It is clear that Greeks cannot fully deny the existence of the Macedonian minority in Greece any longer, but now they are trying to minimize it by claiming that: "a small minority of slavophone Greeks exist in few villages north of Florina, but their number does not exceed few thousand".

Lets prove them wrong. Lets show them that Macedonians live not only in Lerin, but all over Aegean Macedonia. Lets record short samples of people speaking various Macedonian dialects from all parts of Aegean Macedonia. Something as simple as this recording is all it takes:

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

To produce short video clips you can use Windows Movie Maker (included in XP and Vista). To record short audio clips you can use the Sound Recorder (included in all Windows versions), or some other freeware app. If you need technical assistance how to produce the video clip and post it on youtube, PM me and I'll try to help you.

Wow, that Suho dialect is truly amazing!

I find it strange the way he says "school".

Its not strange. That's natural to him. How many variations of School is there in our Bitola-Lerin dialects. (Shkolo, Skolia, Uchilshte, Shkola etc)

All those beginning with "s" are bullshit. Of those there is only one way to say school in the Macedonian language, and that is "uciliste". Hopefully the egejci, whom are the best at preserving our language, don't adopt the stupidities of the republic in that regard.

I'm assuming the Egejski villages way to say school is one of the "S" words..

Goce,

My baba, who lives in Bitola, has always said "Skolija"...and I can assure you that she was not influenced by the Macedonian media. I am also irked by the fact that the media has butchered our language, but you can't assume that a word was taken from another language just because that word is not used in the region where you come from.
Here's what define.com says:
School \School\, noun [OE. scole, AS. sc?lu, L. schola, Gr. ? leisure, that in which leisure is employed, disputation, lecture, a school, probably from the same root as ?, the original sense being perhaps, a stopping, a resting.

We say skolya too.

When did people in RoM start saying uchilishche?

In the standard language both училште and школо are used. Школо is an obvious latin loanword (possibly through the greek language). Училиште was introduced most likely in the time of the Revival (mid 19 century). The word may be medieval though...

Skolia or skoile are the most common to us in Lerin, then uciliste.

Anyone say zatvor?

Sirma - My baba is from Bitola as well, she uses skolo and yciliste interchangeably, you need to realise that when our babi went to school, they were taught Serbian, my wife is Serbian and they say skolo. My point is that the Serbian teachers would have reffered to school as skolo, but when they came home their parents would have reffered to it as yciliste.

That Solonsko dialect is great, I found it hard to understand him, I could understand him a lot better than I do the Serbian language, could you imagine someone talking like that to someone from Skopje 100 years ago, they would have struggled to understand each other.

Do you think that as you head further south the Macedonian language turns to Greek the same way it sort of does toward Serbian or Bulgarian in the north and west respectively?

I agree that they were taught in Serbian, other times in Bulgarian, Greek, etc...
However I should make it clear that my grandma moved to Bitola in the 1950's from selo Creshnevo, Poreche region; she was in her late 20's. Also, my baba never went to school... she can't read nor write. By the way, she says "skolija" not "shkolo".

The dialects do change as you move up north, but I can't agree that our language somehow turns to the Serbian language... a Serb from Belgrad can't understand a Macedonian from Skopje. Same goes for the Bulgarians; a Bulgar from Silistra can't understand a Macedonian from Strumica. Also, a Macedonian from Bitola and a Macedonian from Lerin can understand each other perfectly, but a Macedonian from Solun may have a hard time understanding the Macedonian from Bitola.

The Macedonians from Solun and Skopje would have had a much easier time understanding each other 100 years ago. Today the language in the North has drifted.


Possibly, if you go down to the Peloponesos where the Slavic population was assimilated.

I've heard terms like "Megalos glavos" instead of "Megalos kefalos" for big head, etc.

In Macedonia however, there was no need to learn Greek, Macedonian was the lingua franca of the region. Greek was only adopted by a small number of people, mostly Vlach.

what is refference of this audio file? is it somebody from suho talking or is it somebody that reads suho dialect the way he thinks it should be pronounced?

No, the Macedonian language does not change in to Greek. The Macedonian and Greek languages are from different language families. The same way that Macedonian does not "change" into Albanian, Aromanian and Turkish.

I have to say or question if this is actually an original dialect or alternatively a forgotten language that is misguided in actually sounding like this.

There is no problem for me to understand what he is saying but I have to say I probably could not have a working conversation with him unless hey spoke slowly or repeated him self 10 times.

Robevski, you don't have much exposure to Egeitsi do you?

My family is from the Bitola-Lerin region and I've never had an opportunity to learn the standard Macedonian. For me - and probably for many - the Suho dialect is easier to understand than the way people speak in places like Skopje.

Believe me, with a little exposure to the wider Macedonian language these kinds of dialects would become second nature to you.

It's GStojanov reading a text from Mieczysław Małecki's book "Dwie gwary macedońskie" (Two Macedonian Dialects). So it's the way he thinks it should be pronounced. I'll try to record my tatko speaking and upload it somehow.

please do it suhin then we can see what a real suhin speaker would sound like.

Yeh please Suhin.