Blaže Koneski, his successors and the peculiar narrative of a “late standardization” in the Balkans. In a recent article about the standardization of the Macedonian language, 1 the distinguished polish linguist, Zuzanna Topolińska notes: “One of the great advantages of late standardization is the possibility of learning from the experience of predecessors in order to avoid their mistakes. Macedonian codifiers, foremost the central personality responsible for this process, the linguist and poet Blaže Koneski, demonstrated acute ability to find apt solutions and ensure a strong beginning to the implementation process. The two main and important decisions were: (a) the acceptance of, as a starting point, the living grammatical structure of an idiom maximally evolved and, at the same time, understandable and reasonably easy to learn for the speakers of other Macedonian dialects. Likewise, the grammatical structure of the WestCentral dialect was accepted as a whole, at all of the relevant levels: segmental phonology, prosody, inflection, basic categorical paradigms with their functional loads, while the contribution of other dialects was allowed in the lexicon and word-formational patterns.(…) (b) the acceptance of the so-called phonetic spelling; it is de facto a phonological spelling after the principle “one phoneme > one graphem”…” etc. etc.2 One of the most interesting books about contemporary culture in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is “Razgovori so Koneski” (Conversations with Koneski) by Dzane Andreevski, published 1991 by “Kultura”. The particular book which comprises a series of interviews made with the distinguished linguist, philologist, poet and novelist Blaže Koneski from 1985 to 1990, offers a splendid overview of the literary Macedonian language formation since the 1940s, if not for other reasons, surely because Koneski can be considered the most active, dedicated and abiding intellectual in matters of 1
Zuzanna Topolińska, “Advantages and disadvantages of late standardization”. STUF 2008(61), 2: 170176. 2 ibidem, p. 173
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language and literature in the country.3 In the interviews given to Andreevski, Koneski describes in detail the process of the standardization of the Macedonian language in its first steps in the 1940s until the establishment of all basic norms in the mid 1950s. The standardization process of Macedonian is in comparison with other languages a very good documented story since it is one of the most recent processes of standardization among European languages in general. 4 Unfortunately, this fact alone, i.e. the lack of a historical distance leads to a - from a linguist’s point of view of course unacceptable -controversy as to the status of the language in general, especially in Greece where absurd positions about the matter are not rare at all and can be heard from the most official sides. 5 One of the most popular myths about the language is that it cannot have the status of a standard language but merely of a dialect – a position expressed by older Greek linguists such as Nikolaos Andriotis6 in the 1960s and still cultivated by contemporary politicians mainly. Analogous is the Bulgarian Academy’s of Sciences position that Macedonian is merely a “written regional norm of the Bulgarian language in the Republic of Macedonia”.7
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About Koneski’s contribution, see: Y. Burns, “Blaže Koneski. The Right Man in the Right Place at the Right Time.” Macedonian Review 1981-1982, XXXII-XXXIII: 75-83; A. Družeski, “Blaže Koneski: The Founder of Modern Macedonian Linguistics”. Macedonian Review 1979, V: 184-189; Christina Kramer, “Blaze Koneski 1921-1993. In memoriam.” The Slavic and East European Journal 1994, vol. 38, no 3: 557-559. 4 Zuzanna Topolińska, «Advantages and disadvantages of late standardization.» STUF - Language Typology and Universals 2008, vol. 61, issue 2:. 170-176. 5 At the peak of the Macedonian controversy in the beginning of the 1990’s one of the most prominent Greek linguists and for a short period appointed Minister of Education, professor George Babiniotis described the language as a “in reality mixed bulgaro-serbian idiom of Slavic”. (Γιώργος Μπαμπινιώτης, Η γλώσσα της Μακεδονίας. Η αρχαία Μακεδονία και η ψευδώνυμη γλώσσα των Σκοπίων. Αθήνα 1992: 259) 6 Andriotis 1960: “Φυσικά δεν απόκειται στους ξένους να τους υποδείξουν το επίσημο όνομα του κράτους των Σκοπίων και της γλώσσας του. Δικαίωμα όμως και καθήκον τους είναι να θεωρούν τα ονόματα Μακεδονία, Μακεδόνες και Μακεδονική γλώσσα, προκειμένου για Σλάβους, ως ιστορικά και εθνολογικά αστήρικτα και αυθαίρετα. Για μας τους Ελληνες ιδιαιτέρως, δικαίωμα και καθήκον μας είναι να μη δεχτούμε ποτέ την καθιέρωση τους στη δική μας επίσημη ή ανεπίσημη ορολογία, ούτε για το κράτος ούτε για τη γλώσσα του. Για μας και, νομίζω, για κάθε αντικειμενικό κριτή, το πιο ασκανδάλιστο, προσφυέστερο και πληρέστερο προς την αλήθεια όνομα είναι το Σλαβικό ιδίωμα του κράτους των Σκοπίων”. Ν. Ανδριώτης, Το ομόσπονδο κράτος των Σκοπίων και η γλώσσα του, , Θεσσαλονίκη 1989 ( επανέκδοση). 7 See especially the booklet Edinstvoto na bălgarskija ezik v minaloto i dnes. Bălgarska Akademija na naukite. Sofija 1978: 14.
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Nevertheless, the “dialects question” in the standardization process of Macedonian, based on the narration of Blaže Koneski to the subject is of particular interest. Among the most challenging issues in the standardization process of Macedonian, is the incorporation of the main dialectal elements and especially the question whether the wide spread position that the central or even better the west-central Macedonian dialects was indeed planned to serve and really served so decisively as the basis for the official Macedonian language – the way Topolinska but also other Macedonists put it - can be truly asserted. “To me, as a basis served above all the Prilep dialect. Because of this, the peculiarities of my mother’s tongue in that text, in that grammar project, dominated to a big degree. It is self understood that I had to a certain degree knowledge of the main characteristics of the other Macedonian dialects. And I also estimated the whole situation. I took into consideration the writings of some of our authors” - recollects Koneski about his very first attempt to write a Macedonian grammar, somewhere between 1941 and 1943, a grammar that though compiled, was finally lost. Later on, when he participated at the first language committee in 1945, this first approach seemed to him inappropriate: “…I realized that it was impossible to solve all problems on such a narrow dialectal basis and that we had to consider a much broader framework”. 8 Afterwards, when he was appointed to the Agitprop of the Communist’s Party Central Committee, he observed that most of the texts sent to be published in the newly founded newspaper Nova Makedonija – to his great relief - were written neither in Bulgarian nor in Serbo-Croatian, but in a language of various dialectal origins. At this point, a short retrospective to the events of the standardization proves most enlightening: In 1944, at the first “Anti-Fascist assembly for the peoples’ of Macedonia liberation” in the Prochor Pčinski Monastery the decision for the establishing of a language to serve communicational needs in the territory of “Vardarska 8
Dzane Andreevski, Razgovori so Koneski. Skopje 1991, pp. 97-98.
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Makedonija”, was taken. Some months later, from September 27th until December 3rd, in a series of sessions, a ten person committee decided upon the orthography of the new standard. Although Koneski was among the members of the committee, in November he quit: “Simply because I did not want to participate in a case which seemed to me unsatisfactory organized and planned.(…) Particularly I did not like some opinions which suggested to ask Russian scholars for help as to the way our language question should be solved. At the same time in the report by Kiselinov there stood – this we do so and so, in order to keep our northern neighbors satisfied, the other we do so and so in order to keep our eastern neighbors satisfied.”9 The new orthography, suggested by this initial commission, “favored the Russian and Bulgarian model”, reports Victor Friedman in a very detailed article about the codification of the standard Macedonian. 10 This description might be very accurate as to the Bulgarian part, inasmuch this first proposal contained the use of the letter ъ and the letter я. In this very article Friedman adds, that the dialectal basis of literary Macedonian was “the dialects of the West Central region, but the other dialects have contributed to its structure and formation at all levels.”11 In the beginning of 1945, a second commission was appointed, where Koneski participated again. On June 7th 1945, a totally new “pravopis” of Macedonian was published as decision of the Ministry of Enlightenment. “As a basis for our literary language, Misirkov had taken the central dialects. However, this question was not discussed among us in 1945. (…) Nobody would start saying: No, wait, this is not the basis, but the basis is for instance the Dialect of Štip, or the dialect of Struma.”12 recalled Koneski. The juxtaposition of the two approaches – i.e. the approach of the protagonist himself on the one side and of the linguists (in this case Topolińska and 9
Andreevski, op.cit. 140. Victor Friedman, “Macedonian: Codification and Lexicon”. In: István Fodor-Claude Hagè (eds.), Language Reform. History and Future. vol. IV Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag 1989: 307. 11 ibidem, p. 309. 12 Andreevski, op. cit. 146. 10
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Friedman) on the other, puts some question marks to the Central or West Central dialects theory. The new alphabet contained 31 cyrillic but partly also latin letters, some of which made it very similar to the Serbocroatian Cyrillic alphabet: The use of њ, љ, ќ, ѓ, џ, ja (instead of я) is of Serbocroatian descend, the use of ѕ was supposed to be a reminiscence of OCS codes which used the same letter for the phonem [dz]. On the other side, the decision not to use the actually Bulgarian letter ъ dissociated the overall picture of the new written language from Bulgarian. “The main hesitancy was about the writing of the palatal consonants. We decided for љ and њ, i.e. for the letters which we still use today. (…) Meanwhile, we had a dilemma about the use of ќ and ѓ. And here I was for the first time in favor of taking the particular letters, which we normally called Serbian.(…)”, remembers Koneski.
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Further, when
Andreevski asks him whether there was any controversy on the non-adoption of the letter ъ for the “dark vocal” ъ, he mentions the “need for unification plus the fact that we had taken as basis the central dialects, in which there is no phonem for the dark vocal, except in peripheral use, in the cities”…14in direct contradiction to what he had said just a few minutes ago, that no discussion about dialects took place. In 1970, the new orthography was codified in 321 articles. Most of the articles, indeed, adjust the language to the dialectal characteristics of Central Macedonian, such as for example through the rule 3a, to write “a” in words “which in some of our dialects are pronounced with a closed vocal o or u, for example: maž or raka (and not mož or roka, muž or ruka).” 15 This rule, actually, regulates as official the succession of the Common Slavic back nasal to a, instead of o or u – a succession that, indeed, reflects the situation in the dialects of Central Macedonia, especially those of Bitola and Prilep in contradiction to the so far prescribed use of u in the “pravopis” of 1945. This 1945 recipe, i.e. the obligatory succession of the back nasal by u is another 13
Andreevski, op.cit. p. 148. ibidem p. 150. 15 B. Vidoeski, T. Dimitrovski, K. Koneski, K. Tošev, R. Ugrinova-Skalovska, Pravopis na makedonskiot literaturen jazik so pravopisen rečnik. Skopje 1970. 14
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indication that the very first planning of the codification was not really based on the Central Macedonian dialects – as Koneski actually admits, since u corresponds to the northern, Skopje dialect. However, as already mentioned in 1970, the word oružje became oražje and the Central dialects were – from this time on represented in this point. On the other side, through the non-adopting of the mostly characteristic for Bulgarian but in some cases also for the Central dialects letter schwa (ъ) and the adopting of syllabic ṙ and of o in words where schwa would be absolutely appropriate, the codifiers of the language partly offended their alleged principle of sticking to the Central dialects. Particularly obvious is this in the abolishment of the writing of the syllable ъr, which is wide spread in the Central Macedonian dialects. 16 Instead, the codifiers took the syllabic r, according to the northern dialects, or, more exactly to the Serbian norm. For cases, again, where the syllable ъr is unavoidable, especially where it can be clearly heard in the initial position (examples: ’рж, ’рга, ’рнка) Koneski and his team proposed the use of an apostrophe. In his Gramatika na makedonskiot literaturen jazik, published 1952 in Skopje Koneski emphasized: “We must underline that the ’(apostrophe) does not denote a distinct vocal in front of the initial r. In our literary pronunciation in front of the r one can hear only one dark overtone (…) but there is no fully formed vocal (sic) for which there would be a symbol.” 17 Macedonists claim that the use of schwa in the new orthography was avoided because schwa was derived from different origins, “and thus it occurs in different words in different dialects”. 18 This in my opinion is a totally misleading description, since it implies a very detailed and linguistically through and through studied decision, based upon thorough dialectological information and consideration. However this was not at all the case, as Koneski himself testifies. The use of the schwa is one of the most important points of dispute not only between Bulgarians and Macedonians, but 16
Stefan Mladenov, Geschichte der bulgarischen Sprache. Berlin und Leipzig 1929, p. 133. B. Koneski, Gramatika na makedonskiot literaturen jazik. Skopje 1952: 89. 18 V. Friedman, ”The implementation of standard Macedonian: Problems and Results.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 1998, vol. 131: 31-57. 17
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also between Macedonians themselves – there are nationalist circles in Macedonia who in the beginning of the 1990s denounced its exclusion from the standard language as a hostile act of violent serbianization. 19 This could be the reason why such argumentation is being brought forward - a political consideration in what should be a strict linguistic description which actually hushes up the political side of this standardization process. One of the main features of Macedonian dialects is the succession of Common Slavic *tj, *dj by k’ and g’ respectively – and not by št, and žd like in standard Bulgarian. Still, in the 1970 pravopis, some use of the št – žd derivates was recommended. This seems totally contradictory to the claim that Central dialects were the starting point of the codifiers per se. Something similar occurred with the initial total abolishment of the intervocal v in words such as човек which in 1946 became чоек to be turned again into човек in 1950. This orthographic inconsistency had as a consequence a morphological confusion: In 1945-1946 the initial verbal suffix -ува of the first conjugation verbs became –уе, which, again, obliged to a conjugation according to the rules of the third conjugation. Only when in 1950 this rule was abolished, the verbs in question corresponded to the first conjugation again. There were other such diffuse choices. Victor Friedman, for example, reports: “…Due to the complexities of dialectal developments in Macedonian verbal morphology, some important features of Literary Macedonian conjugation cannot be classified as simply West Central vs. non West-Central.(…)…the political prestige of the dialect of the capital, Skopje, which is located approximately at the intersection of the major north-south and east-west isogloss bundles, gave way to the literary prestige of Prilep, which is in the heart of the West Central region. “20 Friedman enumerates all this in order to prove that the ones involved in the standardization process had no intention at all to make literary Macedonian as different as possible from Bulgarian – as they were accused by the Bulgarian 19 20
Ibidem p. 20. Victor Friedman, “Macedonian: Codification and Lexicon”, op.cit.: 311-312.
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linguistic circles. However, the particular choices of the first codifiers might be an indication that the theory of the central Macedonian dialects is a post facto adjustment of the story of the standardization – an adjustment which theoretically only pays respect to the national myth of Krste P. Misirkov’s prophetic desire to create a Macedonian language based on the Central Macedonian dialects. To this conclusion leads us also Krste P. Misirkov himself, in his emblematic work Za makedonskite raboti (1903)with his proposals – on a theoretical level through his advices to his people and on a practical level through his own language. Thus, in his writing, Misirkov differentiates his language among other with 3 very important features: (1) He omits the intervocalic –v-. As already mentioned, this is a dialectal feature of the central but also of some eastern Macedonian dialects, which was initially proposed but then taken back. (2) He uses šč in the position of Common Slavic *tj. In the new standard, this succession has not been adopted, instead we have k’ and more rarely št. (3) He proposes the adoption of jn for palatal [n’], i.e. uvažejne instead of uvaženje, a phenomenon which occurs in the most of the central dialects, and which was not included in the new standard (as already mentioned). All this, Misirkov admittedly chooses in order to keep the language as much distant as possible from the neighboring standards – especially from Bulgarian, as he says, since most of the Macedonians turned to the Bulgarian educational system21. Additionally to that, he underlines with great honesty that whatever decision is taken about the dialect to build the new language basis, it would be firstly a political one and secondly a linguistic-esthetic one. “By the elevation of one dialect to a literary language, esthetic features of any kind never played an important role. This is the one reason, why practical thoughts come in front
21
Krste P. Misirkov, Za makedonckite raboti. Skopje 1974: 138.
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of esthetic ones, and the second reason why the esthetic thoughts are relative and always subjective.�22 BlaŞe Koneski, on the other side, in his narration describes his early choice of the Prilep dialect, already in 1944, (which actually is proposed also by Misirkov) as an accidental one, pointing out that he did not know the content of Za makedonskite raboti until 194523. As already mentioned, the codifiers, with Koneski as their main instructor, were not at all consistent in their choices. They changed a lot and adjusted many of their first decisions, causing especially during the fifties many communicational and further educational controversies. The standard Macedonian has many central dialects features – very important characteristics of the language though derive from eastern and/or northern Macedonian dialects. This kind of process is normal and actually foreseen by the linguistic community, with the different steps theories, as described for example by Fishman (1973) and Neustupny (1970). What is not foreseen is the post facto claim that all this can be actually a conscious adjustment to certain (in the particular case to the central Macedonian) dialects. A claim that is used as an answer to the massive Bulgarian attack the standard language was and is still exposed to, but maybe also, because of the need to prove that certain rules were followed, a plan normal and expected, corresponding to the righteous vision of the national hero Misirkov and the national philologist Koneski. In the interviews, B. Koneski is open and honest. He admits that he did not know exactly, that he did not follow the instructions of Misirkov, that he had to revise many things. The Macedonists often do not the same. Their need for a plan, a vision, a myth, for heroes, makes them seeking for and finding intentions and acts where these did not actually exist. Linguists do not need to co-cultivate a story, only in order to have it included in the official narrative of the Macedonian nation building. The story, that the number of speakers, the easier adjustment possibility etc. etc. were the factors that played the biggest 22 23
ibidem, p. 140. Andreevski, op.cit. p. 145.
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role in the standardization of the Macedonian language and not the need for the biggest possible distance from the neighboring standard languages.24 None of this in Koneski’s open minded, truly honest interviews, none of this in the sometimes cynically political attitude of Misirkov. However, the linguistic argumentation as presented above, takes place despite the fact that the distancing of a new standard from neighboring standards is a must in a new language standardization process. Why not admitting it?
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According to Stefan Troebst, the differentiation from the neighboring people was the main distinguishing feature in the process of the Macedonian nation-building: „Ob die Makedonier (…) „wissen, wer sie sind“, ist im Prinzip unerheblich - entscheidend ist, daß sie wissen, wer sie nicht sein wollen, nämlich weder Bulgaren noch Serben, und schon gar nicht Griechen oder Albaner. Ausschlaggebend für diese explizit autochthone Option des „Nostrismus“ bzw. našizam (von naš – „unser“) aber ist nicht nur auf die Herstellung kollektiver Identität zielende regierungsamtliche Erinnerungspolitik (…), sondern gerade auch rationales Kalkül sicherheitspolitischer, sozialer und nicht zuletzt ökonomischer Art.“ Stefan Troebst, „Geschichtspolitik und historische ‚Meistererzählungen´ in Makedonien vor und nach 1991“. New Balkan Politics 2001, Issue 6: http://www.newbalkanpolitics.org.mk/oldsite/Issue_6/troebst.historical.deu.asp
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