Terminology By Group
All these controversies have led ethnic groups in Macedonia to use terms in conflicting ways. Despite the fact that these terms may not always be used in a pejorative way, they may be perceived as such by the ethnic group to which they are applied. Both Greeks and ethnic Macedonians generally use all terms deriving from Macedonia to describe their own regional or ethnic group, and have devised several other terms to disambiguate the other side, or the region in general.
A proportion of Bulgarians and ethnic Macedonians have extremist views about their inter-relatedness. On the one hand, extremist ethnic Macedonians seek to deny the possibility of any national, linguistic and historical relatedness to the Bulgarians. On the other hand, extremist Bulgarians seek to downplay this distinctiveness, and are often supported by extremist Greeks. Bulgarians and ethnic Macedonians seek to deny the self-identification of the Slavic speaking minority in northern Greece, which mostly self-identifies as Greek. Extremists on all sides have been known to fabricate and reproduce falsified information, along with denying genuine information and propagating unscientific and pseudoscientific theories.
Certain terms are in use by these groups as outlined below. Any denial of self-identification by any side, or any attribution of Macedonia related terms by third parties to the other side, can be seen as highly offensive. General usage of these terms follows:
Read more about this topic: Macedonia (terminology) Famous quotes containing the word group:“The government of the United States at present is a foster-child of the special interests. It is not allowed to have a voice of its own. It is told at every move, “Don’t do that, You will interfere with our prosperity.” And when we ask: “where is our prosperity lodged?” a certain group of gentlemen say, “With us.”” |