THE ALBANIAN LANGUAGE ALMOST BECAME OFFICIAL IN GREECE - Part 01

THE ALBANIAN LANGUAGE ALMOST BECAME OFFICIAL IN GREECE

It is estimated that about 3.5 million Albanians live in Greece today (35% of the total Greek population) and like the Macedonian and Turkish minorities; they are not recognized by the Greek state. Let us not forget that there are also thousands of Albanian migrant workers who work in Northern Greece at seasonal jobs and contribute to the Greek economy. Unfortunately Greece only recognizes Muslims without specifying their ethnic background be it Turkish, Albanian, or other.

According to Ljalja’s research however, the number of Albanians living in today’s Greek territory is much larger than currently estimated because during the period from 1856 to 1858 two thirds of the population (66%) living in Greece was Albanian. The Albanians even had their own representatives in the Greek parliament. It was during this period that the Greek Parliament openly debated the issue of making the Albanian language a second official language of the Greek state. But that did not happen.

The first Albanian publication in Greece “Voice of Albania” appeared in 1890. It was published by Anastas Kulorioti in the Albanian language but was quickly shut down by the Greek state and Kulorioti was immediately jailed. Anastas Kulorioti died from poisoning in a Greek prison.

Immediately after the Ambassadorial conference in London in 1913, even though the Chemerija (Chamurija) region was populated by an Albanian majority, it was given to Greece anyway. Greek authorities conducted massive population expulsions not only of Turks but also

of Albanians and Macedonians. As a result, according to estimates compiled by Albanian organizations and historians, there were around 260,000 Albanians exiled from Greece in the subsequent 64 years. The 1923 Lausanne agreement which recognized that there was a sizable Albanian minority living in Greece and called on the Greek state to provide basic human rights, such as education and religious rights, did not help at all.

Then in the period from 1913 to 1948, in place of the exiled Macedonians, Albanians and Turks, Greek authorities deposited more than 1.5 million colonist settlers from Asia Minor, Pontus and other regions because they supposedly were the descendents of Alexander the Great.

TWENTY-SEVEN GREEK PRIME MINISTERS HAVE ALBANIAN DESCENT

Things in the Balkans are very much mixed-up and so intertwined that it is normal to assume that people are very much mixed. The Balkans is the place where one can find all kinds of people in a single region which is also the subject for Ljalja’s latest thesis. According to Ljalja’s findings, 27 out of the 57 former Greek Prime Ministers are of Albanian descent.

Former Greek Foreign Affairs Minister Theodoros Pangalos, a Greek government representative, on occasion openly spoke about his Albanian background

Speaking of Albanians occupying high positions in the Greek government, Ljalja’s investigation has revealed that even the Greek President, Karolos Papuljas is of Albanian descent. According to Ljalja, Papuljas is a Cham (from Chamurija), born in the village Voshtina, one kilometer away from today’s Greek-Albanian border. His ancestors were Muslims with the last name Sulejmani. About 120 years ago Papuljas’s ancestors converted to Christianity and changed their name. Ljalja supports this assertion with evidence which he received from a well-known Albanian actor who studied with Papuljas and with whom the Greek President maintains contact to this day.

Source:

Petre Dimitrov, Forum, December 12, 2008 Translated and edited by Risto Stefov

About the Greek Language

By Risto Stefov rstefov@hotmail.com March 21, 2010

There is much to say about the so-called “Greek language” about its inception some 3,000 years ago and about its evolution to what is supposedly spoken in Greece today. But is the language spoken in Greece today a “Greek language”, whatever that may mean, or a mix of various languages that modern Greeks speak today?

There are a couple of reasons why I am bringing this up at this time. One is to remind the Greeks that although they call their language “Greek”, implying that it is the language of the so-called “ancient Greeks”, it is not. The second reason is that two can play this game. Greeks tell me that there is no such thing as a Macedonian language and what I call Macedonian is no more than a mix of “Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek and Albanian with some other foreign words added to it here and there”. While these same Greeks claim that there is no such thing as a “Macedonian language”, they boast that they speak the language of the ancient Greeks.

Well let’s put this theory to a test shall we?

First and foremost, the language that modern Greeks speak today is not their mother tongue. When Modern Greece became a country for the first time in 1829, the majority of the so-called first Greeks spoke Arvanitika (Albanian), Vlahika (Vlach), Turkika (Turkish), Slavika (Slav), etc. The so-called “Greek language” they speak they had to learn in school.

So once again, the so-called “Greek language” that Modern Greeks speak today was a language they learned in school. Now in contrast to the Greek language, the Macedonian language, call it what you like, is a natural language that Macedonians learned from their mothers.

Macedonian is a banned language in Greece so the Macedonians could not have learned it in school, the only place they could have learned it is from their mothers and relatives. Ever since Greece illegally acquired Macedonian territories in 1913, Macedonians had no access to Serbia or Bulgaria so how could Macedonian be a Serbian or Bulgarian language?

Now if we go far back in time you will discover that the Macedonian people spoke this language even before there was ever a Serbia or Bulgaria. In fact it was the Bulgarians, a Turkic tribe which spoke a Mongolian language, that adopted the Macedonian language and not the other way around.

If the Modern Greek language is the same language as the ancients spoke then why did the modern Greeks have a need to “purify” it, a process which eventually failed?

Modern Greek is not at all the same as the so-called “ancient Greek” which the Athenians spoke some 2,500 years ago. In fact Modern Greek is yet another “Balkan language” full of colloquialisms and foreign words which the Greek state borrowed from the Byzantine Church and from other foreign languages, including Turkish. Most Modern Greeks don’t know this and know even less about the history of their own language. That is why they claim ‘it is all Greek”.

Here are some examples of ancient Greek, Modern Greek, (English);

Ipos, alogo (horse) Hygor, nero (water) Onos, gaiduri (donkey) Oikos, spiti (house) Odos, dromos (road) Ihthis, psari (fish) Oinos, krasi (wine) Ofthalmos, mati (eye) Ega, Gida (goat) Erifi, Katsiki (kid, baby goat) Ois, provaton (sheep) Yshoiros, gourouni (pig)

Kyon, skylos (dog) Mys, pondiki (mouse) Ornitha, kota (hen) Oon, avgo (egg) Artos, psomi (bread) Ris, miti (nose) Naus, plion (ship)

By just this small sample of examples it should be obvious to everyone that “ancient Greek” and “Modern Greek” are not only NOT the same language but they are not even similar! That is precisely the reason why Greek authorities tried to “purify” their language! And yes there are “ancient words” in the Modern Greek language such as “odos” for example but they only exist because of the language purification initiatives Greek purists undertook since 1776 which were finally abandoned in 1974 by the Greek government.

Another reason for bringing up the inconsistencies in the so-called “Greek language” is because I was asked to do it by one of my readers who wanted to see more evidence of what I am talking about, but not from Macedonian sources because it might be dismissed as “Skopjan propaganda” by our Greek adversaries. So without further ado here is evidence on the formation of the Greek language as composed by non-Macedonian authors;

1. “The beginning of the modern Greek language controversy can be precisely dated to 1776, when Voulgaris, in the preface of his logic, argued that in order to study philosophy it was necessary to know ancient Greek adding that the ‘worthless little books that profess to vulgar language should be hissed off the stage’. By ‘vulgar language’ he meant any variety of modern Greek as opposed to the ancient language.” (“Language and National Identity in Greece 1766 - 1976”, by Peter Mackridge, page 83)

Now who was this Voulgaris character? Here is what Peter Mackridge has to say: “Kitromilides describes Voulgaris as the ‘Patriarch of the Greek enlightenment’ and the first recognized leader of the enlightenment in south-east Europe.

Voulgaris studied at Padua and went on to teach for twenty years in Yannina, Kozani, the Athronite Academy and Constantinople.” (“Language and National Identity in Greece 1766 - 1976”, by Peter Mackridge, page 84)

“Voulgaris introduced himself to the Russian empress in 1771 by referring to himself as ‘Slaviano-Bulgarian’ by origin, Greek by birth, Russian by inclination. (13) It is clear that his aim was to ingratiate himself with the empress by asserting that he too, like the majority of her subjects, was of Slav origin; it is not certain how seriously he took this himself, but his surname does imply Bulgarian origin.

(13) Quoted from an unpublished manuscript by Batalden (1982: 22), who points out the irony that Catherine was not Russian but German by birth. I am grateful to Elka Bakalova for informing me that ‘Slaviano-Bulgarian’ refers to the Slav Bulgarians as distinct from the Turkic proto-Bulgars.” (“Language and National Identity in Greece 1766 - 1976”, by Peter Mackridge, page 85)

2. “Folk culture, for Koraes, was less a source of proof that the people actively yearned to recover their ancient virtues than evidence of their potential (and need) for extensive reeducation. His own experience, in which a series of lucky chances made it possible for him to acquire some learning at an early age (Clogg 1976: 121-124), may well have influenced his thinking here: the Hellenic virtues could be acquired, given only native diligence and aptitude. That one had to turn to Western Europe in this endeavor was simply a matter of historical circumstance, of the fact that Europe had been the repository of Greek learning during the centuries of Ottoman rule – a time when the Greeks themselves had acquired a shamefully Turkish patina which now had to be scraped away.

Koraes is today remembered most of all for his leading role in the development of katharevousa, the neo-Classical (or purified) form of the modern Greek language which, somewhat ironically in the light of his revolutionary principles, has become closely associated with the political Right and the foreign interests which it represents (Sotiropoulos 1977).

Katharevousa was always something of a cultural appeal to the West for recognition, an attempt to demonstrate that the ordinary Greeks of today could speak a tongue which was undeniably their own yet no less clearly Hellenic. Such purism naturally demanded that all words of obviously Turkish origin be eliminated. A recent commentator's description of this deorientalization of the language as "beneficial" (Babiniotis 1979: 4) shows how successful Koraes was in establishing a moral standard by which all subsequent linguistic developments could be evaluated. Ideological criteria of culture, if they are to be judged successful, must in some measure become self-fulfilling prophecies.

The development of katharevousa was part of Koraes' wider, educative view of Hellenic regeneration. Culture, rather than physical descent, still seems to have been the main component of Greekness in his day. Educated people throughout the Balkans called themselves Hellenes; in the Romanian princess Dora d'Istria, we shall later meet one of the latest and most flamboyant embodiments of this conceit. It seems, moreover, that language was sometimes thought virtually sufficient to make people forget that they had ever been anything but Greek – in 1802, there appeared a quadrilingual dictionary published by the priest Daniel of Moskhopolis, exhorting "all who now do speak an alien tongue rejoice, prepare to make you Greek " (quoted in Clogg 1973: 20). This attitude was to change significantly later on, after the establishment of the new Greek State, when greater emphasis came to be laid on an essentially retroactive claim to descent from the ancient Greeks.” (“Ours Once More Folklore, Ideology, and the making of Modern Greece”, by Michael Herzfeld, pages 17 and 18)

3. “Wealthy Greeks, who for the most part had acquired their fortunes abroad, shared to the full the local patriotism so characteristic of the Greeks. This prompted them to provide the funds for schools, libraries and scholarships in their local communities. There was also a more practical motive, for the development of a Greek commercial empire created an increasing demand for numerate and literate Greeks with knowledge of foreign languages.

Schools of a kind had existed throughout the period of Ottoman rule, although with rare exceptions, such as the Patriarchal Academy in Constantinople, they had concentrated on imparting a basic knowledge of reading and writing to their pupils. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, a number of more advanced academies were either founded or revived. Besides the Princely Academies of Jassy and Bucharest, important schools were founded on the island of Chios, in Smyrna (The Evangelical School, 1733, and Philological Gymnasium, 1808) and Ayvalik. In these more advanced schools there was a heavy emphasis on the Greek classics, together with an attempt to inculcate the rudiments of mathematics and the natural sciences. Many of the teachers had studied at the universities of western Europe, particularly in Italy, and many of their graduates were also to study abroad, thanks to the subventions of the merchants.

Books in Greek for a Greek readership had been printed, in substantial quantities, mainly in Venice, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the eighteenth century, however, the production of books for a Greek audience increased dramatically. During the first twenty-five years of the century just over a hundred such books were printed. During the last twenty-five years well over 700 were published, while some 1300 titles were published during the first two decades of the nineteenth century. They were generally small editions, though they did sometimes run to several thousand copies. A more significant indicator of the intellectual climate in Greece, perhaps, than this dramatic increase in the numbers of such books published was the change in their content. Whereas at the beginning of the eighteenth century these books were overwhelmingly religious in character, by the years before 1821 their content had become increasingly secular. Numerous translations were published of the works of Western scientists and philosophers, including Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Beccaria and Rousseau. Some Greeks such as Evgenios Voulgaris themselves published learned philosophical treatises, making use of works of philosophers such as Kant. But in essence the 'Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment' was derivative rather than original, its protagonists seeking above all to make the achievements of Western philosophers and scientists known to their fellow countrymen. The works of the

Western Enlightenment also began to circulate in the Greek lands in their original languages, often remarkably soon after publication. The most significant aspect of this increasing secularization of Greek culture was the rediscovery by the Greeks of a sense of their own past, a realization that they were the heirs to a glorious heritage that was universally admired by the educated classes of western Europe. During earlier centuries there had been a limited awareness of the ancient world but the nascent Greek intelligentsia embraced the study of Greece's classical past with an intensity approaching fervour during the fifty years or so before the outbreak of the Greek revolt. New emphasis was given in the schools and academies to the study of ancient Greek, new editions of the classics were published and Greeks saw in the wars between the Greeks and the Persians analogies with their present situation. Some Greeks began to baptize their children with the names of ancient worthies rather than the saints of the Orthodox Church. This rediscovery of the past engendered in the Greek intelligentsia a new self-confidence, aptly epitomized by Benjamin of Lesvos' claim in 1820 'that neither the Greeks of old nor the Greeks of today are subject to the laws of nature'.

An unfortunate outcome of this obsession with Greece's classical heritage was the increasingly bitter dispute that developed over the Greek language. Some argued that if the Greeks were truly to become worthy of their great heritage then they should reverse the natural development of the language and restore it to its pristine Attic purity, purging it of its Turkish, Slav and Italian accretions. Others argued that the spoken or demotic language should be made the basis of the written language. Still others advocated an intermediate position, arguing for the 'purification' of the demotic without going to the extremes of the archaizers. The 'language question' was by no means resolved at the time and has continued to bedevil Greece's cultural development right up until modern times. It must be emphasized that the intellectual ferment that characterized the Greek world in the seventy years or so before the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence was largely confined to a small, predominantly Western-educated intelligentsia, many, perhaps most, members of which actually lived outside the Ottoman Empire. It largely passed over the heads of the great mass of the Greek people, who were mostly illiterate and who remained steeped in a thought

world that was essentially Byzantine. The prophecies, folk songs, tales of Alexander the Great and popular romances such as the Erotokritos remained the staples of popular culture. The obsession with Greece's classical past was not widely shared. When someone compared the prowess of a klephtic leader to that of Achilles, the former asked 'Who is this Achilles? Did the musket of Achilles kill many?' Moreover the intellectual revival was for the most part resolutely opposed by the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church, which regarded the new emphasis on philosophy, the natural sciences and the culture of the ancient world as likely to lead to moral degeneration and indifference in matters divine. To counter what it regarded as the flood of atheistic and seditious literature circulating among the Greek populations of the empire a printing press was set up in Constantinople by the patriarchate in 1798, where uplifting and improving books were published under strict censorship. If the mass of the Greek population was largely indifferent to its enthusiasms, and the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church actively opposed to them, nonetheless the new intelligentsia did serve a useful function in articulating the aspirations of the Greek national movement.” (“A Short History of Modern Greece”, by Richard Clogg, Second Edition, pages 36 to 39)

4. “Greece has been characterized until recently by a fundamental diglossia between the spoken language everyday (the demotic) and a constructed language (katharevousa), which pretended to harken back to the classical idiom but was actually closer to Byzantine Greek, and which was inaugurated as the official language of the state in the 1830s and remained legally so until 1974. (“Dream Nation”, by Stathis Gourgouris, page 89)

But, despite all attempts by the purists to “purify” their artificially imposed Greek language, in the end their attempts failed and today we still have a language that contains words from the past, from an entirely alien era, and Turkish and other foreign words picked up along the way. So like their modern “fake” Greek identity it is only fair and deserving that the Greeks have a “fake” and bastardized language to be proud of and to call their own.

Greece does not hesitate to call the Macedonian language “non existent” and a mix of Serbian and Bulgarian but have they ever

looked at their own language? I don’t think so, because if they did then they would be less critical of other peoples’ languages.

Modern Greece according to David Holden

David Holden, at the time his book “Greece Without Columns the making of the Modern Greeks” was published in 1972, was a chief foreign correspondent of the London Sunday Times. His career as a journalist has included long experience in the Arab world which qualifies him to assess Eastern strains in Greek life and attitudes without Western preconceptions.

Holden spent enough time in Greece to discover that, as he put it, “a great screen of mutual misunderstanding seems to hang between Greece and the western world” which he thought to explain why modern Greece is the way it is. He says he is a friend of the Greeks but he is not a “Philhellene” because to him, as he puts it, “philhellenism is a love affair with a dream which envisions ‘Greece’ and the ‘Greeks’ not as an actual place or real people but as a symbol of some imagined perfection” which he himself had never experienced.

Holden’s knowledge of Greece stems from two decades of watching, studying and visiting Greece. The result is a provocative and at times astonishing revelation, to say the least, which is sure to be controversial as well as illuminating. As per Holden’s own words, his book is “not at all about the Greece which countless volumes have been put before us and which the tourist advertisements nowadays continue to sell to us as a land of marvelous temples and antique memories of perfection.” The Greece Holden knows is the real Greece without any illusions.

Let us now see what Holden has to say on the question of “What is Modern Greece and who are the Modern Greeks?”

“Further back still, beyond the War of Independence when the modern nation-state of Greece came into being for the first time, the whole concept of Greece as a geographical entity begins to blur before our eyes, so many and various were its shapes and meanings.” (p 22) What do you suppose Holden means? He means Greece before its independence was a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural region. He also means that a Greek state never existed before 1821.

“But if geography can offer us no stable idea of Greece, what can? Not race, certainly; for whatever the Greeks may once have been, when Homer and Agamemnon lived and cloud-gathering Zeus leaped from his Cretan birthplace upon the ancient world, they can hardly have had much blood-relationship with the Greeks of the peninsula we know today. Serbs and Bulgars, Romans, Franks and Venetians, Turks, Albanians, Germans and Italians in one invasion after another have made the modern Greeks a decidedly mongrel race.” (p 23)

Here he says that a Greek cannot be determined by his Greek ethnic identity because the type of Greek defined after 1821 never existed before. The modern Greek is a product of all the people that walked over or settled on those lands over the centuries including the Albanians, Vlachs, Turks and Macedonians.

“Not politics either; for in spite of the tenacious western legend about Greece as the birthplace and natural home of democracy, the political record of the Greek is one of singular instability and confusion in which, throughout history, the poles of anarchy and despotism have played roughly equal parts, and a decently modulated freedom has very rarely appeared.” (p 23)

Greece may boast that it is the cradle of democracy but in reality it has practiced everything but democracy! Even though Greece is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural state, there is no room for diversity or for minorities. Greece is an expert in “cultural genocide” and in suppression of diversity. Even today Greece refuses to recognize the remnants of those people which it suppressed and which fought tooth and nail to preserve its true identity.

“Not religion; for while Byzantium was Christian, ancient Hellas was pagan; and although the Eastern Orthodox Church has closely associated with the Greeks for the last sixteen centuries it has never been their exclusive possession.” (p 23)

The only reason modern Greeks claim that the Orthodox Church is a “Greek possession” is because the Constantinople Patriarchate used the International Koine language which Greece today claims as its own.

“Not even language will quite do, for although it brings us a good deal nearer than the others to some overall coherence in the forms of Greek identity, it has also been a source of much Greek division in modern times. …the official language of the state, called Katharevousa, or ‘pure’, is an artificially imposed adaptation of the classical tongue…” (p 23)

The Catharevousa was the Greek official language of the Greek state from 1901 until I believe 1975 when it was abandoned by the Papandreou regime in favour of the colloquial language known as the Dimotiki resembling the Koine.

“When Greece was reborn in 1832 in the form of a modern nation-state there was, in consequence, a fundamental ambiguity about her entire national character. The Greek nation-state was a product of western political intervention-‘the fatal idea’ as Arnold Toyanbee once called it, of exclusive nationalism impinging upon the multi-national traditions of the eastern world.” (p 28)

When Greece became a state for the first time in 1829 the vast majority of people living on its territory were Albanians, Turks, Vlachs, Macedonians, Roma and a variety of other ethnic minorities. There never was a state called “Greece” before 1821.

“By extension, therefore, at any rate in theory, it [Greece] was a child of the renaissance and of western rationalism, some of whose inspiration was derived from classical Greece; and its western sponsors naturally saw the moment of its creation as a rebirth of ‘true’ or classical Greek-ness in the land to which that heritage rightfully belonged. But the Greeks themselves had few such thoughts. They had known no renaissance; and the thread of their classical past had long been woven into the oriental web of Byzantium. Their recovery of political independence was to most of

them far more a matter of restoring the power of the Greek Christian empire than of rebuilding ancient Hellas.” (p 29)

Before the Greek state was created by the Great Powers the people living in that region did not see themselves as the kind of Greeks they became afterwards. That Greece was not familiar to them. The vast majority of the people involved from 1821 when the uprising against the Ottomans began to the time Greece became a state for the first time in 1829 saw themselves as Christians fighting to restore the Byzantine state.

“Officially, Greeks call their modern state Hellas, after the classical world of 2,000 years ago, and by the same token they are officially known as Hellenes, which implies descent from their illustrious classical forefathers. But at the same time, colloquially, they call themselves Romios, derived from Rum, or Rome, and signifying that they are citizens of the eastern Roman Empire whose capital was Constantinople-in short, that they are really the children of Byzantine ‘Greece’, on the other hand, is derived from the Latin Graecia, the province of the western Roman Empire which stretched south of Mount Olympus through the peninsula of Attica and the Peloponnesus. Its International use to describe the sovereign state that currently occupies that territory is merely a reflection of the fact that ‘Greece’ in this modern sense is literally a western invention.” (p 29)

I believe the above quote is self explanatory.

“Thus, in Greece today, we have the fragmented and purely local traditions of the classical city states compressed together with the wide-ranging and multi-national pattern of the eastern Roman Empire into the mould of a modern nation-state which has nothing structurally in common with either and whose only internationally recognized name is equally foreign to both.” (p 29)

In other words, Modern Greeks received their classical ancient heritage through education and not through continuity; it being passed on from generation to generation. And by accepting this artificial heritage, Greeks have rejecting their real one, leaving them in a cultural limbo.

“The reality of Greece today, indeed, is that she is an immature, insecure and poor nation with an unmanageable and bitterly divided legacy of historical glory. Socially and economically she remains largely under-developed, but historically she is, so to speak, over-developed and unable, therefore, to treat herself, or to be treated by others, on her preset merits. So national pride becomes a substitute for performance and every step forward has to be taken with a confused and confusing backward glance.” (p 36)

If you want to learn more about “another side of Greece” I highly recommend you read David Holden’s book “Greece Without Columns”.

In spite of Greece’s artificiality today one can call him or herself a “proud Greek” with a 4,000 year old heritage and with roots extending back to the classical Greeks of 2,000 years ago but a real and genuine Macedonian accord to Greek logic cannot call him or herself a Macedonian because again according to modern Greek logic “Macedonia is Greek” and “there is no such thing as a Macedonia”!

Source:

Holden, David. Greece Without Columns: The Making of Modern Greeks. London: Faber, 1972.

G. A. Henty on 19th century Greece and the Modern Greeks

Modern Greeks for the last century or so have been spreading untruths about themselves and now generations later have forgotten who they really are.

This article is another means of letting the Greeks know who they are. And for those who ask, “Why am I doing this?” I am doing this because nowadays Greeks have forgotten who they are and where they come from and have become so brazen that they dare to attack others like the Macedonians, Albanians and Turks and question their identity without giving it a second thought as to their own and the damage they are doing.

When people deny other peoples’ ethnic identity they deny their right to exist and as such those people have no choice but to fight back. But unlike the Greeks who fight back with half-truths and untruths Macedonians have the truth on their side.

What follows are excerpts from G. A. Henty’s book “In the Greek Waters: A Story of the Grecian War of Independence (1821-1827)” who speaks the truth about 19th century Greece and the Modern Greeks.

On page 40 Henty said:

“Greece will rise one of these days,” Mr. Beveridge went on, “and when she does she will astonish Europe. The old spirit still lives among the descendants of Leonidas and Milatiades.”

“I should be sorry to be one of the Turks who fell into their hands,” William Martyn said gravely as he thought of the many instances in his own experiences of the murders of sailors on leave ashore.

“It is probable that there will be sad scenes of bloodshed,” Mr. Beveridge agreed; “that is only to be expected when you have a race of men of a naturally impetuous and passionate character enslaved by a people alien in race and in religion. Yes, I fear it will be so at the commencement, but that will be all altered when they become disciplined soldiers. Do you not think so?” he asked, as the sailor remained silent.

“I have great doubts whether they will ever submit to discipline,” he said bluntly. “Their idea of fighting for centuries has been simply to shoot down an enemy from behind the shelter of rocks. I would as life undertake to discipline an army of Malays, who, in a good many respects, especially in the handiness with which they use their knives, are a good deal like the Greeks.”

“There is one broad distinction,” Mr. Beveridge said: “the Malays have no past, the Greeks have never lost the remembrance of their ancient glory. They have a high standard to act up to; they reverence the names of the great men of old as if they had died but yesterday. With them it would be a resurrection, accomplished, no doubt, after vast pains and many troubles, the more so since the Greeks are a composite people among whom the descendants of the veritable Greek of old are in a great minority. The majority are of Albanian and Suliot blood, races which even the Romans found untamable. When the struggle begins I fear that this section of the race will display the savagery of their nature; but the fighting over, the intellectual portion will, I doubt not, regain their proper ascendancy, and Greece will become the Greece of old.”

William Martyn was wise enough not to pursue the subject.

On pages 139 and 140 Henty said:

“Brutes!” Martyn exclaimed with great emphasis. “How these fellows can be descendants of the Greeks beats me altogether.”

“The old Greeks were pretty cruel,” Horace, who had just joined them, said. “They used to slaughter their captives wholesale, and mercy wasn’t among their virtues. Besides, my father says that except in the Morea very few indeed are descendents of the Greeks;

the rest are Bulgarian or Albanian, neither of whom are Greeks of old would have recognized as kinsmen.”

“It is case of distance lending enhancements to the view,” Miller laughed; “our illusions are gone.”

“Never mind, we must make the best of them, Miller; they are not Greeks, but at any rate they are all that is left of the Greeks. Their actions show that their Christianity is a sham, but at the same time they are an intelligent race capable of someday becoming a great people again, and they are struggling to throw off the yoke of a race intellectually their inferiors and incapable of progress in any sort of way. That is what my father said to me as we were walking up and down the deck this morning. That is the light I mean to look at it in the future. It is a capable people struggling with an incapable one, and if they are savage and vindictive and debased it is the faults not of themselves but of those who have so long been their masters.”

“Good,” Martyn said; “that is the most satisfactory view of the thing, and we will stick to it and shut our years as much as possible in future against all stories to the Greeks’ disadvantage.”

In spite of Greece’s artificiality today one can proudly call him or herself a “Hellene” with a 4,000 year old heritage, with roots extending back to the classical Greeks of 2,500 years ago but a real and genuine Macedonian cannot call him or herself Macedonian because according to modern Greek logic “Macedonia is Greek” and “there is no such thing as a Macedonian”!

Source:

Henty, G.A. In the Greek Waters: A Story of the Grecian War of Independence (1821-1827). London: Blackie and Son, 1893

After two centuries of living a myth Greece now faces reality

By Risto Stefov rstefov@hotmail.com January 24, 2010

The thing that amazes me most about Greeks is not the lies that come out of the mouths of so many, but the honesty that comes out of a few. I have always imagined that all Greeks knew the truth and by that I mean that they know how their recent ancestors became Greek and that deep down they know they are not “real Greeks”. And by “real Greeks” I mean descendents from the so-called “ancient Greeks”. I thought every Modern Greek knew that before Greece became a country in the 19th century his or her ancestors were not Greek at all and that somewhere down the line they became “Greek” through assimilation, the same way many Macedonians became Greek. But I guess I was wrong!

When Greece was created for the first time in 1829 there were no “real Greeks”. The entire region was populated mostly by Albanians, Turks, Slavs, Vlachs, Latin and a long list of other ethnicities that existed in that region at the time. The vast majority of the people living in the tiny Greek state at the time of its liberation from the Ottomans were uneducated and unfamiliar with the concepts of nationality and ethnicity. As far as they were concerned they were all Christians which distinguished them from their Muslim overlords. After their liberation all Christians in the Greek state, regardless of their ethnicity, were told they were Greek. This continued as Greece expanded its territory over the years and acquired more and more people.

Some people accepted the idea that they were Greeks and moved on. Those who refused were exiled, jailed, tormented, or eventually forcibly assimilated. But in spite of pressure from the authorities, many continued to speak their language, practice their traditions and not feel Greek. Some continue these practices to this day, particularly in the villages and isolated communities.

So it should be of no surprise that there are people in Modern Greece today who truly believe that they are “real Greeks”, descendents of the so-called ancient Greeks, because that is what the Greek authorities have been telling them all their lives through their early education. There should also be no surprise that there are people who don’t “feel Greek” living in Greece today because generation after generation they held onto and cherished their true identities, mostly in secret. Unfortunately this is turning out to be the skeleton in Greece’s closet.

Some Greeks however, from time to time, had a need to venture outside of Greece and, mostly by accident, discovered that there is more to Greece than they were led to believe. Some refused to believe what they found yet others found more than they bargained for.

With no restriction and censorship by the Greek state, Greeks living in the Diaspora are exposed to much more information about themselves and about their country than they would otherwise have access to inside Greece.

Most of this “new and never heard of before” information unfortunately comes from their own compatriots and even from their own relatives. This kind of information is not easy to accept because it collides with their belief system and, for some, undermines the entire foundation of their own identity. Given where it comes from, this kind of information is not easy to reject either.

It is very difficult for Greeks, who truly believe that all Greeks are descendents of the ancient Greeks and that Greece is ethnically a homogeneous nation, to accept that people who are born in Greece and speak the Greek language do not “feel Greek” and therefore are not Greeks. For them things like that just don’t add up. No wonder so many who “do not feel Greek” are so frequently labeled “traitors”.

Today’s story is about a Greek who all his life believed that he was a “real Greek” until he took a trip to Canada to visit his relatives and ran into some Greek speaking Macedonians who, as he puts it, “pointed him in the right direction”.

Here is what he had to say:

“When I came to Canada to visit my relatives, as a grown man I had a certain understanding what a Greek was. I expected to find Greeks like myself there. A Greek is a Greek. If a person was born in Greece, spoke Greek then they were Greek, end of story, nothing complicated to comprehend. Right? Then I ran into some people who were born in Greece, spoke Greek but said they were Macedonians. What Macedonians, I asked? You mean you are from the north part of Greece, from Macedonia? Right? ‘No!’ One of them said ‘we are Macedonians from Greece’. And he was quite hostile about it.

I was blunt and told them point blank that I did not believe him: ‘vre pedia mu den iparhi tetio prama!’ (Boys there is no such thing!) But they began to make fun of me calling me ignorant and all sorts of names. Another said ‘I was living in Greece but know nothing of Greece’. He said I should take a trip one of these days and explore my own country that I live in and see things for myself. He even dared to tell me to ‘open my eyes’. How dare they call me ignorant and all those things! I was quite upset for a long time and made no mention of it to anyone until I returned to Greece. Unfortunately, I could not shake off the feeling, it kept wearing me down. The only way to shake it off, I thought, was to prove to myself that those guys were wrong. So I took that trip. I toured my country but I could not prove them wrong.

Well, that was then and this is now. It didn’t take me too long to discover that indeed things in Greece were not what I expected. I decided to keep looking and whatever I found, I was man enough to handle. Well, some things I found could be explained but others things which I could have called ‘anomalies’ could not. I could have ignored them but then who was I fooling? Unfortunately, as much as I hate to admit, those guys in Canada proved to be right. I did live in this country I knew nothing about. When I stopped fighting with

myself I discovered that Greece is a multi-ethnic country like any other Balkan country, full of living cultures, ethnicities and languages. In the villages were I visited I heard people speak Arvanitika (Albanian), Vlahika (Vlach), Makedonika (Macedonian) and Turkika (Turkish). I asked people if anyone here spoke other languages, other than Greek. Most people said ‘we are all Greeks here’ but some admitted that other languages are indeed spoken. When I asked who spoke these languages I got no names just a feeling that people do speak other languages. When I asked ‘how did these language get here’ no one seemed know. Some said they didn’t speak them themselves but heard others speak them. When I asked for their opinion, most said, as far as they knew, these languages have been spoken here from a long time for as long as they can remember. Who knew that non-Greeks lived in Greece? I always thought we were all Greeks here, that’s what I was told, that’s what I believed, it’s not something one talks about every day. There were always the signs but I never paid attention to the signs. I knew from my history lessons that some of our revolutionaries spoke different languages but thought nothing of it. There was no need to ask because the idea that we were all Greeks was strong and unquestionable. But I never heard of Macedonians living in Northern Greece that’s for sure. Not in the ethnic sense as a people different from the rest of us. I always believed we were all Greeks and a Macedonian was a Greek who lived in Macedonia, you know, Northern Greece.