Hacker News Reader

Comment by whatever1 | Hacker News Reader

Because their main goal is to differentiate as much as possible from Bulgaria.

I could understand them wanting to mark their differences from Serbia, but Bulgaria was the reference point for the emergence of Macedonian nationalism when the Ottomans were pushed out. Do you have references for such anti-Bulgarian sentiment?

Quoting Wikipedia [1]: "The Balkan Wars (1912–1913) and World War I (1914–1918) left Ottoman Macedonia divided between Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Albania and resulted in significant changes in its ethnic composition. The immediate effect of the partition of Ottoman Macedonia were the nationalistic campaigns in areas under Serbian and Greek administration, which expelled Bulgarian churchmen and teachers and closed Bulgarian schools and churches. As a consequence a sizable part of the Slavic population of Greek and Serbian Macedonia fled to Bulgaria or was resettled there by virtue of a population exchange agreements. The Bulgarian population in Vardar Banovina was regarded as "Southern Serbs" and a policy of Serbianization was implemented. Within Greece, the Southern Macedonians were designated "Slavophone Greeks".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonian_Bulgarians

Well, I'm Bulgarian, there's much hatred as they like to call us tatars and all kinds of things. Not really very nice, considering they have the same genes as ours, same names, same language(except for a few serb add-ins). Also, they would rather be absorbed by Albania, than join their blood brothers :)

When you generalize like that, who do you refer to when you say 'they'? I've been there last year and I saw a lot of ethnic albanians and met A LOT of people with greek surnames.

Well, I can only say that we have 95% the same language with a few letters inserted by the serbs. If you look at both greek and albanian languages it's easy to see that they are VERY different than ours. Now, whoever tries to convince you otherwise, is wrong and it's not hard to conclude that given this language similarity and no nearby such similarity it's easy to figure out their origin :)

I don't know. It seems to be dangerous to paint broad strokes like that. My immediate heritage is german, italian and croatian and am from Croatia, speak croatian and live there/here. Yet, I understand 90% of macedonian and probably 70% of bulgarian without ever learning either language. Where is the line then? Since I was born here and learned this language as my first, yet not anyone from my family (grandparents and beyond) is from here... is my origin then same as yours or what? It's a dangerous path. For example, whole region was Rumelia for 502 years up to about 150 years ago, capital was in Sofia (if I remember correctly). Are you all Turkish then? Even people that settled there after Rumelia was gone, but understand the language (as their first)? Where does one define clear lines and be so confident in things like that? It's not that simple.

Bulgarian and Macedonian are way similar than say Croatian and Macedonian. Genetically we are the same. Your example is not on point(both about Sofia and your origin)

Any source for the "genetically same" claim? To me Bulgarians look fairly distinct from Macedonians, although I'm not certain if that's any strong genetic indicator.

Serb here, not sure why would anyone "mix up" macedonians and serbs in any context, and why is a bigger differentiation necessary. Even in the bloodiest years on the Balkans, the relations were very reasonable. Today in Serbia, even the most nationalistic groups (of any kind of influence), don't take Northern Macedonia in discussion.

The relations between Bulgaria and Macedonia were a bit more bumpy, I don't know all of the details, but Bulgarians* consider(ed) Macedonians just as a part of their own and their language as a dialect. Serbian and Macedonian languages are far to different for that. Yes, we can understand each other with some trouble, but that is no where near like Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin and Serbian which at times sound identical.

The only issue is the conflict between the Serbian and Macedonian Orthodox churches, but that really does not have effect on anything else than themselves.

It's maybe important to note that these disputes (and possible disputes) with Bulgaria, Greece and maybe(?) Serbia have almost none impact whatsoever on the daily lives of anyone in the region there. No animosity, no nothing basically apart from politically organised rallies here and there. Situation with albanians on the other hand... is interesting.

Absolutely. I mean, there are all sorts of fruitcakes all around the Balkans, but in general, things do carry on peacefully. A lot of political points are gathered on everyday stupidities between Serbian and Croatian politicians, to be honest, but that is another story.

The situation with Albanians in Macedonia is disconcerting, at least from a Serb's perspective. It is just too easy to notice a pattern of behaviour, incidents and evenrs, and almost threatening stance, even in some comments here regarding the Albanian majority in Macedonia. Serbia has been through that and handled it poorly, and I'm afraid that Norhtern Macedonia is on the same slippery slope.

Maybe people don't remember, but there was an actual armed conflict within Macedonia only 17 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_insurgency_in_the_Republi... which ended with the Ohrid Agreement which current prime minister of Macedonia, Zaev, said to annul and introduce albanian as the second official language in the (North) Macedonia. That's the real situation at hand in Macedonia now (and then). What situation with Greece did was to inhibit Macedonia's accession to NATO (and EU) which would reduce the threat of reopening possible future armed conflicts. Interesting times ahead for North Macedonia, that's for sure.

No, Slav Macedonia was acceptable to us. But not to the Albanians, and we changed our constitution in 2001 to allow them to veto this kind of things (under strong US/NATO pressure).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com