[alst-l] From Greek Helsinki Monitor

[Agron Alibali]

GREEK HELSINKI MONITOR ON VLACHS


http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/english/reports/vlachs.html

THE VLACHS

General data on the language

Vlachs are those whose mother tongue is Vlachika (name in Greek
-ÂëÜ÷éêá- for both Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian)/ Arminesti
(name in the Aromanian language) -we lack information on how
Megleno-Romanians call their language in their language-; most
linguists use the terms Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian for these
two languages. Both languages belong to the linguistic family of
East Romance languages, and, within it, to the linguistic group
of Balkan Romance: the latter includes the Northern dialects
Daco-Romanian (the base of modern Romanian) and Istro-Romanian;
and the Southern dialects Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian. ‘Aromanian
and Megleno-Romanian are linguistically considerably different from
standard Romanian: mutual intelligibility is not always simple’
(Trudgill, 1994:12).

There are two Vlach languages in Greece: Megleno-Romanian spoken
by a population (calling itself Vlasi in their language) concentrated
in an area in the North of Greece and across the border in Macedonia
and Bulgaria; and Aromanian (spoken by people calling themselves
Armini in their language) with many dialects spoken by Vlachs
throughout Northern Greece but also in Albania and Macedonia. One
such dialect is very influenced by Albanian: its speakers are known
as Arvanitovlachoi (in Greek) or Farseriots. Otherwise Aromanian
has a great dialectical variety, mainly according to the geographical
area where it is spoken. Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian have evolved
from the neo-Latin or Proto-Romance dialects spoken in the Balkans,
mentioned since at least the VI century (Wace-Thompson, 1989:2;
Katsanis et al., 1990:17-8). Along with Arvanites, Macedonians, and
Roma, Vlachs argue whether they should write their language (‘today
all Kutzovlachs know their language is not written’ -Katsanis,
1989:2), which does not have a rich written tradition; if written,
they argue whether they should use the Greek or the Latin alphabet.
Before the development of the Latin-based Romanian alphabet, the few
Aromanian texts used the Greek alphabet, just as the Romanian texts
used the Cyrillic one. Afterwards and through today, the large
majority of texts that are available in Vlach use the Latin alphabet.

Megleno-Romanians have traditionally lived in the Kilkis and Pella
departments near the border with Macedonia and Bulgaria, and in
the adjacent areas of these latter countries. Aromanians have
traditionally lived throughout Northern Greece, in most
departments of Macedonia, Thessaly and Epirus, as well as
in the Etolia and Akarnania and the Fthiotida departments of Central
Greece. The largest concentration of Vlach population has been in
the Pindos mountain that separates Epirus from Thessaly and Macedonia.
Aromanians have traditionally also lived in Albania and in
(former Yugoslav) Macedonia, while some moved to Romania in the
XX century, which has a -recognized- Aromanian minority. Like the
rest of the population, since the 1950s, Vlachs have been
emigrating from their villages to the cities and especially
the capital, Athens. Many Vlachs return to the villages during
the summer. It appears that urbanization has been leading to the
loss of the use of the language, which has been surviving more
in the traditional villages. Traditionally Vlachs had been
shepherds and wood-workers.

There have not been any official statistics on this as well as on
any other minority group in Greece since 1951. Today, the best
estimate for the people who speak the language and/or have a
Vlach consciousness is that they number around 200,000. Hill
1990:135) estimates them at 150,000-200,000 and Dahmen (1994:3) at
200,000-300,000. Other estimates of people with some relation to
the community range from 50,000-1,200,000, the higher figures
coming from members of the community. The very nationalistic
daily newspaper Eleftheros Typos, in presenting the 1994 Vlach
festival, estimated the size of this ‘very genuine part of Hellenism’
at 500,000 (8 July 1994). The high figures may correspond to all
Greeks who have some Vlach ancestry, but certainly not to the current
speakers and those with a similar consciousness. As with all other
minority languages except Turkish, Vlachika has no legal status in
Greece and is not taught at any level of the educational system
(except the study of the language in a course on neo-Latin languages
at the University of Salonica). However, after the Balkan Wars,
Greece officially recognized the Vlachs as a minority: certainly
an ethnic, if not a national one. The recognition took the form of
a formal exchange of letters between the Greek and the Romanian Prime
Ministers, that were subsequently attached to the Treaty of Bucarest
(1913). Greece had then committed itself to grant autonomy to the
‘Kutzovlach’ schools and churches and to allow the establishment
of a special diocese for them; at the same time, it recognized the
right of the Romanian government to subsidize the Vlach
institutions (Averoff, 1992:66). In fact, only the functioning of
the ‘Romanian’ schools was allowed in the interwar period.
Nevertheless, in that period, the Greek Foreign Ministry considered
the Vlachs without Greek consciousness as a non-Greek
ethnic (‘áëëïåèíÞ’) minority, along with other such minorities;
and so did the dictator  Metaxas himself, when he wrote of ‘foreign
elements’ that need be ‘Hellenized’ (Divani, 1995:107 &117-8).
Through 1951, too, Vlach was acknowledged in Greek census
statistics, but the figures vastly underestimated the number
of speakers: they tended to reflect the number of minority
speakers with a strong non-Greek identity (for the figures on
Vlachs see Averoff, 1992:19-20). Since the 1950s, there is no
official policy towards the language, except the discouraging
of its use by many means.

Moreover, there are no media in Vlachika, but only some Vlach
songs and folk stories sometimes aired by radio stations. Vlachs
are Orthodox Christians; their church services are nowadays all
held in Greek. Their main cultural activity is an
annual ‘reunion’ (áíôÜìùìá) cultural festival since 1984,
organized by the Panhellenic Union of Vlach Cultural
Associations, with 29 regional associations. Moreover, local
festivals and some congresses have been organized.



History of the community and the language

Although some have claimed that Vlachs have moved to what is
today Greek territory from as far north as the Danube, or that
they are the descendants of Roman settlers (views surveyed by
Lazarou, 1986:135-148), most authors agree today that Vlachs
are Latinized indigenous populations: the disagreement that
persists concerns whether the Latinized populations were Greek
or -perhaps and most likely-, as most authors argue, non-Greek
(Lazarou, 1986:87; Wace & Thompson, 1989:272-6; Berard,
1987:292-295; Bickford-Smith, 1993:48; Padioti, 1991:vii;
Katsanis et al., 1990:18; Nakratzas, 1988:69; Banac, 1992:42).

The earlier known references to the Vlach language date from
the VI century (Wace & Thomson, 1989:2). In the Middle Ages, Vlachs
established their own states in Great Vallachia (in Thessaly and
Southern Macedonia) and Little Vallachia (in Etolia-Akarnania and
Southern Epirus), in the XI and XII centuries (Dahmen, 1994:3;
Berard, 1987:296); later on, they formed the basis of and provided
the rulers to the ‘Second Bulgarian Kingdom’ or ‘Kingdom of Vlachs
and Bulgarians’ (1185-1260), which at one point incorporated Great
Vallachia. The latter survived the kingdom’s collapse as an
autonomous area through the XIV century; then, and for some four
centuries, little is known about the Vlachs who, as Orthodox
Christians, belonged to the Greek-dominated Orthodox millet
(= nationality) in the Ottoman Empire. Modern Vlachs are sometimes
called Kutzovlachs (= Vlachs from Little Vallachia) or
Burtzovlachs (= Vlachs from Great Vallachia), terms which have
acquired demeaning connotations (Papathanasiou, 1991:25; Lazarou,
1986:62).


The above mainly refer to the Aromanians. Very little has been
written about the Megleno-Romanians, who are supposed to be
descendants of the Turkic Pechenegs (Nakratzas, 1988:85-6; Lazarou,
1986:133; Winnifrith, 1987:23); today, they are the only Vlachs
who call themselves Vlasi in their own language.

In the XIX century, Vlachs first rose against Turks, participating
in the Greek War of Independence (1821-1828) and provided many of
its leaders. Subsequently, the Greek state benefited from very
generous donations of prominent Vlachs who had made fortunes in
Europe. Until then, Vlachs were thought of as Vlachophone Greeks:
when the first textbooks of Aromanian using the Latin alphabet
appeared in early XIX century, they were practically ignored
by Vlachs (Lazarou, 1986:200-3). Following the emergence of
Romanian nationalism in the mid-XIX century, however, there was
an effort to create a Romanian, or at least a distinct, non-Greek,
national consciousness among Vlachs in the Southern Balkans.
The movement started in the Pindos area in the 1860s, but was
quickly recuperated by (then still autonomous) Romania. A multitude
of Aromanian textbooks using the Latin alphabet were published
(Lazarou, 1986:204-206). Romanian schools were created in the Vlach
areas of the Ottoman Empire, but the most prosperous Vlach
families continued to favor a Greek education and a Graecophile
attitude, even despising those who did not follow their line;
nevertheless, a considerable number of Vlachs, mostly among
the transhumant shepherds, acquired a separate, if not Romanian,
identity thanks to these efforts (Dahmen, 1994:8; Wace & Thompson,
1989:8; Averoff 1992:30 & 67; Poulton, 1995:61). Thessaly’s
annexation by Greece in 1881 led to a serious crisis in
many Vlach families which were henceforth prevented from freely
crossing the new border, a move necessary for those of them who
were shepherds.

In the first years of the XX century, the Ottomans recognized the
Vlachs as a separate millet (1905), allowing them to officially
have their own churches which they had already created in the
preceding twenty years. The conflict over the allegiance of
the Vlachs became one aspect of the general ‘Macedonian struggle’
of the 1900’s. The irregular Greek military units in Macedonia
and Epirus had orders to treat as hostile the Romanian schools and
villages, just like the Bulgarian ones: schools were
burned down, Romanophile Vlachs were murdered, and the strength of the
Romanian influence among Vlachs was weakened as a result, as it
was also clear that Romania had no chance of ever annexing Macedonian
territories (Wace & Thompson, 1989:9; Averoff 1992:59-61 & 184-189;
Dahmen, 1994:4; MRG, 1990:131).

After the Balkan Wars, the Vlachs, like Macedonian Slavs and Pomaks,
found themselves divided in four different states (Albania, Serbia,
Greece, and Bulgaria): an effort to create an autonomous Vlach state
in the Italian-held Korce area of Albania was stillborn in 1918.
Nevertheless, Greece recognized officially the Vlachs as a
minority, by an exchange of letters between the Greek and the
Romanian Prime Ministers which were appended to the Treaty of
Bucarest (1913). On the basis of that Treaty, schools with Romanian
subsidies operated in Greece through the end of World War II, when
communist Romania lost its interest in the Vlachs. Nevertheless,
very few Vlachs sent their children to these schools (a few hundreds
-Averoff, 1992:70-1), because such choices were perceived as an
indication of anti-Greek attitude by both the state (which subsequently
banished many of their graduates during the World War II) and the
leading Vlachs who consistently maintained a Graecophile posture and
sometimes used even physical violence against the Romanophiles
(Averoff, 1992:70-1, 79-81, & 185). In general, Balkan Vlachs have
tended to be assimilated by the dominant national group in each
country they lived in: most of those who resisted assimilation
emigrated to Romania or other non-Balkan countries (MRG, 1990:130-1).
Despite that, during the Metaxas dictatorship (1936-1941), the
measures of mandatory attendance of Greek language night schools
even by the elderly non-Greek native speakers, and of the banning
of the public use of the language applied to all Vlachs as well,
creating resentment as well as fertile ground for a conflict
between ‘Romanian-leaning’ and ‘Greek-leaning’ Vlachs (Divani,
1995:116-8).


During the Axis occupation of Greece, in World War II, some Vlachs
with non-Greek identity attempted to create a Vlach principality
in the Pindos Mountains, Thessaly and Epirus, with the tolerance
of the Italian occupying forces and the opposition of other
Graecophile Vlachs (Averoff, 1992; MRG, 1990:131).

In the post-war era, Vlachs felt they had to be extremely careful,
as the two secessionist attempts (in the turn of the century and
in the 1940s) made Greece suspicious of a distinct Vlach ethnic
identity: hence, Vlach assimilation was extensive  and usually
‘voluntary’, i.e. helped by the Vlach leadership. As a result, Vlachs
today, with few exceptions, insist on their being ‘the most genuine,
the best Greeks’ (Lazarou, 1986:158; Katsanis, 1989:xvii; Kahrimanis,
1994; Moutsopoulos, 1991:11-5; Papastergiou, 1994; Papathanasiou,
1991:18). Moreover, many prefer the use of the term Vlachophone
Greeks to Vlachs: the latter is perceived as indicating a
separate identity, hence the opposition by some to the creation
of Vlach cultural associations in the 1980s, thought of as efforts
to ‘de-Hellenize’ the Vlachs. Besides, the European Bureau of
Lesser Used Languages (EBLUL)’ contacts with the Vlachs
are also strongly criticized; finally, it is claimed that the
EEC-sponsored report on Greece’s minority languages (Siguan,
1990) was amended by the Greek authorities before its publication
to be more consistent with the official Greek view on this
community (Lazarou et al., 1993:192).

Trudgill (1994) has shown that, in Greece, as minority languages
are all alien (Abstand) to Greek, the use of different names for
them (Arvanite rather than Albanian, Vlach rather than Romanian,
Slav rather than Macedonian) has contributed to denying their
heteronomy (their dependence on the corresponding standard
language) and increasing their autonomy (by assigning them the
status of autonomous languages). As a result, the minority
language’s vulnerability grew significantly, as well as the
dissociation of the speakers’ ethnic (Arvanite, Vlach, Slavophone)
identities from the corresponding national identities (Albanian,
Romanian, Macedonian) which have developed in the respective modern
nation-states. Today,  Vlach ethnic identity is perceived by many
members of the community as distinct from that of the other Greeks
who have Greek as their mother tongue (called ‘Grecos’ in Aromanian)
but as fully compatible with Greek national identity (likewise
for many Arvanites and Macedonians). A similar phenomenon has
helped weaken the links between Pomaks in Greece (speaking a
Bulgarian-based language) and Bulgarians and the consequent Pomaks’
assimilation into the Turkish ethnic and, by now, national identity
in Western Thrace, an assimilation here detrimental to Greece’s
homogenization and anti-minority policies. In another Balkan context,
such attitude helped distance the literary Macedonian language
standardized by Yugoslav  authorities in the late 1940s from
Bulgarian to which the previously spoken dialects in Yugoslav
Macedonia were heteronomous.

If Hellenization was a significant factor for the weakening of
the use of Vlach languages, urbanization was another. Aromanian
and Megleno-Romanian had survived until recently in many homogeneous
villages where most people had been using the language regularly.
Those, though, who moved to the cities soon abandoned the use of
the language as it was unintelligible to most other city dwellers
and was even perceived as a sign of backwardness, while, on the
other hand, the children had no way of learning the language as
neither was it taught at school nor was it used regularly by
family members -often grand parents- at home.



Current situation of the community and the language


Almost all Vlach speakers are today bilingual, i.e. they also
speak Greek, usually fluently for the younger and middle-aged
generations. It is widely agreed that Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian,
having for centuries evolved in a different environment from
Daco-Romanian have acquired separate (Ausbau) status from
standard Romanian, in fact with dialectical richness for Aromanian;
nevertheless, at  least partial mutual intelligibility between
Vlach and Romanian exists, partly enhanced by the Romanian schools
in the Vlach areas in the end of the XIX and the first half of
the XX centuries.

On the other hand, Vlach languages are threatened with extinction.
There has been a  rather widespread indifference among Vlachs, as
well as Arvanite and Macedonian  community members about the fate
of their mother tongues, along with self-deprecation: they have
been led by dominant unilingual Greek culture to -usually
sincerely- believe that these languages are deficient, lack proper
grammatical structure, and have a poor vocabulary (Trudgill,
1994:14; Tsitsipis, 1994:4). So, gradually, Vlachs have switched
from bilingualism to a subordination of Aromanian or Megleno-Romanian
to Greek. It is probably a correct estimate, although no detailed
studies exist, that the language is used today by middle aged people
(interchanged with Greek) and by elderly people (in most contexts)
and much less by younger generations (usually when addressing
older people).



Since the 1980s, though, an interesting ‘Vlach revival’ has been
noticed. An annual festival, with an increasing participation of
Vlach cultural associations is regularly  taking place in Northern
Greece; these associations have created a national Panhellenic
Union of Vlach Cultural Associations, numbering 29 members in 1994.
In the latter year, too, people close to the associations launched
a monthly newspaper, albeit only in Greek, Armanika Chronika.
Records and cassettes with Vlach songs are now available, and books
about them are being published. Aromanian is even a research subject
at the University of Salonica. It should be noted, though, that most
of the people involved in this revival are still hostile to a possible
teaching of Vlach at schools -for example, Minister of Education
George Papandreou mentioned, to an International Helsinki Federation
delegation, such a negative attitude by the Metsovo mayor when he
asked him the question in mid-May 1995. Such attitude is explained
by the fact that this matter automatically reminds them of the
Romanian schools of the past and, therefore, creates suspicions
about the motivation behind such educational programs: Vlachs,
having suffered so much by Romanian propaganda and Italian- and
Romanian-inspired attempts to create a Vlach entity in Greece during
the Axis occupation, cannot yet understand that such programs are
henceforth standard in European countries and unrelated to irredentisms.

One additional reason for such a slow and careful public
reaffirmation of Vlach culture is the apparent hostility of the
Greek state to such ‘revivals’ among Arvanites, Vlachs, and
Macedonians, which is indicated by police disruption of festivals
(in Macedonia), harassment of musicians who play and sing songs
in minority languages; as well as by the tolerance by the state
and particularly its judiciary of public calls, printed in the
press, to use violence against those musicians; likewise, human and
minority rights activists have been the object of similar threats
(Stohos, 20/7/1994 and in previous issues, where even the Euromosaic
project to prepare a new report on linguistic minorities in the
European Union was attacked). Such hostile environment makes even
the scholars’ work look suspicious: for example, Vlachs
react with incredulity and suspicion to assertions that their
language can be written. Moreover, EBLUL’s interest in the
community has been strongly criticized even by Vlach linguists
for having ‘created difficulties rather than helped promote the
language’ and ‘divided the Vlachs, break their unity with, as a
result, the shrinking of the language and the weakening of their
wish to keep the language and their customs’ (Katsanis, 1994).
It has also been violently attacked in state-sponsored publications
(Lazarou, 1993:191-193) and strongly criticized by the President
of the Panhellenic Union of Vlach Cultural Associations in his
address to the 1994 ‘reunion’. Moreover, in the summer 1995
reunion, one Vlach activist, Sotiris Bletsas, who distributed
copies of the EBLUL’s map with the EU’s lesser spoken languages
(including the Vlach language) was harassed by bystanders, including
the deputy of New Democracy (ND) Eugene Haitidis, who even had the
local police officers take the activist into custody in order to
bring charges against him: only when forced to state
that he would reject any inaccuracies of the map was the activist
allowed to walk free. In September 1995, Mr. Haitidis, in a
television program, attacked our spokesperson Panayote Elias
Dimitras for having ‘ordered’ Mr. Bletsas’ actions, who had allegedly
admitted that he had been deceived by Mr. Dimitras, a statement that
Mr. Bletsas denied ever having made. When ND leader Miltiadis Evert
was asked to disavow his deputy’s actions (as the deputy is in charge
of human rights issues in the party), he declined.


Likewise, the Vlach languages have never been included in the
educational curricula of the modern Greek state. On the contrary,
their use has been strongly discouraged at schools (and in the army)
through physical punishment, humiliation, or, in recent
years, simple incitation of the Vlach users. Such attitudes have
led many Vlach (as well as Arvanite, and Macedonian) parents to
discourage their children from learning their mother tongue so
as to avoid similar discrimination and suffering.

       As mentioned above, there has been an annual Vlach reunion
festival since 1984, in which Vlach songs and dances are performed.
There is a, certainly limited, production of cassettes and records
with Vlach songs, as well as a CD with traditional Thessaly Aromanian
songs assorted with an annotated study showing that Aromanian songs
have a number of common traits with Romanian songs (Baud-Body, 1990).
A partly EU-funded project, MAPECH (Multimedia Application  for the
Preservation of Epirus’ Cultural Heritage), of the Egnatia Foundation,
aims in part at collecting Vlach songs and tales and will use the Latin
alphabet for that purpose.

All Vlach speakers are fluent in Greek; in fact, the use of Vlach
is being subordinated to the use of Greek especially among the younger
generations. The reasons have  already been mentioned above: the
monolingual policy of the Greek state along with the resulting
self-deprecation of the language; modernization; influence of
education; easier access to the major cities and to the electronic
media where only Greek is used: so, the decrease of the isolation
of the Vlach communities has severely affected  language use.
In fact, sometimes, young people discourage their parents from
speaking the language (especially in public).

Although there are no studies similar to the ones for the
Arvanitika, one could say that, at least in the Vlach villages,
in the 1990s, most people over 50 are fluent speakers, but most
people under 50 and especially under 25 are at best terminal or
passive speakers, with limited knowledge of vocabulary and grammar.
So, young people today, when they know the language, they use
it only in strict family context usually in conversations with
the elderly people; sometimes, too, to make fun of non-speakers.
Nevertheless, there are many variations of this age differential as
reported in a traveler’s careful study (Winnifrith, 1987:9-25).

Experts, therefore, agree that Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian in
Greece are threatened with extinction, perhaps more than in the
other Balkan countries which, after the collapse of communism, have
tended to grant official recognition to Vlachs
(Winnifrith, 1987:25; Trudgill, 1994:14-15).

In fact, some argue that the gradual disappearance of Vlach languages
is inevitable, because the historical role of the Vlachs ends with
the conclusion of the XX century, as the social conditions which
helped Vlach survive for centuries have been eclipsed: special
working habits and social structure, geographical isolation; they
in fact oppose all efforts to help Vlach languages survive into
the next century or, even more, recognize it as a minority language
as it has been done by European institutions
(Katsanis et al., 1990:9 & 1989:xvii; Kilipiris, 1994).

Finally, we should add a few words about the Vlachs’ transnational
exchanges. There are few ties with Romania today, as this country
carefully avoids raising any claims on Vlachs in the 1990s. On the
contrary, after the collapse of the communist regimes in the Balkans,
links were established between Vlachs of Greece and Vlachs of
Albania, especially those among the latter who claim a Greek
identity: they are invited  by Vlachs of Greece in their festivals,
and receive help from them to rebuild churches or in the form of
other necessary assistance to Vlach villages in Albania. On the
contrary, no links exist with the Vlachs of Macedonia, as there
do not appear to be many who claim the Greek identity there.


[published in "Greek Monitor of Human & Minority Rights" Vol. 1
No. 3 December 1995 (May-June 1994)]




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