ufuk wrote:First of all, how do we distinguish a language from a dialect?
in our everyday life? -> a language is a "
dialect with an army"
in a linguistic sense? -> don't know...i'm no linguist but i guess there should be some criteria as to how different 2 dialects must be for them to be cponsidered different languages...however there doesn't seem to be an agreement on "Macedonian" -> many linguists (
not only Bulgarian) consider it a dialect of Bulgarian BUT some linguists (
not only Macedonian) consider it a separate language...all i can talk about is my personal experience...and i personally can not consider (
on a linguistic level) a separate language one that i can almost perfectly well understand without ever studying it...on a political level, however, i have no problem whatsoever for it to be considered a separate language
ufuk wrote:I don't care about the naming dispute either. It is obvious that some centuries ago these two languages were the same, like Azeri and Anatolian Turkish, but I do think they should be considered different languages now, rather than being dialects of each other. Because there are two separate orthographies and phonology. Besides, they are official languages of two separate governments.
i completely agree...but i need to clarify that in the case of Bulgarian and Macedonian we are not even talking about centuries but about decades - not more than 5-6 decades ago they were practically the same language (
with the normal dialectical differences of course) but since then Macedonian was (
intentionally or not) developed in such a way as to differ from Standard Bulgarian as much as possible...
if the Macedonians were clever enough to admit that:
Ok, so and so decades ago our languages were very sumilar or even the same HOWEVER today they are different enough to be considered separate languages -> then i'm sure most people in Bulgaria would accept Macedonian and even the linguists will turn a blind eye to the fact the the 2 languages are really not that different...however that leads to some political/historical implications for the country of Macedonia which...well it's all politics really - more precisely -> Balkan politics which is even worse
ufuk wrote:But mutual intelligibility varies from person to person. I can figure out almost %60 of a kazakh text but most people wouldn't be able to do a %20.
true...i've heard/read some Bulgarians say they can't understand Macedonian at all - of course they were probably exagerating but still...i guess it depends on education, common knowledge, basic intelligence etc. -> after all some Bulgarians have problems understanding even their own language (
when they encounter a little bit more elaborate or more archaic language forms)
ufuk wrote:My point is, -I assume that we all know racism is bad, of any kind- racism can't really be done on linguistic issues. I don't think we mean different things IvoCarog, neither I'm opposing you here.
well in the case of Macedonian it's more of a case of nationalism than racism but yeah - i agree with you...Bulgarian nationalist wannabes refuse to admit that there's such a thing as "Macedonian language", Macedonian nationalist wannabes refuse to admit that the 2 languages were practically the same not so long ago...
p.s. btw ufuk you know what's funny? there's a Bulgarian dialect spoken in the Rhodope mountains that i can't understand a word of and it still is considered a Bulgarian dialect -> and then there's the Macedonian that i can understand almost perfectly but it is considered a separate language...go figure