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<div>Note that only some Macedonian-speakers in northern Greece
(mostly in the east) are Bulgarian-identified. Easpecially in
the western part of the region (e.g. around Lerin = Gk. Florina &
Kostur = Gk. Kastoria) they are Macedonian-identified and refer to
their langauge as makedonski. Note also that Macedonian-speakers
near Voden = Gk. Edhessa used makedonski for their language as early
as 1908 (Upward, Allen. 1908. The East End of Europe.
London: John Murray. pp. 202-206.). Speakers
use <font face="Arial"><i> ta dhikà mas</i></font> when
speaking Greek, not when speaking Macedonian (when they would use
nashinski, nashki, or some similar derived form of nash 'our').
Note also that there is a political dimension: The speaking of
Macedonian in Greece was illegal under the Metaxas dictatorship, and
although at one time speakers of Macedonian in Greece did use
makedhonika to refer to their language, this usage was explicitly
proscribed. (I have a photo of a Greek poster telling people to
not speak (na milane) "Makedhonika" as well as
"Vlahika", etc. (k. lp.) It refers to these as
"glossika" (a deriviative of glossos 'language').</div>
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<div>Victor Friedman <vfriedm@midway.uchicago.edu></div>
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<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial">In connection
i) with Björn Wiemer's query on languages which are named by
their own speakers as "our speech/language", ii) with the
interesting information given by Östen Dahl's on<i>
meänkieli</i> as a minority <i>kieli</i> which, spoken in
theTorne valley in Northern Sweden, has recently been officially
recognized, and iii) with my own remark that there are many languages
which correspond to what Björn is looking for, it may be useful to
recall two further cases, besides Guarani, which I mentioned in
my message (15 Dec.), and Siriono, mentioned by Östen. One is what
Greek linguists refer to as "Slavonic Macedonian" (for the
obvious reason that when the Greeks are speaking of Macedonia, they
mean a part of Greece, and won't refer to the Republik of
Macedonia (formerly one of the six federal republics of Socialist
Yugoslavia) without adding "Slavonic". This language, still
spoken in northern Greek villages between Thessaloniki and the
Macedonian and Bulgarian borders, is one of the endangered
languages in Europe today. It is referred to by its older users (most
of them bilinguals (with Greek as the language used outside family
relationships) ) as "Bulgarian" sometimes, but mostly as<i>
ta dhikà mas</i> which, in Greek, exactly means,
literally, "the one of us, that which belongs to us";
the term for "language" is not used here because the neutral
plural in<i> -a</i>, in this case, necessarily refers in modern
Greek to the language, as in<i> milate anglika</i>; <i>
"</i>do you speak English?" The other case is represented by
a community of which many members precisely happened to live in
Thessaloniki before their extermination by the Nazis in 1944:
descendents of the Spanish Jews expelled from Spain by the Catholic
Kings in 1492, and who refer to the archaic Judeo-Castilian they speak
(generally called "djudesmo") as<i> lo muestro.</i>
In this language,<i> m-</i> in <i>muestro</i> corresponds
to Castilian<i> n- </i>in<i> nuestro</i> "our,
ours". Therefore,<i> lo muestro</i> means, exactly, "ours,
the one (sc. language) of us".</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial">
Interestingly, a people may also refer to itself (not exactly to
its language) as "alien" rather than
as "self". It may also use both designations.
Indo-Europeans referred to themselves either as "self"
or as "other". "Self" was found in the name
of the Samnites, in which<i> Samn</i> is in all likelihood from<i>
*swe+*bh -no-,</i> and in the old name of Sweden, o.Sw.<i>
swe:-ri:ke </i> "realm of self"<i> ></i>
mod.<i> Sverige</i> (Östen will correct me if I am mistaken).
"other" is found in the vey name of the Aryans, from skr.<i>
à:rya </i> "other". By referring to themselves in
this way, they meant that they had come from a territory
different from the one they had conquered (cf. Pokorny, Thurneysen,
Thieme, and the Gaulish tribe Allobroges (="(from) another
territory" in which the root, *<i>alyo</i>-, corresponds to
Eastern<i> à:rya</i>) ). According to another hypothesis, which
is not backed up by convincing arguments, and which is explicitly
rejected by Benveniste, the Aryans were so called because they
were the best: cf. Greek<i> ari-</i> in<i> àristos</i>. I won't
insist on the implications of such a hypothesis and what it is
reminiscent of with respect to the 1933-1945 period. Anyway, this
leads us fairly far from "our language", although the topics
are not unrelated!</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial">Best,
Claude.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1">Claude
Hagège<br>
</font><a href="mailto:claude.hagege@free.fr"><font face="Arial"
size="-1">claude.hagege@free.fr</font></a></blockquote>
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