Bulgars in Macedonia (1919 NY Times article)

[Pelister]

I read that he is 3/4 prosfyga, and 1/4 native Macedonian.

[Bill77]

If you read his posts Prolet you will find he said there are influences all round. Stop making one sided statements.

Spot on Mikail, we have our own words but since the Ottoman empire ruled over Macedonia for Centuries, you can expect to have some influences. Just like todays Western and European influences in our Language, ie; Cao instead of zbogum or priatno. Super instead of dobro or odlichno etc.

Cao and Super will never be Macedonian words.

[Mikail]

Yes Bill. My Dedo always told me the Ottomans never taught local Macedonians how to speak their language. They always learned Macedonian and communicated to the locals in Macedonian. If this is the case, then I wonder how Turkish influenced Macedonian in such a big way?

[Pelister]

Onur, thanks for posting that interesting archival stuff.

Problem is, Ottoman archive is probably one of biggest in the world which contains documents between the year 1300s to 1923 and all those documents has been written with some kind of special Turkish with certain codes, ciphers and definitions which never or rarely used by regular Turkish language speakers.

I am certain that many of the documents from the 18th and 19th centuries are different to the Turkish spoken today, and I have seen a few documents that are actually written in Arabic.

But there are 100s of experts who works with millions of governments archive documents to de-code and translate them to modern Turkish and digitize the paper documents.

That is encouraging.

I think that it may have to come down to someone paying someone else to get the information we need. I have tried through one of my University Professors to get a look at the some of the material in the archives, but honestly, he did not have the time, and no-one will do it for free unless that are there already, and enthusiastic about this sort of stuff. But I am certain that the Turks kept very detailed records beneath the Muslim/Christian classifications - I believe that they had the family names and number of members of every house in every village in Macedonia among other things.

[Onur]

I am certain that many of the documents from the 18th and 19th centuries are different to the Turkish spoken today, and I have seen a few documents that are actually written in Arabic.



But I am certain that the Turks kept very detailed records beneath the Muslim/Christian classifications - I believe that they had the family names and number of members of every house in every village in Macedonia among other things.

Actually, spoken language was quite same as the Turkish we use in Turkey atm. Only the script was Arabic. P

Turks was using Runic script till 12th century of islam conversion and we used Arabic script(Persian form of it) `till the reforms of Republic, at 1924.


During my studies at university, we analyzed few books about this issue. One of the books was this;

Grammaire turque, ou méthode courte et facile pour apprendre la langue
http://books.google.com/books?id=224TAAAAQAAJ




This book is pressed and published in Istanbul at the year 1730. Its a guidebook for Turkish language, for the foreign people who came to Turkey for commerce. Its written in French and includes Turkish expressions and grammar written in Latin script for Europeans to read and understand easily. When we analyze the examples of the Turkish language used at 1730, we see that its quite same as todays Turkish.

Actually the documents you mention was probably Persian, not Arabic. Its also not rare to find documents written in Persian language at Ottoman times too. Since French and Persian were the primal foreign languages to learn among educated people at that times.

French, because it was the preferred language to use for foreign relations in Europe for centuries. Even British people was using French for international relations.

Persian was the equivalent of French for eastern world because it was the language to learn eastern culture and religion of Islam since Persians was the source of Ottoman Islam. At that times, Persian was the language of the intellectual society at eastern world, never Arabic.

The issue with archival documents is, Turks created and used some kind of special writing style only used for archive records. It was very formal Turkish with Arabic script which may contain ciphers, codes and expressions never used in spoken language. We see the same exact style of writing with documents written in 16th century or 20th century.



It is true that the Ottoman archives kept very detailed especially after 15th century. When i see Ottoman archive experts on TV, they say that we even got records for salaries and promotions of the ordinary officers in Jerusalem or Salonica. Especially demographic records was very detailed because it was necessity to know the population of certain place to determine taxes from their income. Taxes was the primary source of Ottoman Empire`s income.

[Mikail]

Very interesting. So Greek wasn't a primary language used for anything. French and Persian you say!

[Babazuba]

Spreding fals roomors is historical pas time.
I quote,"Albanians come from Caspian sea.
Othoman Empire enslaved them, bringing them to Macedonia. Othomans made them into a buff zone at the
edg of Macedonian Kingdom where Albania is today."
On the map of Caspian sea, there is a name, Albani.
If Albanians were Ilirians, what are they doing at the
shores of Caspian sea?
And was Ptolomay describing in his map those people
caling them Albani tribes. If Albanians can translate
Pelasgian writing, its only because they exepted the
Macedonian language and writing.
Seing that Macedonian carved script on a rock, goes
back 8000 BC, and Macedonians can translate it, today.
Historians sime to ceep quiet about true history.
Probably because every nation, specialy around Macedonia
like to write their own teory. The bad thing about it is,
they will fight for their lies till death.
I regrate this, but how can one stand up to a murderer
who is redy to kill for a lie.
I am sometimes reluctant to say what I discovered, on
blogs like this. Reason being, information can be used for
negative purpose. Please corect me if you think me wrong. I don't mean to ensolt. I just quote, and try to
make sence. Like a detective work. You know,

[julie]

Babazuba welcome to the forum.

[Mikail]

Babazuba welcome to the forum.

Yes, babazuba. Please share with us from where it is you write from.

[Onur]

Very interesting. So Greek wasn't a primary language used for anything. French and Persian you say!

Greek was only the language of Orthodox Christianity and religious education(as well as Armenian) in Ottoman Empire. Nothing more. Also that Greek language was quite different than today`s modern Greek. For example, I know that if a Greek from Athens tries to speak with a Greek here in Istanbul today, they can hardly understand each other because here in Istanbul, especially old people still use an ancient form of Greek language.

[Daskalot]

Spreding fals roomors is historical pas time.
I quote,"Albanians come from Caspian sea.
Othoman Empire enslaved them, bringing them to Macedonia. Othomans made them into a buff zone at the
edg of Macedonian Kingdom where Albania is today."
On the map of Caspian sea, there is a name, Albani.
If Albanians were Ilirians, what are they doing at the
shores of Caspian sea?
And was Ptolomay describing in his map those people
caling them Albani tribes. If Albanians can translate
Pelasgian writing, its only because they exepted the
Macedonian language and writing.
Seing that Macedonian carved script on a rock, goes
back 8000 BC, and Macedonians can translate it, today.
Historians sime to ceep quiet about true history.
Probably because every nation, specialy around Macedonia
like to write their own teory. The bad thing about it is,
they will fight for their lies till death.
I regrate this, but how can one stand up to a murderer
who is redy to kill for a lie.
I am sometimes reluctant to say what I discovered, on
blogs like this. Reason being, information can be used for
negative purpose. Please corect me if you think me wrong. I don't mean to ensolt. I just quote, and try to
make sence. Like a detective work. You know,

Babazuba, would you elaborate on the highlighted part of what you have written.
I do sense that you are trying to pull our noses here, if I am wrong I am very sorry.