Acceso usuarios
Roland E. Schmieder
This article is intended to give a sociolinguistic sketch of the Situation of the Macedonian language in Greece. After some preliminary notes concerning the subject of the article and the sort ofmaterial used, a survey of the geographical regions settled by Macedonians in Greece and some statistical data concerning the ethnic structure of the population ofGreek Macedonia are given. We give a very short classification of the dialects spoken in the Greek pari of Macedonia within the family of the Slavic languages and some historical data about the settlement and the development of the Slav ethnic element there, including a short outline of the official Greek policy toward the Macedonian minority and its language. After a description of the demographic Situation of the Slav population in northern Greece we give a short characterization ofthe spheres of application of Modern Greek in comparison with Macedonian. In the next chapter we describe a number of gradients that determine the Status of Macedonian in several groups of the population (educational levelt aget sex, degree of urbanization, and geographic location) andisolate reasonsfor these gradients. In thefollowing section we show with examplesfrom the real language Situation the effects of bilingualism and language contact on the use and the character of the Macedonian language that can be heard today in Greek Macedonia (displacement of Macedonian by Modern Greek, code switching, and interference)t explaining the mechanisms at work that lead to the linguistic Situation described. At the end ofthe article we give a short conclusion, interpreting the treated observations in afurther linguistic context and underlining the importance ofmore detailed studies on the subject.
