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Home , Ancient Greek, Hellenic languages, Norbert Jokl, Slavicism

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL STUDIE (IJALSC) Vol. 2, No. 1, 2019.

MISSION CONTACT POINTS BETWEEN ANTIQUE AND SLAVICISM

Dervish Alimi, PhD, Lecturer at of Tetova, Faculty of , Republic of , E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. The questions are: Where are the ‘footprints’ of the ancient Macedonian ’ toponyms and vocabulary, remaining in the linguistic-semantic fund that would witness the continuity of historical development and transformation, respectively, the “antico-Slavic mixing” that has been widely claimed by some Macedonian historian? “What are the remaining words of the ancient Macedonian heritage, even of the language of the old old neighbors who would testify to their every day contacts?”, when we see that today’ vocabulary fund of the Macedonian language is strictly Slavic, except for Turkish and Bulgarian-Serbian borrowings and the modern inflows of internationalisms and technicalities? Where are the old ancient Macedonian words which the Macedonian Slavic language today inherited, however few were they ?! The ancient language dictionary of the ancient Macedonian tribe should have definitely left a mark on today’s Macedonian language vocabulary, as they have left the mark of the old Anglo-Saxon in today’s or the language of Old Gallons in the today. This is the fact of the missing points of contacts between these two cultures, among others.... Keywords: Antique, slavicism, inheritance, vocabulary, borowings, interference, tribes, traces, mark, language, neighbor, etc.morphological adaptation. © 2019 IJALSC. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION the first inhabitants of this sub-basin, the first are , respectively their descendants Antiquity and Slavicism are two con- - the Illyrian tribes and the other two Hellenic cepts that represent two so opposed histori- tribes whose heirs aspire and claim to be the cal and linguistic aspects that it is difficult today’s and Greeks. to find points of contact and correspondence Of course such allegations without sci- between them. Antiquity is related to the entific basis remain in the sphere of silly and of civilization several ridiculous speculation, for the fact that no one hundred or several centuries before our era, takes them seriously. But the problem becomes while Slavicism is closely related to the his- bigger when these claims become the basis of tory and civilization of Slavic peoples, - a nation’s state policy, uncertain in itself, in ly the old Slav tribes that have penetrated the terms of its national and historical identity. since the 7th century and beyond. As we can see, these cultures are separated with A. Daily politics or scientific approach almost a whole millennium, and joining these at a meeting point means to skip and ignore a To master a whole history of a province whole millennium story. that coincides with the name of your people, it In this millennium vacuum of the inva- would be an initial stage to start the “political sions and displacements of peoples on the old battle” for the exclusive heritage of the ancient Balkan peninsula and the old European con- history of ancient Ancient Macedonia, but it’s tinent, many peoples could not survive and not enough to win this fight. To continue fur- disappeared from the face of the , among ther in this struggle, is needed a historical con- whom are and in the Bal- tinuity in the field of cultural, architectural, an- kans, or Etruscans, such as and many old Celt- thropological and semantic-scientific heritage. ic tribes in . So it is imperative to ask what is the cultural Regarding the Balkan Peninsula, among heritage of historical interconnection between Corresponding Author the old or ancient Macedonian people, with Dervish Alimi, PhD, Lecturer at University of Tetova, the people today supposedly radically trans- Faculty of Philology, Republic of Macedonia, formed from ancient to Slavic?! E-mail: [email protected] The question is, where are the ‘foot- prints’ of the ancient Macedonian Macedo- nians’ toponyms and vocabulary, remaining This work is licensed under a Creative Commons in the linguistic-semantic fund that would wit- Attribution 4.0 International license. The is ness the continuity of historical development published with Open Access at www.alsjournal.com and transformation, respectively, the “antico-

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Slavic mixing” that has been widely claimed “Lek” of today’s is identified with the by some Macedonian historians? personality of the Great Alexandar (“Leka i Architectural and ancient monuments Madh”). Is not this a powerful argument of the and baroque architectural constructions that centuries-old Albanian consciousness for the rose with much fuss in past can in no continuous linkage to the Macedonian-ancient way compensate and replace the lack of this legacy? Especially when the Albanians are not heritage, because these should have been built denied the Illyrian legacy by the most eminent many hundreds of years ago. Not by chance scientists of the of linguistic etymol- all over the world the word “monument” or ogy, nor are they challenged the Hellenistic- “memorial” is used for works that “testify” to Illyrian contemporaries, as the Ancient Mace- the cultural and historical past of a state or a donians existed and acted in the period when nation. It is illogical and ridiculous to witness the entire peninsula of today has been inhab- the past with the present, in the absence of his- ited by different Illyrian tribes, among which torical-scientific arguments. These memorials the Dardans and the Epirs as the neighboring that stand up today can testify tomorrow, only tribes of ancient Macedonia. for a period of political course of modern his- In this regard, the Albanians have not tory, for the fact that they are being built today, undergone any linguistic transformation of not in and for the glorious past of the famous Illyrian national identity, either in Roman, Macedonian ancient people, as these did not Slavic or Turkish, which means that they can exist at that time. also claim to the exclusive heritage of an- cient Macedonians as old Illyrian, as well as and Greeks and do. In my opinion, this B. Lack of Greek vocabulary in the thesis is scientifically unqualified, according Macedonian language to which, among others, it is suggested that spoke in Illyrian Then, where are the old ancient Macedo- mixed with Greek, according to .O. Müller nian words which the Macedonian Slavic lan- (1825) and G. Bofante (1987). guage today inherited, however few were they As a result, only Albanians and Greeks, ?! The ancient language dictionary of the an- can consider that they are entitled to be cient Macedonian tribe should have definitely contenders for the ancient Macedonian ancient left a mark on today’s Macedonian language heritage, if not more, then for the sole reason vocabulary, as they have left the mark of the that at least they have been former neighbors old Anglo-Saxon in today’s English language and have coexisted at that time in the today’s or the language of Old Gallons in the French territory of the Balkan peninsula! language today. Thus, the coexistence of the old As we can see, in the Macedonian lan- and Greeks of the Hellenists is not disputable guage there are many words of Turkish origin, by anyone. From a logical point of view, the as well as Serbian and Bulgarian, which testify persistent insistence on the ancient legacy of to the history of contacts that this language has a people in the historic mosaic results in the had in history with these peoples, because of logical conclusion that ancient Macedonians whose inheritance are also the present claims must have been either old Hellenistic or Il- of these peoples to this language. lyrian tribe. Continued in this regard, it turns Therefore, the question can not be avoid- out that ancient Macedonians as the old Helle- ed, such as: “what are the remaining words of nistic or Illyrian tribe, who would historically the ancient Macedonian heritage, even of the have been mixed with the Slavic tribes, such language of the old Greeks old neighbors who as the deceased, the Velezzi, the Renaissants, would testify to their every day contacts?”, the Strumenjans, the Sagittarius and the Gra- when we see that today’s vocabulary fund of vuites, at the beginning of the sixth century, the Macedonian language is strictly Slavic, should be, if not linguistically, at least geneti- except for Turkish and Bulgarian-Serbian bor- cally very close to the other Illyrian tribes, rowings and the modern inflows of interna- such as the Dardans, the , the Dacians, tionalisms and technicalities? the Thracians, whose direct descendants are the Albanians. Thus, the historical Illyrian background . Illyrians and Greeks is not only verified by Albanian speaking sci- entists, but by most historians and world lin- If we reflect this way, it can not be con- guists, among them the first Swedish historian sidered by chance that the state currency called Hans Erik Tunman (Thunmann, 1746-1778),

www.alsjournal.com 2 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL STUDIE (IJALSC) Vol. 2, No. 1, 2019. in his study “History Research” (1771), and • A northern Greek dialect connected after him was one of the first Albanologists, the with the Greek and greeks, sug- Austrian scientist and diplomat Johan Georg gested among others by A. Fick (1874) and O. von Han (1811-1869) in his capital work (Al- Hoffmann (1906) banesische Studien , 1854). These hypotheses • An influential Greek dialect of the have been supported by many others, not ex- non-indoeuropain substrate, suggested by M. cluding Serbian and Croatian historians. Then, Salelliarou (1983) the Austrian albanologist also known as the fa- • A sister tongue of Greek within the ther of Albanology, Norbert Jokl (1887-1942) Indo-European, Macedonian and Greek lan- who states that “whatever may be, we can see guages, forming two Greek-Greek subgroups, that the remains of the linguistic language in- subgroups within Indo-European languages heritance of the ancient Illyrian and Thracian (sometimes called Hellenic) suggested by Jo- Balkan languages, are closely related to the seph (2001), Georgiev (1966), and others. ”. Even in the academic studies of the language of the , among E. Political pragmatism versus which we emphasize, Vaclav Blazek, who in National Romantism his studies on “Paleoballanic Languages: Hel- lenic Studies” states that: one of the Hellenic Therefore, there are two opposing languages is the Macedonian language, except views: for the Frisian, the Messianic, etc. Unfortu- - On the one hand based on the fact that nately, there are no traces of a the Macedonian a nation’s letter of identification or the iden- language, but the only sources known to an- tity card is the language it speaks, and in the cient Macedonians are: the glosses of lexicog- absence of solid scientific arguments on the raphers and ancient onomastics. Even Tit Livi, genetic-linguistic continuity between today’s told that the Macedonians as well as to two Macedonian Slavic population and the popu- other tribes, like the Ethiolians and the Akar- lation of ancient and antique Macedonia; nas, are of the Hellenistic language. This - Considering that the semantic and the position is also found in the relevant scientific vocabulary of the Macedonian language today literature of the Croatian Academy of Sci- is entirely Slavic and is part of the family of ences, but also in the Serbian and Bulgarian , and there is a lack of lin- languages, who share the point of view that guistic and cultural remains of Antique Mace- ancient Macedonians were the Hellenic tribe donians in today’s Macedonian vocabulary, as who spoke and wrote in ancient Greek or Hel- it has words left over and borrowed Turkish lenic languages. and Serbian and Bulgarian; and on the other hand, - Viewed from the aspect of political . Antique versus Slavic pragmatism, it would be much more conve- Macedonians nient for our fellow Macedonian citizens not to claim the ethnic-cultural similarities be- Currently, the anti-Macedonian phylo- tween the old and the ancient Macedonians, genetic suggestions include: but to insist only on the cultural continuity of • it is an Indo-European language the old Slavic language because. that is close to Greek and is associated with This would also ease the settlement the thirsty and frigid tongues, suggested by of the political dispute over the name of to- A.Meillet (1913) and I.I. Russi (1938), or part day’s Macedonia, as well as the fear and the of the linguistic connection involving Thra- main political argument of the Greeks that the cian, Illyrian and Greek (Kretchmer, 1896), E. Macedonians would in the near future, based Schwyzer (1959); on the historical adoption of the Macedonians • It is an Illyrian dialect mixed with antique landmarks, present their territorial Greek, suggested by K. O. Müller (1825) and claims over the entire territory today called G. Bofante (1987). Macedonia, including the present-day prov- • A Greek dialect, part of the north- ince of the same name in northern . western variances (locust, ethanol, ficidian, As a consequence, every usurpation and etc) of Dorian Greek, suggested among others identification with the old Hellenistic people by N.G.L. Hamond (1989), Olivier Masson is not supported and is not subject to treatment (1996), Micheal Mier-Brügger (2003), and Jo- by non-Slav scientists, nor from other Slavic hannes Engels (2010) speakers of the nearest neighborhood, who be-

www.alsjournal.com 3 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL STUDIE (IJALSC) Vol. 2, No. 1, 2019. lieve in the truth and in the scientific facts, and people and their country to finally make the do not fall into speculations motivated by na- necessary semantic-geographic compromise tionalistic romanticism and the needs of daily and accept the scientific reality, as well even politics. politics of major interest rather than of minor political dayly interest, within the constella- tions of the political forces and the spheres of F. The Psycholinguistical point of interest in the continent. view Conflict of interests Even from the aspect of Psycholinguis- The author declares no conflict of inter- tics, it can not be said that the today’s Mace- est. donians are the genetic inheritors of ancient Macedonians. It denies them every day, their familiarity with other Slavic peoples, which is References natural from the biological nearness of blood. Hans Erik Tunman (Thunmann, 1746-1778), in his Otherwise, such a close affinity of our fellow study “The History of the Eastern European Ep- Macedonians as descendants of ancient Mace- icure (Undersuchunger überdie Geschichte der donians would naturally lead to genetic close- Östlichen Europäischen Völker”, 1774) ness with Albanians, as direct descendants of Johan Georg von Han (1811-1869) in his capital work their Illyrian neighbors. Also, psychological (Albanesische Studien, 1854). Norbert Jokl (1887-1942) Linguistisch-kulturhisto- mentality is also a complementary scientific rische Untersuchungen aus des Bereiche des Al- criterion to prove the cultural identity and in- banischen, -, 1923. dividual national affiliation, which necessarily Vaclav Blažek, Paleoballanic Languages: Hellenic leads to the conclusion that even here, there is Studies, a huge gap between antiquity and Slavicism. Kretschmer, Einleitung in die Geschichte der griechischen Sprache (Introduction to the His- Nevertheless, if it is accepted that the an- tory of the , 1959). cient Macedonians themselves were an Illyr- E. Schwyzer: Griechische Grammatik I 1939, II 1950 ian tribe, and if today’s Macedonians continue G. Bonafonte, Language and Culture of the Etruscans to claim to be their historical heirs, although (1985) this is scientifically unstable and unrecogniz- NGL. Hammond, A History of Macedon Volume III: 336-167 BC. (1988) istorijabalkana.yuku.com/ able, this thesis necessarily sheds light on the topic/244/Kral-hrvacki-Tomislav ?. mosaic of Balkan politics, because this would Commons.Wikimedia.org / Eiki / Category: Indo-Euro- also prove the genetic and political proximity pean_language. between today’s Albanian and Macedonian Historia e popullit shqiptar, Volume 1, Botimet Toena, peoples. If so, then we would have to conclude 2002 - 804 pages Историја на Македонскиот народ, Уредник: that today’s history must accept the new real- п р о ф . д - р Т о д о р Ч е п р е г а н о в , political fact of genetic affiliation of these two група на Автори:, Институт за национална peoples, which would reinforce the political историја Скопје, 2008 awareness of our proximity, namely their com- mon history, and that would be a very healthy base for building up their common future.

CONCLUSION

Consequently, a wise policy should learn from history and look to the future. It should have in mind the bright and progres- sive future of the people ahead of the dark and troublesome past, and in this regard, would find the approaches that unite the peoples of today’s majority in the country, ahead of the differences that put them in unnecessary quar- rels with neighbors and that their feet and confuse the steps towards the future. This priority must be the avant-garde of a state-running and non-arbitrary visionary politics for each politician who will lead the

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