Greek View
From the Greek point of view, there can be only one meaning for the term Macedonia, and that is in reference to ancient Macedon and the modern Greek region of Macedonia. It follows that the term cannot properly be used for a Slavic language.
Demetrius Andreas Floudas, Senior Associate of Hughes Hall, Cambridge, explains that it was only in 1944 that Josip Broz Tito, in order to increase his regional influence, gave to the southernmost province of Yugoslavia (hitherto officially known as Vardarska banovina) the new name of People's Republic of Macedonia. At the same time, in a "political master-stroke", the local language - which was until then held to be a western Bulgarian dialect - was unilaterally christened "Macedonian" and became one of Yugoslavia's official languages. Greece similarly rejects the name "Republic of Macedonia", seeing it as an implicit territorial claim on the whole of the region.
Books have been published in Greece which purport to expose the artificial character of the Macedonian language. Some Greeks believe that the Slavic dialects spoken in Greek Macedonia are actually a mixture of Slavic and Greek (see Slavic language (Greece)).
Read more about this topic: Political Views On The Macedonian Language
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