The Real Ethnic Composition of Modern Greece

[Carlin]

@ Amphipolis

URL:
http://www.kathimerini.gr/717886/opi...ata-anagnwstwn

Hi Amphipolis, did I understand this correctly? Does the author Δημος Π. Γεωργιου state and explain that There are many signs in the area (of Corinthia) of ​​the presence of Armenians, Georgians, Persians, and Anatolians? Thanks.

(The text is a letter titled "Old Stories", which was sent to Kathimerini newspaper and published on 16/12/2009.)

[tchaiku]

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 28


1) South of the Danube, about 500,000 are scattered over northern Greece and European Turkey, under the name of Kutzo-Vlachs, Tzintzars or Aromani. It is noteworthy that the Rumans north of the Danube continually gain ground at the expense of their neighbours; and even the long successful Greek propaganda among the Kutzo-Vlachs were checked after 1860 by the labours of Apostolu Margaritis and other nationalists.

2)
a) Little Walachia (Μικρά Βλαχία) was a name applied by Byzantine writers to the Ruman settlements of Aetolia and Acarnania, and with it may be included “Upper Walachia,” or Ανώβλαχα. Its inhabitants are still represented by the Tzintzars of the Aspropotamo and the Karaguni (Black Capes) of Acarnania.
[This explains why in George Castelan's book Pindus mountains were called ''Little Walachia'']

b) Great Walachia (Μεγάλη Βλαχία).—It is from Anna Comnena, in the second half of the 11th century, that we first hear of a Vlach settlement, the nucleus of which was the mountainous region of Thessaly Benjamin of Tudela, in the succeeding century, gives an interesting account of this Great Walachia, then completely independent. It embraced the southern and central ranges of Pindus, and extended over part of Macedonia, thus including the region in which the Roman settlers mentioned in the Acts of St Demetrius had fixed their abode. After the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204, Great Walachia was included in the enlarged despotate of Epirus, but it soon reappears as an independent principality under its old name, which, after passing under the yoke of the Serb emperor Dushan, was finally conquered by the Turks in 1393. Many of their old privileges were accorded to the inhabitants, and their taxes were limited to an annual tribute. Since this period the Megalovlachites have been largely Hellenized, but they are still represented by the flourishing Tzintzar settlements of Pindus and its neighbourhood (see Macedonia).

3)
After the overthrow of the older Bulgarian tsardom by Basil Bulgaroktonos (976-1025), the Vlach Political and territorial divisions. population of Thrace, Haemus and the Moesian lands passed once more under Byzantine dominion; and in 1185 a heavy tax, levied in kind on the cattle of these warlike mountain shepherds, stirred the Vlachs to revolt against the emperor Isaac Angelus, and under the leadership of two brothers, Peter and Asen, to found a new Bulgaro-Vlachian empire, which ended with Kaliman II in 1257. The dominions of these half-Slavonic half-Ruman emperors extended north of the Danube over a great deal of what is now Rumania, and it was during this period that the Vlach population north of the river seems to have been most largely reinforced. The 13th century French traveller Rubruquis speaks of all the country between Don and Danube as Asen's land or Blakia.

[Amphipolis]

Originally Posted by Carlin

@ Amphipolis

URL:
http://www.kathimerini.gr/717886/opi...ata-anagnwstwn

Hi Amphipolis, did I understand this correctly? Does the author Δημος Π. Γεωργιου state and explain that There are many signs in the area (of Corinthia) of ​​the presence of Armenians, Georgians, Persians, and Anatolians? Thanks.

(The text is a letter titled "Old Stories", which was sent to Kathimerini newspaper and published on 16/12/2009.)

He is basically arguing that Arvanites of Eastern Corinthia (and Albanians in general) are actually Armenians, Paulicians etc. This is a well written text and google translation gives a miraculously good result, BUT

... as I suspected this University Professor is... a Mechanical Engineer with an amateur interest in surnames etymology. His theories are probably a little wild and you will not find references or details in there.

[tchaiku]

The Byzantine writer Cecaumenos, in his Strategicon of 1066 wrote that the Vlachs of Epirus and Thessalia came from North of the Danube and from along the Sava and that they were the descendants of the Dacians and the Bessi.

[Carlin]

Constantinople and the echo chamber: the Vlachs in the French crusade chronicles, Florin Curta




URL:
https://www.academia.edu/28202191/Co...ade_chronicles

[tchaiku]

2 — Long before the tenth century the name Tsakones was used by the Tsakonians themselves. 3 — When they finally became Christians, the ethnological significance of the name Tsakones was already obscure, and they continued to be so called when they were introduced as Christians in the service of the Empire.

The chief characteristics of Tsakonic had been long established (see G. P. Anagnostopoulos, Tsakonische Grammatik (1926),
Read here:
https://books.google.com/books?id=2O...1DDjQQ6AEIJTAA

[Carlin]

Originally Posted by tchaiku

Long before the tenth century the name Tsakones was used by the Tsakonians themselves

This is a bold claim. What is the evidence to back this up?

We would need a document, from before the tenth century (preferably written by a Tsaconian author) that the name Tsakones was used by the Tsakonians themselves.

The following is from Bulletin de l'Association Guillaume Budé, 1978. Page 216:

"les tsacones sont des soldats de second rang, des auxiliaires. Le terme apparait d'abord en Asie Mineure. A partir du VIIIe siecle, des heretiques, les Pauliciens, sont transferes en masse d'Asie Mineure sur la frontiere byzantino-bulgare y servir comme tsacones, d'ou la valeur religieuse ..."

"the Tsaconians are second-class soldiers, auxiliaries. The term first appeared in Asia Minor. From the eighth century onwards, heretics, the Paulicians, were transferred in large numbers from Asia Minor to the Byzantine-Bulgarian border and served as Tsaconians, hence the religious value ..."

https://books.google.ca/books?id=3M5...=X&redir_esc=y

[Carlin]

1) Tsakonian dialect of Modern Greek
Maxim Kisilier & Valentina Fedchenko

https://www.researchgate.net/project...f-Modern-Greek

Despite multiple descriptions Tsakonian still remains one of the most mysterious Modern Greek (= MG) dialects. Brian Newton even prefers to exclude it from his classification, and Peter Trudgill finds just few isoglosses that are relevant both for Tsakonian and other MG dialects. Most descriptions of Tsakonian keep repeating that Tsakonian is the most ancient MG dialect, it escaped any influence of Hellenistic Koine and its strange features still exist because the speakers did not contacts with the speakers of other MG dialects till in 1960–1970th.
However, Tsakonians were not so isolated as it might seem and many Tsakonian peculiarities (special phonetics, analytic verb forms etc.) cannot be easily explained, but comparing with other MG dialects or by means of typological analysis.
The data I gathered in Tsakonia during last six years makes me disagree with the widespread opinion. The analysis of vocabulary definitely shows many loans from Italian (/koléγa/ ‘friend’), especially from the Venetian dialect (bobóta ‘maize bread’) and various Balkan languages: Slavic (/ambárja/ ‘granary’), Albanian (/kórbe/ ‘black goat’), Aromanian (/búrda/ ‘sack’). Most Tsakonian words (regardless their origin) have parallels in other MG dialects. For example, /strúnga/ ‘yard for cattle’, /vlámi/ ‘lover’, /fára/ ‘family, tribe’ are also met in Thessalian. It means that Tsakonian was in continuous contact with other languages and probably with other MG dialects. Probably this experience of permanent multilingual situation helped Tsakonian to survive when Standard MG became dominant in the region.

2) Palatal Sonants in Tsakonian. Discussing the Problem
Maxim Kisilier & Valentina Fedchenko

http://www.tsakonianarchives.gr/mele...ssing-problem/

Tsakonian is the most mysterious Greek dialect. Famous Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi noted about 1668 that nobody can understand inhabitants of Tsakonia without an interpreter: they speak neither Greek nor Italian. Even today Tsakonian is almost incomprehensible for other Greeks. It falls out of all current classifications of Greek dialects because the majority of Tsakonian phonetic features doesn’t coincide with the isoglosses that are valid for other Greek dialects. Palatal sonants, their status and mutation still remain a matter of discussion. For example, the distribution of palatal and non-palatal sonants is unclear. Another problem deals with the conditions of mutation, i. e. it is often not clear if the mutation depends just on phonological environment or is also affected by certain extralinguistic factors, like the sex of the speaker.

3) The verb of the Aromanian language, by Antonis Bousboukis

http://vlahofonoi.blogspot.ca/2017/0...nguage-by.html

Katsanis also finds matches of the Aromanian with the Tsakonian (Greek dialect), matches that ‘are phonetic, morphological and lexical. The first (phonetic) are the most frequent, while morphological and lexical ones are not that much’.

[tchaiku]

Originally Posted by Carlin

This is a bold claim. What is the evidence to back this up?

We would need a document, from before the tenth century (preferably written by a Tsaconian author) that the name Tsakones was used by the Tsakonians themselves.

The following is from Bulletin de l'Association Guillaume Budé, 1978. Page 216:

"les tsacones sont des soldats de second rang, des auxiliaires. Le terme apparait d'abord en Asie Mineure. A partir du VIIIe siecle, des heretiques, les Pauliciens, sont transferes en masse d'Asie Mineure sur la frontiere byzantino-bulgare y servir comme tsacones, d'ou la valeur religieuse ..."

"the Tsaconians are second-class soldiers, auxiliaries. The term first appeared in Asia Minor. From the eighth century onwards, heretics, the Paulicians, were transferred in large numbers from Asia Minor to the Byzantine-Bulgarian border and served as Tsaconians, hence the religious value ..."

https://books.google.ca/books?id=3M5...=X&redir_esc=y

I think what the author means is that the name ''Tsakones'' was present between Tsakonians already in 10th century, therefore the name was already existent prior to that period of time.

[tchaiku]

Originally Posted by Carlin

"les tsacones sont des soldats de second rang, des auxiliaires. Le terme apparait d'abord en Asie Mineure. A partir du VIIIe siecle, des heretiques, les Pauliciens, sont transferes en masse d'Asie Mineure sur la frontiere byzantino-bulgare y servir comme tsacones, d'ou la valeur religieuse ..."

"the Tsaconians are second-class soldiers, auxiliaries. The term first appeared in Asia Minor. From the eighth century onwards, heretics, the Paulicians, were transferred in large numbers from Asia Minor to the Byzantine-Bulgarian border and served as Tsaconians, hence the religious value ..."

https://books.google.ca/books?id=3M5...=X&redir_esc=y

According to the Byzantine historian George Pachymeres, some Tsakonians were resettled by the Byzantine emperor Michael VII Ducas in Propontis. They lived in the villages of Vatka and Havoutsi, where the Gösen River (Aesepus) empties into the sea.

http://hellenisteukontos.blogspot.co...in-turkey.html
Havoutsi:
http://travelingluck.com/Asia/Turkey...ut%C3%A7a.html
Vatika:
http://travelingluck.com/Asia/Turkey...ak%C3%A7a.html