By Prof. James F. Clarke
Published in 1988 and distributed by Columbia University Press, USA
Among Americans increasing interest in Macedonian subjects is to be noted in academic circles. Few society meetings occur without Macedonia appearing on the program, usually in a linguistic form, but lacking historical perspective.
Occasionally an article appears in a scholary journal such as one by Prof. Stephen Fisher - Galati on "IMRO" in the East European Quarterly, edited by him, but without first-hand knowledge of the subject. Perhaps more interesting is a book published in 1977 by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Reading the Ashes, An Anthology of the Poetry of Modern Macedonia. Basically a product of Skopje, the Introduction by the American editor is riddled with errors. It required 32 "translators" to translate the 26 poets. As is to be expected, it ignores, or is ignorant of, Bulgarian Macedonian history and literature, substituting instead myth and misinformation. It is my purpose here to describe how the myth of a Macedonian literary language got started.
There have been two so-called Macedonian literary languages separated by 1081 years. That of Cyril and Methodius was the first Slavic literary language, with the first Slavic alphabet - the Glagolitic, later transformed into the Cyrillic. This was adopted by all the Slavs and became a world language, the first language and alphabet in Europe with a religious basis. The other, as now practiced in Yugoslav Macedonia, is the latest, the smallest (exept for Lusatian Serbian) and we may presume, the last Slavic literary language. Cyril's Old Bulgarian, or Old Church Slavonic, was originally spoken by the Slav inhabitants of what is now Greek (or Aegean) Macedonia (Lunt, Old Church Slavonic, p. 2). New Macedonian is made up of dialects from the Centre of Yugoslav (Vardar) Macedonia.
My title would seem to put Horace Lunt in the position of isapostolos, or a latter-day Saint; "disciple" would be more appropriate. Like St. Cyril, he is a distinguished multilinguist. Since 1959 professor of Slavic at Harvard, he has worked both ends of the longMacedonian street. His first major work, written at the Biblical age 33, was a Grammar of the Macedonian Literary Language (Skopje, 1952), the first languistic description and analysis in any language. Lunt's is the only grammar listed in Koneski's Istorija na Makedonskiot Jazik (History of the Macedonian Language, Skopje 1965), aside from his own. Only three years later (1974) came his Old Church Slavonic Grammar (6th ediction, rev.), described as "the first to be written in English" and for many years a standard work (J. O. Ferrell, Language, vol. 33, p. 450 - 453). A thousand years of spoken Macedonian separate these two grammars.
By-product of Lunt's work on the Macedonian language was his "Survey of Macedonian Literature" in the first volume of Harvard Slavic Studies (1954) of which he was editor. This also was a pioneer work (and remains the only English source - other than an English translation of one of Koneski's works. Towards the Macedonian Renaissance, Skopje, 1961). He has also published a few shorter pieces. Of special interest is an article, "The creation of Standard Macedonian" (Anthropological Linguistics, May, 1959).
Lunt himself tells us how he discovered Macedonia in the Preface to Grammar of the Macedonian Literary Language, p. 1. While in the U. S. Army in 1944, he stumbled on some partizan underground publications in a Macedonian dialect. After the war he attended lectures on Macedonian in Prague, and in 1950 at Bled, given by the leading Skopje authority, Blazhe Koneski, and sponsored by the Yugoslav Council for Science and Culture. In 1951, fresh from a Columbia Ph. D. (1950), he spent three months in Skopje with financial aid from the Yugoslav Council and the Macedonian Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture. There he had the guidance and assistance of Prof. Koneski and associates at the University of Skopje. Thus, Koneski's Slavic Seminar acted as judge and jury in determining what was to be standard. Lunt's Grammar of the Macedonian Literary Language was printed in Belgrade and published by the Macedonian State Press in Skopje in August 1952. It might, therefore, be considered official.
Instant Standard Literary Macedonian
On August 2, 1944, one of the first acts of the 122 delegates from Macedonia to the Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council, meeting clandestinely at the St. Prohor Pchinski Monastery in Serbia, was the following decree:
1. In the Macedonian state as official language is adopted the People's Macedonian language.
2. This decision enters into force immediately.
(Dokumenti od sozdavanjeto i razvitokot na N. R. Makedonija, Documents on the Creation and Development of the P. R. of Macedonia, Skopje, 1949, p. 22)
This must be the quickest creation of a literary language in history. A Commission, including Blazhe Koneski, was appointed in December to spell out the new literary language. It came up with a new alphabet and orthography on May 3 and June 7, 1945.
After two centuries of Slavic scholarship, very little is known about the origins and nature of Old Bulgaria in Macedonia. Many questions remain and some probably always will. Although the locale of the language seems established, the ethnic origin of the sainted brothers is still disputed. It is hard for Slavs to accept them as anything but Slavs. Prof. Lunt calls them "Greeks" (Slavic Review, June, 1964, p. 216), but also refers to Macedonian as "St. Cyril's native Salonika dialect" (Lunt, Old Church Slavonic, p. 3). Many questions would be answered should we discover that their mother, or at least their wet-nurse, was a "native" (I'm told by Konstantin Mechev, a Cyrillo-Methodian scholar of Sofia, that after 5 month's research in Moscow, he has conclusive evidence that they were Slavs; e. g. Bulgarians). Even the traditional date for the language, 863, is disputed, especially by Russian and Bulgarian scholars, not all of whom are Marxists. Aside from such assertions that there must have been a couple of centuries of prior literary development (P. Dinekov, Deloto, 1100 godini, p. 5) we find such statements as "the brothers finished their epoch-making work in 855" (N. Todorov, et al, Bulgaria, Historical and Geographic Outline, Sofia, 1965, p. 28).
Considering the times and circumstances, it is inevitable that the great achievement of the two "Apostles to the Slavs" should still be shrouded in myths and legends. On the other hand, the second contemporary Macedonian literary language was created in the full light of our day. Yet this too is obscured by a growing Macedonian Myth. To it Horace Lunt has contributed his share and set the pace for subsequent American linguistics.
I am not here to quarrel with the current Macedonian literary language. No less an authority than Roman Jakobson years ago declared it the thirteenth Slavic literary language. Every man has the right to invent and write in his own language. Nor is the upgrading of a dialect into a literary language a heresy, though only in a totalitarian police state can this become standard overnight by decree.
To the 19th century the literary language used by Bulgarians in Macedonia was some form of Serb or Bulgarian variation of the Russianized Church Slavic with degrees of spoken admixtures, as in the so-called Damaskini. In the first part of the 19th century Greek (or Slavic with Greek letters) was also used but increasingly the literary language was the same as that used elsewhere in Bulgaria with occasional use of Macedonian dialects. Between the two wars in Yugoslavia, it was Serbian by compulsion, with Bulgarian proscribed. Now it is the new Macedonian, with Bulgarian proscribed, and with Serbo-Croatian as a second official language.
According to Prof. Lunt, Macedonian "came of age" with the 1951 publication of Koneski and Toshev's little Macedonian Orthography. He rather prematurely declared at the time he compiled his Grammar that Macedonian "had achieved a degree of homogenity comparable to that of the other Balkan languages" - this in the space of six precotions years (Grammar, p. 6). The chief architect of the language has been Prof. Koneski, President of the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences, whom Lunt considers one of the best Macedonian authors. The first part of the Grammar came on the heels of Lunt's; the second, in 1954. His Dictionary, in three volumes, was published in 1961, 1965, and 1966, with definitions in Serbian. The last two volumes were delayed by the great Skopje earthquake. A major work is his History of the Macedonian Language (1965).
I too am prepared to stipulate that a kind of Macedonian literary language is in use in Skopje, although its growing pains are still showing. But to claim as Koneski does (The Macedonian Language in the Development of the Slavic Literary Language, 1968), that Macedonian is comparable to the other Slavic languages is nonsense. What interests me here are the ideological and the political rationalizations and the problems and myths thus created.
Tito's Macedonia
Literary Macedonian owes its existence largely to Tito and the inclusion of Macedonia in his six-room federal house. The new federal idea was laid in 1942 and publicly hatched at Jajce in 1943. The new "co-equal" Macedonian republic was launched in 1944 at the St. Prohor Pchinski Monastery. The motives behind its existence help explain much of its subsequent character: Macedonian's relations with Belgrade had been a running, bloody sore in the interbellum period; to head off Stalin opting for the Bulgarian Communist Party's claims, Macedonia and the partizan movement there had to be forcibly tied to the new Yugoslavia; and there was the possibility of using Vardar Macedonia as a magnet or springboard for the acquisition of Greek and Bulgarian Macedonia and a restoration of partitioned Macedonia.
The elevation of Macedonia into the ranks of the historically and ethnically based Yugoslav federal republics had to be rationalized; ideologically, politically, historically, and culturally. A separate Macedonia had to have a separate and different official literary language - different both from Bulgarian and Serbian. The obvious necessity to use an existing spoken language meant deciding which of the many dialects to use. The Western Macedonian was chosen, which in Vardar Macedonia - meant the central dialect group, was removed as much as possible from both Bulgarian and Serbian contamination.*
At the same time, a separate Macedonian alphabet was devised, made unnecessarily different from the Bulgarian, including a few peculiarly Serbian letters, and containing some letters not found in any other Cyrillic alphabet** , but it is still closer to Bulgarian than anything else.
In other ways, the makers of Modem Macedonian have tried to be different. A folk-based language of a relatively primitive people finds it both necessary and difficult suddenly to adapt to mid twentieth century conditions. In addition to finding or coining local folk substitutes for Bulgarian literary expressions, the Macedonian language legislators avoid taking ready-to-hand Bulgarian (or Russian or Serbian) technical and other ultra-modern expressions in favor of Western, including American, terms. The purpose is to make Macedonian as different as possible. The result is barbarous jargon, literally a Macedonian Salad.
In contrast to the arbitrary severing of the Bulgarian literary umbilical cord, there is daily contact with Serbian via the school, press, radio, business, politics, and the army. For Macedonians, Serbian has to be a second, official language.
A State in Search of History - The Macedonain Myth
Professor Lunt reminds us that a "language can be described and learned without the slightest knowledge of history" unfortunately true of some of American linguists, but also that the "elements of history are always present" (Old Church Slavonic Grammar, 2nd ed. 1959, p. x.). The new Macedonian state and language in particular required historical rationalization to justify their separatism. But the discouraging fact was that there was virtually no Macedonian "state" history, as such. Consequently the Skopje scholars have found it necessary to rewrite Balkan history at least as far back as Cyril and Methodius to make room for Macedonia. As Lunt says, "except for a brief period under Samuil at the end of the ninth (sic) century, Macedonia never had its own government" (Grammar, p. 3). Because the history of Macedonia has hitherto inevitably been written mostly in terms of Bulgaria, Macedonian historians are finding it necessary to deprive Bulgarians of some of their history, for example, St. Clement, chief disciple of Cyril and Methodius, whose anniversary on Ohrid in 1966 (with Professor Lunt as honored guest) was celebrated as a Macedonian affair. Another example is the Bogomils, whom the Macedonians have adopted as their very own national movement. On some of these points Macedonians have trouble convincing even their fellow Yugoslavs. But it is not my purpose here to retread Macedonian historiography and its catharsis of Bulgarian elements.
Conclusion
For Macedonians to deny their Bulgarian heritage is like Peter denying Christ. But Peter repented!
You are familiar, I am sure, with all the distortions and denials of Bulgarian history, literature, and culture, as related to Macedonia eminating from Skopje. But we here too have scholars seemingly ignorant of Bulgarian Macedonian history. Take Prof. Golab of Chicago who cites a work by Russian scholar Selishchev on Polog and Its Bulgarian Inhabitants as Polog and Its Slav Inhabitants. It was at Chicago that Koneski got an honorary doctorate as "father of the Macedonian Language". Actually Tito was the "father" and Koneski the "mother" with Horace Lunt as "mid-wife".
The kind of historical gymnastics and dialectical Macedonianism indulged in at Skopje puts the ideological cart before the historical horse: suddenly we had ultra-Macedonian Nationalism, a gift from Marx; then came the establishment of a "state", then the official language, then back-up "history" and finally what? A Macedonian Consciousness?
I see no quick or easy solution for today's version of the age-old Macedonian Questions, invented at the Congress of Berlin (1878). My conviction, however, is that historical truth will prevail and our task is to see that these truths must not be forgotten. This is the least we should do.
Prof. James F. Clarke
Published in 1988 and distributed by Columbia University Press, USA
Among Americans increasing interest in Macedonian subjects is to be noted in academic circles. Few society meetings occur without Macedonia appearing on the program, usually in a linguistic form, but lacking historical perspective.
Occasionally an article appears in a scholary journal such as one by Prof. Stephen Fisher - Galati on "IMRO" in the East European Quarterly, edited by him, but without first-hand knowledge of the subject. Perhaps more interesting is a book published in 1977 by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Reading the Ashes, An Anthology of the Poetry of Modern Macedonia. Basically a product of Skopje, the Introduction by the American editor is riddled with errors. It required 32 "translators" to translate the 26 poets. As is to be expected, it ignores, or is ignorant of, Bulgarian Macedonian history and literature, substituting instead myth and misinformation. It is my purpose here to describe how the myth of a Macedonian literary language got started.
There have been two so-called Macedonian literary languages separated by 1081 years. That of Cyril and Methodius was the first Slavic literary language, with the first Slavic alphabet - the Glagolitic, later transformed into the Cyrillic. This was adopted by all the Slavs and became a world language, the first language and alphabet in Europe with a religious basis. The other, as now practiced in Yugoslav Macedonia, is the latest, the smallest (exept for Lusatian Serbian) and we may presume, the last Slavic literary language. Cyril's Old Bulgarian, or Old Church Slavonic, was originally spoken by the Slav inhabitants of what is now Greek (or Aegean) Macedonia (Lunt, Old Church Slavonic, p. 2). New Macedonian is made up of dialects from the Centre of Yugoslav (Vardar) Macedonia.
My title would seem to put Horace Lunt in the position of isapostolos, or a latter-day Saint; "disciple" would be more appropriate. Like St. Cyril, he is a distinguished multilinguist. Since 1959 professor of Slavic at Harvard, he has worked both ends of the longMacedonian street. His first major work, written at the Biblical age 33, was a Grammar of the Macedonian Literary Language (Skopje, 1952), the first languistic description and analysis in any language. Lunt's is the only grammar listed in Koneski's Istorija na Makedonskiot Jazik (History of the Macedonian Language, Skopje 1965), aside from his own. Only three years later (1974) came his Old Church Slavonic Grammar (6th ediction, rev.), described as "the first to be written in English" and for many years a standard work (J. O. Ferrell, Language, vol. 33, p. 450 - 453). A thousand years of spoken Macedonian separate these two grammars.
By-product of Lunt's work on the Macedonian language was his "Survey of Macedonian Literature" in the first volume of Harvard Slavic Studies (1954) of which he was editor. This also was a pioneer work (and remains the only English source - other than an English translation of one of Koneski's works. Towards the Macedonian Renaissance, Skopje, 1961). He has also published a few shorter pieces. Of special interest is an article, "The creation of Standard Macedonian" (Anthropological Linguistics, May, 1959).
Lunt himself tells us how he discovered Macedonia in the Preface to Grammar of the Macedonian Literary Language, p. 1. While in the U. S. Army in 1944, he stumbled on some partizan underground publications in a Macedonian dialect. After the war he attended lectures on Macedonian in Prague, and in 1950 at Bled, given by the leading Skopje authority, Blazhe Koneski, and sponsored by the Yugoslav Council for Science and Culture. In 1951, fresh from a Columbia Ph. D. (1950), he spent three months in Skopje with financial aid from the Yugoslav Council and the Macedonian Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture. There he had the guidance and assistance of Prof. Koneski and associates at the University of Skopje. Thus, Koneski's Slavic Seminar acted as judge and jury in determining what was to be standard. Lunt's Grammar of the Macedonian Literary Language was printed in Belgrade and published by the Macedonian State Press in Skopje in August 1952. It might, therefore, be considered official.
Instant Standard Literary Macedonian
On August 2, 1944, one of the first acts of the 122 delegates from Macedonia to the Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council, meeting clandestinely at the St. Prohor Pchinski Monastery in Serbia, was the following decree:
1. In the Macedonian state as official language is adopted the People's Macedonian language.
2. This decision enters into force immediately.
(Dokumenti od sozdavanjeto i razvitokot na N. R. Makedonija, Documents on the Creation and Development of the P. R. of Macedonia, Skopje, 1949, p. 22)
This must be the quickest creation of a literary language in history. A Commission, including Blazhe Koneski, was appointed in December to spell out the new literary language. It came up with a new alphabet and orthography on May 3 and June 7, 1945.
After two centuries of Slavic scholarship, very little is known about the origins and nature of Old Bulgaria in Macedonia. Many questions remain and some probably always will. Although the locale of the language seems established, the ethnic origin of the sainted brothers is still disputed. It is hard for Slavs to accept them as anything but Slavs. Prof. Lunt calls them "Greeks" (Slavic Review, June, 1964, p. 216), but also refers to Macedonian as "St. Cyril's native Salonika dialect" (Lunt, Old Church Slavonic, p. 3). Many questions would be answered should we discover that their mother, or at least their wet-nurse, was a "native" (I'm told by Konstantin Mechev, a Cyrillo-Methodian scholar of Sofia, that after 5 month's research in Moscow, he has conclusive evidence that they were Slavs; e. g. Bulgarians). Even the traditional date for the language, 863, is disputed, especially by Russian and Bulgarian scholars, not all of whom are Marxists. Aside from such assertions that there must have been a couple of centuries of prior literary development (P. Dinekov, Deloto, 1100 godini, p. 5) we find such statements as "the brothers finished their epoch-making work in 855" (N. Todorov, et al, Bulgaria, Historical and Geographic Outline, Sofia, 1965, p. 28).
Considering the times and circumstances, it is inevitable that the great achievement of the two "Apostles to the Slavs" should still be shrouded in myths and legends. On the other hand, the second contemporary Macedonian literary language was created in the full light of our day. Yet this too is obscured by a growing Macedonian Myth. To it Horace Lunt has contributed his share and set the pace for subsequent American linguistics.
I am not here to quarrel with the current Macedonian literary language. No less an authority than Roman Jakobson years ago declared it the thirteenth Slavic literary language. Every man has the right to invent and write in his own language. Nor is the upgrading of a dialect into a literary language a heresy, though only in a totalitarian police state can this become standard overnight by decree.
To the 19th century the literary language used by Bulgarians in Macedonia was some form of Serb or Bulgarian variation of the Russianized Church Slavic with degrees of spoken admixtures, as in the so-called Damaskini. In the first part of the 19th century Greek (or Slavic with Greek letters) was also used but increasingly the literary language was the same as that used elsewhere in Bulgaria with occasional use of Macedonian dialects. Between the two wars in Yugoslavia, it was Serbian by compulsion, with Bulgarian proscribed. Now it is the new Macedonian, with Bulgarian proscribed, and with Serbo-Croatian as a second official language.
According to Prof. Lunt, Macedonian "came of age" with the 1951 publication of Koneski and Toshev's little Macedonian Orthography. He rather prematurely declared at the time he compiled his Grammar that Macedonian "had achieved a degree of homogenity comparable to that of the other Balkan languages" - this in the space of six precotions years (Grammar, p. 6). The chief architect of the language has been Prof. Koneski, President of the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences, whom Lunt considers one of the best Macedonian authors. The first part of the Grammar came on the heels of Lunt's; the second, in 1954. His Dictionary, in three volumes, was published in 1961, 1965, and 1966, with definitions in Serbian. The last two volumes were delayed by the great Skopje earthquake. A major work is his History of the Macedonian Language (1965).
I too am prepared to stipulate that a kind of Macedonian literary language is in use in Skopje, although its growing pains are still showing. But to claim as Koneski does (The Macedonian Language in the Development of the Slavic Literary Language, 1968), that Macedonian is comparable to the other Slavic languages is nonsense. What interests me here are the ideological and the political rationalizations and the problems and myths thus created.
Tito's Macedonia
Literary Macedonian owes its existence largely to Tito and the inclusion of Macedonia in his six-room federal house. The new federal idea was laid in 1942 and publicly hatched at Jajce in 1943. The new "co-equal" Macedonian republic was launched in 1944 at the St. Prohor Pchinski Monastery. The motives behind its existence help explain much of its subsequent character: Macedonian's relations with Belgrade had been a running, bloody sore in the interbellum period; to head off Stalin opting for the Bulgarian Communist Party's claims, Macedonia and the partizan movement there had to be forcibly tied to the new Yugoslavia; and there was the possibility of using Vardar Macedonia as a magnet or springboard for the acquisition of Greek and Bulgarian Macedonia and a restoration of partitioned Macedonia.
The elevation of Macedonia into the ranks of the historically and ethnically based Yugoslav federal republics had to be rationalized; ideologically, politically, historically, and culturally. A separate Macedonia had to have a separate and different official literary language - different both from Bulgarian and Serbian. The obvious necessity to use an existing spoken language meant deciding which of the many dialects to use. The Western Macedonian was chosen, which in Vardar Macedonia - meant the central dialect group, was removed as much as possible from both Bulgarian and Serbian contamination.*
At the same time, a separate Macedonian alphabet was devised, made unnecessarily different from the Bulgarian, including a few peculiarly Serbian letters, and containing some letters not found in any other Cyrillic alphabet** , but it is still closer to Bulgarian than anything else.
In other ways, the makers of Modem Macedonian have tried to be different. A folk-based language of a relatively primitive people finds it both necessary and difficult suddenly to adapt to mid twentieth century conditions. In addition to finding or coining local folk substitutes for Bulgarian literary expressions, the Macedonian language legislators avoid taking ready-to-hand Bulgarian (or Russian or Serbian) technical and other ultra-modern expressions in favor of Western, including American, terms. The purpose is to make Macedonian as different as possible. The result is barbarous jargon, literally a Macedonian Salad.
In contrast to the arbitrary severing of the Bulgarian literary umbilical cord, there is daily contact with Serbian via the school, press, radio, business, politics, and the army. For Macedonians, Serbian has to be a second, official language.
A State in Search of History - The Macedonain Myth
Professor Lunt reminds us that a "language can be described and learned without the slightest knowledge of history" unfortunately true of some of American linguists, but also that the "elements of history are always present" (Old Church Slavonic Grammar, 2nd ed. 1959, p. x.). The new Macedonian state and language in particular required historical rationalization to justify their separatism. But the discouraging fact was that there was virtually no Macedonian "state" history, as such. Consequently the Skopje scholars have found it necessary to rewrite Balkan history at least as far back as Cyril and Methodius to make room for Macedonia. As Lunt says, "except for a brief period under Samuil at the end of the ninth (sic) century, Macedonia never had its own government" (Grammar, p. 3). Because the history of Macedonia has hitherto inevitably been written mostly in terms of Bulgaria, Macedonian historians are finding it necessary to deprive Bulgarians of some of their history, for example, St. Clement, chief disciple of Cyril and Methodius, whose anniversary on Ohrid in 1966 (with Professor Lunt as honored guest) was celebrated as a Macedonian affair. Another example is the Bogomils, whom the Macedonians have adopted as their very own national movement. On some of these points Macedonians have trouble convincing even their fellow Yugoslavs. But it is not my purpose here to retread Macedonian historiography and its catharsis of Bulgarian elements.
Conclusion
For Macedonians to deny their Bulgarian heritage is like Peter denying Christ. But Peter repented!
You are familiar, I am sure, with all the distortions and denials of Bulgarian history, literature, and culture, as related to Macedonia eminating from Skopje. But we here too have scholars seemingly ignorant of Bulgarian Macedonian history. Take Prof. Golab of Chicago who cites a work by Russian scholar Selishchev on Polog and Its Bulgarian Inhabitants as Polog and Its Slav Inhabitants. It was at Chicago that Koneski got an honorary doctorate as "father of the Macedonian Language". Actually Tito was the "father" and Koneski the "mother" with Horace Lunt as "mid-wife".
The kind of historical gymnastics and dialectical Macedonianism indulged in at Skopje puts the ideological cart before the historical horse: suddenly we had ultra-Macedonian Nationalism, a gift from Marx; then came the establishment of a "state", then the official language, then back-up "history" and finally what? A Macedonian Consciousness?
I see no quick or easy solution for today's version of the age-old Macedonian Questions, invented at the Congress of Berlin (1878). My conviction, however, is that historical truth will prevail and our task is to see that these truths must not be forgotten. This is the least we should do.
Prof. James F. Clarke
Prof. James F. Clarke is trying to be facetious, focusing on the work of Horace Lunt and the Macedonian linguists in the 1940s, and suggesting that they pulled a non-existent rabbit out of hat. They did not. These linguists codified and standardized an already existing language that was in common use among Macedonian intellectuals during the previous 150 years. I disagree with Clarke's use of the word 'invent' applied to their work on the grounds that literary standardization has been a normative development in most modern languages that progressed suddenly from medieval communities to industrialized ones in the last one hundred years.
ReplyDelete'Standarization' has thus been a perfectly normal and necessary activity in most modern languages, especially among groups that were ‘left behind’ in the Industrial Revolution. Many languages have played and are still playing a game of terminological catch-up to create a modern technical vocabulary that is not composed entirely of foreign (often English) loan-words. That was the task before the Macedonian linguists in 1944. Much similar work was also done in other European languages following WWII. It seems Prof. Clarke is unaware of the following.
For instance, German spelling was officially reformed in 1901. Turkish was massively reformed in 1928 with foreign loan-words removed and Latinization adopted all in a few months. A complete, modern Catalan dictionary first appeared in 1931. Japanese had a spelling reform in 1946. Danish spelling was reformed in 1948. Norwegian underwent reforms in 1907, 1917, 1938, 1941, 1981 and 2005, reflecting the tug-of-war between the spelling styles preferred by traditionalists and reformers and the country's different dialects. Brazil reformed Portuguese in 1943 and 1971; Portugal reformed Portuguese in 1945 and 1973. Latvia reformed Latvian in 1946. The Veneto region of Italy created a standard spelling for Venetian language and codified it in 1995 as a 'distinct language', different from standard Italian. Were all those reformers 'inventing' or 'modernizing' their languages in the opinion of Clarke?
The predecessors of Macedonian linguists in the 1940s are well-known. Krste Misirkov began around 1900 the work of standardization with a committee that set out to create a modern terminology that was missing. However, a common literary language already existed at the time. Macedonian literature from the late 1800s and early 1900s reveals that authors of the time were already using a common, standard dialect.
In 1899, the Ministry of Education officially codified a standard Bulgarian language based on the Drinov-Ivanchev orthography. That’s only 45 years before the codification modern Macedonian! Moreover, the codification of modern Macedonian was already done by Krste Misirkov in 1903, only four years after 1899, though the work was suppressed by the Bulgarian police.
Prof. Clarke may not be aware that the task of creating a modern technical vocabulary is, in most countries and in private businesses, the work of a ‘terminologist’, a translation-specialist who is charged with finding a way to say something culturally new or technically innovative that sounds natural in the target language. Their job is to get it right. What a terminologist does is in a sense the invention of neologisms, the right neologism, but that is by no means unique to modern Macedonian. Most languages are doing it several times a week! The French Academy creates and approves neologisms every year. That is one of the jobs of the Institute for the Bulgarian Language…inventing neologisms.
ReplyDeleteThe Chicago Style Guide functions in the United States as the de facto academy of American English. The Oxford University Press decides what passes for English in the United Kingdom. English is one of the rare languages in today’s world that does not have a formal academy to create neologisms.
The Slovenian literary language underwent a parallel development to that of Macedonian, being standardized in an atmosphere of war, disruption, repression and discrimination. Between 1920 and 1941, the official language of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was defined as "Serbian-Croatian-Slovene". In practice, Slovene was used in Slovenia, both in education and administration. It was not until 1970 that a complete dictionary of standard Slovene was published. Standard Slovene spelling and grammar are now defined by the Orthographic Committee and the Fran Ramovš Institute of the Slovenian Language, which are both part of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Did they 'invent' standard Slovene as a compromise between the dialects or 'standarize' it? The first official dictionary of the modern Slovenian language was released in five books between 1970 and 1991. Will Prof. Clarke claim the Fran Ramovš Institute 'invented' Slovenian?
More pointedly, does the "Institute for the Bulgarian language" at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences also 'invent' words or grammar or do they create necessary ‘neologisms’ and 'standardize' the Bulgarian language? I am certain Prof. Clarke will never use the word 'invent' to describe the work of the Institute for the Bulgarian Language. His use of the word ‘invent’ may, therefore, be politically motivated, but it is certainly inconsistent.