The Poetry of Traditional Languages
The Neapolitan linguist-historian Giambattista Vico said in 1744 in his New Science, “We find that the principle of [the] origins both of languages and of letters lies in the fact that the first gentile peoples, by a demonstrated necessity of nature, were poets who spoke in poetic characters.” This grand discovery enabled Vico to outline the ...
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Aspects of Language and Identity in the Greek Peninsula since the Eighteenth Century
My aim in this paper is to comment on certain texts written in Greek around the years 1800 and 2000 on the subject of the populations and languages that make up the cultural mosaic of the south Balkan peninsula. The introduction to a work by Asterios Koukoudis entitled Studies on the Vlachs, first published in ...
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Community News
We’ve heard of members of our community achieving distinction in the arts, such as Tony Award nominee David Pittu on the Broadway stage. We learned of some recent successes by a few others: Saviana Stanescu, a playwright who is on the faculty of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, recently had her play, ...
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Update on the Vlachs: A Visit to Uma
It is twenty years since I published The Vlachs. When I did so Yugoslavia was still an entity, Albania a closed book, and the Iron Curtain still shrouded much of Eastern Europe. Vlach ha survived these difficult years quite well. There is oddly an increased interest in minority languages, and increased efforts to preserve them. Vlach ...
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Creating a Virtual Museum and Cultural Center: kythera-family.net
www.kythera-family.net Imagine if a huge museum and cultural centre for the Aromanians were to be built, with room for thousands of heritage documents from Vlachs living in the region and those of Vlach descent in the Diaspora. Where all things relating to the community — interviews, important historical documents, family names, vintage family photo collections, old maps, family ...
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An Istrian in New York
The moment I saw the familiar sadness in my mother’s eyes as she looked out over the land she helped her grandfather farm, my experience of being a daughter of Istrians—and more specifically, Istro-Romanians—crystallized. Tears came to her eyes as she looked upon the topola (poplar) trees her grandfather had planted with his son when he was ...
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Community News
We are pleased to welcome the following new members: Elena Profesta Brooklyn, NY Christie Vieira Trumbull, CT An interesting article “In search of my other Greek roots” appeared in the September/October 2006 issue of Odyssey, a leading Greek magazine written in English. Writer Elena Polyzos was raised in a trilingual (Greek-Vlach-English) family in Sydney, Australia, that ...
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Vlach Women and Modernization: A Footnote to Progress
Editor’s note: This article is adapted from a paper that was written almost 20 years ago in graduate school and neither intended for publication nor subjected to academic peer review. I include it in this Newsletter not as fact but rather as an unproven thesis that may provoke thought about the trade-offs we make as ...
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Aromanians in Greece: Minority or Vlach-speaking Greeks?
Abstract At the latest since the existence of the so-called “Aromanian question” are the Aromanians split into different factions concerning their identity, i.e. those who consider themselves as being Romanian, those who consider themselves as being Greek and those who consider themselves as being “purely” Aromanian. Due to increasing contacts to the Greek language as ...
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Vlachs
We are pleased to welcome the following new members: Corneliu Mihalexe Warren, MI Horea Hristu Bridgeport, CT We were saddened to learn of the recent passing of Spiro Vasilescu, a longtime member and past officer of the Society Farsarotul. We hope to feature a brief profile of this wonderful man in a future issue of ...
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Vlachs
*This article was first published in Mediterranean Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 4, and is reprinted here by kind permission of the author and Duke University Press. They have many names: Rumani, Arumani, Vlach, Koutsovlachos (Greek), Choban (Albanian), Tsintsar or Vlasi (Slavic), Karagouni (Turkish), and more. They inhabit at least six Southeastern European countries: Greece, ...
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The Vlachs of Greece and their Misunderstood History
Abstract The Vlachs speak a language that evolved from Latin. It was transmitted by Romans to many peoples and was used as an international language for centuries. Most Vlach populations live in and around the borders of modern Greece. The word ‘Vlachs’ appears in the Byzantine documents at about the 10th century, but few details are ...
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Community News
We are pleased to welcome the following new members: Nitsa Perkins-Bailey Marshfield, MA Jonathan Forsythe No.Smithfield, RI Cornel Todeasa Monroe, CT Tom Cheamitru Gambrills, MD Peter Caleshu Naples, FL Andrea Crowell Stratford, CT Alexander G. Dacey Easton, CT Anastase P. Dacey Easton, CT Bethany A. LoMonaco Mansfield, CT Sarah E. LoMonaco Mansfield, CT Joanne C. ...
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Past Presidents at the Centennial Celebration
Past Presidents of the Society being honored at our Centennial: from left, Bill Balamaci, Nick Fatse, Dina Vanghele, Bob Nicola, Andrea Colimitra, George Fatsy, & Aurel Ciufecu
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The Vlachs: Metropolis and Diaspora
(Editor’s note: Asterios Koukoudis is the author of a recently published four-volume masterwork about the Aromanians: Thessaloniki and the Vlachs, The Vlachs of Olympus and the Meglen, The Vlachs of Veria and the Albanian Vlachs of Central Macedonia, and The Vlachs – Metropolis and Diaspora, which has been translated into English and will soon be available through ...
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Greek Committee of the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages
PO BOX 100, 59200 NAOUSA – GREECE TEL. ++.3850.22570, E-mail: greblul@otenet.gr INFORMATION BULLETIN, OCTOBER 2002, NUMBER 1 PRESS RELEASE On 26 January 2002 a meeting was arranged in Thessaloniki by the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages for representatives of the linguistic minorities of Greece. This historic meeting ended with a decision to create the Greek ...
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Nationalism vs. the Vlachs
I celebrated my sixty-fifth birthday in Sarandë, South West Albania. This is easily reached by boat from Corfu, and is a safe and pleasant place to take a holiday. There are Vlachs in the area and all over Southern Albania. I have recently written about these Vlachs in a book entitled Badlands, Borderlands. Rather disappointingly ...
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Community News
We are pleased to welcome the following new members: Jennifer Turek Wallingford, CT James W. Conway Batavia, IL Atanasie Talabacu Middle Village, NY Mihai Talabacu Middle Village, NY Harlambie Mila Bronx, NY We were saddened to learn of the passing of Prof. Kostas Kazazis, a scholar and good friend of the Aromanian language. Excerpts from ...
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Kostas Kazazis: In Memoriam
Editor’s note: Kostas Kazazis was a good friend to the Aromanian community and language. Among his extensive writings on practically all of the Balkan languages, he also contributed an enlightening article to our Newsletter (“Some Recent Greek Views on Aromanian,” Volume 10, Issue 2: 1996). The following is excerpted from a tribute that will appear ...
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The Vlah Minority in Macedonia: Language, Identity, Dialectology, and Standardization
The research for this article was aided by a grant for East European Studies from the American Council of Learned Societies with funding from the US Department of State/Research and Training for Eastern Europe and the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union Act of 1983 (Title VIII). All translations are my own unless otherwise ...
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