I have translated this June 4th article from the newspaper Dnevnik about the attack on my professor’s dictionary promotion in Greece. It provides more information, including the fact that a journalist was injured during the attack and that other professors were threatened besides Prof. Friedman.

Also noteworthy is that the promotion was held in a building right next to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and yet the police were very late in arriving, to the extent that was a serious risk more people were going to be hurt. My scholarship counselor in the United States, who grew up in Greece, pointed out to me while I was there that police response time in Greece is generally very poor. Nonetheless, it seems inconceivable that there was no presence of security at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that could have quickly acted to break up the attack.

To me, this indicates police complicity, or at least indifference, to the attack. It is a shameful reflection on the Greek government. Its inadequate response to this act of violence against ethnic minority human rights and linguistic scholarship should be thoroughly investigated.

My translation of the article below:

Fascists Eclipse Dictionary

June 4th, 2009
Shouts of “traitors,” “this is Greece,” “everyone out,” “Vaskopulos, leave,” threats, and circulation of propaganda material from the Greek ultra-nationalists of the organization “Golden Dawn” obstructed the promotion of a Greek-Macedonian dictionary in Athens the night before last. Some ten minutes after the beginning of the presentation at the International Press Center, located next to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Greece, dozens of members of this fascist organization stormed the hall, threatening the participants.

During the incident, a journalist from the Greek newspaper “Proto Thema” who was attacked by the hooligans was injured, but a bigger incident was prevented when the police arrived. The impression is nonetheless that they were late in their reaction. The most critical moment was when one of the attackers swung a black motorcycle helmet toward the head of the famous Macedonian language scholar, the American linguist Victor Friedman. The assault was prevented at the last moment when the leader of the group that constantly interrupts gatherings that Vinozhito organizes caught the attacker by the hand which was holding the helmet. Vinozhito, or “Rainbow,” is a party of the unrecognized Macedonian minority in Greece.

The promotion of the first Greek-Macedonian dictionary, whose author is Vasko Karadža, nonetheless took place, since the attendants did not leave during the course of the incident. “This is a signal that members of the Greek government are beginning to fear the Macedonian community in Greece. The incident is a great shame for Greece that cannot be hidden from the European public. The promotion of the dictionary for us is yet another reason to continue our fight for the protection of the Macedonian community, for recognition of the Macedonian minority and for the democratization of Greek society,” announced Pavle Vaskopuls, leader of Rainbow.

“If Greece is the cradle of democracy, then the cradle is broken,” announced the promoter of the dictionary, Victor Friedman. A target of the hooligans’ threat was also the professor Riki Van Boeschoten, a Dutch woman who teaches ethnology at the University of Thessaly and is a major supporter of the recognition of Macedonian human rights in Greece. One of the attackers threatened to beat her, though the threat did not result in a physical attack.

Other Greek journalists from a few television and print media were following the promotion of the dictionary. The attackers withdrew when they received information that the police were approaching the press center. The members of “Chrysi Avyi” have long been registered as a political party, and up to now have been closely associated with the parliamentary nationalist party LAOS, of Georgios Karatzaferis. The incident occurred a few days before the European parliament elections, which will be held in Greece this week. Pavle Vaskopulos announced that their party was facing enormous pressure.

“For Rainbow there are no democratic conditions for fair participation in the elections whatsoever. The party is completely excluded and boycotted by the Greek media. Only one television station was willing to broadcast our political spot, at six in the morning. That says more than enough about their attitude towards us, in relation to our activities they only see the Greek chickens,” Baskopulos announced.

The first Greek-Macedonian dictionary, which contained 15,000 words, printed by the publishing house “Dawn,” will have a 2000 copy print run, according to Rainbow. This is the result of the work of the distinguished intellectual Vasko Karadža, who comes from the village Dămbeni, Kostursko. The dictionary was cited in his will with the request that it be promoted in Greece when the the conditions were right. The word, besides being for the members of the Macedonian minority, is also intended for any modern Greek citizen.

My professor, Victor Friedman, was in Athens to help promote the publication of a new Macedonian-Greek dictionary.

The conference was stormed by a group of about twenty Greek nationalists, some wearing masks. They disrupted the proceedings, screamed nationalist slogans, harrassed the presenters, stole promotional material, damaged cameras, and physically threatened my professor. Balkan Insight has an article about the attack.

The attackers appear to have been associated with the Greek organization Golden Dawn, originally a neo-Nazi outfit that has rebranded itself as a defender of Greek national identity and religion and capitalized on a swell of anti-immigrant feelings.

Golden Dawn does not have representation in parliament as far as I’m aware, but they are closely connected with another nationalist, right-wing party called Popular Orthodox Rally that does have representation. A key point shared between these two parties and the current conservative Greek government is that a Macedonian-speaking minority in Greece does not exist, that the Macedonian language has never been spoken on Greek territory, and that any claim to the contrary represents a threat to Greek national security.

Prof. Friedman and his colleagues were promoting a dictionary. A list of corresponding words that allows someone to translate from Greek into Macedonian or vice versa. Merely making translation possible was enough to provoke the violent rage of these nationalists, who insist that not only does no one within Greek borders speak Macedonian, but that the Macedonian language itself does not even exist. The current government itself refuses to even accept that its neighboring state has an official language, instead referring to Macedonian as “a Slavic idiom.”

The attack was a revolting act of violence by a group of self-deluded extremists. But they function within a mainstream that tacitly endorses their provocations.

I expect that the Greek government, if it responds to the attack, the destruction of property, and the threats against my professor and his colleagues at all, will disavow everything and insist that it is not responsible for the misconduct of individual Greeks. This is true, but it also remains true that the position of the Greek government itself concerning the Macedonian language, the rights of its ethnic minority citizens, and the rights of Macedonian citizens to its north is not only unjust, but creates an environment in which nationalist sentiment can boil over into violence.

And they are responsible for that environment.

I want to say that you cannot eradicate a language with violence, because a language is an abstract system, a complex interrelated network of ideas. But individual people are the essential vessel for a language, and people can be intimidated, injured, murdered. Violence can crack the vessel and let the language spill away.

Which is one of many, many reasons why such instances of violence as this, however small, must be protested furiously. We must not allow even a step down that road.

You might have noticed I’ve add a “Share/Save” link at the end of Polysemic’s posts. If you especially like any of the things I’ve written, I’d be really grateful if you could bookmark the post in case you use something like Del.icio.us or share the post in case you use something like Facebook.

That menu item should make it very easy, and it really helps me bring in new readers and hopefully introduce them to Macedonia and the Balkans (if they’re not familiar already!).

I’m in Greece at the moment, first in Thessaloniki and then in Athens staying at the parents’ place of my Rotary scholarship supervisor from the US.

He’s been giving me a walking and culinary tour of the country. I have to agree with him that the food is magnificent—it seems impossible to me the amount of deliciousness people wring out of eggplants here—but the walking tour inspires a lot of critical comments from him about Greece.

My own impression is that Greece is pretty much just like Macedonia, except denser and richer, so the things that would surprise most Americans don’t really surprise me after a year of exposure. Lack of pedestrian, much less wheelchair access, cars parked on sidewalks, dangerous nonchalance about traffic rules, loud conversations—they’re all so normal for me now that I keep finding myself somewhat puzzled that my host is pointing them out. I’ve even grown to like these usually negative qualities for adding “Balkan flavor.”

But I’m not stuck eating Balkan flavor every day, for years. It makes sense for it to seriously irritate my host. I can leave the Balkans at any time. He had to work extremely hard for the chance to resettle in the US. I take a certain pleasure in the grittiness and slipshod, somewhat dangerous freneticism of the Balkans because it is so different from my home and the novelty colors my whole experience. I can turn an inconvenience into an adventure.

Sometimes though, inconveniences are just inconveniences. I think I understand, or I at least have an inkling, why my host wanted to get away.

For me though, Greece hasn’t surprised me yet except in its size. From atop the Acropolis, I was not expecting Athens to extend in all directions to the horizon the way it does. Actually, the city reminds me a lot of Los Angeles in topography and size, sometimes even in architecture. Los Angeles streets are far wider and more orderly, though.

I think Athens is what LA would be if all of its traffic was routed into narrow, single-lane alleys that twisted and turned like a thousand worms’ boreholes through the core of the city. A lot more people walk, because like hell if you’ll be getting anywhere by car.

If you know me, you know a comparison to LA means that a city is not endearing itself to me under most circumstances. I think LA spoils the West Coast. But I kind of like Athens.

Maybe Balkan flavor for me is enough to disguise a rotting taste for others.

I’ve been on a book-buying spree as I’ve been getting ready to leave Macedonia. On one of my bookhunts I got handed a pamphlet in defense of Cyrillic. I thought I would translate it and analyze it in service of the broader point of Macedonian identity and the somewhat problematic ways it is defended in the public sphere.

The pamphlet goes as follows

Го чувам своето - додека пишувам на кирилица постојам!

I protect what is mine - as long as I write in Cyrillic, I exist!

Македонски се пишува со кирилица

Macedonian is written with Cyrillic

Јзикот го зачувавме. Да ја зачуваме и кирилицата. Зашто, јазик без писмо нема. А писмото најдобро со употреба се чува. Иако е создадена пред повеќе од 10 века, токму тука на нашиве простори, во земјата на древни цивилизации, со прегорната работа на светите Кирил и Методиј и со посветеноста на Епископот Охридски Свети Климент, како и многубројните ученици и мисионери, кои нивното дело го продолжиле, се чини дека во временоското и просторното траење, кирилицата по малку неправедно како да се подзаборава. Поточно, сета нејзина убавина, инспиративност и сликовност, со се’ поретката употреба, како да потклекнува.

We protected our language. Let’s protect Cyrillic. Because a language does not exist without writing. And writing is best protected with practice. Even though it was created more than 10 centuries ago, right here on our territory, in a land of ancient civilizations, with the blazing work of Saints Cyril and Methodius and with the holiness of the St. Kliment of Ohrid Episcopy, as well as the numerous scholars and missionaries who continued their work, it seems, in its duration through time and space, as if Cyrillic is being somewhat unjustly forgotten. More precisely, it is as if, despite all of its beauty, inspiration and vividness, it is falling to its knees with ever rarer use.

Кирилицата е убава…

Cyrillic is beautiful

Еднакво убава, испишана со мајсторската рака врз пергаментот по кој се лизга перото, или со техниките на новите мајстори, сместени на тастатурите на компутерот. Со спојување и комбинирање на 31 буква од нашата азбука, можат да се изразат сите зборови на овој свет. Само со зачувување и со користење на кирилицата, може да се изрази сета нејзина убавина, но и да се зачуваат колективниот идентитет и индивидуалното определување на секој од нас. И затоа: додека пишуваме кирилица - постоиме. Се’ додека ја користиме кирилицата, сето она што е најблагодородно и највредно во нашето колетивно и индивидуално битие ќе биде зачувано. Зачувано од заборав и вредно за траење. А постои само она што трае.

Singularly beautiful, written by a master hand over a parchment with a gliding quill, or with the the techniques of the new masters, situated on the keyboards of a computer. With the coordination and combination of the 31 characters of our alphabet, all the words in the world can be expressed. Only by protecting and using Cyrillic can we express all of its beauty, but also only in that way can we protect our collective identity and the unique qualities of all of us. And thus, as long as we write in Cyrillic, we exist. As long as we use Cyrillic, all that which is noble and most precious in our collective and individual existence will be protected. Protected from loss and worthy for eternity. And only that which lasts exists.

Кирилицата постои и трае.

Cyrillic exists and lasts.

И затоа своето име пишуај го со кирилица… или името на својата земја… или името на својата мајка… на својата љубов… или имињата на своите желби и тајни. Обиди се да замислиш голема светлечка реклама испишана со кирилица како се “смешка” преплавена со светлоста на новиот ден и новото доба…Обиди се да погледнеш на табличките во улицата на твоето детство и ќе видиш убава, чиста и читка табла, испишана со убава, чиста и читка кирилица. Сети се на својата прва љубов, на првиот изговорен збор, на својата прва напишана буква, на своето прво писмо, на првата прочитана или напишана книга… и ќе видиш дека се’ е поврзано со твоето прво писмо.

And for that reason, write your name in Cyrillic… or the name of your country… or the name of your mother… of your love… or the names of your desires and secrets. Try to imagine a great luminous advertisement written in Cyrllic and how it would laugh awash in the light of a new day and a new age… Try to recall the signs on the street of your childhood and you will see a beautiful, clean, and readable sign, written in beautiful, clean, readable Cyrillic. Remember your first love, your first pronounced word, your first written character, your first letter, your first read or written book… and you will see that everything is connected with your first form of writing.

Богатството е во разновидноста. А кирилицата нуди толку многу разнолики можности за примена и за унапредување. Да ги откриваш сите нејзини волшепства и да бидеш уверен дека во рацете држиш силно и моќно оружје на модерното доба, кое го надахнува нашето постоење.

There is wealth in diversity. But Cyrillic offers all the various possibilities for use and progress. Discover all of her magic and be sure that in your hands you carry a strong and powerful weapon for the modern age, which defends our existence.

И се’ додека пишуваме кирилица, ќе постоиме!

As long as we write in Cyrillic, we will exist!

Писмото

Writing

Писмото е запишување на јазикот. Тоа е средство за просторна и временска комуникација. Писмото е припадност кон колективниот идентитет и индивидуалното определување. Вредноста на писмото се мери со систем на знаци, кои претставуваат елементи на говорниот јазик. А нашиот јазик - македонскиот, е јужнословенски јазик со една од најстарите книжевно-јазички традиции. И се пишува со кирилица.

Writing is the method of taking down a language. It is the means of spatial and temporal communication. Writing is belonging to a collective identity and individual quality. The value of writing is measured in a system of signs, which present elements of the spoken language. And our language, Macedonian, is a South Slavic language with one of the oldest written-language traditions. And it is written in Cyrillic.

Кирилицата е едно од најстарите и најубавите писма. Јазикот го зачувавме. Да ја зачуваме и кирилицата. Зашто јазик без писмо - нема. А писмото најдобро со употреба се чува. Македонски се пишува со кирилица.

Cyrillic is one of the oldest and most beautiful writing systems. We protected our language. Let us protect Cyrillic too. Because a language without writing doesn’t exist. And writing is best protected with use. Macedonian is written in Cyrillic.

It is not at all true that a language does not exist without a writing system. The vast majority of the world’s languages are unwritten. At a certain point in history, all of the ancestors of today’s spoken languages were unwritten. Languages have existed for thousands of years, changing but maintaining a core continuity, without the aid of a written norm to maintain them. Written language norms and the use of language in text are both well worth studying, but they do not make up the whole of linguistics and certainly not the whole of the phenomenon of language. The declaration that a language does not exist without a writing system is hyperbole that does not face up to scientific scrutiny.

It is true, however, that practice is the best protection for a writing system. Languages can lose writing systems. The use of Chinese characters in Korean, for example, is dying out even though they are taught in school, because people have grown accustomed to just writing using the Korean alphabet, which is sufficient (and actually quite well-designed) for expressing the standard language in text.

Old English itself lost its own varient of the Latin alphabet, which was quite different from what we use to write modern English today. With the Norman invasions, French became the language of the court and the aristocrats, Old English mostly ceased to be used for official purposes, and the Old English variant of the Latin alphabet faded out of use. By the time English began to be written again (traditionally dated from Chaucer, whose language falls into the Middle English period), it was using French orthographic norms due to the longterm dominance of French. So the brochure is right to point out that it is possible to lose a written form if it falls into disuse. This does not necessarily affect the language though. While English changed, it did not cease to be spoken, and when it returned into official use in England, the language’s new orthography did not obliterate its spoken continuity. English changed enormously under the influence of French, but it did not disappear.

Macedonian is nowhere near that point yet, though. People may not write their text messages or Facebook profiles in Cyrillic, but they still write their journals and classnotes in it. Macedonian books are published in Cyrillic—no exceptions. Vacillations occur over how to properly Romanize Macedonian, not how to properly Cyrillicize it.

All the words in the world certainly cannot be expressed with Macedonian Cyrillic. That is impossible to even say with a straight face. Macedonian Cyrillic letters are well designed to express the sounds of the Macedonian language and no other. You do not have to look far to see this—Macedonian newspapers writing articles about Albanian politicians or other public figures in this country write their names in Cyrillic along with the rest of the article. Albanian, however, is written in Latin, and the two alphabets do not easily convert between one another. The Albanian sounds th (like the English “th” as in “thick”), dh (like the English “th” as in “this”), l (like the British English “l” in “leutenant”), and y (does not exist in English, like German ü) lose their distinctiveness in Cyrillic and thus Albanian names are given an incorrect, approximate Macedonian pronunciation. I run into this same issue when I’m teaching students English: if I want to write the pronunciation of a new word for students in Cyrillic, I have to take into account the fact that I cannot easily write the difference between the vowels in bead and bid or the vowels in bad and bed in Cyrillic.

This is not a problem unique to Macedonian. I can’t easily approximate Macedonian pronunciation using English’s version of the Latin alphabet. Every language’s writing system is designed to represent that language and will face problems when applied to another. Sometimes you can make adjustments by reshuffling the phonetic values of the characters, by adding diacritics, or by allowing two characters combined together to represent one sound. This was how the Latin alphabet was adapted to all the languages of Western Europe. It is also how Cyrillic was adapted to many of the indigenous languages of Siberia by the Soviets. But if you want to write “all the words in the world,” you need a writing system designed to do that, one that has a character (or a way of modifying a character) to accommodate every possible sound a human language can utilize as distinctive.

As a matter of fact, such a writing system exists: it’s called the International Phonetic Alphabet and linguists use it to describe the sounds of languages in a way that can be universally understood. By my count, the IPA features about 75 letters for consonant sounds that are made with the lungs, another 5 letters for consonant sounds that are made by clicking your tongue (heavily featured in Southern African languages), 29 letters for vowel sounds, and 62 additional diacritics to modify all these letters.

It takes a lot of characters to write all the words in the world. English’s writing system isn’t up to it and neither is Macedonian’s. What I think they were intending to say is that there is no need to switch to Latin in the middle of a Cyrillic sentence to represent some borrowed word, which sometimes occurs in the writing of young Macedonians, especially when the word is a recent English or French borrowing. Indeed, these words can be approximated in Cyrillic without doing too much damange to the comprehension of an educated reader. But, again, it is hyperbole to say that Macedonian is suitable for the whole world’s vocabulary.

While the beauty of Cyrillic is realtive (I find it to be quite beautiful), it takes a real stretch to say that it is an old writing system. Cyrillic began to be used in the mid-900s. In comparison, Brahmi came into use 1200 years previous to that, Latin 1600 years previous, Olmec (in Mexico) roughly 1800 years previous, and Chinese 2100 years previous. Cyrillic is a young script. This is neither here nor there in terms of its effectiveness in conveying Macedonian (in fact, general Cyrillic is quite well suited to express the sounds of your average Slavic language), but if you base your entire rhetoric about the ‘worth’ of a language on the age of its writing system, you have very stiff competition for the top prize from all over the world.

In all, this pamphlet expresses genuine and understandable concern about the use of Cyrillic in the public space, with a deeper underlying concern about Macedonian identity and the threats against it originating mostly from Greece and Bulgaria. In trying to assuage the concern, however, the pamphlet swerves from and occasionally strays totally off the path of factual accuracy. This is a general problem in Macedonian public rhetoric about the language, where the very real and very legitimate feeling of distress in having someone from outside your own country tell you that you don’t exist, you don’t speak a real language, and you’re not allowed to use your own name for yourself is channeled into furious argument for easily disprovable positions, like that modern Slavic Macedonian is descendent from Ancient Macedonian. Ancient Macedonian’s alignment in the Indo-European tree of languages remains difficult to prove (Greeks claim it, but the evidence remains inconclusive). However, it is without a doubt that Ancient Macedonian was not Slavic. Sadly, the popularity of factual distortions like this among some ends up damaging the credibility of all. Macedonian scholars and politicians who are making legitimate arguments supported by evidence and scientific consensus find themselves tarred with the brush of irrational nationalism preemptively.

As I said in a previous post, I support the general aim of this pamphlet. I wish young Macedonians used Cyrillic more often. I think the Latin rendering of Macedonian, especially when you neglect to use diacritics, doesn’t do the language justice. Hyperbole is emotionally effective and thus may be said to serve the cause of greater respect for Macedonian Cyrillic. But as I hope I’ve illustrated, it is damaging in the long term both to the cause of Cyrillic and to the broader cause of defending Macedonian identity.