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189-461: Macedonian nationalism ( Macedonian : македонски национализам , pronounced [makɛdonski nat͡sionalizam] ) is a general grouping of nationalist ideas and concepts among ethnic Macedonians that were first formed in the late 19th century among separatists seeking the autonomy of the region of Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire . The idea evolved during the early 20th century alongside
378-411: A common church for Bulgarian and Macedonian Slavs which would use a common modern Macedo-Bulgarian literary standard. The period between 1840 and 1870, saw a struggle to define the dialectal base of the common language called simply "Bulgarian", with two opposing views emerging. One ideology was to create a Bulgarian literary language based on Macedonian dialects, but such proposals were rejected by
567-714: A Balkan Socialist Federation, and that divided from the "imperialists" Macedonia would be united into its framework. This ideology later found fruition with the support of the Soviet Union as a project of the Yugoslav communist federation. Various declarations were made during the 1920s and 1930s seeing the official adoption of Macedonism by the Comintern . In turn declarations were made by the Greek, Yugoslav and Bulgarian communist parties, as they agreed on its adoption as their official policy for
756-651: A burden upon the Greeks themselves. In particular, Western Philhellenism focused exclusively on the heritage of Classical Greece, while negating or rejecting the heritage of the Byzantine Empire and the Greek Orthodox Church , which for the Greek people are at least as important. Philhellenism also created a renewed interest in the artistic movement of Neoclassicism , which idealized fifth-century Classical Greek art and architecture, very much at second hand, through
945-610: A consequence of national allegiance. On the eve of the 20th century the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO) tried to unite all unsatisfied elements in the Ottoman Europe and struggled for political autonomy in the regions of Macedonia and Adrianople Thrace . But this manifestation of political separatism by the IMARO was a phenomenon without ethnic affiliation and
1134-422: A consonant and is conjugated as an irregular verb. The perfect tense can be formed using both to be ( сум ) and to have ( има ) as auxiliary verbs . The first form inflects the verb for person and uses a past active participle: сум видел многу работи ("I have seen a lot of things"). The latter form makes use of a clitic that agrees in number and gender with the object of the sentence and the passive participle of
1323-736: A danger of marginalization . The policy has also attracted criticism domestically, by ethnic Macedonians within the country, who see it as dangerously dividing the country between those who identify with classical antiquity and those who identify with the country's Slavic culture. Ethnic Albanians in North Macedonia see it as an attempt to marginalize them and exclude them from the national narrative. The policy, which also claims as ethnic Macedonians figures considered national heroes in Bulgaria , such as Dame Gruev and Gotse Delchev , has also drawn criticism from Bulgaria. Foreign diplomats had warned that
1512-474: A debate on the establishment of their separate Orthodox church . As a result, massive Greek religious and school propaganda occurred, and a process of Hellenization was implemented among the Slavic-speaking population of the area. The very name Macedonia, revived during the early 19th century after the foundation of the modern Greek state, with its Western Europe-derived obsession with Ancient Greece ,
1701-446: A definite direct or indirect object is used, a clitic pronoun will refer to the object with the verb: Јас не му ја дадов книгата на момчето ("I did not give the book to the boy"). The direct object is a remnant of the accusative case and the indirect of the dative. Reflexive pronouns also have forms for both direct and indirect objects: себе се , себе си . Examples of personal pronouns are shown below: Relative pronouns can refer to
1890-490: A direct link to the modern ethnic Macedonians. This phenomenon is called "ancient Macedonism", or "Antiquisation" ("Antikvizatzija", "антиквизација"). Its supporters claim that the ethnic Macedonians are not descendants of the Slavs only, but of the ancient Macedonians too, who, according to them, were not Greeks . Antiquisation is the policy which the nationalistic ruling party VMRO-DPMNE pursued after coming to power in 2006, as
2079-543: A grammatical aspect ( глаголски вид ) that is a typical feature of Slavic languages . Verbs can be divided into imperfective ( несвршени ) and perfective ( свршени ) indicating actions whose time duration is unknown or occur repetitively or those that show an action that is finished in one moment. The former group of verbs can be subdivided into verbs which take place without interruption (e.g. Тој спие цел ден , "He sleeps all day long) or those that signify repeated actions (e.g. Ја бараше книгата но не можеше да ја најде , "He
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#17330862829562268-419: A grammatical category which specifies the opposition of witnessed and reported actions (also known as renarration). Per this grammatical category, one can distinguish between минато определено i.e. definite past, denoting events that the speaker witnessed at a given definite time point, and минато неопределено i.e. indefinite past denoting events that did not occur at a definite time point or events reported to
2457-454: A linguistic feature not found in other Slavic languages is the use of the suffix -иња to form plural of neuter nouns ending in -е : пиле - пилиња (a chick - chicks). Counted plural is used when a number or a quantifier precedes the noun; suffixes to express this type of plurality do not correspond with the regular plurality suffixes: два молива (two pencils), три листа (three leaves), неколку часа (several hours). The collective plural
2646-697: A link between the Bulgaro-Macedonians on the one hand, and the Illyrians and ancient Macedonians on the other, whom he also regarded as Slavs . The main agenda of this story about the mythical Bulgaro-Illyro-Macedonians was to assert that the Macedonian and Bulgarian Slavs were among the indigenous inhabitants of the Balkans. Other proponents of the Macedonist ideas in the early 20th century were two Serbian scholars,
2835-427: A means to disambiguate between two words ( храна , food vs. рана , wound). This explains the rarity of Х in the Macedonian language. ^3 They exhibit different pronunciations depending on dialect. They are dorso-palatal stops in the standard language and are pronounced as such by some native speakers. The word stress in Macedonian is antepenultimate and dynamic (expiratory). This means that it falls on
3024-604: A member of the Balkan sprachbund. This period saw the introduction of many Turkish loanwords into the language. The latter half of the 18th century saw the rise of modern literary Macedonian through the written use of Macedonian dialects referred to as "Bulgarian" by writers. The first half of the 19th century saw the rise of nationalism among the South Slavic people in the Ottoman Empire. This period saw proponents of creating
3213-465: A non-paired voiceless fricative, nine pairs of voiced and unvoiced consonants and four pairs of stops . Out of all the Slavic languages, Macedonian has the most frequent occurrence of vowels relative to consonants with a typical Macedonian sentence having on average 1.18 consonants for every one vowel. The Macedonian language contains 5 vowels which are /a/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /o/, and /u/. For the pronunciation of
3402-883: A perfect tense formed by means of an auxiliary verb "to have", followed by a past participle in the neuter , also known as the verbal adjective . Other features that are only found in Macedonian and not in other Slavic languages include the antepenultimate accent and the use of the same vocal ending for all verbs in first person, present simple ( глед- a -м , јад- а -м , скок- а -м ). Macedonian distinguishes at least 12 major word classes , five of which are modifiable and include nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numbers and verbs and seven of which are invariant and include adverbs , prepositions, conjunctions , interjections , particles and modal words . Macedonian nouns ( именки ) belong to one of three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter) and are inflected for number (singular and plural), and marginally for case . The gender opposition
3591-455: A person ( кој, која, кое - who), objects ( што - which) or serve as indicators of possession ( чиј, чија, чие - whose) in the function of a question or a relative word. These pronouns are inflected for gender and number and other word forms can be derived from them ( никој - nobody, нешто - something, сечиј - everybody's). There are three groups of demonstrative pronouns that can indicate proximate ( овој - this one (mas.)), distal ( онаа -
3780-440: A person. Adjectives accompany nouns and serve to provide additional information about their referents. Macedonian adjectives agree in form with the noun they modify and are thus inflected for gender, number and definiteness and убав changes to убава ( убава жена , a beautiful woman) when used to describe a feminine noun, убаво when used to describe a neuter noun ( убаво дете , a beautiful child) and убави when used to form
3969-546: A policy of disarming the local militia, accompanied by beatings and threats. During this period the political autonomism was abandoned as tactics and annexationist positions were supported, aiming eventual incorporation of the area into Bulgaria. After the WWI, in Serbian Macedonia any manifestations of Bulgarian nationhood were suppressed. Even in the so-called Western Outlands ceded by Bulgaria in 1920 Bulgarian identification
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#17330862829564158-537: A pro-Macedonian bias in the Macedonian-Greek conflict. Similar parahistorical myths connecting the Slavs and Paleo-Balkan peoples were characteristic for Ottoman Bulgaria during the late 18th and the 19th century and later arrose in Ottoman Macedonia. Practically, until the 1940s Bulgarian academic circles and Bulgarian volk history spread the same views when fighting Greek claims about the Greek origins of
4347-469: A process of Hellenization and Serbianisation of the Slavic population and led in general to a cease in the use of this term in both countries. On the other hand, Serbian and Bulgarian left-wing intellectuals envisioned in the early 20th century some sort of "Balkan confederation " including Macedonia, should the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire dissolve. This view was accepted from
4536-560: A recent change in the title of the Greek Patriarchist bishop of Bitola: from Exarch of all Bulgaria to Exarch of all Macedonia . He also noted the unusual popularity of Alexander the Great and that it appeared to be something that was recently instilled on the local Slavs. As a consequence, since the 1850s some Slavic intellectuals from the area adopted the designation Macedonian as a regional label, and it began to gain popularity. In
4725-728: A set of ideas perceived as characteristic of aggressive Macedonian nationalism. Before the Balkan Wars Macedonist ideas were shared by a limited circle of intellectuals. They grew in significance during the interbellum , both in Vardar Macedonia and among the left-leaning diaspora in Bulgaria, and were endorsed by the Comintern . During the Second World War , these ideas were supported by the Communist Partisans, who founded
4914-500: A set of three deictic articles: unspecified, proximal and distal definite article). Macedonian, Bulgarian and Albanian are the only Indo-European languages that make use of the narrative mood . According to Chambers and Trudgill , the question whether Bulgarian and Macedonian are distinct languages or dialects of a single language cannot be resolved on a purely linguistic basis, but should rather take into account sociolinguistic criteria, i.e., ethnic and linguistic identity. This view
5103-419: A short personal pronoun is added: Тоj легна ("He laid down") vs. Тоj го легна детето ("He laid the child down"). Additionally, verbs which are expressed with the reflexive pronoun се can become transitive by using any of the contracted pronoun forms for the direct object: Тој се смее - He is laughing, vs. Тој ме смее - "He is making me laugh"). Some verbs such as sleep or die do not traditionally have
5292-484: A similar paradox was observed at the eve of the 20th century and afterwards, when many Bulgarians from non-Macedonian descent, involved in the Macedonian affairs, espoused Macedonian identity , and that idea undoubtedly was emancipated from the pan-Bulgarian national project. During the interwar period , Bulgaria also supported to some extent the Macedonian regionalism , especially in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia , to prevent
5481-483: A strange, ancient ethnonym "Makedonci" (Macedonians) was imposed 10–15 years prior by outside intellectuals, introduced with a "cunning aim" to replace the traditional "Bugari" (Bulgarians). In 1892, Georgi Pulevski completed the first "Slavic-Macedonian General History", with a manuscript of over 1,700 pages. According to the book, the ancient Macedonians were Slavic people and the Macedonian Slavs were native to
5670-504: A type that was eminently Slavic (i.e. old-Serbian) and therefore non-Bulgarian. Nowadays, these outdated Serbian views have been propagandized by some contemporary Macedonian scholars and politicians. Some panslavic ideologists in Russia , former supporter of Greater Bulgaria , also adopted these ideas as opposing Bulgaria's Russophobic policy at the beginning of the 20th century, as for example Alexandr Rittikh and Aleksandr Amfiteatrov . At
5859-499: A way of putting pressure on Greece, as well as for the purposes of domestic identity-building. Antiquisation is also spreading due to a very intensive lobbying of the Macedonian diaspora from the US, Canada, Germany and Australia, Some members of the Macedonian diaspora even believe, without basis, that certain modern historians, namely Ernst Badian , Peter Green , and Eugene Borza , possess
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6048-650: Is Old Church Slavonic . During much of its history, this dialect continuum was called "Bulgarian", although in the late 19th century, its western dialects came to be known separately as "Macedonian". Standard Macedonian was codified in 1945 and has developed modern literature since. As it is part of a dialect continuum with other South Slavic languages , Macedonian has a high degree of mutual intelligibility with Bulgarian and varieties of Serbo-Croatian . Linguists distinguish 29 dialects of Macedonian , with linguistic differences separating Western and Eastern groups of dialects. Some features of Macedonian grammar are
6237-779: Is Bulgarian followed by Serbo-Croatian and Slovene , although the last is more distantly related. Together, South Slavic languages form a dialect continuum . Macedonian, like the other Eastern South Slavic idioms has characteristics that make it part of the Balkan sprachbund , a group of languages that share typological , grammatical and lexical features based on areal convergence, rather than genetic proximity. In that sense, Macedonian has experienced convergent evolution with other languages that belong to this group such as Greek, Aromanian , Albanian and Romani due to cultural and linguistic exchanges that occurred primarily through oral communication. Macedonian and Bulgarian are divergent from
6426-474: Is added as a suffix to nouns. An individual feature of the Macedonian language is the use of three definite articles, inflected for gender and related to the position of the object, which can be unspecified, proximate or distal. Proper nouns are per definition definite and are not usually used together with an article, although exceptions exist in the spoken and literary language such as Совче то , Маре то , Наде то to demonstrate feelings of endearment to
6615-547: Is also constructed at the other end of the square. A triumphal arch named Porta Macedonia , constructed in the same square, featuring images of historical figures including Alexander the Great, caused the Greek Foreign Ministry to lodge an official complaint to authorities in the Republic of Macedonia. Statues of Alexander are also on display in the town squares of Prilep and Štip , while a statue to Philip II of Macedon
6804-504: Is an Eastern South Slavic language. It is part of the Indo-European language family , and is one of the Slavic languages , which are part of a larger Balto-Slavic branch . Spoken as a first language by around 1.6 million people, it serves as the official language of North Macedonia . Most speakers can be found in the country and its diaspora , with a smaller number of speakers throughout
6993-551: Is avoided by some speakers who strive for a clear, formal pronunciation. ^2 Inherited Slavic /x/ was lost in the Western dialects of Macedonian on which the standard is based, having become zero initially and mostly /v/ otherwise. /x/ became part of the standard language through the introduction of new foreign words (e.g. хотел , hotel), toponyms ( Пехчево , Pehčevo ), words originating from Old Church Slavonic ( дух , ghost), newly formed words ( доход , income) and as
7182-658: Is characterized by 46–47 phonetic and grammatical isoglosses. In addition, a more detailed classification can be based on the modern reflexes of the Proto-Slavic reduced vowels ( yers ), vocalic sonorants, and the back nasal *ǫ. That classification distinguishes between the following 6 groups: The phonological system of Standard Macedonian is based on the Prilep-Bitola dialect. Macedonian possesses five vowels , one semivowel , three liquid consonants , three nasal stops , three pairs of fricatives , two pairs of affricates ,
7371-417: Is generally fixed and falls on the antepenultimate syllable while Eastern dialects have non-fixed stress systems that can fall on any syllable of the word, that is also reminiscent of Bulgarian dialects. Additionally, Eastern dialects are distinguishable by their fast tonality, elision of sounds and the suffixes for definiteness. The Northern dialectal group is close to South Serbian and Torlakian dialects and
7560-402: Is markedly analytic in comparison with other Slavic languages, having lost the common Slavic case system . The Macedonian language shows some special and, in some cases, unique characteristics due to its central position in the Balkans. Literary Macedonian is the only South Slavic literary language that has three forms of the definite article, based on the degree of proximity to the speaker, and
7749-592: Is no vocative case in neuter nouns. The role of the vocative is only facultative and there is a general tendency of vocative loss in the language since its use is considered impolite and dialectal. The vocative can also be expressed by changing the tone. There are three different types of plural: regular, counted and collective . The first plural type is most common and used to indicate regular plurality of nouns: маж - мажи (a man - men), маса - маси (a table - table), село - села (a village - villages). There are various suffixes that are used and they differ per gender;
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7938-479: Is not distinctively marked in the plural. Masculine nouns usually end in a consonant or a vowel ( -a , -o or -e ) and neuter nouns end in a vowel ( -o or -e ). Virtually all feminine nouns end in the same vowel, -a . The vocative of nouns is the only remaining case in the Macedonian language and is used to address a person directly. The vocative case always ends with a vowel, which can be either an -у ( јунаку : hero vocative) or an -e ( човече : man vocative) to
8127-542: Is often realized phonetically as [aː] ; e.g. ⟨саат⟩ /saat/ [saːt] ' colloq. hour', ⟨змии⟩ - snakes. In other words, two vowels appearing next to each other can also be pronounced twice separately (e.g. пооди - to walk). The consonant inventory of the Macedonian language consists of 26 letters and distinguishes three groups of consonants ( согласки ): voiced ( звучни ), voiceless ( безвучни ) and sonorant consonants ( сонорни ). Typical features and rules that apply to consonants in
8316-451: Is phonemic in many dialects (varying in closeness to [ ʌ ] or [ ɨ ] ) but its use in the standard language is marginal. When writing a dialectal word and keeping the schwa for aesthetic effect, an apostrophe is used; for example, ⟨к’смет⟩ , ⟨с’нце⟩ , etc. When spelling words letter-by-letters, each consonant is followed by the schwa sound. The individual letters of acronyms are pronounced with
8505-644: Is supported by Jouko Lindstedt , who has suggested the reflex of the back yer as a potential boundary if the application of purely linguistic criteria were possible. As for the Slavic dialects of Greece , Trudgill classifies the dialects in the east Greek Macedonia as part of the Bulgarian language area and the rest as Macedonian dialects . According to Riki van Boeschoten , dialects in eastern Greek Macedonia (around Serres and Drama ) are closest to Bulgarian, those in western Greek Macedonia (around Florina and Kastoria ) are closest to Macedonian, while those in
8694-421: Is the same as of all other modern Slavic languages , i.e. of the subject-verb-object (SVO) type and has flexible word order . Macedonian vocabulary has been historically influenced by Turkish and Russian . Somewhat less prominent vocabulary influences also came from neighboring and prestige languages . The international consensus outside of Bulgaria is that Macedonian is an autonomous language within
8883-837: Is the smartest girl in her class). The only adjective with an irregular comparative and superlative form is многу which becomes повеќе in the comparative and најмногу in the superlative form. Another modification of adjectives is the use of the prefixes при- and пре- which can also be used as a form of comparison: престар човек (a very old man) or пристар човек (a somewhat old man). Three types of pronouns can be distinguished in Macedonian: personal ( лични ), relative ( лично-предметни ) and demonstrative ( показни ). Case relations are marked in pronouns. Personal pronouns in Macedonian appear in three genders and both in singular and plural. They can also appear either as direct or indirect object in long or short forms. Depending on whether
9072-431: Is unknown due to the policies of neighboring countries and emigration of the population, estimates ranging between 1.4 million and 3.5 million have been reported. According to the 2002 census, the total population of North Macedonia was 2,022,547, with 1,344,815 citizens declaring Macedonian their native language . Macedonian is also studied and spoken to various degrees as a second language by all ethnic minorities in
9261-423: Is used for nouns that can be viewed as a single unit: лисје (a pile of leaves), ридје (a unit of hills). Irregular plural forms also exist in the language: дете - деца (child - children). A characteristic feature of the nominal system is the indication of definiteness . As with other Slavic languages, there is no indefinite article in Macedonian. The definite article in Macedonian is postpositive, i.e. it
9450-530: The Gymnasium , to revitalize German education at home, and providing on two occasions high-minded philhellene German princes ignorant of modern-day Greek realities, to be Greek sovereigns. During the later 19th century the new studies of archaeology and anthropology began to offer a quite separate view of ancient Greece, which had previously been experienced second-hand only through Greek literature , Greek sculpture and architecture . Twentieth-century heirs of
9639-483: The Archbishopric of Ohrid as an autonomous Macedonian church, but his idea failed. Some authors consider that at that time, labels reflecting collective identity, such as " Bulgarian ", changed into national labels from being broad terms that were without political significance. While according to some modern authors as well as pro-Macedonian sources (e.g. Nick Anastasovski), the designation 'Bulgarian' referred to all
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#17330862829569828-501: The Bulgarian ethnic provenance of the revolutionaries can not be put under question. The first major manifestation of ethnic Macedonian nationalism was the book On Macedonian Matters , published in Sofia in 1903 by Krste Misirkov . In the book Misirkov advocated for affirmation of the Macedonians as a separate people. Misirkov considered that the term "Macedonian" should be used to define
10017-582: The Bulgarian Communist Party repealed its previous decision and adopted a position denying the existence of a Macedonian ethnicity. As a result, the Bulgarophobia in Macedonia increased almost to the level of State ideology . This put an end to the idea of a Balkan Communist Federation . During the post- Informbiro period , a separate Macedonian Orthodox Church was established, splitting off from
10206-567: The Bulgarian Empire and was referred to as such due to works of the Ohrid Literary School . Towards the end of the 13th century, the influence of Serbian increased as Serbia expanded its borders southward. During the five centuries of Ottoman rule , from the 15th to the 20th century, the vernacular spoken in the territory of current-day North Macedonia witnessed grammatical and linguistic changes that came to characterize Macedonian as
10395-548: The Bulgarian Uniates in 1860, and then in 1870 the Bulgarian Exarchists . With the rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire then, the classical Ottoman millet system began to degrade with the continuous identification of the religious creed with ethnic identity. In this way, in the struggle for recognition of a separate national Church , the modern Bulgarian nation was created, and the religious affiliation became
10584-803: The Macedonian Partisans set up the Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia . They proclaimed a Macedonian nation-state of the ethnic Macedonians and the Macedonian as official language. After the German troops left the area in November, the new Macedonian government started the codification of the Macedonian language. The state was later incorporated in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia . However, by
10773-656: The Parthenon (the Elgin Marbles ), works that inspired the British Philhellenes, many of whom, however, deplored their removal. Many well-known philhellenes supported the Greek Independence Movement such as Shelley , Thomas Moore , Leigh Hunt , Cam Hobhouse , Walter Savage Landor and Jeremy Bentham . Some, notably Lord Byron , even took up arms to join the Greek revolutionaries. Many more financed
10962-541: The Renaissance by western researchers, who introduced ancient Greek geographical names in their work, although used in a rather loose manner. The modern region was not labeled "Macedonia" by the Ottomans. The name "Macedonia" gained popularity parallel to the ascendance of rival nationalism. The central and northern areas of modern Macedonia were often called "Bulgaria" or " Lower Moesia " during Ottoman rule. The name "Macedonia"
11151-474: The Serbian Orthodox Church in 1967. The encouragement and evolution of the culture of the Republic of Macedonia has had a far greater and more permanent impact on Macedonian nationalism than has any other aspect of Yugoslav policy. While the development of national music, films and graphic arts had been encouraged in the Republic of Macedonia, the greatest cultural effect came from the codification of
11340-883: The Socialist International . In 1910, the First Balkan Socialist Conference was held in Belgrade, then within the Kingdom of Serbia . The main platform at the first conference was the call for a solution to the Macedonian Question. The creation of a Balkan Socialist Federation was proposed, in which Macedonia would be a constituent state. In 1915, after the Balkan Wars had concluded, the Balkan Socialist Conference in Bucharest agreed to create
11529-492: The Socialist Republic of Macedonia held a referendum that established its independence from Yugoslavia . With the fall of Communism , the breakup of Yugoslavia and the consequent lack of a Great power in the region, the Republic of Macedonia came into permanent conflicts with its neighbors. Bulgaria contested its national identity and language, Greece contested its name and symbols, and Serbia its religious identity. On
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#173308628295611718-746: The Yugoslav Federation , thus partially fulfilling the Comintern's pre-war policy. He was supported by the Bulgarian leader from Macedonian descent and former General Secretary of the Comintern Georgi Dimitrov , in anticipation of an ultimately failed incorporation of the Bulgarian part of Macedonia ( Pirin Macedonia ) into the People's Republic of Macedonia, and of Bulgaria itself into Communist Yugoslavia. The first Macedonian nationalists appeared in
11907-651: The ancient Macedonians . Nevertheless, in 1914 the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs report states that the Serbs and Greeks classified the Slavs of Macedonia as a distinct ethnic group "Macedonians Slavs" for political purposes and to conceal the existence of Bulgarians in the area. However, after the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) Ottoman Macedonia was mostly divided between Greece and Serbia, which began
12096-491: The ancient kingdom of Macedon ), while the main highway to Greece has been renamed to "Alexander of Macedon" and Skopje's largest stadium has been renamed "Philip II Arena". These actions are seen as deliberate provocations in neighboring Greece, exacerbating the dispute and further stalling Macedonia's EU and NATO applications. In 2008 a visit by Hunza Prince was organized in the Republic of Macedonia. The Hunza people of Northern Pakistan were proclaimed as direct descendants of
12285-467: The irredentist concept of a United Macedonia , which involves territorial claims on a large portion of Greece and Bulgaria , along with smaller regions of Albania , Kosovo and Serbia . During the first half of the second millennium , the concept of Macedonia on the Balkans was associated by the Byzantines with their Macedonian province , centered around Adrianople in modern-day Turkey . After
12474-590: The 1860s, according to Petko Slaveykov , some young intellectuals from Macedonia were claiming that they are not Bulgarians , but they are rather Macedonians , descendants of the Ancient Macedonians . In a letter written to the Bulgarian Exarch in February 1874, Slaveykov reports that discontent with the current situation "has given birth among local patriots to the disastrous idea of working independently on
12663-595: The 1860s, as there are no documents or inscriptions mentioning the Macedonians as a separate ethnic group, all Slavs in Macedonia used to call themselves Bulgarians". The semi-official term Bulgarian Millet , was used by the Ottoman Sultan for the first time in 1847, and was his tacit consent to a more ethno-linguistic definition of the Bulgarians as a separate ethnic group. Officially as a separate Millet were recognized
12852-458: The 1890s, Russian supporters of a Slavic Macedonian ethnicity emerged, Russian-made ethnic maps began showing a Slavic Macedonian ethnicity, and Macedonian nationalists began to move to Russia to mobilize. The origins of the definition of an ethnic Slav Macedonian identity arose from the writings of Georgi Pulevski in the 1870s and 1880s, who identified the existence of a distinct modern "Slavic Macedonian" language that he defined as different from
13041-492: The 1890s, seeking the autonomy of Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire. The IMRO initially opposed being dependent on any of the neighbouring states, especially Greece and Serbia, however its relationship with Bulgaria grew very strong, and it soon became dominated by figures who supported the annexation of Macedonia into Bulgaria, though a small fraction opposed this. As a rule, the IMRO members had Bulgarian national self-identification, but
13230-637: The 1930s, after the recognition of the Macedonian ethnicity by the Comintern , as for example Dimitar Vlahov , Pavel Shatev , Panko Brashnarov , Venko Markovski , Georgi Pirinski, Sr. and others. Such Macedonian activists, who came from the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (United) and the Bulgarian Communist Party never managed to get rid of their pro-Bulgarian bias. Macedonian language Macedonian ( / ˌ m æ s ɪ ˈ d oʊ n i ə n / MASS -ih- DOH -nee-ən ; македонски јазик , translit. makedonski jazik , pronounced [maˈkɛdɔnski ˈjazik] )
13419-403: The 1940s is disputed. This confusion is illustrated by Robert Newman in 1935, who recounts discovering in a village in Vardar Macedonia two brothers, one who considered himself a Serb , and the other a Bulgarian . In another village he met a man who had been "a Macedonian peasant all his life" but who had been at various times called a Turk , a Serb and a Bulgarian. During the Second World War
13608-718: The 19th-century view of an unchanging, immortal quality of "Greekness" are typified in J. C. Lawson's Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion (1910) or R. and E. Blum's The Dangerous Hour: The lore of crisis and mystery in rural Greece (1970). According to the Classicist Paul Cartledge , they "represent this ideological construction of Greekness as an essence, a Classicizing essence to be sure, impervious to such historic changes as that from paganism to Orthodox Christianity , or from subsistence peasant agriculture to more or less internationally market-driven capitalist farming ." The Philhellenic movement led to
13797-710: The Alexandrian army and as people who are most closely related to the ethnic Macedonians. The Hunza delegation led by Mir Ghazanfar Ali Khan was welcomed at the Skopje Airport by the country's prime minister Nikola Gruevski , the head of the Macedonian Orthodox Church Archbishop Stephen and the mayor of Skopje , Trifun Kostovski . Such antiquization is facing criticism by academics as it demonstrates feebleness of archaeology and of other historical disciplines in public discourse, as well as
13986-526: The Balkan Slavs, Cvijic devised a " Central Type " (Slav Macedonians and Torlaks ), dissimilar at the same time to the " Dinaric Type " (the principal "Serb" ethnographic variant) and the " East Balkan Type " (representing the Bulgarians, but excluding even Western Bulgaria). The true Bulgarians belonged only to the "East Balkan Type" and were a mixture of Slavs , " Turanian " groups ( Bulgars , Cumans , and Turks ) and Vlachs , and as such, were different from
14175-550: The Balkans into a battlefield. Belgrade was suspicious of the recognition of any Bulgarian minority and was annoyed this would hinder its policy of forced " Serbianisation ". It blocked such recognition in neighboring Greece and Albania, through the failed ratifications of the Politis–Kalfov Protocol in 1924 and the Albanian-Bulgarian Protocol (1932) . During the interwar period in Vardar Macedonia, part of
14364-522: The Balkans, in contrast of the Bulgarians and the Serbs, who came there centuries later. The root of such indigenous mixture of Illyrism and Pan-Slavism can be seen in "Concise history of the Slav Bulgarian People" (1792), written by Spyridon Gabrovski, whose original manuscript was found in 1868 by the Russian scientist Alexander Hilferding on his journey in Macedonia. Gabrovski tried to establish
14553-452: The Bulgarian army and authorities when they took temporary control over Vardar Macedonia. On the other hand, Serbian authorities put pressure on local people to declare themselves Serbs: they disbanded local governments, established by IMARO in Ohrid , Veles and other cities and persecuted Bulgarian priests and teachers, forcing them to flee and replacing them with Serbians. Serbian troops enforced
14742-457: The Bulgarian codifiers. That period saw poetry written in the Struga dialect with elements from Russian . Textbooks also used either spoken dialectal forms of the language or a mixed Macedo-Bulgarian language. Subsequently, proponents of the idea of using a separate Macedonian language emerged. Krste Petkov Misirkov 's book Za makedonckite raboti ( On Macedonian Matters ) published in 1903,
14931-570: The Bulgarian influence in Macedonia, thereby promoting Serbian interests in the region. Novaković's diplomatic activity in Istanbul and St. Petersburg played a significant role in the realization of his ideas, especially through the " Association of Serbo-Macedonians " formed by him in Istanbul and through his support for the Macedonian Scientific and Literary Society in St. Petersburg. The geopolitics of
15120-430: The Bulgarian people on anti-Bulgarian grounds. The term is first believed to have been used in a derogatory manner by Petko Slaveykov in 1871, when he dismissed Macedonian nationalists as "Macedonists", who he regarded a misguided ( sic ): Grecomans . The roots of the concept were first developed in the second half of the 19th century, in the context of Greek , Bulgarian and Serbian initiatives to take control over
15309-462: The Bulgarians. The turning point for the Macedonian ethnogenesis was the creation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia as part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia following World War II. With the conquest of the Balkans by the Ottomans in the late 14th century, the name of Macedonia disappeared for several centuries and was rarely displayed on geographic maps. It was rediscovered during
15498-507: The Comintern and were the only political party in Greece to recognize Macedonian national identity . However, the situation deteriorated after they lost the Greek Civil War . Thousands of Aegean Macedonians were expelled and fled to the newly established Socialist Republic of Macedonia , while thousands of more children took refuge in other Eastern Bloc countries. At the end of the 1950s
15687-464: The Eastern South Slavic dialect continuum, although since Macedonian and Bulgarian are mutually intelligible and are socio-historically related, a small minority of linguists are divided in their views of the two as separate languages or as a single pluricentric language . 5 May, the day when the government of Yugoslav Macedonia adopted the Macedonian alphabet as the official script of
15876-464: The Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Macedonia condemned the incident and recalled its diplomat back to Skopje for consultations. Macedonism , sometimes referred to as Macedonianism ( Macedonian and Serbian : Македонизам, Makedonizam ; Bulgarian : Македонизъм , Makedonizam and Greek : Μακεδονισμός, Makedonismós ), is a political and historical term used in a polemic sense to refer to
16065-559: The Glory that was Greece". American higher education was fundamentally transformed by the rising admiration of and identification with ancient Greece in the 1830s and afterward. Another popular subject of interest in Greek culture at the turn of the 19th century was the shadowy Scythian philosopher Anacharsis , who lived in the 6th century BC. The new prominence of Anacharsis was sparked by Jean-Jacques Barthélemy 's fanciful Travels of Anacharsis
16254-481: The Greek War of Independence and spawned sequels and imitations throughout the 19th century. In German culture the first phase of philhellenism can be traced in the careers and writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann , one of the inventors of art history, Friedrich August Wolf , who inaugurated modern Homeric scholarship with his Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795) and the enlightened bureaucrat Wilhelm von Humboldt . It
16443-456: The Hellenes, mostly of foreign princes, as Amasis ; of Parthian kings[...]; also of Hellenic tyrants, as Jason of Pherae and generally of Hellenic (Greek) patriots. According to Xenophon , an honorable Greek should also be a philhellene. Some examples: The literate upper classes of Ancient Rome were increasingly Hellenized in their culture during the 3rd century BC. Among Romans
16632-414: The Macedonian language and literature, the new Macedonian national interpretation of history and the establishment of a Macedonian Orthodox Church . Meanwhile, the Yugoslav historiography borrowed certain parts of the histories of its neighboring states in order to construct the Macedonian identity, having reached not only the times of medieval Bulgaria, but even as far back as Alexander the Great . In 1969,
16821-1009: The Macedonian language include assimilation of voiced and voiceless consonants when next to each other, devoicing of vocal consonants when at the end of a word, double consonants and elision. At morpheme boundaries (represented in spelling) and at the end of a word (not represented in spelling), voicing opposition is neutralized . ^1 The alveolar trill ( /r/ ) is syllabic between two consonants; for example, ⟨прст⟩ [ˈpr̩st] 'finger'. The dental nasal ( /n/ ) and dental lateral ( /ɫ/ ) are also syllabic in certain foreign words; e.g. ⟨њутн⟩ [ˈɲutn̩] ' newton ', ⟨Попокатепетл⟩ [pɔpɔkaˈtɛpɛtɫ̩] ' Popocatépetl ', etc. The labiodental nasal [ɱ] occurs as an allophone of /m/ before /f/ and /v/ (e.g. ⟨трамвај⟩ [ˈtraɱvaj] ' tram '). The velar nasal [ŋ] similarly occurs as an allophone of /n/ before /k/ and /ɡ/ (e.g. ⟨англиски⟩ [ˈaŋɡliski] 'English'). The latter realization
17010-598: The Middle Ages up to the 20th century. Following the independence of the Republic of Macedonia in the late 20th century, issues of Macedonian national identity have become contested by the country's neighbours, as some adherents to aggressive Macedonian nationalism, called Macedonism , hold more extreme beliefs such as an unbroken continuity between ancient Macedonians (essentially an ancient Greek people ), and modern ethnic Macedonians (a Slavic people), and views connected to
17199-532: The Petersburg Macedonian Colony propagandized the existence of a separate Macedonian people different from Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbs, and sought to popularize the idea for an independent Macedonian state. Some of its articles were written by Krste Misirkov . During the Balkan Wars and the First World War the area was exchanged several times between Bulgaria and Serbia. The IMARO supported
17388-473: The Republic of Macedonia to Canada attended a nationalist Macedonian event in Toronto and delivered a speech against the backdrop of an irredentist map of Greater Macedonia . This has triggered strong protests from the Greek side, which regards this as a sign that irredentism remains the dominant state ideology and everyday political practice in the neighboring country. Following strong diplomatic protests, however,
17577-687: The Roman Censor, Cato the Elder and Cato the Younger , who lived during the "Greek invasion" of Rome but towards the later years of his life he eventually became a philhellene after his stay in Rhodes. The lyric poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus was another philhellene. He is notable for his words, "Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artis intulit agresti Latio" (Conquered Greece took captive her savage conqueror and brought her arts into rustic Latium), meaning that after
17766-706: The Serbian geographer Jovan Cvijić . Nevertheless, Macedonist ideas increased during the interbellum in Yugoslav Vardar Macedonia and among the left diaspora in Bulgaria, and were supported by the Comintern . During the Second World War Macedonist ideas were further developed by the Yugoslav Communist Partisans, but some researchers doubt that even at that time the Slavs from Macedonia considered themselves to be ethnically separate from
17955-531: The Serbs evidently played a crucial role in the ethnogenesis by promoting a separate Macedonian consciousness at the expense of the Bulgarians (it is worth mentioning that 19th century Serbian propaganda mostly adhered to direct Serbianization, including post-WWI policy of Belgrade in Vardar Macedonia). In 1888 the Macedono-Bulgarian ethnographer Kuzman Shapkarev noted that, as a result of this activity,
18144-491: The Slavic-speaking population as being ethnically linked to their nation and thus asserted the right to seek their integration. The first assertions of Macedonian nationalism arose in the late 19th century. Early Macedonian nationalists were encouraged by several foreign governments that held interests in the region. The Serbian government came to believe that any attempt to forcibly assimilate Slavic Macedonians into Serbs in order to incorporate Macedonia would be unsuccessful, given
18333-550: The Slavs in Macedonia had started to use the ancient designation Macedonians alongside the traditional one Bulgarians by the 1870s. However, Shapkarev notes that the name "Macedonians" had been "imposed on them by outsiders" (i.e., the Greeks), and that the Slavs in Macedonia were using the designation "Bulgarians" as peculiarly theirs, while referring to other Bulgarians as Shopi . Similarly, they referred to their own Macedono-Bulgarian dialect as Bulgarian ("bugarski") in opposition to
18522-651: The Slavs living in Rumelia and meant nothing more than peasant , contemporary travellers, ethnographers and linguists, including Slovak philologist Pavel Jozef Šafárik (1842), French geologist Ami Boué (1847, 1854), French ethnographer Guillaume Lejean (1861), English travel writers Georgina Muir Mackenzie and Paulina Irby (1867), Russian ethnographer Mikhail Mirkovich (1867), Czech folklorist Karel Jaromír Erben (1868), German cartographer August Heinrich Petermann (1869), German geographer Heinrich Kiepert (1876), Austrian diplomat Karl Sax (1877), etc. clearly identified
18711-516: The Slavs living in the part of Rumelia currently known as Kosovo as Serbs and only referred to the Slavs living in the Macedonia as Bulgarians . All of them also established the ethnographic boundary between Serbs and Bulgarians along the Šar Mountains . According to John Van Antwerp Fine Jr. , until the late 19th century those Macedonian Slavs who had developed an ethnic identity believed they were Bulgarians. As per Raymond Detrez "Indeed, until
18900-486: The Socialist Republic of Macedonia as part of the Yugoslav federation, the new authorities also enforced measures that would overcome the pro-Bulgarian feeling among parts of its population. On the other hand, the Yugoslav authorities forcibly suppressed the ideologists of an independent Macedonian country. The Greek communists, similar to their fraternal parties in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, had already been influenced by
19089-598: The Younger in Greece (1788), a learned imaginary travel journal , one of the first historical novels , which a modern scholar has called "the encyclopedia of the new cult of the antique" in the late 18th century. It had a high impact on the growth of philhellenism in France: the book went through many editions, was reprinted in the United States and was translated into German and other languages. It later inspired European sympathy for
19278-539: The Yugoslav Macedonian Republic in 1944. Following the Second World War, Macedonism became the basis of Yugoslav Macedonia's state ideology , aimed at transforming the Slavic and, to a certain extent, non-Slavic parts of its population into ethnic Macedonians . This state policy is still current in today's Republic of North Macedonia , where it was developed in several directions. One of them maintains
19467-469: The advancement of their own local dialect and what’s more, of their own, separate Macedonian church leadership." Nevertheless, other Macedonian intellectuals, such as the Konstantin Miladinov , continued to call their land Western Bulgaria and worried that use of the new name would imply identification with the Greek nation. According to Kuzman Shapkarev , as a result of Macedonists' activity,
19656-416: The ancient Macedonians were Slavic, and modern-day Slavic Macedonians were their descendants. However, Slavic Macedonians' self-identification and nationalist loyalties remained ambiguous in the late 19th century. Pulevski for instance viewed Macedonians' identity as being a regional phenomenon (similar to Herzegovinians and Thracians ). Once calling himself a "Serbian patriot", another time a "Bulgarian from
19845-542: The ancient Macedonians. As part of this policy, statues of Alexander the Great and Philip II of Macedon have been built in several cities across the country. In 2011, a massive, 22-meter-tall statue of Alexander the Great (called "Warrior on a horse" because of the dispute with Greece) was inaugurated in Macedonia Square in Skopje , as part of the Skopje 2014 remodelling of the city. An even larger statue of Philip II
20034-649: The ancient local tribes in the area of the Central Balkans as Daco-Moesian . Previously these entities were traditionally regarded in Yugoslavia as Illyrian, in accordance with the romantic early-20th-century interests in the Illyrian movement . At first, the Daco-Moesian tribes were separated through linguistic research. Later, Yugoslav archaeologists and historians came to an agreement that Daco-Moesians should be located in
20223-479: The anthropologist Keith Brown visited the Republic of Macedonia at the eve of the 21st century, he discovered that the local Aromanians , who also call themselves Macedonians , still label the ethnic Macedonians, and their eastern neighbors as "Bulgarians". In the 19th century, the region of Macedonia became the object of competition by rival nationalisms, initially Greek nationalists , Serbian nationalists and Bulgarian nationalists that each made claims about
20412-404: The area was annexed by Bulgaria and anti-Serbian and pro-Bulgarian feelings among the local population prevailed. Because of that Vardar Macedonia remained the only region where Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito had not developed a strong partisan movement in 1941. The new provinces were quickly staffed with officials from Bulgaria proper who behaved with typical official arrogance to
20601-588: The areas of modern-day Serbia and North Macedonia. The most popular Daco-Moesian tribes described in Yugoslav literature were the Triballians , the Dardanians and the Paeonians . The leading research goal in the Republic of Macedonia during Yugoslav times was the establishment of some kind of Paionian identity and to separate it from the western "Illyrian" and the eastern "Thracian" entities. The idea of Paionian identity
20790-481: The autonomist faction stimulated the development of Macedonian nationalism. It devised the slogan "Macedonia for the Macedonians" and called for a supranational Macedonia, consisting of different nationalities and eventually included in a future Balkan Federation . However, the promoters of this slogan declared their conviction that the majority of the Macedonian Christian Slav population was Bulgarian. In
20979-575: The beginning of the 20th century, the continued Serbian propaganda efforts had managed to firmly entrench the concept of the Macedonian Slavs in European public opinion and the name was used almost as frequently as Bulgarians. Simultaneously, the proponents of the Greek Struggle for Macedonia , such as Germanos Karavangelis , openly popularized the Hellenic idea about a direct link between the local Slavs and
21168-570: The career of Titus Quinctius Flamininus (died 174 BC), who appeared at the Isthmian Games in Corinth in 196 BC and proclaimed the freedom of the Greek states, was fluent in Greek, stood out, according to Livy , as a great admirer of Greek culture . The Greeks hailed him as their liberator. There were some Romans during the late Republic, who were distinctly anti-Greek, resenting the increasing influence of Greek culture on Roman life, an example being
21357-545: The centre ( Edessa and Salonica ) are intermediate between the two. The Slavic people who settled in the Balkans during the 6th century CE, spoke their own dialects and used different dialects or languages to communicate with other people. The "canonical" Old Church Slavonic period of the development of Macedonian started during the 9th century and lasted until the first half of the 11th century. It saw translation of Greek religious texts. The Macedonian recension of Old Church Slavonic also appeared around that period in
21546-569: The connection of the modern ethnic Macedonians with the ancient Macedonians , rather than with the South Slavs , while others have sought to incorporate into the national pantheon the right-wing Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) activists, previously dismissed as Bulgarophiles . The term is occasionally used in an apologetic sense by some Macedonian authors, but has also faced strong criticism from moderate political views in North Macedonia and international scholars. Additionally
21735-594: The conquest of Greece the defeated Greeks created a cultural hegemony over the Romans. Roman emperors known for their philhellenism include Nero , Hadrian , Marcus Aurelius and Julian the Apostate . In the period of political reaction and repression after the fall of Napoleon , when the liberal-minded, educated and prosperous middle and upper classes of European societies found the Romantic nationalism of 1789–1792 repressed by
21924-536: The conquest of the Balkans by the Ottomans in the late 14th and early 15th century, the Greek name Macedonia disappeared as a geographical designation for several centuries. The background of the modern designation Macedonian can be found in the 19th century, as well as the myth of "ancient Macedonian descent" among the Orthodox Slavs in the area, adopted mainly due to Greek cultural inputs. However, Greek education
22113-415: The country and within the region of Macedonia , including Pirin Macedonia into Bulgaria and Aegean Macedonia into Greece. Variations in consonant pronunciation occur between the two groups, with most Western regions losing the /x/ and the /v/ in intervocalic position ( глава (head): /ɡlava/ = /ɡla/: глави (heads): /ɡlavi/ = /ɡlaj/) while Eastern dialects preserve it. Stress in the Western dialects
22302-535: The country. Outside North Macedonia, there are small ethnic Macedonian minorities that speak Macedonian in neighboring countries including 4.697 in Albania (1989 census), 1,609 in Bulgaria (2011 census) and 12,706 in Serbia (2011 census). The exact number of speakers of Macedonian in Greece is difficult to ascertain due to the country's policies. Estimates of Slavophones ranging anywhere between 50,000 and 300,000 in
22491-522: The end of the war, the Bulgarophile sentiments were still distinguishable and the Macedonian national consciousness hardly existed beyond a general conviction gained from bitter experience, that rule from Sofia was as unpalatable as that from Belgrade . After 1944 the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia began a policy of making Macedonia into the connecting link for
22680-461: The establishment of a future Balkan Federative Republic and stimulating the development of a distinct Slav Macedonian consciousness. The region received the status of a constituent republic within Yugoslavia and in 1945 a separate Macedonian language was codified. The population was proclaimed to be ethnic Macedonian, a nationality different from both Serbs and Bulgarians. With the proclamation of
22869-508: The fact that in their works they often used the designations Bulgaro-Macedonians , Macedonian Bulgarians and Macedonian Slavs in order to name their compatriots. Representatives of this circle were Georgi Pulevski , Theodosius of Skopje , Krste Misirkov , Stefan Dedov , Atanas Razdolov , Dimitrija Chupovski and others. Nearly all of them died in Bulgaria. Most of the next wave Macedonists were left-wing politicians, who changed their ethnic affiliations from Bulgarian to Macedonian during
23058-472: The final Serbianization of the local Slavs, because there was a tendency to make the name Macedonia scorned, and the name South Serbia was imposed, while some also used simply South or Povardarie (after the Vardar river) as neutral names. Ultimately, the designation Macedonian changed its status in 1944, and went from being predominantly a regional, ethnographic denomination, to a national one. However, when
23247-429: The first Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM) meeting, Macedonian was declared an official language. With this, it became the last of the major Slavic languages to achieve a standard literary form. As such, Macedonian served as one of the three official languages of Yugoslavia from 1945 to 1991. Although the precise number of native and second language speakers of Macedonian
23436-471: The first History of the Macedonian nation was published. Most Macedonians' attitude to Communist Yugoslavia, where they were recognized as a distinct nation for the first time, became positive. The Macedonian Communist elites were traditionally more pro-Serb and pro-Yugoslav than those in the rest of the Yugoslav Republics. After the Second World War, Macedonian and Serbian scholars usually defined
23625-477: The first expressions of ethnic nationalism among the Slavs of Macedonia. The separate Macedonian nation gained recognition during World War II when the Socialist Republic of Macedonia was created as part of Yugoslavia . Macedonian historiography has since established links between the ethnic Macedonians and various historical events and individual figures that occurred in and originated from Macedonia, which range from
23814-502: The future can be formed by either adding the negation particle at the beginning не ќе одам (I will not go) or using the construction нема да ( нема да одам ). There is no difference in meaning, although the latter form is more commonly used in spoken language. Another future tense is future in the past which is formed using the clitic ќе and the past tense of the verb inflected for person, таа ќе заминеше ("she would have left"). Similar to other Slavic languages, Macedonian verbs have
24003-451: The geographer Jovan Cvijić and the linguist Aleksandar Belić . They claimed the Slavs of Macedonia were " Macedonian Slavs ", an amorphous Slavic mass that was neither Bulgarian, nor Serbian. Cvijić further argued that the traditional ethnonym Bugari (Bulgarians) used by the Slavic population of Macedonia to refer to themselves actually meant only rayah , and in no case affiliations to the Bulgarian ethnicity. In his ethnographic studies of
24192-643: The influence of the Macedonian Diaspora . Contemporary antiquization has been revived as an efficient tool for political mobilization and has been reinforced by the VMRO-DPMNE. For example, in 2009 the Macedonian Radio-Television aired a video named " Macedonian prayer " in which the Christian God was presented calling the people of North Macedonia "the oldest nation on Earth" and "progenitors of
24381-461: The international position of the country. On the other hand, there is still strong Yugonostalgia among the ethnic Macedonian population, that has swept also over other ex-Yugoslav states. Macedonian nationalism also has support among high-ranking diplomats of North Macedonia who are serving abroad, and this continues to affect the relations with neighbors, especially Greece. In August 2017, the Consul of
24570-581: The introduction of Classics or Classical studies as a key element in education, introduced in the Gymnasien in Prussia . In England the main proponent of Classics in schools was Thomas Arnold , headmaster at Rugby School . Nikos Dimou 's The Misfortune to be Greek argues that the Philhellenes' expectation for the modern Greek people to live up to their ancestors' allegedly glorious past has always been
24759-531: The language are found at universities across Europe ( France , Germany , Austria , Italy , Russia ) as well as Australia, Canada and the United States ( Chicago and North Carolina ). During the standardization process of the Macedonian language, the dialectal base selected was primarily based on the West-Central dialects, which spans the triangle of the communities Makedonski Brod , Kičevo , Demir Hisar , Bitola , Prilep , and Veles . These were considered
24948-680: The last decade of the 20th century have been reported. Approximately 580,000 Macedonians live outside North Macedonia per 1964 estimates with Australia , Canada , and the United States being home to the largest emigrant communities. Consequently, the number of speakers of Macedonian in these countries include 66,020 (2016 census), 15,605 (2016 census) and 22,885 (2010 census), respectively. Macedonian also has more than 50,000 native speakers in countries of Western Europe , predominantly in Germany , Switzerland and Italy . The Macedonian language has
25137-449: The late 19th and early 20th century outside Macedonia. At different points in their lives, most of them expressed conflicting statements about the ethnicity of the Slavs living in Macedonia, including their own nationality. They formed their pro-Macedonian conceptions after contacts with some panslavic circles in Serbia and Russia. The lack of diverse ethnic motivations seems to be confirmed by
25326-666: The late 19th and early 20th century the international community viewed the Macedonians predominantly as a regional variety of the Bulgarians. At the end of the First World War there were very few ethnographers who agreed that a separate Macedonian nation existed. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Allies sanctioned Serbian control of Vardar Macedonia and accepted the belief that Macedonian Slavs were in fact Southern Serbs. This change in opinion can largely be attributed to
25515-458: The local Slavs to designate most of the territory of today's geographical region of Macedonia and the names Bulgaria and Moesia were identified with each other. Self-identifying as "Bulgarian" on account of their language , the local Slavs considered themselves as "Rum", i.e. members of the community of Orthodox Christians . This community was a source of identity for all the ethnic groups inside it and most people identified mostly with it. Until
25704-641: The local inhabitants. The communists' power started growing only in 1943 with the capitulation of Italy and the Soviet victories over Nazi Germany. To improve the situation in the area Tito ordered the establishment of the Communist Party of Macedonia in March 1943 and the second AVNOJ congress on 29 November 1943 did recognise the Macedonian nation as separate entity. As a result the resistance movement grew and in August 1944
25893-460: The members was also Krste Misirkov. In 1905 the Society published Vardar , the first scholarly, scientific and literary journal in the central dialects of Macedonia, which later would contribute in the standardization of Macedonian language . During the 1913–14 period, Čupovski published the newspaper Makedonski Golos' (Македонскi Голосъ) (meaning Macedonian voice ) in which he and fellow members of
26082-463: The middle of the 19th century, the Greeks also called the Slavs in Macedonia "Bulgarians", and regarded them predominantly as Orthodox brethren, but the rise of Bulgarian nationalism changed the Greek position. At that time, the Orthodox Christian community began to degrade with the continuous identification of the religious creed with ethnic identity , while Bulgarian national activists started
26271-474: The middle vowels / е / and / о / by native Macedonian speakers, various vowel sounds can be produced ranging from [ɛ] to [ẹ] and from [o] to [ọ]. Unstressed vowels are not reduced , although they are pronounced more weakly and shortly than stressed ones, especially if they are found in a stressed syllable. The five vowels and the letter р (/r/) which acts as a vowel when found between two consonants (e.g. црква , "church"), can be syllable-forming. The schwa
26460-625: The most widespread and most likely to be adopted by speakers from other regions. The initial idea to select this region as a base was first proposed in Krste Petkov Misirkov's works as he believed the Macedonian language should abstract on those dialects that are distinct from neighboring Slavic languages, such as Bulgarian and Serbian. Based on a large group of features, Macedonian dialects can be divided into Eastern, Western and Northern groups. The boundary between them geographically runs approximately from Skopje and Skopska Crna Gora along
26649-509: The movement aiming at the construction of the Bulgarian standard literary language primarily on the Macedonian dialects, such as Kuzman Shapkarev , Dimitar Makedonski and Veniamin Machukovski . Another early recorded use of the term "Macedonism" is found in a report by the Serbian politician Stojan Novaković from 1887. He proposed to employ the Macedonistic ideology as a means to counteract
26838-401: The newspaper Makedoniya in 1871. However, he pointed out that he had heard for the first time of such ideas as early as 10 years prior, i.e. around 1860. Slaveykov sharply criticised those Macedonians espousing such views, as they had never shown a substantial basis for their attitudes, calling them "Macedonists". Nevertheless, those accused of Slaveikov as Macedonists were representative of
27027-405: The official website of the Macedonian Encyclopedia that is published by the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts uses the word 'Macedonism' as its domain name . The term is used in Bulgaria in an insulting and derogatory manner, to discredit the development of Macedonian nationalism during the 19th and 20th centuries. The term is widely seen as a Greater Serbian aspiration, aiming to split
27216-832: The one there (fem.)) and unspecific ( тоа - that one (neut.)) objects. These pronouns have served as a basis for the definite article. Macedonian verbs agree with the subject in person (first, second or third) and number (singular or plural). Some dependent verb constructions ( нелични глаголски форми ) such as verbal adjectives ( глаголска придавка : плетен/плетена ), verbal l-form ( глаголска л-форма : играл/играла ) and verbal noun ( глаголска именка : плетење ) also demonstrate gender. There are several other grammatical categories typical of Macedonian verbs, namely type, transitiveness, mood, superordinate aspect (imperfective/perfective aspect ). Verb forms can also be classified as simple, with eight possible verb constructions or complex with ten possible constructions. Macedonian has developed
27405-437: The other South Slavs in their ethnic composition. More importantly, their national character was decidedly un-Slavic. Bulgarians were industrious and coarse. They were a people without imagination and therefore necessarily without art and culture. This caricature of the Bulgarians permitted their clear differentiation from the "Central Type," within which Cvijic included Macedonian Slavs, western Bulgarians ( Shopi ), and Torlaks,
27594-481: The other Bulgarian dialects, which they called "shopski". During the 1880s, after recommendation by Stojan Novaković , the Serbian government also began to support those ideas to counteract the Bulgarian influence in Macedonia, claiming the Macedonian Slavs were in fact pure Slavs (i.e. Serbian Macedonians ), while the Bulgarians, unlike them, were partially a mixture of Slavs and Bulgars (i.e. Tatars). In accordance with Novaković's agenda this Serbian "Macedonism"
27783-421: The other hand, the ethnic Albanians in the country insisted on being recognised as a nation, equal to the ethnic Macedonians. As a response, a more assertive and uncompromising form of Macedonian nationalism emerged. At that time the concept of ancient Paionian identity was changed to a kind of mixed Paionian-Macedonian identity which was later transformed to a separate ancient Macedonian identity , establishing
27972-440: The other languages in that it had linguistic elements from Serbian , Bulgarian , Church Slavonic , and Albanian . Pulevski analyzed the folk histories of the Slavic Macedonian people, in which he concluded that Slavic Macedonians were ethnically linked to the people of the ancient Kingdom of Macedonia of Philip and Alexander the Great based on the claim that the ancient Macedonian language had Slavic components in it and thus
28161-452: The plural ( убави мажи, убави жени, убави деца ). Adjectives can be analytically inflected for degree of comparison with the prefix по- marking the comparative and the prefix нај- marking the superlative . Both prefixes cannot be written separately from the adjective: Марија е паметна девојка (Marija is a smart girl), Марија е попаметна од Сара (Marija is smarter than Sara), Марија е најпаметната девојка во нејзиниот клас (Marija
28350-455: The policy reduced international sympathy for the Republic of Macedonia in the then-naming dispute with Greece. The background of this antiquization can be found in the 19th century and the myth of ancient descent among Orthodox Slavic-speakers in Macedonia. It was adopted partially due to Greek cultural inputs. This idea was also included in the national mythology during the post-WWII Yugoslavia . An additional factor for its preservation has been
28539-417: The property of being transitive. Philhellenism Philhellenism ("the love of Greek culture") was an intellectual movement prominent mostly at the turn of the 19th century. It contributed to the sentiments that led Europeans such as Lord Byron , Charles Nicolas Fabvier and Richard Church to advocate for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire . The later 19th-century European philhellenism
28728-405: The region of Macedonia, which was at that time ruled by the Ottoman Empire . It was originally used in a contemptuous manner to refer to Slav Macedonians, who believed they constituted a distinct ethnic group , separate from their neighbours. The first to use the term "Macedonist" was the Bulgarian author Petko Slaveykov , who coined the term in his article " The Macedonian Question ", published in
28917-437: The region. Also, the demise of the IMRO and its ideology for much of the interwar period led a part of the young local intellectuals in Vardar Macedonia , regarded at that time as Serbs, to find a solution in the ideology of Macedonism. This issue was supported during the Second World War by the Communist Resistance and in 1944 the wartime Communist leader Josip Broz Tito proclaimed the People's Republic of Macedonia as part of
29106-435: The remaining South Slavic languages in that they do not use noun cases (except for the vocative , and apart from some traces of once productive inflections still found scattered throughout these two) and have lost the infinitive . They are also the only Slavic languages with any definite articles (unlike standard Bulgarian, which uses only one article, standard Macedonian as well as some south-eastern Bulgarian dialects have
29295-444: The republic, is marked as Macedonian Language Day . This is a working holiday , declared as such by the government of North Macedonia in 2019. Macedonian belongs to the eastern group of the South Slavic branch of Slavic languages in the Indo-European language family, together with Bulgarian and the extinct Old Church Slavonic . Some authors also classify the Torlakian dialects in this group. Macedonian's closest relative
29484-534: The restoration of absolute monarchy at home, the idea of the re-creation of a Greek state on the very territories that were sanctified by their view of Antiquity—which was reflected even in the furnishings of their own parlors and the contents of their bookcases—offered an ideal, set at a romantic distance. Under these conditions, the Greek uprising constituted a source of inspiration and expectations that could never actually be fulfilled, disappointing what Paul Cartledge called "the Victorian self-identification with
29673-414: The rivers Vardar and Crna . There are numerous isoglosses between these dialectal variations, with structural differences in phonetics, prosody (accentuation), morphology and syntax. The Western group of dialects can be subdivided into smaller dialectal territories, the largest group of which includes the central dialects. The linguistic territory where Macedonian dialects were spoken also span outside
29862-416: The root of masculine nouns. For feminine nouns, the most common final vowel ending in the vocative is -o ( душо , sweetheart vocative; жено , wife vocative). The final suffix -e can be used in the following cases: three or polysyllabic words with the ending -ица ( мајчице , mother vocative), female given names that end with -ка : Ратка becomes Ратке and -ја : Марија becomes Марије or Маријо . There
30051-439: The same rules ( не‿му‿јá‿даде , did not give it to him; не‿ќé‿дојде , he will not come). Other uses include the imperative form accompanied by short pronoun forms ( дáј‿ми : give me), the expression of possessives ( мáјка‿ми ), prepositions followed by a noun ( зáд‿врата ), question words followed by verbs ( когá‿дојде ) and some compound nouns ( сувó‿грозје - raisins, киселó‿млеко - yoghurt) among others. Macedonian grammar
30240-548: The same stress. Linking is a common feature of the Macedonian language. This linguistic phenomenon is called акцентска целост and is denoted with a spacing tie ( ‿ ) sign. Several words are taken as a single unit and thus follow the rules of the stress falling on the antepenultimate syllable. The rule applies when using clitics (either enclitics or proclitics) such as the negating particle не with verbs ( тој нé‿дојде , he did not come) and with short pronoun forms. The future particle ќе can also be used in-between and falls under
30429-460: The schwa in the same way: ⟨ МПЦ ⟩ ( [mə.pə.t͡sə] ). The lexicalized acronyms ⟨ СССР ⟩ ( [ɛs.ɛs.ɛs.ɛr] ) and ⟨МТ⟩ ( [ɛm.tɛ] ) (a brand of cigarettes), are among the few exceptions. Vowel length is not phonemic. Vowels in stressed open syllables in disyllabic words with stress on the penultimate can be realized as long, e.g. ⟨Велес⟩ [ˈvɛːlɛs] ' Veles '. The sequence /aa/
30618-435: The speaker, excluding the time component in the latter case. Examples: Но, потоа се случија работи за кои не знаев ("But then things happened that I did not know about") vs. Ми кажаа дека потоа се случиле работи за кои не знаев ("They told me that after, things happened that I did not know about"). The present tense in Macedonian is formed by adding a suffix to the verb stem which is inflected per person, form and number of
30807-441: The status of an official language only in North Macedonia, and is a recognized minority and official language in parts of Albania ( Pustec ), Romania , Serbia ( Jabuka and Plandište ) and Bosnia and Herzegovina . There are provisions to learn Macedonian in Romania as Macedonians are an officially recognized minority group. Macedonian is studied and taught at various universities across the world and research centers focusing on
30996-451: The strong Bulgarian influence in the region. Instead, the Serbian government believed that providing support to Macedonian nationalists would stimulate opposition to incorporation into Bulgaria and favourable attitudes to Serbia. Another country that encouraged Macedonian nationalism was Austria-Hungary that sought to deny both Serbia and Bulgaria the ability to annex Macedonia, and asserted a distinct ethnic character of Slavic Macedonians. In
31185-401: The subject. Macedonian verbs are conventionally divided into three main conjugations according to the thematic vowel used in the citation form (i.e. 3p - pres - sg ). These groups are: a -group, e -group and и -group. Furthermore, the и -subgroup is divided into three more subgroups: а- , е- and и- subgroups. The verb сум (to be) is the only exception to the rule as it ends with
31374-540: The third from last syllable in words with three or more syllables, and on the first or only syllable in other words. This is sometimes disregarded when the word has entered the language more recently or from a foreign source. To note which syllable of the word should be accented, Macedonian uses an apostrophe over its vowels. Disyllabic words are stressed on the second-to-last syllable: дéте ( [ˈdɛtɛ] : child), мáјка ( [ˈmajka] : mother) and тáтко ( [ˈtatkɔ] : father). Trisyllabic and polysyllabic words are stressed on
31563-673: The third-to-last syllable: плáнина ( [ˈpɫanina] : mountain) планѝната ( [pɫaˈninata] : the mountain) планинáрите ( [pɫaniˈnaritɛ] : the mountaineers). There are several exceptions to the rule and they include: verbal adverbs (i.e. words suffixed with -ќи ): e.g. викáјќи ( [viˈkajci] : shouting), одéјќи ( [ɔˈdɛjci] : walking); adverbs of time: годинáва ( [godiˈnava] : this year), летóво ( [leˈtovo] : this summer); foreign loanwords : e.g. клишé ( [kliˈʃɛ:] cliché), генéза ( [ɡɛˈnɛza] genesis), литератýра ( [litɛraˈtura] : literature), Алексáндар ( [alɛkˈsandar] , Alexander ). Linking occurs when two or more words are pronounced with
31752-404: The transnational region of Macedonia . Macedonian is also a recognized minority language in parts of Albania , Bosnia and Herzegovina , Romania , and Serbia and it is spoken by expatriate communities predominantly in Australia , Canada , and the United States . Macedonian developed out of the western dialects of the Eastern South Slavic dialect continuum , whose earliest recorded form
31941-425: The use of a dynamic stress that falls on the ante-penultimate syllable, three suffixed deictic articles that indicate noun position in reference to the speaker and the use of simple and complex verb tenses . Macedonian orthography is phonemic with a correspondence of one grapheme per phoneme . It is written using an adapted 31-letter version of the Cyrillic script with six original letters. Macedonian syntax
32130-425: The verb in its uninflected form ( го имам гледано филмот , "I have seen that movie"). Another past form, the aorist is used to describe actions that have finished at a given moment in the past: одев ("I walked"), скокаа ("they jumped"). Future forms of verbs are conjugated using the particle ќе followed by the verb conjugated in present tense, ќе одам (I will go). The construction used to express negation in
32319-412: The village of Galicnik", he also identified the Slavic Macedonian language as being related to the "Old Bulgarian language" as well as being a "Serbo-Albanian language". Pulevski's numerous identifications reveal the absence of a clear ethnic sense in a part of the local Slavic population. The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) grew up as the major Macedonian separatist organization in
32508-404: The white race", who are described as "Macedonoids", in opposition to Negroids and Mongoloids . This ultra-nationalism accompanied by the emphasizing of North Macedonia's ancient roots has raised concerns internationally about growing a kind of authoritarianism by the governing party. There have also been attempts at scientific claims about ancient nationhood, but they have had a negative impact on
32697-465: The whole Slavic population of Macedonia, obliterating the existing division between Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbians. The adoption of a separate "Macedonian language" was also advocated and he outlined an overview of the Macedonian grammar and expressed the ultimate goal of codifying the language and using it as the language of instruction in the education system. The book was written in the dialect of central Macedonia ( Veles - Prilep - Bitola - Ohrid ) which
32886-406: The writings of the first generation of art historians, like Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing . The groundswell of the Philhellenic movement was result of two generations of intrepid artists and amateur treasure-seekers, from Stuart and Revett, who published their measured drawings as The Antiquities of Athens and culminating with the removal of sculptures from Aegina and
33075-446: The young locals repressed by the Serbs attempted at a separate way of ethnic development. Some of the leftist activists of MFO , IMRO (United) and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia expressed Macedonian national ideas. In 1934 the Comintern in accordance with IMRO (United) issued a resolution about the recognition of a separate Macedonian ethnicity . However, the existence of considerable Macedonian national consciousness prior to
33264-421: Was also in this context that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Hölderlin were to compose poetry and prose in the field of literature, elevating Hellenic themes in their works. One of the most renowned German philhellenes of the 19th century was Friedrich Nietzsche . In the German states , the private obsession with ancient Greece took public forms, institutionalizing an elite philhellene ethos through
33453-414: Was also introduced by the Greek clergy and teachers among the local Slavophones with an aim to stimulate the development of close ties between them and the Greeks, linking both sides to the ancient Macedonians , as a counteract against the growing Bulgarian influence there. The first attempts for creation of the Macedonian ethnicity can be said to have begun in the late 19th and early 20th century. This
33642-440: Was applied to the local Slavs. The idea was to stimulate the development of close ties between them and the Greeks, linking both sides to the ancient Macedonians , as a counteract against the growing Bulgarian cultural influence into the region. In 1845, for instance, the Alexander romance was published in Slavic Macedonian dialect typed with Greek letters. At the same time the Russian ethnographer Victor Grigorovich described
33831-418: Was constructed to conceptualize that Vardar Macedonia was neither Illyrian nor Thracian, favouring a more complex division, contrary to scientific claims about strict Thraco-Illyrian Balkan separation in neighbouring Bulgaria and Albania. Yugoslav Macedonian historiography argued also that the plausible link between the Slav Macedonians and their ancient namesakes was, at best, accidental. On 8 September 1991,
34020-444: Was largely to be found among the Classicists . In antiquity, the term philhellene ("the admirer of Greeks and everything Greek"), from the ( Greek : φιλέλλην , from φίλος - philos , "friend", "lover" + Ἕλλην - Hellen , "Greek") was used to describe both non-Greeks who were fond of ancient Greek culture and Greeks who patriotically upheld their culture. The Liddell-Scott Greek-English Lexicon defines 'philhellene' as "fond of
34209-607: Was looking for the book but he could not find it"). Perfective verbs are usually formed by adding prefixes to the stem of the verb, depending on which, they can express actions that took place in one moment ( чукна , "knocked"), actions that have just begun ( запеа , "start to sing"), actions that have ended ( прочита , "read") or partial actions that last for short periods of time ( поработи , "worked"). The contrast between transitive and intransitive verbs can be expressed analytically or syntactically and virtually all verbs denoting actions performed by living beings can become transitive if
34398-406: Was not the only engine for such ideas. At that time some pan-Slavic propagandists believed the early Slavs were related to the paleo-Balkan tribes. Under these influences, some intellectuals in the region developed the idea on direct link between the local Slavs, the early Slavs and the ancient Balkan populations. In Ottoman times, names such as "Lower Bulgaria" and "Lower Moesia" were used by
34587-403: Was prohibited. The Bulgarian notes to the League of Nations , consented to recognize a Bulgarian minority in Yugoslavia were rejected. The members of the Council of the League assumed that the existence of some Bulgarian minority there was possible, however, they were determined to keep Yugoslavia and were aware that any exercise of revisionism, would open an uncontrollable wave of demands, turning
34776-414: Was proposed by Misirkov as the basis for the future language, and, as Misirkov says, a dialect which is most different from all other neighboring languages (Bulgarian and Serbian). Another significant activist for the ethnic Macedonian national revival was Dimitrija Čupovski , who was one of the founders and the president of the Macedonian Literary Society established in 1902 in Saint Petersburg . One of
34965-408: Was recently built in Bitola . Additionally, many pieces of public infrastructure, such as airports, highways, and stadiums have been named after ancient historical figures or entities. Skopje's airport was renamed "Alexander the Great Airport" and features antique objects moved from Skopje's archeological museum. One of Skopje's main squares has been renamed Pella Square (after Pella , the capital of
35154-423: Was revived to mean a separate geographical region on the Balkans, this occurring in the early 19th century, after the foundation of the modern Greek state, with its Western Europe-derived obsession with the Ancient world. However, as a result of the massive Greek religious and school propaganda, a kind of Macedonization occurred among the Greek and non-Greek speaking population of the area. The name Macedonian Slavs
35343-420: Was the first attempt to formalize a separate literary language. With the book, the author proposed a Macedonian grammar and expressed the goal of codifying the language and using it in schools. The author postulated the principle that the Prilep-Bitola dialect be used as a dialectal basis for the formation of the Macedonian standard language; his idea however was not adopted until the 1940s. On 2 August 1944 at
35532-477: Was the time of the first expressions of Macedonism by limited groups of intellectuals in Belgrade , Sofia , Thessaloniki and St. Petersburg . However, up until the 20th century and beyond, the majority of the Slavic-speaking population of the region was identified as Macedono-Bulgarian or simply as Bulgarian and after 1870 joined the Bulgarian Exarchate . Although he was appointed Bulgarian metropolitan bishop, in 1891 Theodosius of Skopje attempted to restore
35721-472: Was transformed in the 1890s, in a process of the gradual Serbianisation of the Macedonian Slavs. By the end of the 19th century, according to Vasil Kanchov , the local Bulgarians called themselves Macedonians, and the surrounding nations called them Macedonians. In the early 20th century, Pavel Shatev witnessed this process of slow differentiation, describing people who insisted on their Bulgarian nationality, but felt themselves Macedonians above all. However
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