Don't you feel a bit inadequate explaining to me what Wikipedia IS a place for, and what it is NOT? Are you trying to be paternalizing or what??! I want a citation myself to show that the Slavs of 9th century Thessaloniki are Macedonian. And, Crculver, neither I, nor Birkemaal has received an answer yet as to the transformation of Old Slavic "tj" and "dj" in Old Church Slavonic, Bulgarian and Macedonian. ~~VMORO

While I want to distance myself from the last statement by VMORO, which I would classify as rude, I can't help pointing out to you, Crculver, that you seem to have misunderstood what grammars and books have to say (or they themselves are inexact). That dialect is certainly Macedonian in the geographical sense of the word. However, if we take modern Bulgarian and Macedonian as a starting-point, the dialect has many more traits of Bulgarian than of Macedonian.

You seem also to forget that it is politics that defines what is a language and what is a dialect and which dialects belong to a certain language, not vice versa. As regards the Slavic dialects of Macedonia, we have an almost universal acceptance of them as Bulgarian until 1918, then they become viewed as Serbian by most scholars, and we have actually started regarding the name "Macedonian" as a linguistic and not only geographical term since 1945. Quoting the synchronical aspects of a question is of not much of a use when you lack any knowledge about its diachronical development. Birkemaal

While this is getting to have very little to do with the article, I am rather tired of seeing people complain that the question of Macedonian is entirely political and a "Macedonian language" a rather recent invention. See The Slavonic Languages, ed. Bernard Comrie, for a defence of the idea of Macedonian as a separate language in its own right for several centuries already. Crculver 02:00, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

See Maps and Politics. Review of the ethnographic cartography of the Balkans by Wilkinson. It describes in detail but quite impartially the history of the concept of "Macedonian Slavs" and hence "the Macedonian language". But I'll look up the book you quoted on Monday and I'll come back to you. Because the author does not know what he's talking about - he has just taken what the Macedonians themselves write about their language without checking it. And since I cannot send my objections to him, I'll send them to you here. I am getting increasingly tired of people who have just read a couple of articles but otherwise have no experience whatsoever in the field. And since you continue claiming this is not a political question, you are nothing more than that ~~VMORO

I am a student of comparative Indo-European linguistics working towards specialisation in the Slavonic branch. I have read more than "a couple of articles", and have studied with the several key handbooks of Old Church Slavonic written in English (as well as two in Russian). I want their respected and accepted viewpoint represented here, not yours, unless you somehow manage to sway the entire world of English-language Slavonic studies to your side. Crculver 21:13, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I am a third generation Macedonian Bulgarian, my grandparents come from Kukush (Kilkis) 50 km north of Thessaloniki and were ethnically cleansed (along with pretty much all exarchist Bulgarians from the Thessaloniki and Serres region) in 1913 by the Greek army. Take no offence but neither I, nor my parents or grandparents, need to take any guiding from you as to what they are: Bulgarians or Macedonians. The dialect of Kukush and Thessaloniki has sht and zhd (instead of soft k and g), it has the schwa vowel (instead of a), it does not have a fixed accent (as in modern Bulgarian and unlike modern Macedonian), it has only one definite article (and not three as in Macedonian). What is in parenthesis is pretty much the only thing that is different between modern Macedonian and Bulgarian (apart from the Serbian loanwords in the former). This much about the "Macedonian" dialect of Thessaloniki - at least beginning of the 20th century one. Yeah, and if I have to turn upside down the whole Slavonic studies, I'll do it - it was already done in 1945. ~~VMORO

Crculver, the Macedonian question was one of the most poliiticised issues until WWI. Serbian cartographer Jovan Cvijic claimed in 1907 (and not several centuries ago), in an attempt to justify Serbian claims to the region, that when the Slavic population of Macedonia calls itself Bulgar, this means for them only that they are peasant Christians, "rayah", and not an affiliation with the "Bulgarian" ethnicity. The same approach was used by the Greeks who claimed "Bulgarian" in Macedonia means a "peasant" whereas "Greek" means "an urban dweller".

As for that grammar - if it indeed follows the development of a Macedonian language for several centuries, it is only a manifestation of gross incompetence. I am absolutely sure that the author alludes to 19 century authors like the Miladinov Brothers, Joachim Karchovski, Grigor Prlichev and Kiril Peicinovik with regard to the Macedonian language. However, these authors referred to themselves as Bulgarians, to their language as Bulgarian and even to Macedonia as to lower Moesia and western Bulgaria. The Yugoslav authorities before invested a lot of money into the translation of their works (with convenient editions and substitutions of "Bulgaria" with "Macedonia") into all major European languages and into their representation as Macedonian literature. However, original editions are absolutely unavailable in Skopje (as such actually do not exist) and the ones which are to be found in Sofia or western European libraries reveal something completely different than what is claimed in Skopje. It is appalling that the author has not even tried to check his sources. This serves only to testify as to how grammars and books are written today - at home, with a couple of books from the library, without any effort to achieve objectivity and neutrality. And I really wonder how you venture to make claims and statements without knowing anything first-hand about the matter in discussion. Birkemaal

Birkemaal, you show serious disrespect to Slavonic scholarship in the West. All comparative Slavic linguists are aware of the political feuds concerning Macedonian, and they are frankly tired of them. They reach their conclusions based on readings of the data as far removed from politics as possible. In the aforementioned work, the writer has traced signs of significant differences in Macedonian back several centuries, believing that it can fairly be called a separate language even though its speakers thought it was a mere dialect of Bulgarian (like, for example, Scots is generally categorised as distinct though mutually intelligible with English and its speakers often believing they are speaking English). Crculver 21:13, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Birkemaal: CrCulver, you seem to regard the postulates of modern science as something holy and unbreakable, but if everyone thought like you, we'd still regard the earth as flat. I don't think that either you, or the authors of those grammars can refute the arguments which have been put forward here, so if something is wrong, it is not at my end of the line.

I am answering here, as well, though the response is not to me. Here you actually confess to what Birkemaal and I were arguing about in the last couple of days: that what is considered a language or a dialect DEPENDS DIRECTLY on politics. You condradict yourself, Crculver: you say that there is no way the dialect of Thessaloniki was Bulgarian in the 9th century but you admit that the people who spoke it regarded as a dialect of Bulgarian (=a Bulgarian dialect) until a century ago???! And as a matter of fact, they still do as most of their descendents live in Bulgaria. On top of it, since your textbooks have taken their stuff directly from my Macedonian colleagues, they make the striking mistake of defining the border of the so called "Macedonian dialects" along the borders of the geographical region of Macedonia. Which is total crap as the dialect of Serres was in fact a Bulgarian Thracian dialect, the dialect in eastern FYROM is identical to the dialect of the Kyustendil and Dupnitza region (in Bulgaria proper, not in Pirin Macedonia) and the dialect of Thessaloniki is a transitional between the two. All of these have more to do with Bulgarian than with the the western Macedonian dialect of Bitola-Prilep which has been used for the codification of the modern Macedonian language. The western Macedonian dialect in its turn is similar to the Bulgarian dialect of the Central Rhodopes, at least as regards the three definite articles and the lack of the schwa vowel.

As for the separate development of the western Macedonian dialect - Bulgaria did not have any formal language for ca. 500 years and the differences between the separate dialects were quite wide(this does not regard only the Macedonian ones). Would that Macedonian dialect turn into a separate language if Macedonia had not been incorporated by Serbia in 1918 and if Tito had not decided on a separate Macedonian identity in 1945? NO. But that's not what I am arguing about:

If one part of the Macedonian Bulgarians decided in the 1940s that they should be called Macedonians and that their language should be called Macedonian, this neither goes retroactively 13 centuries back, nor does it apply to all people from the wider Macedonian region. Because there are 700,000 to 800,000 people with Macedonian descent in Bulgaria and some 100,000 more in North America and every single of your claims here is IMMENSELY OFFENSIVE to ALL OF THEM. Slavonic scholarship in the West (as you define it) nowadays is seriously prejudiced in favour of the Macedonians for one simple reason: until recently Bulgaria was just a Sovjet satellite, whereas Yugoslavia was "unattached" and represented a powerful force in international politics. This MUST and WILL change. Either "Slavonic scholarship in the West" will begin to view this issue in a neutral light and their will be some compromise between the two viewpoints or we'll continue to contest its "scholarliness" - 'cause I can't really see any with regard to the case in question.

If you don't have any remarks to the current edit of Old Church Slavonic, I would like to close the discussion. ~~VMORO

This is too much now. The problem of your "arguments" is that at least Czech, Slovak and German scholars are and have been for decades of the same opinion as what you call "Western scholars". The dialect of Thessaloniki is called Macedonian exclusively (without any mention that this would be disputed), and the texts written on the then territory of Bulgaria after 885 are called Bulgarian-Macedonian redaction, in older German sources sometimes alternatively Old Bulgarian and I have found one single text calling it Bulgarian "circle" (okruh). And I am sure I would find similar names in Russian and other modern texts. It is impossible that all Slavists in the world do not understand old Slavic - people in any West-Slavic country could basically understand them without having studied OCS if someone would read them - and that all of them have "overseen" the consonant "shifts" mentioned above. Also, all linguists know the problems about Bulgaria / Serbia / Macedonia - we are not talking about some exotic countries here. This is just in case some interested person reads this discussion. Juro 03:57, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Are you gonna entertain me again with what you have read, Juro? The dialect is Macedonian in the geographical sense of the word (I don't know how many times I have repeated it on this discussion page) and it is Bulgarian as regards PHONETICS. There is something called comparative linguistics, whether you know it or not.

Scholars have talked about the dialect of Thessaloniki as a Macedono-Bulgarian dialect long before there was any talk of a Macedonian language (i.e. before 1945), the meaning being that it is a Slavic dialect from the geographical region of Macedonia and NOT that it is connected in any way to modern Macedonian (as there was no such language back then and the Macedonian dialects were considered Bulgarian or Serbian). Crculver admitted last time that the speakers of that Macedonian dialect (evidently meaning the Bitola-Prilep one, as the Thessaloniki one is on the divide of eastern and western Bulgarian dialects) thought until, say, a century ago that their dialect was Bulgarian. But I guess you see the long hand of Tito stretching from 1945 back to the 9th century, haha... Get a grip, leave the world of fairy tales. ~~VMORO

You are not quarrelling with me but with 90% of the current linguist of the world and sentences like fairy tales will not change that. And if Macedonian is only a geographical designation (which I neither confirm nor deny, I am only saying that the language was not a Bulgarina dialect in the mid 9th century), then it is interesting that you have deleted my edit months ago, which only said that "some" (although in reality virtually all) linguists call it Macedonian, which is a correct statement. The problem is that you get a "heart attack" the moment you see the word Macedonian in connection with Bulgarian history ...Juro 19:50, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

And I'll continue to do that. Neither you, nor these 90% of the linguists (according to you) can give an adequate explanation as to why they call the dialect Macedonian. I exclude herefrom the geographical sense of the word, as there is nothing incorrect or wrong about that. Whether I have a problem with something or not is my own personal business, here we talk about facts, against which you have not managed to produce one single argument. And these 90% of the linguists (according to you) haven't managed either. Trying to attack me personally because you have nothing else but a superficial, second-hand knowledge of the issue doesn't really do any good. Should I remind you your "Great Moravian" complex, Juro (from Slovakia)?

I don't have the time now but around Christmas I'll find a text in Old Church Slavonic and I'll have a table ready with the consonant shifts in all Slavic languages, which I'll place here. Until then I regard the discussion as closed, pls don't bother me with information as to what new you have read in German, Czech and Slovakian, or with yet other attempt at an attack below the waist. ~~VMORO

(1) This has absolutely nothing to do with Great Moravia and you know that. This has been discussed already. The fact that you have complitely "omitted" Great Moravia several times when editing this text is only one of indications that there is a seriuos Bulgaro-centric bias with you. (2) It is interesting that it's YOU who is talking about attacks below the waist, given that you have repeatedly used explicit insults, of a type I have never seen in the Wikipedia yet, several times on this page thereby making any discussion and edits impossible. (3)That you have a problem with everything outside Bulgaria is a fact. (4)The problem here is that we do not have one of the 90% supporters of the opposite view here to discuss with you the details. But it would still make no sense since you do not even accept that the article just mentions that there are opposite views, it can only contain yours - imagine where this Wikipedia would end if everybody would behave like you. But actually, this has been discussed already, too... Juro 20:05, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This has everything to do with Great Moravia - and your last edit in the article is very symptomatic for your "style" of editing. Don't you feel a bit ridiculous blaming me for Bulgaro-centric bias when you yourself edit from a Moravian point of view?

The claims you make that "I have omitted Great Moravia several times" are laughable - the articles were already full of your "Moravianism" when I started editing here and I have not erased anything in them. What exactly do you want, Juro from Slovakia? That we all mention Great Moravia at least twice in every sentence?

As a matter of fact, I enjoy quite a good reputation elsewhere in Wikipedia. Your opinion doesn't bother me too much.

You were the one who barged against me last. And this is what you do every time you run short of arguments (you actually haven't had even one since the beginning of our "discussion").

The discussion pages of the articles are meant for discussions about articles, not for petty complaints that "I have omitted Great Moravia several times" or for accusations that "I have a Bulgarian-centric bias" when you have nothing else meaningful to say. I'll remind you to stick to the topic of discussion, not to get personal. Either produce some arguments at last or stop complaining like a little child.

As I said earlier, I'll prepare something well-substantiated over Christmas and I'll get back to the article afterwards. You can continue on your own with the personal attacks, complaints and everything else that is irrelevant to this article or to our discussion, I have neither the time, nor the desire to deal with it.

~~VMORO

You are a hopeless case... Ignoring you emotional explosion again, I must repeat three points once again (1) before YOU started editing the article months ago, there was no single mention about Great Moravia or Moravia in the article, (2) the article contains almost nothing about moravianisms (although it actually should contain information that Climent of Ohrid actually wrote most of his most important works in Great Moravia and similar "details") and we are talking here about whether the language of Thessaloniki was a Bulgarian dialect - what does that to do with Great Moravia??? (3) I repeat for readers of this dicussion, because nobody will be able to mention this in the article - no serious linguist or historian of the world outside Bulgaria condiders the South Slavic language of Thessaloniki a Bulgarian dialect. Juro 02:03, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Juro I will utterly disagree. I dare to call myself a “serious linguist”, and I am teaching this science in Canada (outside Bulgaria). In most of the the literature that I cite to my students it says that OCS (Old Church Slavonic) is also called Old Bulgarian. Well one thing is for sure all “serious linguists” in Canada have studied this. And if you need a reference to a more serious encyclopedia try Britannica or Webster in order to realize that not only Canadians are taught that.

Kevin

You are confusing two things: (1) the language spoken in Thessaloniki in 862 which could not be Bulgarian (actually it was what is called "cultivated Macedonian") because there were no Bulgarians in the town [the fact that the language is similar to Bulgarian does not make it a Bulgarian language], (2) the title Old Bulgarian for the literary language used after 885 in Bulgaria, which is sometimes used. If you use the term Old Bulgarian and think that it is correct (that is you do not use it for traditional reasons) than you are not a "serious" linguist in this field. In addition your last changes are more than debatable, actually they are wrong... Juro 01:23, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Kevin, the literature that you cite to your students may very well use the term "Old Bulgarian". No one is disputing that some older works use this term. However, recent literature has eschewed the term, considering it anachronistic and not sufficiently precise. I'll point you to Routledge's The Slavonic Languages, ed. Bernard Comrie, the most substantial overview of the Slavonic branch of the last decade. Nowhere does it use the term "Old Bulgarian" in its coverage of Old Church Slavonic. The OCS grammars of Schlamstieg and Lunt likewise do not use the term. Nandris' fine grammar, dating from the 1950's, states that the term "Old Bulgarian was improperly used for OCS," showing that already in his time the term seemed dated. The overview of OCS provided by the A. Richard Diebold Center for Indo-European Language and Culture at the Linguistics Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin says, "OCS is at times termed Old Bulgarian, though this nomenclature has fallen out of fashion." The term is certainly not very popular in the current literature, and worth avoiding except to mention as ananchronism. Crculver 02:18, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

---

All I can say about this, is that I have nicely explained all of that but was of course reverted by VMORO. I'm returning this edit. Nikola 20:44, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Display of Cyrillic text

Are people un-italicizing Cyrillic text because it doesn't display italicized, or doesn't display at all? If it's just a matter of italic text degrading to "roman" on some systems, that would be seem acceptable to me.

On my machine italics work fine, but combining diacritics (e.g., acute accents) on Cyrillic text show up as little squares after the letter.

Perhaps it would be better to use non-combining accents, like some dictionaries do?

acute accents: старославя´нский язы´к

primes: старославя′нский язы′к

Hm. No, they look like apostrophes.

I'm using Safari/Mac. With 'lucida grande' or 'arial unicode ms' specified in my style sheet, the accents work on Cyrillic text, but nothing gets italicized or bolded. With 'verdana', bold and italic works, but no combining accents. Anyone know of a good Unicode sans-serif family with italic, bold, and bold-italic fonts, and combining accents that work?

—Michael Z.

Some people complain that italics are difficult to read; so it is better not to use italics for Cyrillic text. — Monedula 07:30, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Writing traditions

VMORO, you cannot blanketly state that the authors of the Bulgarian manuscripts are "the most important". Auty, for example, divides the corpus into three parts (Moravian et al., Macedonian, and Bulgarian), but suggests that the Macedonian portion is the most substantial and the Moravian the most useful for comparative linguistics. He seems little enthusiastic about the items produced in the Kingdom of Bulgaria and, with the exception of Supr., they are rarely given much attention in the grammars. The NPOV is to explain the division and find those who are most important within their respective division. Crculver 02:59, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'll remind you that both the Ohrid and the Preslav literary school were within the the limits of the "Kingdom of Bulgaria", as you phrase it. And that OSC was not used in Great Moravia after the dissolution of the Great Moravian academy. So, please, point out what exactly you object against and if there are authors you have found, pls add them. VMORO

The author(s) of the Kiev Folia wrote in the northern tradition. Crculver 03:15, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Maybe you could inform the readers for how many years Ohrid has been part of the kingdom of Bulgaria in 885 (so that everybody sees how quickly languages of former foreign territories can change in your view) and since when languages are named after names of states (I have pointed that out already) - do we have 200 languages in the world, because there are 200 states ??? I am sorry but this is more than ridiculous ... Juro 03:37, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

For around 60. And could you inform the readers, Juro, how long the Slavic population of Vardar Macedonia (with a big underline for Vardar as this does not regard the other parts of Macedonia) considered its language Bulgarian and how long Macedonian? Let me answer instead of you: ca. 1100 and 60, respectively. I have talked about this sort of "retroactive renaming" as regards the language and national affinities of the Slavs of Macedonia, whoever is interested may read it in the upper paragraphs. VMORO

OK, so they had been living separately from the core of the Bulgarian state for some 250 years, but than in 60 years or so (my sources say 35 years, but maybe that's not so important) changed their language into Bulgarian - an unwritten language centered in the far northeast at that time... that is almost impossible (providing we assume that there were separate Slavic languages at all) and above all improvable. And as for the rest - you are still confusing the form with the content: We are not talking about how someone denoted their language (Bulgarian can also means "referring to Bulgaria" or "referring to the inghabitants of the Kingdom of Bulgaria" not only "referring to the Bulgarian language"), but how modern linguists denote it in order to make the correct distinctions (in this case to show that there was a difference between Ohrid and Predslav). But even ignoring this, we are still talking about the 9th century (any other century is irrelevant, especially the 20th century) and there is no evidence whatsoever for how the people referred to their language at that time (Personally I am sure they called it either Slavic or Macedonian) ...Juro 04:29, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Personal beliefs are outside the scope of this discussion. And you seem to know nothing of the history of the southern Balkans if you "believe" that they called their language Macedonian. Macedonia itself was not called Macedonia (Macedonia was the name given to southern Thrace) - a part of it was referred to as Kutmichevitsa by the Slavs and note, Bulgaria, by the Byzantines. After the fall of the first Bulgarian Empire in 1018, the whole of Macedonia (which was the core of the Kingdom of Bulgaria, not of Macedonia) was incorporated into Byzantium as the province of Bulgaria and the independent Bulgarian Patriarchate in Ohrid was placed under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and named Bulgarian archbishopry of Ochrida. The hagiography of Saint Clement of Ohrid (written not by a fellow Bulgarian but by a Greek in the 11th century) clearly states he was from Bulgaria and he considered Bulgaria as its fatherland. These are all hard facts, Juro, which have a solid basis in written documents and archaelogical findings, not in the work of the academicians of Skopje.

And yes, Juro, there is plenty of evidence as to how these Slavs called their language. All Slavs including those of Macedonia called their language "The Slavonic language" until at least the 10th century and then there was a gradual branching out, for the Slavs of Macedonia it was into Slavyanobalgarski or Balgarski, respectively. There is no need to strain yourself to make my statements look ridiculous because you don't seem to know what u're talking about. The Slavs in the 9th century were still divided into separate tribes each of which had their own dialect but each of them, however, extremely close to the other one. The development of separate Bulgarian, Serbian, Polish, etc. states centered the norm and laid the basis for the formation of a separate Bulgarian, Serbian, Polish, etc. language. The Macedonian language, HOWEVER, does not count hereto as its speakers and ALL academicians called it BULGARIAN until the occupation of Macedonia by Serbia - which declared them southern Serbs and their language a southern Serbian dialect.

Juro, all of what I said is either in the article or in the discussion page here, som pls read them first before asking or making assumptions. And the second paragraph can be figured out by common sense which I am sure you have in abundance. So don't ask idiotic questions to which I have to give idiotic answers, as this is a waste of time for me and for you. VMORO

It's you who is not knowing what he is talking about (and as always adding a direct personal insult...), you are constantly repeating yourself and talking about centuries which are in no connection to our topis and you are not reacting to what I am saying. In addition you are claiming here things about Slavs (tribes, 9th century etc.) which are far more complicated than you present them here and completely disputed, but of course YOU know the answer and this encyclopaedia must present your view.

And I repeat: there is no proof on the identity of the Slavs around Ohrid after 885 (that does not mean from 885 until 2004 of course!!!).

And I repeat that it is absolutely irrelevant how the language was denoted the 19th century, we want to present here the current state of knowledge and if you open ALL (or at least MOST) serious present linguistic books (except for Bulgarian and Greek ones, for obvious reasons) you will find a distinction between Bulgarian and Macedonian. Even if it was wrong (which it definitely isn't), a serious encyclopaedia containing a longer text on Old Church Slavonic must mention at least that this term exists, but you are completely deleting ANY occurrence of the word Macedonian. I really do not know how to put this in an even simpler way so that you get this point which I am constantly repeating here.

And what you are basically saying above is irrational - on one hand you are saying that all Slavs called their language Slavic (which is correct) in the 9th century, but on the other hand those annexed by Bulgaria shortly before were an exception and called their language Bulgarian language (probably to show how happy they were about having become part of a completely unrelated kingdom), although in reality you are lying because nobody knows how they called their language say between 885 and 900, because that's the time pertinent to our topic. In sum, now we have an article saying (1) that according to Bulgarian linguists, although there were no Bulgarians in Thessaloniki in the Byzantine Empire, the Slavs of Thessaloniki spoke a "Bulgarian dialect" and (2)(without proof) that the Slavs around Ohrid were a special group of Slavs which expressed their identity before all other Slavs just to show us that they wish that we call their language "Bulgarian" named after their new lords. What weird constructions will you add next?

Addition: The text is still not OK especially because: it completely omits the widespread (correct) use of the term Macedonian for the Ohrid area at least (and of course also for the Thessaloniki area), and it says that Bulgarian linguists consider the language a "Bulgarian dialect" - I simply do not believe that they say this...Juro 04:05, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, they do, so you'd better believe it. And the text is not Ok yet because the dialect was indeed Bulgarian (If I should quote Crculver yet again: The population of Macedonia spoke Macedonian for a couple of centuries but they didn't know that as they regarded it as a dialect of Bulgarian). And the dialect of Thessaloniki is far closer to modern Bulgarian than to modern Macedonian, which is also explained and substantiated above. VMORO

John

Can someone dig out the Old Slavonic form of the name "John", to be used at John (name)? I'm also not sure if all Slavic languages inherited that name from Old Slavonic or if some got it through other languages. --Joy [shallot] 23:44, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The Old Slavic for John was Ιωан (Ioan) and comes from Greek Ιωαννης (Ioannis). From the Old Slavic form, vernacular Bulgarian Иван, Russian Иван, Serbian Jован etc. were developed. Similar names (i.e. Czech Ivana) also exist in some West Slavic languages, in opposing to the German form (Jan) they traditionally use. 84.252.31.40 15:38, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ivana in Czech is a femininum, masculinum is Ivan. However, Czech has also much more common Jan (and femininum Jana).

In modern Bulgarian, traditional form is Иван (Ivan), but wide spread alternatives are: original Йоан (Yoan); later Яни (Yani), diminuited Янко (Yanko), female Яна and Яница (Yana, Yanitsa), from late-Greek Γιαννης (Yannis); dialectal Йован, Ванче (Yovan, Vance). 84.252.31.40 15:46, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Slavonic Wikipedia

To everybody that is interested - please support the request for Wikipedia in Slavonic language. The base will be either Old Church Slavonic, or Church Slavonic, or both. You can express your support by adding your name at: [1] - Ogneslav 15:27, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This is silly. For one, they are languages with extremely limited vocabulary left to us, so anything outside of liturgical use requires reconstruction of vocabulary with the comparative method. Arguments will ensue. And they are two different languages with vast differences in pronunciation (which affects sandhi, i.e. writing), morphology, and vocabulary. Would you support an English-language Wikipedia that let people write in either Modern English or Anglo-Saxon as they please? Crculver 17:49, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Lack of modern vocabulary is not such a problem — for instance, there is Old English Wikipedia. But indeed we must decide first, which language to use — Old Church Slavonic or modern Church Slavonic. And if we opt for the Old Church Slavonic, which alphabet to use — Cyrillic or Glagolitic? — Monedula 09:12, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

To me, the best decision is to use Church Slavonic as it is later redaction and is closer to modern Slavic languages. Also, it is simpler. As for the alphabet - I think Church Slavonic is only written in Cyrillic alphabet, so... About the limited vocabulary - I wouldn't say that a language, that produced centuries long literary tradition and used to organise and administre a number of Churches, has limited vocabulary. - Ogneslav 11:30, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Now some genious said Church Slavonic does not exist ([2])!?! To me this is deeply offensive. If you have something to say about that comment - do it on the above page. I'm fed up with this assumption that only what is interesting and entertaining to the 'nation of the free' should be allowed to exist on our planet. - Ogneslav 08:02, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Bulgarocentric"???

This term is POV itself, so I wouldn't use it just like that any time I feel likely to. As I wouldn't use "Russoncentric" or "Czechocentric", or "Macedocentric". If you look back in the past 100 years, a number of theories and 'names' were applied to OCS. But the language is still one, still the same. I suggest we just present the facts and keep judgements for ourselves. 'Cause in another 100 years today's theories and 'names' will be long gone, and the language will still be the same, as it was 1000 years ago. Point out sources and let people decide what is 'out of date', what is 'formerly called' and what is 'Bulgarocentric'. They don't need you or me to tell them so.

Also, when I wrote those 5 or 10 extra words, there was a good reason for each one of them and I can explain it. I doubt you can do the same for your statements though. - 84.252.31.40 09:30, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Disputes of nomenclature are discussed at Wikipedia. A good encyclopedia prepares the reader to understand contemporary terminology and what is to be avoided in composition meant for a scholarly forum. Readers need to understand why current English-language scholars dislike other appelations. I have tried to be fair and give adequate space to Bulgarian concerns while reflecting the views common to the many OCS grammars used in the English-speaking world, which I have cited here and in Bulgarian language many times. You seem to want to erase the view held by qualified international scholars and place only the Bulgarian view here. Crculver 01:57, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The critics can explain as to why the Old Slavonic *tj, *dj are transformed into *sht, *zhd in Old Church Slavonic and ONLY in Bulgarian. (in Macedonian they are soft *k, *g, respectively, "k@shta" and "mezhdu" in Old Church Slavonic corresponds to "k@shta" and "mezhdu" in Bulgarian and to "ku*ka", "me*gu" in Macedonian). Otherwise, no hard feelings, Crculver, you are an excellent editor. VMORO

VMORO, we have already been through this. The language was generic Proto-South-Slavonic as spoken in Solun, and those Proto-Slavonic consonants developed so in Proto-South-Slavonic. It cannot be termed just Old Bulgarian since Cyril and Methodius never set foot in the Kingdom of Bulgaria, though a mention must be made that it is the ancestor of Bulgarian and Macedonian. Please obtain the books that I have mentioned a dozen times here to understand better the reasons for the English-language nomenclature. I am sick of mentioning scholarly works here that are never looked at by the "Old Bulgarian" side of this dispute. Crculver 16:27, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Crculver, there is nothing in my comment concerning the name of this article but that's self-evident if you actually read it.VMORO

As far as I noticed, Wikipedia tries to represent different views, not the most common, or the most convenient. If there is a tradition of calling the OCS Old Bulgarian and that tradition was 'the common' one for a long period of time, then I believe it deserves a bit more than 2 lines in the article. The way it is now, the whole article sounds tremendously one-sided and POV. It widely represents the anti-Bulgarian view and does not let the opposite view explain its arguments. Great role for that situation plays the presense of unfair pesonal comments and incoherent tips on what is 'outdated' and 'undesirable'. You can't write what English-language scholars like and dislike, as I don't believe you know them all and even less I believe that they authorized you speak on their behalf. On the other hand there are plenty of sources (including on-line) that use the term Old-Bulgarian. It is not in your or my competency to decide what is 'right' and what is not. Btw do you speak Bulgarian? Because if you don't then I really don't see the base from which you try to judge on such complex linguistic issues. It's like trying to write with just half the alphabet. - Ogneslav 11:51, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just a quick search provided the following on-line sources where term Old Bulgarian is used:

• [3]
• [4]
• [5]
• [6] : "Noun 1.Old Bulgarian - the Slavic language into which the Bible was translated in the 9th Century"
• [7]
• [8]
• [9]

So, as everybody can see, the term Old Bulgarian is still alive and (what is more important) - in use. All other suggestions made in the article Old Church Slavonic are nothing more than deceit. It's another question who is responsible for that. From what I saw looking at his contributions, I do doubt objectivity and neutrality were his sole motives. - Ogneslav 13:15, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If you had bothered looking at my citations, you would see that the term "Old Bulgarian" is not used in those grammars considered the finest in the English-speaking world. In Lunt's "Old Church Slavonic Grammar", the most respected and most-often assigned, it is never used except to say that this is what the language has been called in the past, though "Old Macedonian" is really justified. Schlamstieg, in his "Introduction to Old Church Slavic", says that the term "Old Bulgarian" can only be applied to writings from Preslav, while it cannot be applied to the many other writings. Nandris, in his "Handbook of Old Church Slavonic Grammar", writes that "[the term] Old Bulgarian was improperly used for OCS". These men are the pinnacle of OCS scholarship in English, and if they shun the term "Old Bulgarian", then it is not the place of us Wikipedians to question it lightly unless we can boast similar qualifications.

Sometimes old terminology hangs on. In toponyms, for example, some still call Thailand "Siam", Kyiv "Kiev", or Gdansk "Danzig". In electronics, the device known as a capacitor is occasionally called by its antique name of "condensor". However, we need to emphasise the terms used in current scholarship. The English-language experts have spoken, "Old Bulgarian" is not suitable for the general language of the corpus.

Furthermore, I challenge you, as I did VMORO, to explain how a language originating from Thessaloniki, outside of the Kingdom of Bulgaria and hundreds of kilometers south, whose two speakers Cyril and Methodius never set foot in Bulgaria, and several of whose manuscripts (such as the Kiev Folia) have no Bulgarian influence whatsoever, could be classified as specifically Bulgarian. Crculver 17:12, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

VMORO:No, you have not challenged me with that, you have never asked me. The border was not "hundreds of kilometers" from Thessaloniki but a mere hundred. All linguists admit that in the middle of the 9th century the Slavic dialect of present Macedonia did not differentiate in anything with the Slavic dialect of Thrace or from the Slavic dialect of present northern Bulgaria. The weaking of *e, which is pretty much the only thing used to differentiate between works written in Preslav and in Ohrid (apart from the more frequent use of Bulgar words in Preslav) is thought to have developed in the late 10th century, which is 1,5 centuries after that. As for the "readings" which you prescribe me: I am reading the Routledge compendium on Slavic languages, which, I think, is quite representative for the views of the western Slavonic studies. And which is filled with erroneous and one-sided treatment of the Macedonian question.

But anyway, as manuscripts of the time of Old Church Slavonic call the language only "Slavic" irrespective of where they were written, I am gonna pay more attention to the Middle Bulgarian Period (12-14th cent) and where all manuscripts (BOTH from northern Bulgaria and Macedonia) quote the name "Bulgarian" and "Slav-Bulgarian". I should have scanned copies or at least works and page numbers to cite within a month, you can check them and we can again have a little discussion as to how manuscripts from both Macedonia and northern Bulgaria can be Bulgarian from the 12 to the 14th century and how these manuscripts can be Macedonian and Bulgarian from the 10th to the 11th century. I would also like you to explain as to how the speakers of a language can call it one way from the 11th century to the beginning of the 20th century and how "scholars" can call that same language in a totally different way (after the language of a nation which crystallised nationally in the 1930s-1940s of the 20th century) denying the right of self-expression of generations of people from Macedonia.

In the meantime, I'll suggest that you cast a look over the Hagiography of St. Clement of Ohrid by St. Teophylact(us) of Ohrid written at the end of the 10th century. It explains in a nice smooth way how St. Clement of Ohrid preached with Bulgarian books and talks about a Bulgarian liturgy (not Slavonic one). VMORO

For starters, AFAIK there are no manuscripts attestably written by Cyril and Methodius themselves. Therefore there is no guarantee that the language of the copies (at least 50 years later) was not mutated, especially after the moved to Bulgaria. Therefore your argument about 100 km etc. is not applicable.

At the same time I would agree that when speaking about languages of times with very scarse written source it would be safer to use a more neutral term, rather than to link it to some modern language. Mikkalai 18:50, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Of course my argument is still applicable. Cyril and Methodius were not from the Kingdom of Bulgaria, therefore the language they spoke and imposed on the students in Moravia cannot be termed "Bulgarian". It's that simple. The manuscripts produced by the Moravian school, such as the Kiev Folia, were made and preserved far north of Bulgaria, therefore their language cannot be called "Old Bulgarian." Only those manuscripts written within Bulgaria can be said to have an "Old Bulgarian" language. But there are many writings with no Bulgarian connection whatsoever. Why should their language be called "Old Bulgarian"? Crculver 18:59, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This whole argument is useless. This is not the place where we'd be able to solve an argument of that scale. What I want and insist is, that the 'Bulgarian' view be allowed to also present its arguments and that no POV suggestions and implications be put in the article. Till now everything that was not convenient to Crculver was deleted. This is against Wikipedia rules. The whole article represents only one POV and only 2 lines are left for the other. - Ogneslav 10:50, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I made a quick mini-research last night with the compendium I have at hands (Routledge). The bibliography of OCS contained 30 entries, áll of them published after 1945 (in other words, they were modern, in 26 of them the name of the language was OCS, in 4 the name was Old Bulgarian (3 in German, 1 in English published in 1989). The consequent conclusion is that OB is not "outdated" and "out-of-use" as according to Crculver, it has just lost ground to OCS in the English language (it seems though to have remained quite popular in German-lingual Slavonic Studies) but is still used, although rarely. VMORO

Ask Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Russian etc. linguists... The term is not even mentioned as alternative anymore... The term Old Bulgarian is wrong and the only point in using it is Bulgarian nationalism and every linguist or historian in the world knows it, because the arguments are completely evident even from this simple discussion. I always thought that this question was solved even with the Bulgarian linguists some 40 years ago, but this article shows that unfortunately this is still not the case....Juro 22:45, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have already "asked" them by making the mini-research I mentioned. The term is rarely used nowadays in English language scholarship (though it is used), though it seems quite vigorous in German linguistics. This is how the situation IS. You can certainly have any kind of personal opinion (wrong, right, black, white, purple) and I can certainly reserve the right not to be concerned by it. VMORO

(This is partly also a reaction to your contributions below)Ha, ha (keeping your style...)...Another one of your "researches" like the above one in this discussion when you argued using internet encyclopedias and mirrors of wikipedia? ... Maybe I have to remind you that most Slavists (at least of Slavic origin) can speak other Slavic languages very well, because they are quite similar. And I repeat, since the language as a whole is no Bulgarian dialect, others can (and they do) claim that you have no idea in relation to the other redactions. Obviously, you have for example no idea regarding the Western Slavic elements and even do not know what Great Moravian texts exists. And do not play the expert here, because I have to remind you that several months ago you did not even know that OCS had something in common with Great Moravia and had to appologize above when I corrected you. Most children know more than you, that is the problem here....Most importantly, it is not your personal opinion that is relevant here, but the opinion of English and international scholars. If you want to present your opinions, make a webpage or write a book (which I would not recommend to anybody because it would lack basic principles of rationality) Juro 00:42, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just answer this question

VMORO and Ogneslav, let's consider these facts:

• Cyril and Methodius were not from Bulgaria, but rather from Thessaloniki in the Byzantine Empire.
• Cyril and Methodius never set foot in Bulgaria.
• In Moravia they produced local texts in their own Thessaloniki speech which were copied by speakers of Western Slavonic.
• The Kiev Folia, one of the most appreciated texts in comparative Indo-European linguistics, came from this region and had no Bulgarian influence whatsoever.

How then can the speech of the Kiev Folia be called specifically Bulgarian?. I have asked you this again and again in this or the Bulgarian language article, and you refuse to answer. I am all for calling the language of the Bulgarian manuscripts "Old Bulgarian", but there are manuscripts from other regions, and there is nothing Bulgarian about them. That is why we have this nice blanket term "Old Church Slavonic".

If you do not answer this question, I will take this to Requests for Mediation, since you would clearly not be interested in explaining the logic of your edits. Crculver 23:24, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hm, I am really tempted to NOT answer you, as I usually do not communicate with people who try to threaten me. Anyway, because your question is important I'll explain the simple logics, starting with your questions:

• Yes, Cyril and Methodius were not from Bulgaria. But Ray Bradbury was not from England either, although he wrote in English. That's just an example. In the case of Cyril and Methodius:
  • 1. they used the language of the Slavic tribes from the Salonika area which was identical with the language that was spoken by the Slavs in Bulgaria and that is the basis of modern Bulgarian. Reason for that is the common ethnic background of the Salonika Slavs and the Bulgarian Slavs. For example proffesor Dora Mircheva stresses on the development of Proto-Slavic *dj and *tj into OCS zhd and sht, which are the same in Bulgarian, but not in Macedonian (gj and kj) or Serbian (d` and c`). Imagine - Cyril & Methodius brought this language to Moravia and it was still understandable for the locals (!!!), what to speak about the Slavs from the two sides of the Byzantine-Bulgarian border.
    • • This still does not explain why if A is similar to B, whe should call B "A", if we know that it is B and if we know that the common name for A and B actually was the "Slavic language"... Also, the language of the Slavs in the Byzantine Empire is older than any non-Slavic influences in the region of Preslav (which, after all, are a major part of the definition of "Bulgarian" as opposed to other languages and nations), so actually using this "similarity" argument the language should be more correcly called Old Macedonian, anyway... Juro 13:12, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• • 2. the military expansion of the Bulgarian rulers from the 9th and early 10th century towards Northern Greece incorporated those Salonika tribes into the Bulgarian state, so their language anyway took part in forming the later Bulgarian language.
    • • I hope this childish argument is a joke. It is your personal invention. There is absolutely no reason to believe that there were any Bulgarians in Thessaloniki around 860... This is just like your above lie about the Ohrid lake being part of Bulgaria for 60 years...Juro 12:55, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• OK, let's say they never set foot in Bulgaria. This is of no relation to the language they used. Although the Salonika legend (11th cent.) asserts that St. Cyril came to Bulgaria before the Moravian mission.
  • • • • Again, a ridiculous "argument"...Juro 12:55, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• That's right.
• I just looked once again at the Kiev Folia and, yes this is in the Moravian redaction of OCS. So what? Obviously the South Slavic grammatical basis is well preserved, although the phonetics suffered some changes.
  • • • • (1) South Slavic or generally Slavic or Macedonian, not Bulgarian. (2) There are many other "folia" and texts with non-Bulgarian influences...

Well, I feel something is badly misunderstood between us. I never claimed that Old Church Slavonic does not exist. I never claimed that term should not be used. In fact, yes, it is more accurate for the literature created out of Bulgaria. What I claim is, that the OCS language (aside from its later redactions) is also called Old Bulgarian by some linguists and there is a good reason for that. I only wanted the 'Bulgarian' view to be represented in the article with its real arguments without you changing, moving or erasing them. I do not judge which suggestion is right. I just want all views to be explained.

Now a simple personal request to you and Juro: would you please stop vandalizing the paragraph I added. You can add any other objective information anywhere in the article - why do you need to brutalize my paragraph and put biting remarks after it? My only explanation is that you are affraid of the facts and preffer to erase or twist them, so people can only read YOUR POV. If I am wrong, then please, don't do it any more. Can't we just combine our different views without subjective tips and without judging which designation is 'accepted' and which is 'out-dated'. An encyclopedia can not allow itself to contain suggestions on 'right' and 'wrong', especially when such controversy exists. - Ogneslav 10:22, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Interesting... Adding correct sentences is what you call "vandalizing"?? Juro 13:02, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My personal conviction is that the OCS literature created in Slovenia, Moravia and Croatia in the local redactions should deffinitely be designated as Old Church Slavonic and that the term Old Bulgarian is really unsuitable in that case. But when speaking about the Bulgarian literature which was created in Bulgaria in the 9th and 10th centuries and was brought to Russia and Serbia and copied there in the following centuries, in that case Old Bulgarian is the most accurate deffinition. For example the Russian slavist Selishchev says: "But this term (Old Bulgarian) has to be used in the case when speech goes about one of the historical periods of the Slavic language of Bulgaria compared to its following periods". According to Vladimir Kantor: "The problem is that we (Russians) received Christianity from Byzantium, though not in Greek, but with "uncle's help", through a mediator language - the Old Bulgarian" and also: "And so the translation of the liturgical books into Old Bulgarian and the christianization of Rus happened before the Schism". Russian linguist N.Davidova says: "Old Bulgarian, or as they also call it - Old Slavic, language was laid in the basis of the language of the Russian culture - the Church Slavonic"

- Ogneslav 10:51, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This last statement is not in line with your last edits which again turned the Bulgarian redaction into Old Bulgarian=OCS and reduced the other redactions into a sort of "exotic exceptions" of the Bulgarian language... Juro 13:02, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have changed "all Bulgarian linguists" to "most Bulgarian linguists". If you've ever taken a course in writing, you may know that you should never use the word "all" without rock-solid statistical evidence and possibly even not then. I know a Bulgarian philologist who opposes the term "Old Bulgarian" in favour of "Old Church Slavonic", so there is at least one. That means "all" is not a suitable term. Crculver 18:51, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• "The Kiev Folia, one of the most appreciated texts in comparative Indo-European linguistics, came from this region and had no Bulgarian influence whatsoever."

The Kiev Folia is merely a 17 sheets manuscript from the 10th century. Compare that to the Suprasl collection of 285 sheets. 'had no Bulgarian influence whatsoever' — that's a hell of a statement.

• "Cyril and Methodius never set foot in Bulgaria."

And this proves that they didn't translate into the Slavic dialect whose descendant is Bulgarian, perhaps or what?

The prescriptive role of modern Slavonic Studies or where your mistake lies

I have reverted the last edits for the following reasons:

• When Hatala, Schleicher, Volkov, etc. called the language Old Bulgarian, they did not think it stemmed from Preslav, they were fully aware that the language was based on the Slavic dialect of Thessaloniki, they considered this dialect a Bulgarian dialect. That is why many linguists called (and still call it, esp. in German language Slavonic studies) the dialect Macedo-Bulgarian, i.e. Bulgarian from the region of Macedonia.
• There is no general "Southern Slavic" dialect, all southern Slavic dialects were, to all intents and purposes, Bulgarian, until the middle of the 20th century when the population of Vardar Macedonia decided (or gradually evolved, this you'll like better, I guess) to a new nationality which entailed also a new language. However, this has affected only one part of the Macedonian Bulgarians and this cannot go retractive to the 9th century.
• Denomination: Manuscripts from Macedonia 12-14 century clearly call the language in which they were written Bulgarian and Slav-Bulgarian, the same name is applied to the language of St. Climent, as well as st. Cyril and Methodius. The name Bulgarian is also used to define the language of the Slavs of Macedonia until the beginning of the 20th century.
• Linguistics, as well as any other science, should be descriptive and not prescriptive. If people called their language Bulgarian for 8 centuries, then their language was Bulgarian. If they decide to call it otherwise aftwerwards, then it is from that moment on called the way they wanted it to be called. VMORO

You seem to have problems with basic numbers and logics, this is simply incredible ... OCS was explicitely called "Slavic", not Bulgarian, the centuries you are talking about having nothing in common with OCS.

Don't try to tell me what I have a problem with and what I do not. Do you yourself have a reading problem or are you simply dyslexic? What I am saying is that manuscripts fro m both northern Bulgaria and Macedonia in 10-11 cent. call the language Slavic and manuscripts from both northern Bulgaria and Macedonia in 12-14 cent. call the language Bulgarian or Slav-Bulgarian. So it is the same language we are talking about. VMORO

So this is not a mistake, this is a fundamental problem in your reasoning: (1)What does the 12th-14th to do with OCS??? What time are talking about here??? (2) Bulgarian manuscripts from the 12th-14th century call their language Bulgarian... Don't you see a problem in this (I assume) correct statement with relation to the topic and time we are talking about??? Juro 01:01, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

And the argument with your "reputable" linguists... Do you know Hattala's (he is called Hattala, not Hatala) work? He might have been reputable in the 19th century and played an important role in the introduction of the Slovak standard language, but if you would read his works today, you would laugh at many points... And he was critized already at his time by some opponents. The same applies to other linguist of that time mentioned in the text, and you should know that (this includes Safarik, the author of the first synthetic work on Slavic past). The major reason is that all the sources, folia etc. were only in the process of collection and analysis at that time (this was for example Safarik's hobby in Serbia), they simply did not have the information and the whole study of Slavonic languages was only at the beginning at that time... (And you know, in some countries in Europe, this is known even to students of elementary schools. And such a critical attitude is what is called progress and science...) Juro 02:33, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Haha, Juro, don't be ridiculous, what exactly progress of science are you talking about? None of the present anthologies on Slavic languages (which you quote all the time) are written by people who have worked directly with the languages in question, the articles about the specific languages are based on information provided by the respective national linguistcs which can mean distortions of any type and proportions. I can quote a number of mistakes in these anthologies. And what is certain - the Slavonic Studies in 50 years will regard some present views as laughable. VMORO

The answer is very simple :(1) And I and many others can quote YOUR mistakes, (2) another error in basic logics: what is the argument behind what is certain - the Slavonic Studies in 50 years will regard some present views as laughable ?? Does that make the texts of 19th century more accurate than the current ones????????? Of course there will be changes in the future, but we are describing the current state of knowledge. (And I will not decribe the meaning of "progress" to you, take a dictionary)...(3) I did not quote anything - what are you talking about?Juro 00:42, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You write: "There is no general "Southern Slavic" dialect, all southern Slavic dialects were, to all intents and purposes, Bulgarian". This is plainly false. For something to be called "Bulgarian", it must have a link to a specifically Bulgarian ethnos. That which contributed most to the development of a separate Bulgarian people was 1) residency within the Kingdom of Bulgaria, and 2) the arrival of the Bulghars and their assimilation giving the Bulgarians slight Central Asian influences. Cyril and Methodius in Thessaloniki were outside of these influences. There is nothing ethnically Bulgarian about them. Therefore, their speech is best described as Proto-South-Slavonic. Bulgarian stemmed from that, yes, but calling PSS "Bulgarian" is like calling Proto-NW-Germanic "English". Crculver 18:38, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, Crculver, I can see (and to some extent accept) your argument. However, you forget that the same people you are talking about have had a connection with the Bulgarian ethnos since the middle/end of the 9th century. Let me remind you again that the whole Slavic population of the Thessaloniki district fled or was voluntarily resettled to Bulgaria as Bulgarians, not as "Southern Slavs" in 1913 and the period from 1920 to 1926. And the highest concentration of people from the Thessaloniki region nowadays is actually in Sofia. VMORO

(1) Basic numbers, VMORO ... what time span are you talking about here again????? 1920????? (2) In 862 and before that time Thessaloniki was integral and even important part of the Byzantine Empire and had no relation to Bulgaria whatsover and the ancient Slavs there spoke a labguage without Protobulgarian influences which define "Bulgarian". Also, the region of Ohrid was only conquered by Bulgaria some 25 (!) years before the time when the persons expelled from Great Moravia arrived there. It is impossible that in your view the population changed its dialect so quickly in an era without radio, TV, newspapers etc. (3) Generally, please stop ypur constant lies here... Juro 00:27, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You do seem to have a reading and understanding problem, Juro:-))) (1)No one has said that they "changed" their dialect. They regarded it as Bulgarian. The Slavs of Vardar Macedonia shifted at the beginning/middle of the 20th century and started to regard their language as Macedonian. The Slavs east of the present border between FYROM and Bulgaria and roughly east of the Vardar in Greece have, however, never stopped to regard their language as Bulgarian. Once and for all, stop the Bulgarian slur and give a valid argument, as you haven't had such since the beginning of our virtual "friendship".

As for the reasons for the "impossibility" of the dialect to be Bulgarian...: Well, since you were an ardent champion of the Macedonian Slav dialect until a couple of months ago, can you tell me with the same arguments you use: When exactly did the medieval Macedonian Slav state (!) ruled over Thessaloniki and when exactly did the Slav Macedonian consciousness (!) develop so that this´dialect from the middle of the 9th century could be called Slav Macedonian. I am gonna give you a representative list of books. After you have read them, we can discuss the problem, otherwise you are only capable of producing opinianated slur which has nothing to do with facts and evidence.

So: About the development and uses of the name Macedonian Slavs:

• Wilkinson, H.R. (1951). Maps and Politics; a review of the ethnographic cartography of Macedonia, Liverpool University Press.

Representative ethnographic dicription of the population of Macedonia in the 19th cent.

• MacKenzie, Georgena Muir and Irby, I.P. (1867)

Representative ethnographic dicription of the population of Macedonia at the beginning of the 20th century:

• Brailsford, Henry Noel. (1906). Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future

Facts and details about the first expulsion of the Bulgarian population in Greece east of the Vardar (1913):

• Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (1914). Report of the International Commission To Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars. Washington: The Carnegie Endowment.

Next week I can (and will) paste in here scanned works of 19th century Bulgarian writers from Macedonia where they talk about the Macedonian dialect, as well scanned articles from the Times at the beginning of the 20th century talking about the population of Macedonia. I don't yet have scanned copies of Middle Bulgarian manuscripts from Macedonia (talking about the language in which the are written) but I hope to correct this in the course of the next month. VMORO

Macedonia became part of Bulgaria either around 809 or in 837, the year 860 which you keep pasting is false. OCS did not have Dzh and Tjsh, it had zhd and sht, get a grip over yourself. VMORO

VMORO, that the phonetic features are South Slavonic is certainly not in question. What is disputed is that they are specifically Bulgarian. Therefore, we should keep the phrase before the table as reading "The Southern Slavonic nature of the language is evident from the following features", which all should be able to agree on. Then, underneath it, we should represent the partisan viewpoint that it the features are specifically Bulgarian. To try to combine the two will only confuse the reader as to the nature of the dispute between the international linguists and traditionalist Bulgarian philologists. Still, I think the article is reaching a point where it mirrors what is said about the language in current international scholarly publications while still clearly stating the Bulgarocentric POV and that's how one makes a decent encyclopedia. I'm not quite sure what is implied by the statement about OCS's pronunciation of yat, since my grammars all say that yat was pronounced as /ae/ in the time of Cyril and Methodius and do not mention that there were already dialectical variations. I may remove this unless someone can show differences in yat by circa 860, otherwise I'll move it to the "Local influences" section. Crculver 08:22, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

1.There is no dispute "between the international linguists and traditionalist Bulgarian philologists". There is a dispute between linguists who call the language Old Bulgarian and other linguists who call it Old Church Slavonic. There are people of different nationalities in both of the camps. As a matter of fact the usage of the term Old Bulgarian was introduced by Austrian and German linguists and was later developed by Russian ones. All other implications exist only in your own mind.

2.As you can see from the phonetical table - the phonetical features of Old Church Slavonic are identical to Bulgarian and quite different from Macedonian and Serbian. So term "South-Slavonic" is out of place.

3.Since all your grammars don't mention that there were already dialectal differences, then you should agree with us that the Slavic language of Salonika area and that of Bulgaria was all the same language with no dialectal differences. Once you say the Salonika Slavs spoke a distinct ('Macedonian'?!?) dialect from Old Bulgarian, another time you say the two languages had no dialectal differences and their features can not be distinguished from each other. Finally?

4.You try to look such a great specialist on the topic, but you have no idea about the OCS' pronounciation of Yat? Then I'll let you know - OCS documents often mess up the use of [ě] with that of [ja]. In many words the original Yat ([ě]) is replaced with [ja]. That means those two sounds were pronounced the same way. That's typical for the East Bulgarian dialects (to which the Salonika dialect belonged) and for modern Bulgarian, where Yat turns into JA. BUT in Macedonian, Serbian and all other Slavic languages (except the Lechitic dialects) the Yat has narrow articulation - it turned to E or even I. So in those languages Yat couldn't be messed with JA - their sounding is simply too different. - Ogneslav 12:19, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• "As you can see from the phonetical table - the phonetical features of Old Church Slavonic are identical to Bulgarian and quite different from Macedonian and Serbian. So term "South-Slavonic" is out of place." Nope, sorry, the term South Slavonic is already used by many of the experts in the field. Others use slightly different but identical terms, like "Balkan Slavonic" (Huntley) or "Eastern Balkan Slavic" (Lunt). You seem to have a remarkable anti-elitism here. Wikipedia is meant to mirror the current findings of the international scholarly community, not push theories developed in-house. Let's do that.

• You are confusing the general designation of OCS as a Balkan Slavic language with the specific argument about the reflexes of *t' and *d', which are specifically a Bulgarian fenomen (check again in your books). I can't see any push theories here - it is your opinion on the manner of phrasing against the opinion of Ogneslav. Don't try to equalize your own personal opinion with what linguistics has to say. JayO

• "Since all your grammars don't mention that there were already dialectal differences" They mention plenty of dialectal differences, just not about yat at the earliest time.
• "You have no idea about the OCS' pronounciation of Yat? Then I'll let you know" Some of the grammars state that this is a question of orthography, not pronunciation. Simply because the two symbols were confused does not say anything definitive about the pronunciation of Thessaloniki in the 9th century. Crculver 19:58, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• This is a misinterpretation of what grammars say - most of them are united on the [æ] pronunciation of the yat vowel, which is also confirmed by the ortography and the presence of a separate letter for the vowel in the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets. JayO

Cleanup

Juro, you are filling the article with relatively inconsequential details about earlier Proto-Slavonic dialectal splits. Half the features you are quoting are typical not only for the Southern Slavic but also for the Eastern Slavic languages, like the tl, dl reflexes which I removed. On the other hand, you have hidden the t', d' reflexes, which are a much more important disctinction marker and have been well established in the language of Cyril and Methodius. And if you are gonna be consistent with the supposed dialectal division of the Slavic languages in the 9th centuries purging the word Bulgarian everywhere, you should changing the Moravian influences to Western Slavic influences. Otherwise your edits can look like a personal crusade.

Ogneslav, the Proto-Bulgar words are the result of Bulgar influence in the 10th century and they prove nothing. The later recensions (Serbian, Russian and possibly Croatian) are usually regarded as Church Slavonic and have no place under Old Church Slavonic.

I have furthermore removed personal comments and minority opinions of both you.

And as I see Crculver's comment just now - all grammars agree that the t', d' reflexes and the wide yat (æ) (+Lechitic) are shared by OCS and Bulgarian, there is no dispute about that between international linguists. Leaving them out puzzles me, please explain to me why you want to do that and why you regard something which is part of almost any book on Slavic languages is partisan. JayO

OK, I agree with your edits. It now looks neutral enough, as it should have looked from the very beginning. Thank you for the effort. Btw - just to mention:

• proto-Bulgar influences are found not only in Bulgarian documents, but also in Russian, Serbian and Romanian; that was the reason I put it in the major characteristics (anyway, it's ok now also, I don't complain)
• a lot of oppinions claim that the Croatian is one of the oldest recensions - created by Cyril and Methodius' disciples before they went to Moravia. - Ogneslav 11:40, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

ВМОРО, извинявай, че ти промених последните едити. Макар написаното да ми допадаше, сякаш е по-добре да оставим нещата за малко да се поуспокоят. Притесняваше ме, че някои по-крайни забележки ще амбицират досадника Юро и така и няма да ни остави на мира. Нека видим дали ще се вслуша в ДжейО, става ли? Поздрави, - Ogneslav 11:40, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

А ви момци мислите да овде баш нико не разуме то што пишете?

If you are going to insult someone, at least have the guts to do it openly and not behind their backs. Nikola 16:40, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

       Guys, why don't you settle this dispute once and for all? Forget about Thesaloniki and Old Macedonian,
whatever. The main facts to be mentioned here are that the language started its development (as a written one) 

in Moravia and it was finished in Bulgaria (Bulgarian Kingdom, whatever). It is important to mention, however, that the Cyrillic alphabet and the mission to Moravia was to a great extent of political nature.(Byzantium tried

to lay the foundation of solid influence in the region). The reason the language was later developed in Bulgaria,
was the failure of the mission and the strong will and determination of Boris I. This is why today it can stiil be 

found as Old Bulgarian, as well as Old Church Slavonic. Only later it was adopted and edited by Russia, Serbia, etc.

and got its own versions. This is why we can distinguish three categories: Old Church Slavonic ( from the mission in
Moravia(we should not call it Old Moravian, because Moravia today does not exist and it will be confusing)), Old 

Bulgarian(influenced by the Bulgarian vernacular/language), and later interpretations such as Russian, Serbian, etc.

And stop with those senseless disputes, it is actually annoying. And, yes, I am Bulgarian, actually, and I do 

recognize there is a great sense of bias in all the books in the field of Slavonic linguistics. However, we have for sure the facts I mentioned above, and although linguistics is generally subjective,

I think everyone can acknowledge the credibility of those facts. And, Juro, no offense, but just wanted
to mention sometimes you are annoying with this Ohrid stuff. It is to no extent pertinent to the question 

for how many years Ohrid has been under Bulgarian rule. The important thing here is that the academy there was undisputably Bulgarian and this is acknowledged by the people who worked there(you can find references from VMORO). It is also to no extent important who spoke what vernacular in the region. The fact was the academy was there for a reason, and most probably political one. Do you have any idea of internal policy? If you do, you might actually understand the purpose of the academy. Maybe it is there to back Bulgarian influence in the region, have you thought about that? And, apparently, it is successful, as you can see from history(1014-1017). ENough for Ohrid and old Macedonian, this stuff is just bogus. Oh, sth for Nikola:

dupe, stiga gluposti, molq ti se, nikoi ne obijda nikoi i ti mnogo dobre go znae6. aide s1s zdrave:)

General remarks

I do not have the power and time anymore to continue the current edit-war. I have noticed that I am getting angry just because of one article in the wikipedia .... but OCS is certainly not worth that...Although the current text is certainly better than several weeks ago, I remind any reader that my last version was very carefully prepared deliberately using texts of the Czech and Slovak Academies of Sciences written by several authors (not by single authors), one of which being written by tens of the best Slovak linguists, and that most of the changes in my last contribution are simply wrong, especially those concerning Great Moravia, Bohemia...The text is confusing Moravia, Great Moravia, the Balaton principality, the Nitrian principality and Bohemia now (which, by the way, is a very frequent error in the world nowadays and almost everyone outside Czechia and Slovakia is completely confusing these things because it is a somewhat complicated issue). Also, the text completely ignores the very frequent use of the word Macedonia (whether it is understood geographically or ethnically or in whatever way) for what is designated here Western-Bulgarian. Even German texts advocating the Bulgarian view use the term Macedonian in this connection, e.g. the current standard German univesity text book of N. Trunte [although in my view (which is unimportant here) it contains a lot of wrong historic information] and of course all Czech and Slovak texts. As an example, see the following link frequently mentioned by Slavic Studies departments of German universities .. [10] Personally, I do not understand, why this cannot be at least mentioned in the text – would someone "die" or what?

Also, the language itself is often described as "cultured Macedonian" (again whether the term is used geographically or ethnically or how ever...) - a good encyclopaedia has to mention this.

To VMORO, as for Ohrid region (not the whole of Macedonia) being part of Bulgaria see e.g. the map [11] in the middle of the page, which is a Czech map, but if you are a Slavist you should nevertheless understand it (my personal remark is that it is taken from the last standard text book on the history of Bulgaria currently used both in Czechia and in Slovakia). It shows that the Ohrid region was not part of Bulgaria (the thick black line) before 852. I consider that a very important fact and still do not understand why it has been deleted....

The only point where I can partly agree with the changes is the form of dj and tj in the original OCS, because I have found out in one book now that there is a difference between the Slavists from Czechia and Slovakia and from Bulgaria on this issue. The Czechs and Slovaks claim that the sounds were ť and ď or, more recently, ť^š and ď^ž . I cannot decide what is correct, but, again, I think that a serious encyclopaedia has to mention this ...Juro 01:04, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Template:IPA or Template:Unicode

Is there any reason not to use Template:Unicode for the Cyrillic and extended-Latin characters, instead of Template:IPA? That one is specifically meant for cases such as this. —Michael Z. 2005-04-19 23:32 Z

No, the only reason being is that the symbols could not be seen and I have practically never used Unicode... That's why I used IPA. VMORO 00:31, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

"c": č or x?

use of [s] for the Proto-Slavic [ch] before the Proto-Slavic åi

Proto-Slavonic reflexes of *tj ([t']) and *dj ([d']): [table follows]

Should "ch" be č or x? —Michael Z. 2005-10-13 14:18 Z

It should be x. (PIE s -> PS x) --millosh (talk (sr:)) 15:08, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Of course, in some cases... --millosh (talk (sr:)) 15:10, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it should be x, but I didn't read the article... Alternation x->s is product of the second and the third palatalization. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 15:14, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks; I'll update the article. —Michael Z. 2005-10-13 15:25 Z

Done, but I found one more; should "zh" in the table under Russian be ž? I can't find any more obvious problems, but would someone with a bit more linguistics knowledge please scan through the article and check for any more inconsistencies in the transcriptions? Thanks. —Michael Z. 2005-10-13 15:47 Z

Huh, I found a lot of errors... I'll fix it tomorrow where I am sure. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 19:14, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Just a question, when you say that the table is false, is that your scientific or political opinion? To clarify: as we all know, on Wikipedia all articles about languages identify them in political sense. So, if, for example, Bulgarian language in political sense has žd sound and OCS language in political sense has žd sound, wouldn't that mean that the table is actually correct (in political sense, of course)? Nikola 09:07, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I need to answer to your trolling? --millosh (talk (sr:)) 18:01, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I'd like to see an answer to this. Nikola 23:43, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Milosh should give well-grounded reasons before declaring the table "false" - which he hasn't done. On top of it, the table is not false - it needs to be harmonized with IPA, that's all. So, Milosh, either talk or stop blanking the section. Because this falls within certain defintions of vandalism. VMORO 23:20, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

On top of the top: the reflex of dj in Serbo-Croatian should be [ʥ] and of tj [ʨ] - Milosh has made a couple of errors... VMORO 23:47, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

You have not made a mistake, you've just used the Unicode values - which is also an option but I think this will be more confusing... I am not entirely sure about the values for Czech and especially for Slovenian, so it will be very nice if some one could checks them... VMORO 00:16, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

The table is much better then this one which I commented last time. You should add a note that article doesn't have reliable source for Slovenian and Czeck. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 12:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

It was false because there were letter "x" for Russian and Slovenian which means (German) "ch" in transcription. And, again, I don't think that the table should be visible until you (or me or anyone) have reliable data. And you still don't have it. I know that Nikola doesn't know anything about scientific method, but I am sure that you know something about that. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 12:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Slovenian is OK as I think. But it should be checked. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 12:52, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I was around when it was made (may be even I made it, I don't remember) and I am certain that [x] did not stand for "ch". It must have been added later by someone else. But anyway, thank you for the observation, I'll try to find a Slovenian user about the Slovenian part. VMORO 23:18, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

In linguistic transcription "x" means German "ch" and Slavic "h". (Where "h" means German "h".) So, "x" is ok when you try to represent unknown number or even unknown word, but in phonological sense, it is not good. You can see our discussion from the top of this section. We were confused with that notation. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 18:20, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I remember reading in at least a couple of places that the Slavic kha is usually represented by x, only sometimes ch (but I've never seen it intended to replace an "unknown" in linguistics, not that I've read so much). I think x is better, because it resembles the Cyrillic letter, and ch is used for the cha sound in other systems—it's unusual, so when it appears in isolation it's hard to guess what is meant. Please try not to call it h, because in Ukrainian h is represented by г, g is represented by ґ. —Michael Z. 2005-12-1 20:15 Z

There is no "x" in the table. It is "ć" in Serbian (etc.) and IPA transcription is now good. I just told to VMORO that two of us were very confused with using "x" for "unknown phoneme" because this letter is used for Slavic kha. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 10:25, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Disputed and expert tags

Sorry, this is nothing against anyone, just facts in this article are not correct. I am reading this article from time to time partially and I am always finding claims which are not correct. And, as my knowledge of OCS is not excelent, we need some expert. This time I found some problems: Ѫ is presented as ą and it should be ǫ. Russian ę gave 'ja' (pęt' -> пять), ě gave 'je/e' (rěka -> река). Because of that, as well as because of some events in the past, I am completely unsure about factual accurency of this article. (I will repeat: this is not the matter of POV and I am not offending anyone for not so good work; just let's try to make better article.) --millosh (talk (sr:)) 13:04, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Both spellings of the back nasal vowel, ą and ǫ, are permissible, since the exact phonetic identity of the vowel is uncertain (although many scholars today would believe it was nasalised /u/). Still, we should standardise on ǫ since it is what the majority of contemporary English-language sources use.

I would like to remove the Disputed tag, since the material now up matches perfectly the major English-language handbooks of Lunt, Schmalstieg, Gardiner, Gasparov, and Nandris. CRCulver 00:00, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Old Macedonian

In all texts I have read (in Macedonian) on this topic, the word старомакедонски has been used. A Google search of старомакедонски showed that all sites where from a Macedonian domain (.mk) or a Macedonian site with another domain, except for two (2). Yet, a search for старословенски showed that all but one (1) site was in Serbian. I propose that the current listing of старословенски be changed to старомакедонски. I thought I'd post this here to check in case it 'offended' any one. --Daniel Tanevski ^talk 16:17, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

There is no such thing as "Old Macedonian". Macedonian language did not come into existence as a separate language from Bulgarian until the 20th century. Macedonians call it старословенски or in english: Old Slavic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ziveski (talk • contribs) 16:10, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Just being contradictory is not discussion. Give concrete evidence of your claims and build a consensus. — Gareth Hughes (talk) 16:47, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

See below in the other "Old Macedonian" my remarks to the territorial issue. Moreover, having in mind a response by Juro on the German page version, I would like to point out further as follows: 1. Linguistically, Ancient Bulgarian has shown already distinctive mutations from what has been the supposed pan-slawic language preceding it; this can be seen in the palatalisation of k, g, etc. when comparing it to western slavic languages. Also, e.g. the nasal O became an O in modern Bulgarian (but e.g. an U in Russian). The Bulgarian language has an â as well as a short y, as opposed to other slavic languages. And the L stayed an L in Bulgarian, while e.g. in Serbian it could develop into an U. This contradicts the notion of Ancient Bulgarian being a kind of "Anciant Slavic", as other slavic languages had diverted from it - the language which kept the greatest continuity is Bulgarian. 2. To compare this language e.g. to Latin or Ancient Greek - the Latin alphabet knew a K ere it was substituted by a C, and went through grammatical changes (as can be seen in the more antiquated pater familias instead of pater familiae); nevertheless, as the Imperium Romanum has had the greatest influence on this language, it is generally being contemplated in its classical form, disregarding any archaic pre-classic developments - and the Latin alphabet is not being called "West-Greek-Etruskian Variation" but, simply, the Latin alphabet. Same can be observed for Ancient Greek - while the Greek alphabet went through considerable changes over time (like losing the Digamma in words as vanax or ovis, or introducing letters as Psi), it referred to in its classical form based on the anthe of the Greek culture. Having in mind the influence the discussed language had due to the Bulgarian Empire and in the Bulgarian Empire, it should - drawing the parallel to the above said - be named Ancient Bulgarian. 3. As I mentioned in my post below to which I referred in the beginning, ancient languages are judged by the culture that mostly influenced them, and not on the basis of modern states - noone would name Latin "Ancient-Vaticanian", eventhough it is spoken in the Vatican till today (and the Vatican is, compared to Macedonia, certainly not even "modern"). It is therefore misguided to talk of "Ancient Macedonian". I do not deny that there may have been different dialects throughout what has been the Bulgarian Empire - but so there existed Ionian Greek, Thessalian Greek etc., all being Ancient Greek - and not "Ancient Thessalian" etc. 4. That the Bulgarian language has evolved over time is no argument against the existence of Ancient Bulgarian - just as there exists Old German and Middle German - e.g., the poems of Walter von der Vogelweide are barely intelligible to the modern German reader; it changes nothing, they were written in German nevertheless. - And not in "Old Dutch" or anything thelike. - Nino —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.126.180.69 (talk) 15:32, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Sázava monastery

It may be worthy to mention that although Old Church Slavonic was pushed out of the region of the current Czech Republic, there was still community of monks in the Sazava monastery (close to Prague) which used it and created new books long into 12th century (approx.).

Tag

Why is the Tag still there? What's disputable? --HolyRomanEmperor 14:57, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

From reading the talk page, apparently nothing. I'm taking it off. Angr (talk • contribs) 10:37, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Modern Slavic nomenclature

I have corrected some mistakes in the nomenclature section:

1. There were a lot of terms listed that should refer exclusively to the Church Slavonic language, not to the oldest period of this language. In general, the (very important!) differentiation of these two notions is quite a mess in the English-language Wikipedia. Someone who has more time than I have at the moment should clean that up...
2. There were Old East Slavic words listed as "Russian": In how far would that be "modern Slavic nomenclature"?

Apart from that, yes, there are many scholars who believe that Old Bulgarian is geographically more appropriate. (I am not one of them!) The argument goes like this: Until 1944, when the Macedonian standard language came into existence, the Macedonian dialects were part of the Bulgarian dialect continuum and had no separate "roof" of their own, so they were usually considered Bulgarian dialects. The dialect of Cyril & Methodius was probably one of these.

-- Daniel Bunčić 20:29, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Of course, but there were also many linguists who considered Macedonian a southern dialect of Serbian language, especially during the existence of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia). --Djordje D. Bozovic 16:55, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Why does the Modern Slavic Nomenclature include "# Czech: staroslověnština — 'Old Slověnian'"? i.e. The normal English spelling would be "Slovenian", so why is there a diacritic above the "e" in the English translation here? -86.133.247.156 22:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Intuitive pronunciation

"The intuitive pronunciation of the old word for Slavs can be given as appr. slovaeneh [ae stands for a very open e] or sloveneh at that time."

First, - slovaeneh?! What case is this supposed to be, and why isn't it nominative? Second, it's dubious whether wikipedia should include such a statement at all. Would an [English?] speaker really want to know "intuitively" how to pronounce an old word for Slavs, and what has this got to do with OCS? Etc, etc.--194.145.161.227 22:48, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

You are completely wrong. Intuitive pronunciation means pronunciation for those who are unable to read IPA symbols and/or the Slavonic signs, that's all. And the relevancy is given by the fact that the only preserved (almost) contemporary name for the language is the adjective of exactly this word - very "irrelevant", indeed. Juro 23:06, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I've avoided the whole matter simply by giving standard transliteration. There's no need to claim an "intuitive pronunciation" since phonetic matters are speculation, and the transliteration gives a perfectly good phonemic representation. And anon IP, the name is in the nominative, as words for peoples tend to form plurals in -ѣне, cf. солѹнѣне "Thessalonians". CRCulver 23:25, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Please address me with my initial numbers, I'm a very sensitive anon IP. I thought it wasn't in the nominative, because I interpreted the h as h. I hadn't figured out that this was supposed to be a way to tell a poor average Anglo-Saxon that he should say "Slaw-vay-nay" and not "Slaw-vay-nee". Quite useless, of course. Obviously an Anglo-Saxon who can't read IPA isn't particularly interested in learning to say "Slavs" in Old Slavic. --194.145.161.227 23:57, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I do not care much anymore, but to correct you, it is not a speculation anymore, there are two alternatives how the particular sign could have been pronounced and the original text gave them as well as it is possible without IPA signs. This is important in the sense that the modern pronunciation of the Czech symbol ě is different. Juro 23:45, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

No, the exact pronunciation of yat is a matter of controversy and it simply wouldn't be appropriate for us to make a blanket assertion about its phonetic identity. There is a standard transliteration for OCS, let's use it. CRCulver 00:12, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

You have outdated information. I have read some studies/articles on this years ago. Juro 00:21, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

No, I'm well aware of various speculation as to the identity of yat. But there are still to this day multiple schools, not to mention the perennial existence in IE studies of those who disapprove of any phonetic assertions when all we can really be sure about are phonemes. CRCulver 00:25, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

The question is always whether reasonable conclusions can be made or not. In this case it has been possible to reasonably reduce all the alternatives for the century in question to two alternatives (hypotetical, of course). Saying that we cannot be sure is always correct when reconstructing languages, especially in phonetics, but then 50% of this article, as well as most medieval articles, are just pure speculation. A valid opinion, but not practical for an encyclopaedia or any research.Juro 00:39, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

In this particular section ("Nomenclature"), there is no need for speaking of the identity of yat. That can go up above in "Phonology". Here let's just use the standard transliteration, and the reader will know from what he read previously what the possible realizations of the phonemic symbol ě are. CRCulver 00:44, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes. This has been just a reaction to the above, not directly to the article.Juro 17:41, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

The probability of a Czech reading the English wikipedia and being as stupid as to believe that the transcription should be read like modern Czech is - well, let's say my opinion of the Czech nation is too high to believe such a thing.--194.145.161.227 23:57, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

The matter is somewhat (actually much more) complicated for this particular symbol, because earlier it was thought that it was pronounced (and as far as I remember, in some later dialects it actually was pronounced) like the Czech ě (i.e. "ie"), hence the sign (which was invented by a Czech decades ago). And in Czech and Slovak texts (in the latter ones in the form -ie-) the name of OCS is still derived from this old (slightly) wrong interpretation of the symbol and only very few people know this, because nobody wants to change a "conventional" name in the schoolbooks. But take this only as an interesting remark. Juro 00:12, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. But what are these recent speculations about yat? I always thought it was an [æ]? --194.145.161.227 00:37, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

The old opinions included [ie], the modern opinion is that it was [ae] or a central [e] (again, using simplified symbols). Juro 17:41, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Ivanka

Hello, I am trying very intently to get the Correct Bulgarian spelling of the name IVANCA, it is pronounced IVANKA, and it is for a necklace i am having made for my friend who lives here in Alaska, US. Could you please tell me how I would spell IVANCA in Bulgarian, many thanks, psmo

Why are you asking here, instead of the talk page of Bulgarian language? In Old Church Slavonic, it would be Иванка. Probably, it would be the same in Bulgarian. Daniel Šebesta (talk • contribs) 23:22, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Bosnian?

Was the Bosnian recension a sub-recension of the Serbian one? --PaxEquilibrium 21:49, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Removed "macedonian" from the recensions

There's never been such a recension - never heard of such. It's a forgery, a new one and it's a bad one. Recensions (as some of you may have noticed and as it is usually explained in most textbooks on the matter) are named after the medieval country in which they were originlly developed. This is why we have Moravian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, etc. recensions. NB! There is no Czech or Belarusian recension, for example. This is why there can't be a "Macedonian" recension - that recension was created on the territory, inside the borders of what was back then south-west Bulgaria. At the time (880-890 AD) there was no country in that area that was named Macedonia. It was the Bulgarian tsar Boris who welcomed St. Kliment in what-was-then Bulgaria, and sent him to the Bulgarian-at-the-time town of Ohrid to create his academy. I don't see why this is so hard to understand for some people. 65.2.75.52 21:27, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Have you never seen the standard English-language handbooks for OCS? Namely those of Lunt, Schmalstieg, Nandris, and Gardiner. It has long been common to speak of a Macedonian recension. If you have a problem with this terminology, take it up with English-speaking OCS scholars. Removing the material because you disagree with it violates WP:NOR CRCulver 21:33, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Thessaloniki was NOT part of Bulgaria. There is a Czech recension. And the term Old Macedonian is also the standard modern name in Slavic countries. Juro 22:19, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Thessaloniki was not part of FYROM Macedonia either. If you insist on specifying the specific geographical location of the recension, then use Thessaloniki or Byzantium. [Th.A. 15/3/2007] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.10.181.65 (talk) 00:02, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

This is a refferal to a state tradition. There is much more weight on various Bulgarian claims for the sole reason that these linguistic and cultural changes were institutionalised. What is more, they were preserved and further developed to the extent that a distinct Bulgarian tradition emerged. That continuity is used by some scholars to even claim that the creation of the state in conjunction with an independant church, both backed up by an official written language, forged a nation.

Another theory on Cyril and Metodius

Another theory claims that the brothers actually used a Northern Danubian dialect to base their work on. Furthermore, their father was a Bulgar noble, expelled from the court of Kardam. He then entered a Byzantine office in Thesaloniki and has been confused to be Byzantine himself. As wide and relative that the meaning of what 'Byzantine' stands for is, the only thing that is at stake here is that their father was Bulgar noble and their mother Slavic. That reduces the whole notion of them being Byzantine to them being Byzantine officials. This theory was also accompagnied by a linguistic analysis.

One more ting. The Byzantine monarch that supposedly sent them to Moravia is a certain Michael. By the time their went on a mission, he was, however, long dead. Interestingly enough, Boris I of Bulgaria, had adopted Michael as his CHristian name ... Some food for thought :)))

(I will have to look for a reference on that matter as that was something I read by the way years ago ... )

Moravian, Thesaloniki Slavic Dialect and Old Church Slavonic

My wonder here is how on earth did a languague based on dialect from the region in Thesaloniki was used for the basis of a language that was going to be used in Great Moravia. Did these people speak the same language or what? Same language family is as far as this can get. Then again, the Church Savonic that the Moravians were getting and using with ease, comes back to the Balkans in a perhaps a little different form, but is used again with ease by the local Slavic speaking population ... Something doesn't make sense here. We could get away by saying that Slavic languages were much closer to one another back then. Still, something seems out of place. There are reasons why Glagollitic was changed into Curyllic. nd that is just for a start.

Back in the 6th century the Slavonic languages were still so similar that the Slavs could easily understand each other, even if one of them was from Macedonia and the other one from Moravia. --Djordje D. Bozovic 13:51, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Medieval Bosnia

I find it shocking that Croatia claims the written language and Serbia the spoken (Bosancica=Hrvatsko-bosanska cirilica & the Bosnian recension being a sub-recension of Serbian) and both claims are founded and generally true. --PaxEquilibrium 01:48, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

It is interesting indeed. I believe that this comes from the fact that bosančica, a somewhat modified Cyrillic alphabet that was used in medieval Bosnia, was also sometimes used by the (mostly Croatian) Catholic population in Herzegovina, Dubrovnik, and Dalmatia (although the Croats usually stuck to the Glagolitic alphabet for a long time). However, the language itself had more characteristics similar to those of the Serbian language, than to those of the Croatian recension. --Djordje D. Bozovic 20:41, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

It's only sad that Serbian and Croatian (modern) linguists will not be able to agree with such things. They all simply say that research is irrelevant because either: (a) Serbs lived to the Una or (b) Croats lived to the Drina.

I especially think that no Bosnian linguist will agree. --PaxEquilibrium 01:43, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

"Old Macedonian"

The source I gave earlier isn't biased. Nor is this about modern ethnic divisions. Yes, the Apostles to the Slavs were Macedonian; and yes, they spoke a Slavic language; and yes, they drew heavily upon it when codifying OCS. But that language is not called "Old Macedonian". But this is a linguistic article, and according to the nomenclature they use Old Macedonian is a language spoken in Classical times prior to the Hellenization of that region; i.e. before the time of Philip and Alexander. It is simply incorrect to use it otherwise. I provided a source; not biased, but neutral. Please provide a neutral source for OCS as "Old Macedonian" if it's going to be added back. TCC (talk) (contribs) 17:59, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Here's the source I cited in the edit summary: [12], just for reference. TCC (talk) (contribs) 18:04, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Nevertheless, the language is called Old Macedonian by all true experts in this field, not only English, but also Slavic and German. And the name is technically correct both historically, geographically and linguistically. You can turn it how ever you want. (And I am not the one reverting your edits)Juro 18:48, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

In that case, it should be easy to locate a reliable neutral source, which is all I'm asking for. (And what, by the way, do these people call the older non-Slavic language?) TCC (talk) (contribs) 20:10, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Ancient Macedonian language, I think. The current way the sentence is written is the closest to satisfying all of us. My problem is that this was a geographical term and nothing else. They referred to it as old macedonian cause it was geographically in the Macedonia region. Anything else would be fantasy stories. There is the question, of course, is it right to mention this as old macedonian - I vote against as it is obvious that there already is a language with a pretty similar name and this might cause great misinterpretations. --Laveol 21:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Of course it is right to mention it, when several of the most authoritative English-language handbooks give it as one of the more appropriate names for the language. It would cause misinterpretation only to those unwilling to learn anything about the subject, and we are not responsible for the ignorance of others. 128.214.205.4 11:18, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

There is no such thing as "Old Macedonian" in the regard of this article. If you use the argument that nowadays the republic of Macedonia is situated on this territory, then you should be consequent and say that "there is no Latin, because nowadays the countries on the area of the Imperium Romanum are Italy, France, Germany, Spain,... thus the language shall be called Old Geman, Old Italian, Old French,..." - this is so obviously wrong that it needs no further discussion and I would be surprised if anyone ever witnessed it. Consequently, too, the inscriptions in Ancient Greek in Ephesos etc. should also be called "Old Turkish". - If this sounds entirely absurd, then it is no less absurd to invent "Old Macedonian" for a language and script clearly developed and used on the territory of what was then Bulgaria. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.126.180.69 (talk) 11:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Protection

Taking the recent edits into account, I believe the article should be protected against unregistered users. What do you think? Daniel Šebesta (talk • contribs) 19:08, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

If you're referring to the "Old Macedonian" issue, this seems to me more a content dispute than vandalism. If that's the case, then semi-protection is not called for. TCC (talk) (contribs) 07:15, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

If it is changed again and again with no explanation (i.e., edit summary or talk contribution), I consider it vandalism. The latest editor, at least, filled out the edit summary and explained their edit. Daniel Šebesta (talk • contribs) 07:59, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Those who repeatedly remove 'Old Macedonian' have showed sufficient bad faith here. There are rational discussions that can be had, but I think anyone who just removes text from the article without even a decent edit summary should be given a vandalism warning and, eventually, blocked. I don't think page protection would be helpful, as this is about two words. Unfortunately, Wikipedia is plagued by this kind of ethnically-motivated editing. It might be worth putting 'Old Macedonian (not Ancient Macedonian)' in the article. THe Macedonian link is supported in the opening paragraph of the Encyclopaedia Britannica article:

Old Church Slavonic language also called Old Church Slavic Slavic language based primarily on the Macedonian (South Slavic) dialects around Thessalonica (Thessaloníki). It was used in the 9th century by the missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius, who were natives of Thessalonica, for preaching to the Moravian Slavs and for translating the Bible into Slavic. Old Church Slavonic was the first Slavic literary language and was written in two alphabets known as Glagolitic and Cyrillic (the invention of Glagolitic has been ascribed to St. Cyril). Old Church Slavonic was readily adopted in other Slavic regions, where, with local modifications, it remained the religious and literary language of Orthodox Slavs throughout the Middle Ages.[13]

I think that this is clear enough support for the use of the word 'Macedonian'. I'll put this into the article and see how it goes. If anonymous editors simply remove it, it'll simply demonstrate further bad faith and undermine any valid argument they might have. — Gareth Hughes 13:34, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Complain

Please if you want to have a perfect page for Slavonic language than don't be ridiculous and change that Bulgarian propaganda. It is not Old Bulgarian and, it is language made on Macedonian basis. And Ohrid is not East Bulgarian school, it is Macedonian,it is a fact. And please stop with that stupid Bulgarian propaganda, I am tired of it and I am starting to hate Wikipedia that allows it and I am sure every Macedonian feels the same. CIAO MacedonianBoy —Preceding comment was added at 18:29, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Am I missing something?

I have a question to the good people who edit this page (a question outside the whole origin and terminology debate). Usually when I come to a language page on Wikipedia I expect to find complete presentation of phonology (whether it is factual or - as in the case of many languages no longer spoken - simply purported). I'm also expecting some (and hoping for an in-depth) discussion on grammar and syntax, complete with tables of inflectional patterns for verbs, nouns etc where applicable (and I know OCS was rather complex in this respect). But I've been searching this page and I can't find it so the question is: Am I missing something? Is there a link to another page? Is there another page at all? I just find it so strange that almost nothing is said about the actual language, how it was structured, its grammatical and syntactical features etc. Why is this not included? Nothingbutmeat 11:06, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Nothingbutmeat! A Wikipedia article is never complete and perfect. We will appreciate if you or someone else expand the article using reliable sources. Daniel Šebesta (talk • contribs) 13:24, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Daniel! Thank you for the speedy reply. Unfortunately I am in no way equipped to elaborate on the grammar of OCS or I would get on it immediately.

I hope my previous post did not come across as rude or overly criticising, I understand that no article is ever perfect. Still, I was quite surprised that the article contains virtually no information on grammar, syntax etc; I would consider that to be an integral part of any language article of some length (such as this one).

I would like to request that someone with a good knowledge of the language take the time to add this information. Nothingbutmeat 17:38, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

No, I didn't consider your comment rude at all! I understand that the information you mentioned should be in the article; I was just trying to suggest a reason why it is not there now. I studied OCS at university for some time and have some quite reliable sources (written in Czech by Czech linguists), but I am too busy these days to expand the article. However, I'll keep it in mind. Daniel Šebesta (talk • contribs) 17:51, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Slavonic Bible?

Is the Old Slavonic Bible text online? It might make a helpful external link. 71.93.238.53 01:27, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Here is the link, brother: http://www.sbible.boom.ru/slavpdf.htm Can somone please publish it in the article's footnotes perhaps... Thanks.--Moesian (talk) 08:21, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Old Church Slavonic Language Article Doesn't Exist On Romanian Wikipedia

Now why is that? hmmmmmmm......... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.235.165.92 (talk) 23:12, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The answer is simple—probably because no one created that article there. —Daniel Šebesta {chat | contribs} 00:53, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Macedonian language

Please refer to History of the Macedonian language. "Macedonian recension" is an anachronism, as Macedonian was used as a regional designator in the Middle Ages. Also, the Ohrid was a Bulgarian literary center, its works were produced in the Bulgarian language. Mr. Neutron 21:50, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Although I agree with you that the term 'Macedonian Language' in it's meaning as a language of a distinct nation is of more recent origin, that does not erase the fact that the present Macedonian language traces back its roots to the Church Slavonic, and as such it should have it's own section on this page. You are welcome to edit the parts you deem inaccurate (discussing them first), but do not delete the whole section Capricornis 23:43, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Byzantines used the term "bulgar" (with a small initial b) as an offense in the Middle Ages, so what?! If Ohrid was a Bulgarian literary school, then why was Glagolithic script used there, instead of Cyrillic - the script used in Preslav (which is beyond doubt Bulgarian)? Or is it that the First Empire was a "bannana" state? Oh, and Mr. Neutron the works of the Ohrid literary school were written in Slavonic/Slavic language, neither in Macedonian, nor in Bulgarian. And the Slavs in Macedonia had then and still have distinct tongue form the Bulgarians. --Profesorot 00:08, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

proof reading reqd

Hi, I have copied some Cyrillic text, which I think is Old Church Slavonic to oldwikisource:Author:Sergei Rachmaninoff, but I am just learning so I would appreciate it if someone could take a quick look and confirm what it is. John Vandenberg 10:26, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

It's Russian. ;) --George D. Božović 15:15, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Requested expansion

For an article about a language this article contains almost no information. Could someone please add all of the appropriate noun declensions and verb conjugations? Tibetologist (talk) 03:57, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, why was the 'Macedonian recension' edited into 'West Bulgarian'? Is it that some Greek and Bulgarian users don't like the way it's worded? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.87.56.76 (talk) 08:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Because "Macedonian recension" is not correct, my friend. At the time, and in later centuries, Macedonia was the name of a totally different region. For more information please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonia_%28region%29 and more particularly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Byzantine_Macedonia_1045CE.svg
Anyway I am amazed by the fierce resistance in this discussion against the term "Old Bulgarian" which is used by many scholars (of course non-ex-Yugoslav ones). Apparently it is more politically correct NOT to use "Old Bulgarian".
In any case, a language is normally named by its speakers. Unfortunately speakers of this language are not around to shout it out, but they have left us numerous stone inscriptions and various skripts where they clearly refer to their spoken language as ѩӡыкъ блъгарьскъ (iеⁿzyik' bl'garsk'). I see that many participants in the current discussion have set their mind to prove them wrong, expecially our ex-Yugoslav Macedonian brothers some of whom have a strong dislike for historical sources. Old Church Slavonic was institutionalised in Bulgaria and was later undergone intense development within the boundaries of the Bulgarian state under the hand of people who called themselves Bulgarians. Objectivity allows (if not bounds) the use of the term Old Bulgarian. Mir vam!--Moesian (talk) 08:11, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Nomenclature

I don't have access to all of the references, but Franklin (2002) Writing, Society and Culture in Early Rus, c. 950-1300 puts the following in a footnote where he first discusses the language:

See Schenker ... pp. 189–90. ‘Old’ Church Slavonic is also known as ‘Old Slavonic’ (mainly in Russian and French scholarship) and occasionally as ‘Old Bulgarian’.

Then the following in the main text:

In practice, however, virtually all Church Slavonic manuscripts already contain hints of their own linguistic milieu, and over time Church Slavonic divides into increasingly pronounced regional variants, dialects, dubbed ‘Russian Church Slavonic’, ‘Bulgarian Church Slavonic’ (or ‘Middle Bulgarian’), and so on.

He also calls the differences between these variants "too trivial to be interpreted as disintigration". You can also compare how he refers to the name of Old East Slavic, in the main text:

... East Slavonic (aka. ‘Old Russian’, ‘Old Ukrainian’, or the ingenious coinage ‘Rusian’) ...

The temporal context of his book allows him to mainly use Church Slavonic and East Slavonic for the respective languages, and Slavonic for them collectively.

Is it fair to say that in English-language scholarship the language is mainly referred to as Old Church Slavonic, or just Church Slavonic when the context makes its identity clear, and Old Slavonic or Old Bulgarian when referring to scholarship in other languages? Is there any English-language source at all which uses Old Bulgarian primarily?

When we figure out the details, I suggest that this article should mention the context in which these names are used, with appropriate prominence. The intent is to inform the reader without catering to anyone's national pride. —Michael Z. 2008-05-23 22:13 z

More specifically, alternate English names and foreign-language names and their English translations are already mentioned in the Nomenclature section. Please cite specific reasons for picking out Old Bulgarian to promote to the intro. —Michael Z. 2008-05-23 22:19 z

There's no good reason to have either Old Bulgarian or Old Macedonian in the intro. It's another attempt by Laveol to throw the word into every, even remotely related, article. Another problem is the use of the term "Eastern Bulgarian recension" which was invented here on Wikipedia on the basis that the Macedonian recension is "West Bulgarian". --Hegumen (talk) 05:29, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, pants. —Michael Z. 2008-05-24 06:07 z

Just a note about the Macedonian Recension. In Gordon H. Fairbanks "The Phonemic Structure of Zographensis Language", in Language, Vol. 28, No. 3, (Jul. - Sep., 1952), p. 360 it is clearly stated: The Codex Zographensis a, manuscript in the Glagolitic alphabet dating from ca. 1000 A.D., consists of a translation of the four gospels into Old Bulgarian. It is one of the oldest OB texts, and for that reason the phonological structure of its language is of significance for historical linguistics. A search in JSTOR didn't bring out any result about the Macedonian Recension but I am sure that it has been called like that in a number of works. The term in this context implies geographical rather than linguistic connotations although I am sure that the Macedonian Language is also the descendant of the Old Bulgarian or OCS language. There in nothing bad about it and I can't see the reason for this disagreement. Before you start thinking that I am just another nationalist Greek trying to advance Greek or Bulgarian POV please note that I have so far abstained from any Macedonia related topics. I can't see why the Macedonian editors are so vexed by this. Both the Bulgarian and the Macedonian language have a common ancestor, which is called Old Church Slavonic or Old Bulgarian and sometimes rather anachronistically Old Macedonian. If you still have any doubts I can also add citations from Obolensky and others...--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 09:59, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Old Bulgarian in this case is synonymous with OCS. It's just an alternative name for the language used mostly by Bulgarian historians and linguists. "Macedonian recension" is current and the only term I've ever seen in English-language literature. Yes, it is used in a geographical sense though the modern Macedonian language does stem from it. As a Macedonian editor I'm not in any way vexed by the use of "Old Bulgarian" in the article. My problem is with the use of terms such as "West/East Bulgarian" and the identification of this language with an ethnic group (whichever it may be). --Hegumen (talk) 10:34, 24 May 2008 (UTC)¨

Nope, it's obviously not used mostly by Bulgarian linguists, but most world linguists point it out as a proper name for it - linguistically and historically/geographically. And, you do have a problem with Bulgarian as obvious from other contribs you've made. What you missed out is to check exactly what your Google books hits told you. Here are your three hits:

1. The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics says "This Slavonic language was 'Old Church Slavonic,' which is also sometimes called 'Old Bulgarian,' 'Old Slavonic' or even 'Old Macedonian."
2. Comparative History of Slavic Literatures - "The brothers knew the Old Bulgarian or Old Macedonian dialect spoken around"
3. Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction - "The Old Church Slavonic of Bulgaria, regarded as something of a standard, is often called Old Bulgarian (or Old Macedonian)."

From all this (and your edits to the article) I get the impression that you didn't bother reading your sources. And as for Old Bulgarian there are pretty overwhelming evidence for its inclusion I don't see the same for your push. I'll edit it according the sources which have it rather as an alternative name to Old Bulgarian, not even to Old Church Slavonic. --Laveol ^T 10:50, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

(This goes to Hegumen)Well I have a rather different impression from the relevant literature but who am I to say. I should point to the fact though that Macedonian is of rather recent coinage (some 120 years old) and that both the glossotomy and the the Macedonian national identity developed probably somewhere in the end of the 19th century so I can't find anything bad about calling OCS Old Bulgarian since it was spoken by people called Bulgarians in the Middle Ages. As far as ethnic groups are concerned I really wouldn't like to get into that. As far as I am concerned people in the Balkans are (or should have been) brothers first and foremost. It is a bad thing when brothers start arguing about the family heirlooms--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 10:45, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

You're disguising your chauvinism and manipulations with politeness and pleasantries. I'll reply to your comment the next time I sign in. --Hegumen (talk) 18:13, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

??????--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 18:30, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Well on second thought you probably deserve a proper answer. So lets see... Where exactly did I disguise my alleged chauvinism? Was it when I spoke of Macedonians instead of ethnic Macedonians or Fyromians or Skopians and the lot? Maby when I refered to the Macedonian language as an existing language instead of a Bulgarian dialect? Or is it when I spoke about your national identity appearing some 100 years ago instead of 60? You probably need to read the article on Ethnic (awful disambiguation) Macedonians in Wikipedia. Is it because I refrained from any discussion dealing with ethnic groups? What's wrong in believing that balkan people have much more in common than the opposite? Is it chauvinistic to think that Bulgarians, Macedonians, Albanians, and -no matter how much you may hate the word- Greeks are probably much more related than they are willing to admit. I 've read my share of Borza, Karakasidou, Danforth, Hill, Hobsbawm, Kedourie, Mango, Ostrogorsky, Obolensky, Vasiliev, Smith, Anderson, even Lunt for Christ's sake in trying to understand and I happen to believe that they were right in many points. I do not feel I deserve such behaviour, I don't even edit articles about Macedonians or Macedonian subjects. You attach some kind of metaphysical power to your national identity as if it were something more important than humanity itself. Why is it so hard to undestand that what you perceive as your own and only posession may actually belong to others as well? What's so fucking important in saying that you did not emerge in vitro? Why don't you rejoice with the multitude of elements that went into the forming of your identity the same way this happened with Greeks or Bulgarians or Whateverians? But no, you want to have it all for your self. Go ahead idealize and purify your past from every imaginary foreign element (some have tried to do it here in Greece as well, for all their foolishness!) it will only impoverish you the same way it has impoverished a lot of my own stock or even the Bulgarian one. And on top of all that you add insult to your bigotry! This whole situation is sad and we are all becoming sad persons in this Insanopedia--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 19:51, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

So Old Bulgarian implies the living language of St Cyril, but one would probably not refer to the language of the Primary Chronicle by that name, correct? —Michael Z. 2008-05-25 04:10 z

There's been a lot of discussion concerning the Primary Chronicle, but if it helps here's what Horace Lunt says, On Interpreting the Russian Primary Chronicle: The Year 1037 in The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 32, No. 2, (Summer, 1988), p. 263

"This Old Slavonic written language, variously called Old Bulgarian, Old Church Slavonic, and Old Russian, is to be regarded as a single cultural form of the Late Common Slavic language, with different "literary dialects," to use the terminology of Durnovo.". I have to caution anybody interested to use this quote that is not clear whether he is referring to the language of the Primary Chronicle per se. The remark belongs to footnote 27.--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 09:33, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Just a question though: Is it some kind of anathema to aknowledge the important role early Bulgarians played in the dissemination of this literary tradition? Because I really don't get this whole tension and it is my understanding (from what I read so far) that their role was paramount exactly in this respect.--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 09:54, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Giorgios, I'm not talking about Bulgarians' role. I'm just trying to agree on what the term Old Bulgarian means in English, in what contexts it is used, and consequently how to appropriately inform the reader of those facts. I don't think we need to memorialize the early Bulgarians by placing undue prominence on a name for this language which appears to have a minor role in English-language scholarship.

Are there any quotations where it is clear what is being referred to? To interpret his one liberally would be to equate Old Bulgarian with Old Russian, which seems wrong. —Michael Z. 2008-05-25 15:01 z

You are right on that but I can't tell you anything before Monday. I 'll be paying a visit to a library and I will have a look at this and some other things. My general impression so far is that many of these terms are used rather loosely or even interchangibly no matter how inaccurate they may be. Their usage is mostly conventional if I am not mistaken. I think that the Lunt quote shows just that. As far as the term Old Bulgarian is concerned I can tell you that I ve seen it used time and again in OCS contexts--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 16:19, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe this will help:"Research on the verbal government of substantives in the Laurentian " Primary Chronicle, " a text reresentative of the language of the early twelfth century, sheds some light on the role and status of the genitive-accusative in old Russian.", Orrin Frink, "Genitive-Accusative in the Laurentian Primary Chronicle" in The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 6, No. 2, (Summer, 1962), p. 133--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 16:06, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

But then again I get this: "In the responses to Meillet, most notably by N. P. Nekrasov, reference began to be made not only to Old Church Slavonic but also to Old Russian, in particular to early manuscripts of the Primary Chronicle. Thomson wished to take this work into account, and he believed that his general theory was supported by the Primary Chronicle as it appears in the Laurentian Manuscript of 1377. The Laurentian Manuscript contains the oldest surviving text of the Primary Chronicle, and, because of the historical importance of this chronicle, the Laurentian version of it is a standard documentary source. At the same time, the Laurentian Manuscript is a difficult text because it is so heterogeneous; it contains much material in addition to the Primary Chronicle, which was itself composed out of heterogeneous sources over two centuries before the Laurentian Manuscript was written. The Laurentian Primary Chronicle is therefore not an ideal source from which to gather preliminary data on the history of Old Russian; on the contrary, it can often be interpreted only through comparison with other, more straightforward, texts" Emily Klenin, "Morphological Coding, Syntactic Change, and the Modes of Historical Attestation: The Genitive-Accusative in Old Church Slavonic and Medieval East Slavic" in The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 31, No. 3, (Autumn, 1987), pp. 407-8. So you see how tricky the usage of terminologies can become.--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 16:33, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

We're getting a little off-topic. My only objection was to the use of the terms "Eastern/Western Bulgarian recension". I have no problem with "Old Bulgarian" and "Old Macedonian" (being used in the same way as equivalent alternatives to the common name Old Church Slavonic). --Hegumen (talk) 07:20, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

In saying "mostly used by Bulgarian linguists", I meant that it's the term that most Bulgarian linguists use exclusively and the use of "Old Bulgarian" in some English-language texts is undoubtedly a result of this. But, I agree that it's a fitting term historically and geographically speaking. @Laveol: It's a question of semantics, but the passages you quoted seem to present them as equivalent alternatives. Again, I have no problem whatsoever in using "Old Bulgarian" in the right context in this article. @Giorgos: You're associating the term "Old Macedonian" and "Old Bulgarian" with the ethnic groups calling themselves Macedonians and Bulgarians. In English-language literature, those terms are obviously used, for the most part, in a geographical sense. I have to repeat that this isn't an issue of ethnicity for me and never was. I only object to the use of "Eastern/Western Bulgarian recension". --Hegumen (talk) 07:39, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

My general impression so far is that many of these terms are used rather loosely or even interchangibly no matter how inaccurate they may be. Their usage is mostly conventional if I am not mistaken. I think that the Lunt quote shows just that. As far as the term Old Bulgarian is concerned I can tell you that I ve seen it used time and again in OCS contexts... I am associating what?--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 16:31, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

And a minor note: I am not sure who is playing the semantics game here, I had a closer look on the usages of all these terms and they are indeed used generically, with the predominant term being Old Church Slavonic. Old Bulgarian is again used rather often and in certain cases it is even disambiguated as in this case here http://books.google.com/books?id=L11bHwAACAAJ&dq=%22Old+Bulgarian%22&lr=&hl=el. JSTOR has some 190 references to Old Bulgarian and less than 30 to Old Macedonian. That should not be misinterpreted though since the term Old Macedonian appeared rather recently in scholarly literature whereas the term Old Bulgarian (or rather Altbulgarisch) was already introduced in the 19th century. As far as the name of the "Macedonian Recension: is concerned I have to admit that I found no standardised termninology. The term Bulgarian Recension has been used to describe both redactions but I didn't trace any bibliographical reference to a "Western Bulgarian Recension". Occasionally the term West Bulgarian is coined and there is even a single reference to a "Bulgaro-Macedonian Recension", so I can't say anything for sure. The term Macedonian Recension does not appear in any of JSTOR's journals, and I didn't find anything about it in the Gennadeion Library here in Athens, but again I am sure I' ve seen it used - although I don't remember where. Rest assured that if I happen to come by any authoritative reference, regardless of the nomenclature used I will post it here. I am going to refrain from further editing this article. Dogfights for Nationalist POVs are really not my cup of tea. What I want to stress though is that cultural phenomena are rather complex and cannot be described or explained in terms of any kind of parthenogenesis. With the literary tradition of Old Church Slavonic this becomes even more apparent, since it has been largely a joint achievement of many different groups--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 10:52, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Recensions

Attempts to present the recention as Macedonian in the sence of "non-Bulgarian" are doomed. Also being "from West Bulgaria" means being "West Bulgarian", doesn't it?

The terms Macedonian and Bulgarian recession have nothing to do with ethnicity. No one is trying to present the Macedonian recension as being "non-Bulgarian" because it isn't Bulgarian and neither is the Bulgarian recension. I've read your sources and neither are suitable. The first source says "der Text stammt aus dem westbulgarischen (makedonischen) Raum". Where do you see "West Bulgarian recension"? It says the Codex Zographensis is from West Bulgaria. Your second source says that Codex Marianus and Zographensis are also from West Bulgaria. There is no mention of a West Bulgarian recension. --Hegumen (talk) 08:03, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Here are you Eastern- and Western-Bulgarian recensions. --Hegumen (talk) 08:05, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Hegumen, you need to brush up your German. I believe that you intentionally fail to notice the following quote: "westbulgarisch (macedonisch)". Whether the sources are suitable, is the reader's right to decide. Many sources speak of "multiple Bulgarian recensions" and two major literary centres in Bulgaria.
Second, the Ohrid Literary School is Bulgarian by ethnicity. There are no authentic sources which mention "Macedonian" ethnicity prior to the 19th century. On the cotrary, they mention Bulgarian and Slav concurrently. Can you prove me wrong? If you continue to dispute the sourced information, I will expand the section to prove my point about the Bulgarian character of the Ohrid Literary School. However I hope we can reach an agreement on the current state of the article, as it treats the language issue generally without focusing on separate schools.--Moesian (talk) 08:56, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Ethnicity apart it seems even linguistically the Western Bulgarian term is used repeatedly. The other is just a geographic turn. Since the language was developed in the two centers of the First Bulgarian empire they are more than connected with each other. And because they both were in the First Bulgarian empire, it means both historians and linguists use Western Bulgarian more often than Macedonian. In the interest of NPOV we have both alternative names, but you still want to push one of them out of it. And that just because you don't like seeing Bulgarian in the articles. --Laveol ^T 11:36, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. And above all the term "Western Bulgarian" is more appropriate because "Macedonian" had a very different meaning in the Middle Ages. An uninformed person upon reading this article would think that the Western Bulgarian/Macedonian recension has something to do with modern Republic of Macedonia which is not true. Above all, I don't know whether the border between the two Bulgarian forms have been defined in science; I would think (only an idea, I am not a linguist or specialist on that matter) that it might roughly coincide with the Yat border which means that the Western recension covered territories to the east from the geographical borders of Macedonia. --Gligan (talk) 14:57, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

@Moesian: I didn't miss anything. Just because it uses the word doesn't mean squat. It says the Codex Zographensis is from Western Bulgaria. With suitability I was referring to whether or not it sourced what you claim, which it doesn't. Again, this isn't an issue of ethnicity. Your saying the Ohrid Literary School was Bulgarian is not needed in this article. Don't make this an issue of whether or not there was a Macedonian ethnicity in the middle ages.

@Laveol: The term is used in a purely geographic sense (being from this or that region, etc.). From the absence of any sources, the term West Bulgarian recension does not appear to be in current use. On the contrary, I would actually like to see term explained.

@Gligan: It doesn't matter what "Macedonian" meant back then, we're discussing modern terminology. A reader may also associate the Bulgarian recension with the modern Bulgarian state or even the Bulgars. --Hegumen (talk) 19:37, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

You may also want to find a few sources which use "Eastern Bulgarian". Logically, if there's a Western Bulgarian recension, as you claim, there should be something somewhere which references an eastern one. --Hegumen (talk) 19:39, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

But you were presented with reasons and adequate answers to all these questions. Why are you asking again? How come it is not in current use - you got modern sources for this, didn't you? --Laveol ^T 21:05, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Hegumen, you say that "Just because it uses the word doesn't mean squat"?!! If this is so, your sources mean nothing. For example, your first source Henry R. Cooper uses the term Macedonian Recension only on page 86. I quote "Macedonian-recension Church Slavonic Bible". On the other hand, he writes on page 101: "In fact, Bulgarian Slavonic became something of a lingua franca for the entire Orthodox Slavic world, parelleling in a way the role of Greek in the Byzantine Empire." This is a sentence from a paragraph where he speaks of the importance of Bulgarian monasteries in the affirmation of this language, no distinction between Ohrid and Preslav. Clearly Cooper uses "Macedonian" in a geographical sence. Have you read any of that book at all?
Laveol is right that only modern sources mention "Macedonian" as a term. Most sources speak only about a Bulgarian recension with two main literary centres - Ohrid and Preslav. Dividing the Bulgarian recensions into two is somewhat misinformative. I am curious to find out what your other sources say, and I intend to do so before making the necessary corrections. --Moesian (talk) 14:46, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

In saying that, I meant that the references provided do not source the use of "West Bulgarian recension". The references I provided for Macedonian recension clearly source the use of that term in modern linguistic literature as a separate recension of OCS. Exactly! Finally you understand. The names of these recensions as based on geographic locations and not ethnicity. If it is indeed a modern term (and common one too) then you agree that Macedonian recension should be used in the article? I also agree that some group these recensions together. I tried writing that in the article, but Laveol reverted my edits in favor of the West Bulgarian nonsense. --Hegumen (talk) 03:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Henry R. Cooper in that OCS was a sort of lingua franca in the Orthodox Slavic world. --Hegumen (talk) 03:50, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes but in the article the Macedonian recension is linked to the texts of the Codex Μarianus and the Codex Zographensis. Are you sure that it is this Recension you are talking about? Why don't you give some excertps from the sources you provided and verify the connection?--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 07:11, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Hegumen, you say "The references I provided for Macedonian recension clearly source the use of that term in modern linguistic literature as a separate recension of OCS". Your first source, Cooper, does not! Hense I have serious doubts about the other sources. Most sources don't even mention a "Macedonian recension" and those that do, do so in the context of Bulgarian recensions. Nowhere does Cooper speak of a Macedonian recension as a non-Bulgarian one, while my source draws a sign of equality between "West Bulgarian" and "Macedonian". I think you are playing your sources by twisting terms and facts in order to implicitly project a modern Macedonian identity and language into the past. This may be OK in the mk.Wikipedia but it does not do any good to the Engilish Wikipedia which attempts to be objective.

I respect your effort to sound reasonable and agreeable in your last comment, but it's not good enough. Cooper says "Bulgarian Slavic" (not "OSC" as you said) was the "lingua franca of the Orthodox Slavic world". So I can't understand whether you actually agree or disagree with Henry R. Cooper, your own source. But it clearly shows your inclanation for twisting terms --Moesian (talk) 07:54, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Do you think we should rename the article to "Bulgarian Slavic" then? :D I'll reply to your other questions later, I'm going on a short wikibreak. --Hegumen (talk) 09:56, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I will ask again since nobody seems to care about verification. Wouldn't it be easier if you provided some excerpts from the sources you cited to back the views expressed? Nobody implied that this article should be renamed, and I think that ample evidence on the nomenclature of the OCS language, often referred to in certain contexts as the Old Bulgarian language, has already been included. I found several instances of a Macedonian Recension in Google but there is no clear indication on its definition and scope. In the article it is directly linked to the Codex Zographensis and the Codex Marianus. How is this corroborated? As far as the Bulgarian character of these texts is concerned, this is what I get from Roman Jacobson's Selected Writings p. 131 (I should remind you that you have cited another work by Jacobson as a source). I quote: "It is utterly improbable that the form vizžь, which is attested once in the Codex Marianus besides the usual vizždь, had arisen through the blending of the Moravian vizь with the Bulgarian vizždь. We can easily explain this unique lapsus calami if we recall that for such a Bulgarian scribe the etymological group zž was always realized as žd...". I think it is pretty obvious what Jacobson thought about the provenience of the Codex. I won't dwell on what Bulgarian might mean in this context (to my mind it is quite straightforward and there is no room for semiological confusions) but I ask again: How is the Macedonian recension linked to these manuscripts? Without being sure I suspect that you are referring to a different group of texts. I may of course be mistaken but I think that this needs further scrutiny and some more sources defining clearly the scope of this Macedonian Recension--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 10:47, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Citations?

Macedonian Recension comments aside I should stress that this article is really lacking in sources and citations (and most importantly inline citations). Too much energy has been devoted to nomenclature disagreements while the contents of the article remain largely unsourced. There's a lot of information on phonological differences and literary traditions with no sources to back them up altogether. Why don't we all concentrate on providing more citations?--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 12:18, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

What about the later recensions (Croatian, Serbian, Russian etc.) I believe they deserve to be presented more elaborately. This is an excellent chance for us to work together--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 12:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more with this. However reading should come before editing. Not editing (to our liking) and then looking for citations and sources to prove our point regardless of context and meaning.--Moesian (talk) 14:04, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Well yes, but I think that by providing sources and citations we will be able to distinguish between valid and spurious claims. Some of the editors added all these interesting pieces of information on literary traditions and phonology, but they didn't provide any sources. Solid, verifiable inline citations are the best remedy to any kind of disagreement me thinks. I am no slavicist my self, but there are so many slavic elements in the Greek language and culture that make this topic quite fascinating for me. In the past I tried studying Russian, but unfortunately I never went beyond the basics. I think I can learn a lot by working on this article, but I simply hate it when I get entangled in Macedonian-Bulgarian-Greek controversies. I honestly hope that the incessant bickering would stop for a while... it so so so frustrating. Hegumen seems to be an intelligent guy, he is quite competent in English and despite his occasional bad temper he could work wonders if he assumed some good faith. I do believe we can all work together--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 14:33, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Eastern and Western Bulgarian recession

With all my respect but the recession is on first place Eastern Bulgarian and just then Macedonian because what is more important is the country which conducted the changes not the region itself.Therefore I changed the previous "Macedonian(Eastern Bulgarian)" to "Eastern Bulgarian(Macedonian)".The second change was to add (Moesian) after Western Bulgarian in order to give more precise information about the location where the recession took place because then(and today too) Eastern Bulgaria includes/d most of the historical-geographic region of Thrace. --BulgarianPatriot (talk) 13:03, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, we have already discussed it and agree that historical and linguistic terms prevail upon geographic once, so I find it justified. If someone is against it, please, state it here before reverting. --Laveol ^T 20:03, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Using satrobulgarski is just a bg POV! --MacedonianBoy (talk) 14:13, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

bunched

it was typo —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.16.176.177 (talk) 17:00, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

dialect without language  ?

Ivan Štambuk removed tag {fact} with comments: (there were no "languages" at that time, only a bunch of more or less intelligible dialects.)

Perhaps everybody agree that a dialect is subset of a language. Is the omission of name of the language - intentional ? If so - why ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.16.176.177 (talk) 18:06, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps Ivan's point was that at that time nobody had bothered to try to assign the dialects to a particular group. Perhaps as the term "Macrolanguage" becomes more widespread, linguists will use it in reference to historical situations such as this. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:16, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

The "language" of OCS canon (i.e. the dialects in which the manuscripts are written) is self-referred to only as "Slavic" (slověnьsky) AFAIK. At the time there was a dialect continuum (just as there is in the whole South Slavic area today) and differences among the dialects were not so abundant as they are today, so the scribes didn't feel the need to polarize among speeches of different areas by using different regional appellatives as all of them bore very high amount of mutual intelligibility (the only real differences were in lexis). Speaking of dialects in terms of genetic relationship, all South Slavic dialects (modern and 9th century) can be traced to Proto-Slavic spoken approx. at the beginning of the 6th century, there was probably no "middle period". In dialectal terms the Thessaloniki speech used by Constantine was closest to Bulgarian, though calling it "Old Bulgarian" would be considered politically incorrect by lots of folks, similar to calling Sanskrit "Old Hindi" or Latin "Old Italian". Similar is the situation with Old Novgorod dialect - the thing that separates it from the dialect ancestral to Old East Slavic was a sound change so old that their common ancestor could have been spoken only prior to the 7th century, i.e. basically still in Early Proto-Slavic period! The division line between a dialect and a language is completely arbitrary (i.e. a matter of sociolinguistics ^_^) when you have some sort of dialect continuum present, esp. when dialects are inherently multi-ethnical/multi-national and modern conceptions of "nations" and "ethnicity" are applied retroactively to the periods when they didn't really exist.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 07:48, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

The solid linguistic background of Ivan Štambuk is apparent from the above. I am glad that so well-informed people pay attention to Wiki articles. --Lantonov (talk) 08:07, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Pan-Slavistic theory of one language with its dialects is reflected or supported neither by archeology. According to the archeological evidences (the Slavic graves), there were 2 main groups of the Slavic settlers in the western Balkans. First older group was matterially assimilated with the native Illyrians (the same agriculture tools and other traditions mixed with the native ones etc) - they continued the old local (Illyrian, Celtic,...) traditions without break, while the second group brought some new traditions (new non-native agriculture tools brought from the north east etc...).

It seems that first group occupied all Western Balkans in the beginning. They were users of "oganj" (fire) - their descendents became Bulgarians, Croats and Slovenes (Kaikavians, Chakavians), and Macedonian and Greek Slavs (Thessaloniki).

The 2nd group came later and penetrated into the central part of the area settled by the first group, completely assimilating their members and influenced them in the place of their settlement, so it resulted (archeologically - materially) with the 1st older group surrounding younger 2nd group in the shape of "U" letter. Archeologically there was some mix zone between 2 groups.

Territorry settled by the 2nd group completely corresponds to the Stokavians who brought "vatra" (fire) and influenced the older Slavs, like in Macedonia. Scakavians were nothing but the settlers of the mixed zone Chakavian - Stokavian (archeologically: older agriculture - newer agriculture) to the west of the Stokavians settled region). Zenanarh (talk) 12:25, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

IPA and Cyrillic

Is there a reason why those weird IPA symbols are used in the article (signs like 'ʒ', 'ʃ', ɛ̃, ɔ̃) instead of usually used transliterations? Most people can't read IPA, and are much more likely to be familiar with usual Latin transliterations to represent PSL./OCS. phonemes, rather than with IPA symbols which inherently carry some uncertainty as the entire phonology of OCS and Proto-Slavic is in fact reconstructed (though with high degree of probability..)

Also - all the examples of OCS writings and mentioned OCS lexemes should be written in Latin transliterations, because enforcing Cyrillic would be disrespective to the Glagolitic part of the canon (which is older and has just as right to be mentioned..). Also, Unicode 5.1 introduced some new code points specifically for (Old) Church Slavonic, and deprecated some old ones, and since no one but specialists have those fonts installed it would be just best to use transliterations than to enforce dual Unicode 5.1 Cyrillic/Glagolitic spellings.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 10:24, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Pfft

This article wreaks of politics. --203.221.86.179 (talk) 14:56, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

wreak - 1. bring: cause to happen or to occur as a consequence; "I cannot work a miracle"; "wreak havoc"; "bring comments"; "play a joke"; "The rain brought ...

2. Punishment; retribution, revenge; To cause, inflict or let out; To inflict or take vengeance on ... Phhhhhfffttt --Lantonov (talk) 15:06, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Rather than nitpick someone's spelling, maybe you could be more constructive, Lantonov.

What about this article seems political/biased? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:20, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

This is what I wanted to ask from the IP user who wrote that illiterate grumble on the first line. Calling someone a "dick" and trying to hide it is a very indecent and cowardly act.--Lantonov (talk) 14:56, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

If you've got a problem, you can take it to my talk page. This is a page where we discuss the article on Old Church Slavonic, not make petty attacks on other users. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:49, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I have no other problem except your attempt to abuse me. And I have nothing to discuss with you. --Lantonov (talk) 05:06, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Glagolitic

Have anyone tried to write "словѣньскыи ѩзыкъ" in glagolitic script? --Kikos (talk) 17:40, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Now with Unicode 5.1 there are some new code points are available for Old Cyrillic glyphs, so the Cyrillic spelling would be more like: "словѣньскꙑи ѩꙁꙑкъ". In Glagolitic it would be like: "ⰔⰎⰑⰂⰡⰐⰠⰔⰍⰟⰊⰊ ⰧⰈⰟⰊⰍⰟ". Find necessary fonts here. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 10:59, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Which of the 4 fonts listed there do you find most useful ? --Lantonov (talk) 11:51, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I have all of them installed :D Take a look at these two tables to see which one you find visually the most appealing. I have no aesthetic criteria and to me all that matters is that it works. Some 2k+ OCS entries in the Wiktionary are pending for a botted move to a "new" spelling.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:16, 14 October 2008 (UTC)