The Challenges Faced by Three Minority Communities in Albania, Greece and Macedonia
Palabras clave:
Macedonia, Greece, Albania, Slavs, multilinguism, linguistic areas, minoritiesResumen
This paper maps the realities faced by ethnic and linguistic minorities in Albania, Greece and Macedonia by concentrating on three minority communities, one in each country. The three groups in the focus are the Macedonians of the Albanian part of the Prespa region, the Orthodox Slavic minority of Northern Greece, and the Muslims of Southeastern Macedonia. The study is based on a sociolinguistic study conducted in June 2015 in the tri-border area around the Lakes Ohrid and Prespa. Among the 53 informants interviewed, there were speakers of Albanian, Aromanian, Greek, Macedonian, Romani and Turkish. A key finding is that all the three communities suffer from either total or partial lack of recognition. In addition, it is argued that the often-reported historical multilingualism in the area is still observable, but limited only to the speakers of minority languages, contributing to the legitimation crisis of the mono-ethnic nationalisms. It is further observed that the transmission of the minority languages is often interrupted by mixed marriages with a speaker of the majority language, and while the informants did not consider the attitudes of the majority language speakers necessarily hostile, they often expressed their wish that the minority languages would be given a more central role in education.
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