Suhin,

There is one common macedonian saying:

Гладна кокошка просо сонува.

I wonder if it is still in use in Suho or around.

@GStojanov

Hi mate. Have been reading through this thread with interest and noted that you are obviously very astute with Macedonian and Southern Slavic languages and dialects.I tip my hat to you my friend.

I also noted that you say your mother is from Berovo and your a native of Strumica.

My wife is from Berovo and my Baba is from Strumica,Dabile to be precise.

I sometimes find it quite difficult when visting family in Macedonia,with different relatives using
different dialects within the same conversation.(ie) Berovski, Macedonian and Strumicski.

I'd like to thank you and everybody else for their contributions in this thread, I'm learning lots.

P.S. Does your mother still use Ne Moga as opposed to Ne Moxe (excuse the x please)?

Hi BritOvo,

In this thread we learned a lot by our friend from Suho. I'm ammazed that he tought himself cyrilics and he knows a lot about the Macedonian language.

Dabile is actually the village where I was born also and raised until I was 4 when we moved to Strumica. See, its a small world. ;-)

Strumica and Berovo dialects are quite different and distinct. My father (from Strumica) used to say: "лагам" which means I plan to, but that same thing in my mother's dialect (Berovo) means I lie. That was a source of a lot of fun situations, as you can imagine.

They do say Не мога instead of Не можам in Berovo. They also say:

- искам (сакам)
- башча (татко)
- зашчо (зошто)
- кашча (куќа)
- калпав (невешт, not-handy).

I love Berovski and I try to speak it whenever I get a chance.

How did u learn Macedonian so well?

I've been going to MK for the last 11 to 12 years since living with and then marrying my wife Sladana.Obviously on the first ever trip to MK I didn't mostly have a clue as to what
was being said,being English,apart from Da,Ne,Nazdravia etc oh and I managed to pick up the word PIVO pretty quickly learnt Rakija the hard way then the phrase
le le (or Male, Berovski) the morning after

Basically I started to accumulate mostly the Berovski dialect pretty quickly after a couple
of further visits after picking up key words within conversations and then piecing / guessing what the conversation was about and asking my wife if I was correct or not.
After a pretty short space of time I became quite accurate and it has all stemmed from there really.

I can read cyrillic and regularly visit the Malesh web site, url below if you don't already know of it.

www.malesh-net.com

The one real word which stands out for me with the Berovski /Strumicski dialects is
SKALA. In Berovski meaning BBQ and Strumicski ladder (correct me if I'm wrong).

I remember one particularly hot summers day when Dedo asked Deni, my brother in-law,
to fetch the skala as Dedo and I prepared the fish we had caught earlier that day from
the lake and Deni came strolling back round the house carrying a bloody great ladder.
Dedo stared at him in amazement as if to say "how the bloody hell are we going to cook fish on that?" and all I could do was shrug my shoulders at Deni as if to say "don't look at me mate,I though he asked you to grab the BBQ,but what do I know?"

It then dawned on Dedo that Baba had been speaking Strumicski to Deni earlier that day
and his brain was geared to that,hence his return with the ladder.All was explained to me
and then it dawned on me that there were probably a whole host of words pronounced the same with totally different meanings in other cities / municipalities and what chance did an English bloke like me have as I was only getting to grips with Berovski at the time.

Are you ever in Berovo at all? If so,which kafana or bars do you tend to hang out in?

Your right though my friend,it's a very small world.

strumichki is alot like banichki ! we also say skala for ladder.

Skala is also used for ladder in Greek. It's of Latin origin.
I think скара is used as BBQ in Suho. It is also used as σχάρα (in Cyrillic: схара) in Greek.

GStojanov I don't really know about the "кокошка" proverb is still in use in Сухо.

Also you have to notice that the guy from Suho that has written the stories in Malecki's book, is very possible that he had studied in a bulgarian elementary school .Though some bulgarisms (in words mainly) appear in his texts.

Suhin,

Was there ever an Exarchist elementary school in Suho? I would be surprized if there was. I think that Suho was a Patriarchist village. But maybe some of the informants studied in Bulgaria. I noticed some words (mostly abstract ones and technical ones) that are of Greek origin, and that is understandable. The study has been done in 1938, 25 year after Suho was included in the Greek state, plus Suho is at the very southern edge of the macedoninan linguistic areal, so some Greek influence is expected.

Nevertheless, the dialect of Suho is clearly of Slavic origin, and I would say very conservative, since it preserved some characteristics of the Old Slavonic that were lost almost everywhere else. (Alternatively it is possible that Old Slavonic was built on this dialect, and those characteristics never even existed in other dialects to begin with, but that is far beyond my knowledge to comment on).

So BritOvo, you are македонски зет,

Well congratulations, you married a first class Macedonian girl. Maleshevci are highlenders, proud, bright people, with highest number of PhD per capita. They were the first ones to rise the banner with the name Macedonia on it. In 1876 in Razlovci they started an Uprising and on their banner they wrote: Macedonia, Rise up so I can liberate you. They took important role in the Kresna Uprising also, since Kresna is in the neighboring Pirin Macedonia. And they do have the best сливова ракија in the world.

Now about the скала/скара, here is the scoop:

Стумички:
скала = ladder
скара = BBQ

Беровски:
скара = both ladder and BBQ
скала = steep rocky hillside

I haven't been in Berovo for seven years now. I'm live in USA so when I go home, I don't always visit Berovo. But this summer I'll try to go. I miss the smell of the борова шума, and the sound of Брегалница river.

Suhin,

Skala is a common word for ladder in most macedonian dialect (in Berovski it is just a phonetic change) and it is of latin origin. There are many words that are of latin origin. Порта is one that comes to mind. They may have survived from the time of the Roman Empire, or via the Vlachs that were and still are, present all over Macedonia.

GS

Alot would of changed from your last visit to Berovo,I'm sure.The trees are still there in abundance and still smell as sweet and fragrant and the Bregalnica river still flows steadily through Berovo.However, the Bregalnica has/will be undergoing some extensive investment
from Swiss sources to improve the quality of the river and Malesh as a whole is receiving
alot of inward investment from both foreign and MK diaspora sources due to it being designated as a tourist destination by the MK Government. I know alot of Macedonians already
utilise Malesh and Berovo as a tourist destination,but,apparently the Dutch are frequent visitors there to and want to invest.

The centre has changed alot from your last visit and looks nice.

My only concern is that I wouldn't want to see Berovo/Malesh turned into some god awful
tourist trap like you find in Greece.I hope they keep it overly provincial and rural as this is what sells the area in my humble opinion.

I was aware of the history surrounding the uprising and you are very correct in stating that
they are very proud people and yep their plum brandy ain't bad at all. But full marks to Strumica for Mastika,beats bloody Ouzo hands down.Was pissed as a cricket on that in Dabile.

Thanks for the breakdown on the skara/skala scenario.

No doubt we'll speak again soon but until then take care and Nazdravia

As far as I know there wasn't one. But nearby Zarova was an Exarchist village and Suho had Exarchists for sure. The study was done till 1938 starting 10 or more years before. There were some Greek words and even more Turkish in the Suho dialect as the village was in the very border of the Macedonian language. Beyond Suho the villages were mainly Turkish speaking. Greek was also the lingua franca of commerce in the late 19th century and the begginings of the 20th plus the village had a Greek elementary school.

Suhin and Maknews,

I made a short recording of myself reading a portion of Malecki's book where one of the people that he interviewed from Suho is presenting himself (when he is born, how he was orphaned at early age, etc..). How can I upload it (9Mb wav file) so you can hear it and tell me if my reding comes close to the spoken Suho dialect?

I uploaded it on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uh2rhqK3aE

GStoyanov, that was brilliant!

It's a very easy dialect to understand, so much easier than the new dialects of the standardized language. I'm putting this on the front page. I'm familiar with people who speak like this.

Thank you so much for that.

BTW, imash nogu chis glas.

Е сполај ти maknews.

I think we should collect and post samples of all Macedonian dialects, but I'll open a separate post for it.

fascinating. this really exemplifies just how diverse some of the dialects are. when i was travelling through eastern macedonia it took a bit of time to fluently understand the accent/s first and then aspects of the dialect/s. listening to this sound clip, comprehension of what was being said was scratchy the first time around but a couple more listens and the understanding starts to flow, even though the accent and spoken words vary from my native dialect.

That is a beautiful dialect.

This video is amazing and a great initiative. We definitely need to build a whole collection of such videos, covering all the dialects of the Macedonian language (or as many as we can get).