Historical maps of the Vlachs regions

Originally posted by Maria d. The earliest known examples of written Aromanian are manuscripts of the Patriarch Fotius dating from around 860-870 AD, and manuscripts written by St. Naum of Ohrid at about the same time.

Can anyone present excerpts from these? I've encountered this claim on several sites but without a single evidence.

Menumorut
Don't you know that most of theHellenophon population of Ellada (today Greece) was exterminated during the early Middle Age? Peloponissos, Thessalia and the other areas were Slav speaking sometimes, then Byzantine emperors recolonized them with Hellenophones from Minor Asia.

Menumorut I understand that when you speak to a Greek you will try to proove that Greeks are not Greeks because you have anything other to say negative  for Greek history(there are).
But before I give you some links I want to ask you something.Do you really believe what you have writen???? Do you really believe that we are hellenised Slavs?? When you think a greek look how it is??? Blond,tall,blue eyes.white skin??? I suppose no because it isn't like this.The average Greek is totaly different with medium height,brown eyes,brown hair,skin light brown(I mean not light as our neighbors but not dark as our eastern,middleastern "neighbors.
I suppose that you've read it a propagandistic antigreek site(there are many). But before you post something think better.
In our language there are about 25-35 slavic words almost all about agriculture and pastoral life. The toponyms which were the argument of Fallmerayer(the original inventor of that theory who repeled by Greek and non-Greek historians,linguists,folklore scientists,anthropologists and genetists) are about 10-12% of the toponyms in Greece but all except one are not located near the coast where Greeks always were many within big numerous cities and only three town have slavic names. All the slavic toponyms are toponyms of small villages isolated up on the mountains.But Fallmerayer stoped his story and he didn't continued to say what happened to the Slavs. My city(Patras) alone managed to repel the Slav attacks ALONE, imagine a city to repel a hypothetical huge slavic population... Emperors deported a huge amount of Slavs of Macedonia and Thrace to Bithynia and Macedonia managed to keep its Greek majority.
Now in Peloponnesos where I am from "welcomed" two slavic tribes:the Ezerites and the Milingoi. As I said before the Slavs of Peloponnesus attacked Patras and when they defeated  they became vassals of Saint Andreas church(he is the protector of the city,here he crussified by the Romans) and untill today we call a branch of 10 villages  in a near mountain Ezerochoria(Ezerites'  villages) just because they were isolated fro the Greek population which was the majority. The remains of Slavs in South Peloponnesus concetrated after Byzantine pressure in the western part of Taygetus mountains and Gortys mountains of Gortys in Arcadia. They survived as slavic-speaking until around 1400 showing that the Byzantine state didn't hellenise the Slavs but only christianised them.The hellenisation of the Slavs was a result of the Greeks around them which were the majority.Also you are right that the state brought Greeks(and not just Hellenophones) from Minor Asia and Magna Grecia also.

On the other hand Romanians have countless slavic words in your dictionary and the slavic input its obvious even facially.

Try these links to see some important things about that issue,see also the links and references of that article.
http://www.answers.com/topic/jakob-philipp-fallmerayer

In your post I see that you write Hellenophones and not Greeks,can you explain to me this alteration????


And look good in your links about Greeks and Aromanians photos. Ask an american friend to learn what is that "greek weekend" and who are those "greeks".Are these brothers in the 8th photo Greeks?????


Edited by Patrinos - 06-Nov-2006 at 11:14

Originally posted by Menumorut This maybe is a Greek dream (all the minorities to leave Greece). Why should they leave the land where they are oldest inhabitants than the Greeks?

Do you understand what i am writing?
Did i say that that any minorities should leave Greece?
The pro-Romanian vlachs left Greece freewillingly,nobody obliged these people to leave
nobody put pressure on them to leave.They made their decision and left.Things are simple.The vlachs of Greece are not a minority of course.

Oldest inhabitants than the Greeks?What does this mean?I can't follow you here.

I repeat that Aromanians in Romania didn't adopted Romanian identity but Aromanian identity. But even they would adopt an identity like Romanian, should they leave Greece?

The decision was theirs.Nobody put pressure on them to leave.But they left.Today these Romanian nationals can be whatever they want to be,Romanians,Aromanians whatever...

Their opinion is not relevant but the historical truth. This theoreticaly because practicaly I'm convinced that Aromanians don't think they are Greeks and don't want to be Greeks.

How are you convinced.Have you spoken with vlachs of Greece,have you asked them if they feel Greeks or not?If you had asked them you would realise that 99,99..% of the vlach speaking Greeks feel Greeks
and are Greeks.
You speak as a nationalist

In Romania too several non-Romanians contributed to the Romanian national State ideal. For example the music of the national anthem is composed (specialy for a patriotic poem which in 1990 became national anthem) by the famous Roma musician Anton Pann (born in Bulgaria) and thre most famous patriotic painting of 19th century is painted by a Jew:

the vlachs at the time when the Greek state was established were not non-greeks.They regarded themselves Greeks and they were Greeks.

Were they regular soldiers or not?

During the Greek Independence war there were few regular soldiers.The Revolution started in your land,in Wallachia
by Lord Alexandros Ypsilantis (descendant of a noble byzantine family).He was an officer of the Russian army,he gathered voluntiers and Greek students from
all over Europe and formed the Sacred Band.Apart from this regular unit there were bands of irregulars.Their leaders were mostly vlachs like Georgios Olympios and Ioannis Farmakis.
These irregulars were the personal bodyguards  of Ypsilantis.I assume that you know what happened next.The revolution was crushed by the turks,Olympios blew himself up in a monastery when the turks entered to arrest him
and Alexandros Ypsilantis was arrested by the Austrians.It is worth noting that the wallachians didn't help at all and caused problems to the revolution.
During the War of Independence in Greece there were many vlachs in charge of irregular units.Many died in Mesolonghi when it was besieged by the turks and at the time of the sortie.

The vlachs were regular soldiers during the Greco-italian war.Most of the first units that faced the first italian assaults were comprised of the local population of Epirus and Macdonia including many vlachs. During the German-Italian occupation the vlachs entered the Resistance,either the National Popular Liberation Army or the EDES.
Military general of the National Popular Liberation Army(guerillas) was General Sarafis who was himself of vlach origin.

Did they make Greeks abandon the territories?

No,they didn't.The slavs as i answered to you in a previous post were assimilated in the course of time by the most numerous surrounding Greeks
Let's end the discussion here.You have your opinion,i have mine,ok?



Edited by nikodemos - 06-Nov-2006 at 16:32

The pro-Romanian vlachs left Greece freewillingly,nobody obliged these people to leave nobody put pressure on them to leave.

There are not 'pro-Romanian' Vlachs. There were some Vlachs who decided to establish in Romania and other who remained in their native lands.

I know that nobody pressed them to leave but the preservation of their cultural identity is endangered due to assimilationist intentions of Greeks. They are in continuous numeric decrease and this is not only a natural phenomenon but a premeditated program of Greek State, the only State which ...has no minorities.

The vlachs of Greece are not a minority of course.

How that? How only in Greece the Aromanians are not a minority, but they are a minority in Albania, FYROM and Romania? get out of your fake dreams:

Council of Europe Aromanians Report.

Why don't you use the term Aromanians which is the name of this people used by them and by all European nations excepting Greeks?


Read this:
Greek activists claim that Aromanian derives from Greek, but this is not believed by scholars outside of Greece. As with all cultural matters in the Balkans, the question of the origins and relationships of the Aromanian language is a political question, and in Macedonia many active Vlachs are wary of associating themselves with the Romanian or Greek "propagandas" which have since the late 19th Century claimed in some manner that the Aromanians are "really" Romanian, or "really" Greek.
...
The independent Balkan Christian nations surrounding Macedonia saw it as a pie ready to be divided and consumed. There was a move for Macedonian independence, but it was small and poorly financed compared to the movements supported by nation-states. The Macedonian (Makedonski)-speaking people of what is now the Republic of Macedonia, of Bulgaria, and of Greece were the primary targets of what their descendants in the Republic of Macedonia now call "the propagandas." Bulgarians, who by now had an independent church called the "exarchate" and separate millet status within the Ottoman Empire, financed churches and schools throughout Macedonia to influence the population toward a Bulgarian "national consciousness." The Greeks, who inherited the millet of Rum, in their turn financed schools and churches influencing the people toward conceiving themselves as nationally "Greek" whatever their ethnic origin. A significant number of both Aromanians and Macedonian-speaking people in fact were so influenced.

In the Aromanian villages it was not the Bulgarians and Greeks who strived for the national consciousness of the Vlachs. It was the Romanians and the Greeks. The Greeks had the advantage of being a long-established, wealthy, commercial culture with a respected language and a dominant church. But some Aromanians, keeping in mind that their language is closer to Romanian than to any other living language in the Balkans, accepted the Romanian position that the Aromanians are really Romanians. The Romanians supported this position with money for schools and churches, but it was the Romanian language of Bucharest, rather than the Aromanian language of the Pelister villages, which was taught in schools and which formed the basis for the church services. The first Romanian-language school in the Aromanian world was established in Trnovo in 1864, but later in the 19th Century the split between Romanophile and Grecophile Aromanians turned bloody. One of our interviews mentions that the Greeks killed the Romanian teacher in Trnovo and then the people of that village could only attend the Greek school.

The Aromanians of Macedonia


See also
The Albanian Aromanians� Awakening


Linguisticaly and genethicaly, Aromanians are totaly different than Greeks:

Oldest inhabitants than the Greeks?What does this mean?I can't follow you here.

That the Aromanians are the descendants of Illyrians, Macedonians and Thracians, who preceded Greeks in Balkans.

How are you convinced.Have you spoken with vlachs of Greece,have you asked them if they feel Greeks or not?If you had asked them you would realise that 99,99..% of the vlach speaking Greeks feel Greeks and are Greeks.

They will awake from this lie of Greek propaganda.
Aromanian Vlachs: The Vanishing Tribes

the vlachs at the time when the Greek state was established were not non-greeks.They regarded themselves Greeks and they were Greeks.

Lie.
Aromanians played an important role in the independence wars of various Balkan countries: Bulgaria, Albania and Greece, against the Ottoman Empire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromanians




    

Edited by Menumorut - 06-Nov-2006 at 17:14

Originally posted by Menumorut They will awake from this lie of Greek propaganda. Aromanian Vlachs: The Vanishing Tribes

And suddenly you woke up....Welcome back to the real world

That the Aromanians are the descendants of Illyrians, Macedonians and Thracians, who preceded Greeks in Balkans.

Are you kidding me?
The pre-hellenic population of Greece were the Pelasgians,the Penestai and others.Why are you writing BS?
The pelasgians and the others were non Indo-European people while the Illyrians and the Thracians were Indo-European.The thracian language is believed to have been one of the closest to the Greek language,along with Phrygian and Armenian.This means that the Greeks,the Phrygians and the thracians-illyrians split from an older IE group after the invasion in the Balkans.

We can now take our development of the Indo-European family tree a stage further by splitting the Western sub-family into two and the Eastern initially into three,and then into five.The Western pair are Celto-Italic and Illyrian*.The initial three-way division of the Easterners is into Germanics and Balto-Slavics in the north,Greeks and Thracians in the south-west,and Aryans in the east.The reason why the Germanics then split offfrom the Balto-Slavics is plain to see: the Germanic Heimat,the Scandinavian archipelago, is a littoral ecosphere that could hardly stand in sharper contrast to the Balto-Slavic world with its simple shoreline and contnental focus.Much the same formulation applies to the Greeks and Thracians.Around the date of this map( that is 2250 BC) the Greeks established their seperate identity by moving into the peninsula they have occupied ever since: the original Graeco-Thracian Heimat, extending from the Axios to the Don, subsequently became the preserve of the Thracians.Beyond the Don lay the relatively harsh lands that sustained the as yet undivided Aryan stock. Page 30 , Colin Mc Evedy, the New Penguin Atlas of ancient history, Penguin Books, second edition 2002

* It is worth noting that in the Greek mythology the Illyrian is the brother of the Celt and the Gaul


Edited by nikodemos - 07-Nov-2006 at 09:09

Originally posted by Maria d. The earliest known examples of written Aromanian are manuscripts of the Patriarch Fotius dating from around 860-870 AD, and manuscripts written by St. Naum of Ohrid at about the same time.

In the Greek wikipedia is stated that the earliest written document in vlach is an inscription on an icon of Virgin Mary made by a certain Nektarios Terpos in 1731 in the village Ardenitsa,which is located somewhere in southern Albania.

From about 200 known Thracian words, 37 share similarity with greek words, Slavic languages 34, 70 Lithuanian and 50 Latvian. I wouldn�t say it was closest to greek language.

From about 200 known Thracian words, 37 share similarity with greek words, Slavic languages 34, 70 Lithuanian and 50 Latvian. I wouldn�t say it was closest to greek language.

Though I'm no specialist, I can tell you this is not how you compare languages. Much more important are considerents related to phonetics (related sounds, languages do not differ only by how different successions of sounds form a word, but also by the set of the sounds itself), grammar and core vocabulary. More related to this thread would be the example of Romanian, a language where if you choose some semantic areas or look for specific regionalisms (not actually dialectal differences, just words with regional coverage) you can find an impressive percentage of Slavic words, but the language is not at all closest to any of the Slavic languages, it is a Romance language.

Edited by Chilbudios - 07-Nov-2006 at 17:52

But from 4 inscriptions and no mp3 records of Thracian language it is hard to make a conclusion that it was closest to Greek language based on phonetics and sounds

Generally there are no mp3 records of ancient languages yet that didn't stop scholars not only to discover them, but also to know how they sounded. Indeed, the scarcity of Thracian words/fragments it is the biggest difficulty for Thracian linguists.

Edited by Chilbudios - 07-Nov-2006 at 21:29