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
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