Home page Culturaltec Bio Special Issues Papers on-line Courses Links
 

 

Linguistic and Ethnic diversity.

As already indicated Greece hosts an "etablie" minority in
Thrace of about 120.000 persons, officially protected since the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Officially the minority is termed "Muslim" following a Greek interpretation of the Treaty's terminology, while the majority of it's members claim a Turkish ethnic identity. Compulsory education is provided in Turkish and there are efforts to teach the children the Greek language, religious coranic classes are also functioning. Literacy in Turk is further enhanced by systematically following Turkish TV programs at home and in the public places.

Romas form however twenty percent (20%) of the Muslim Minority. Along with at least another 150.000 persons living in various parts of Greece, they are now targeted to benefit from a European-wide effort of literacy in a common Romani language and alphabet that was officially adopted in April 1990 (Courtiade 1997:96). The consolidation of a new European Roma ethnic identity - that involves acknowledging the Roma's Indian origin - will most probably take another twenty years: the time to school a couple of compulsory education age cohorts. We foresee a sensible increase of the number of Romas in Greece, as Roma migrants from the Balkan countries will find their way into the European Union, either through immigration or after new member states will join the Union (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic).

Greece is also the homeland of two distinct groups speaking South Eastern Romance languages: the Aromunian (Armini refers to the people) and the Meglenitic, currently known as Valachs or Vlachs. The two vernaculars are not mutually intelligible. An active political involvement of the Valachs in Greek national has made them bilingual in Greek, especially since the teaching of the Romanian language in schools was discontinued after the end of WW2. Before the war a bilateral agreement between Greece and Romania - still valid in law - provided for a sort of bi-cultural education and for the teaching of Romanian in Armini and Meglenite communes in Greece.


In these schools the pedagogical approach consisted in replacing the local dialects by the literate Romanian which was considered to be a proper language for instruction. It should be noted that to this date and since before the war, Greek students claiming a Valach (Armini and Meglenite) descent are readily accepted in the Rumanian Universities and do not pay fees. As a result, while the local dialects still lack a standard alphabet, books and educational materials, there are over 15.000 Greeks holding a Rumanian University diploma.


It is not clear how many Greeks claim or may claim a Valach descent, perhaps as many as 4%. In several mountainous areas the residual population, consisting of those who stayed in the villages after a majority of people moved to the cities, is now markedly bilingual. In two cases, people have registered in Brussels as speakers of a "less spoken language" of the European Union. It is our contention that the emergence of a Valach linguistic identity, is ante portes. The timing of this emergence will depend from the pace of acceptance of the concept of multiculturalism by the mainstream of the Greek society, since all rich and/or influential Valachs are well integrated members of the Greek establishment. Further political forces and junctures are also involved here, since members of Valach communities in neighboring countries claim to be discriminated because their linguistic appurtenance make them suspect of Greek nationalistic feelings.

This brings us to another important linguistic "subculture" the Greek Arvanites (Attica, Boetia, Euboea) and Arberesht (Peloponnese). Though no more than 100.000 were still some how using the dialect in the 1980's a sudden inflow of half a million young Albanians, after 1990, has dramatically changed the linguistic landscape of the country. The Greek Arvanites through a rigid policy of monolingual education considered as the corner stone of national defense against a "communist" environment were progressively de-cultured and integrated into the Greek speaking society. This was facilitated by the proximity of Athens and of the other cities of Southern Greece and by the fact that since Independence (1830) they were always active in the power games of the Greek political scene. After the arrival of the Albanians, however the dialect was suddenly revived in the work place and as a mean of socializing with ethnic kin. At this date there are 500.000 people both indigenous and immigrants using Albanian dialects in Greece.
Albanians are, however today in Greece, the nation's villains. The media and the grass root feeling has developed such a negative image of the "Alvanos" and the criminality they generate that people consider it prudent to dissimulate their origin. In this context nothing is done to educate the children, sooner or later however provision for a bilingual education for the children of Albanian immigrants will have to be taken. This will progressively involve members of the Greek Arvanites communities, even if for the moment they cautiously distance themselves from the "less civilized" immigrants. Yet once again from a couple of villages, people listed Albanian in Brussels among Greece's "less spoken languages".

The post-communist era has brought in Greece a considerable number of people who are speakers of Slavic languages. Russian, Ukrainian and Polish being the main ones. Most of these people do have a Greek ethnic origin and for this reason they are implicitly not encouraged to speak Russian in public, though this is the language one hears in the flea markets. Learning Greek for these people is still a personal matter or an affair left to private or charitable institutions, while little effort is made to put in use their valuable multicultural background. How the concept of multicultural education and of plural cultural inputs to Greek life will apply to those speaking Slavic languages is not clear. An impressive number of Greeks from the former Soviet Union have high school and even college education in Russian, while the Polish Immigrant Community in Greece is positively accepted. There are Greeks in Poland and Poland will be one of the future members of the European Community.

Yet the issue at stake with the "Slavic languages" in genere is one that is linked to the sequels of the cold war era and to the so-called "Macedonian irredentism": the territorial claims of Skopje on parts of Northern Greece, including the city of Salonika with it's 800.000 inhabitants.


Evidence to the existence of 50.000 Macedonian Slavic mother tongue speakers in Northern Greece, as already implied, is very sensitive to report. Interestingly enough the Macedonian language is also contested in Bulgaria, where it is considered to be a Bulgarian dialect. To further complicate things the political options of Sofia regarding linguistic questions leaves Greece - where the Bulgarian position is readily accepted - with two Bulgarian dialects: the Slavic and the Pomac.


Since the 1980's local and central authorities in Northern Greece would have liked to develop education in Pomac dialect to split the "Muslim minority" into it's linguistic components without risking to draw forth demands for literacy from "Slavic Macedonian" communities. In this complicated context, efforts are currently made to introduce a Greek-Pomac alphabet. An independent scholar has even prepared a dictionary and a member of the academic staff of the Department of History and Ethnology of the University of Thrace (Komotini) has drafted a text - translated into Pomac dialect - inviting Pomacs to adopt this alphabet. The social and cultural validity of the attempt is dubious since it aims to cut the 40.000 Pomacs of Greece from both the Turkish speaking world and from Bulgaria where four or five hundred thousand Muslim Pomacs live.

Yet the stage for writing and teaching local dialects, languages that are presented as authentic and "ecologically correct" has been set. One has therefore only to wait for the Greek society to evolve towards a global acceptance of cultural plurality.
Our survey of Multiculturalism and Plurality in Greece, would not have been completed without a list of the various other - foreign - communities that live in the country. A recent (July 1998) two days rally against racism and xenophobia provided us with a comprehensive official list of 21 ethnic and minority associations we are appending to the text.