Albanian Odonyms in North Macedonia as Means for Preserving Linguistic and Cultural Heritage (original) (raw)
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Socjolingwistyka, 2023
The most recent changes in commemorative street and square names (odonyms) in Croatia (after 2013: Zagreb, Šibenik, Karlovac, Zaprešić, Velika Gorica, Varaždinske Toplice, Mursko Središće) and Slovenia (after 2010: Ljubljana, Radenci) are the research subject of the paper. The localities were selected as a result of a press inquiry, combined with a qualitative analysis of the discovered materials with the help of discourse-historical approach. The analysis revealed that the argumentation of actors engaged in naming controversies was interdiscursively linked to topoi of the cultural memory in the two countries (totalitarianism, anti-fascism). Methods from linguistic landscape studies placed the contested names in a broad spatial context and revealed attitudes of under-represented social actors: a top-down character of the renamings and the social response, often characterized by an inert acceptance of the changes. The research demonstrated the diversity of responses in the renamed spaces, and their general use, depending on the size of a locality. The capital cities (Zagreb, Ljubljana) are locations of intense bottom-up semiotic activity, also connected to naming conflicts. The activity is also strong in the cities of regional importance (Karlovac, Šibenik), however, although it is sometimes ideological in content, it does not seem to have much connection to the current naming controversies. Semiotic activity is also high in metropolitan satellite towns (Velika Gorica, Zaprešić), but its content is far less ideological. Provincial towns and villages (Mursko Središće, Radenci, Varaždinske Toplice) are much more semiotically austere and the name changes seem to have a top-down character, modelled after the national capital cities. In sum, the renamed streets and squares tend to be scenes of intensive bottom-up and top-down semiotic practices – on the other hand, they rarely engage directly in the conflict around the meaning-making of naming. In this respect, the Zagreb case seems exceptional.
This presentation refers to toponyms in the broader area of Florina in order to reveal their historic, ideological project. We selected and gathered the total corpus of toponyms which consists of 106 place names. The research question refers to the transformation of toponyms in the specific time and place (western Macedonian borders during 1926(western Macedonian borders during -1929. We focus on the former names that signify a Slavic, linguistic origin, while some of them refer to Turkish, Vlachic and Arvanitic origins. We are interested in the process of renaming these toponyms and particularly in their oral usage. We analyze 10 examples of toponyms in order to find out the historic and ideological variables may signify in. In the process of the interlingual translation we are applying the historic, hermeneutic analysis. A simple definition of hermeneutics is textual interpretation, or, in other words, finding meaning in the written word. Two embedded assumptions of hermeneutics are that humans experience the world through language and this language provides both understanding and knowledge. This method of textual analysis emphasizes the socio-cultural and historic influences on qualitative interpretation. It also exposes connotations.
Godišnjak za društvenu istoriju, 2023
This article aims to analyze the political, ideological and historical background of the process of changing street names in Belgrade since the fall of communism, with special emphasis placed on the alterations done during the administration of the Serbian Progressive Party (2013–2021). Since the early 1990s, almost every regime change has introduced different interpretations of the national past and present, significantly influencing the Belgrade odonyms, thus making the politics, history and public memory closely intertwined and mutually dependent.
Old Boundaries and New Cultural Landscapes of a Multiethnic City in Modern-Day Macedonia
In the context of Macedonian and Albanian ethnonational discourses functioning in North Macedonia that constitute a significant component of the system of the city's symbols and semantics, we come upon confrontational strategies between the Slavic and non-Slavic entities that function in the cultural area of Skopje. On the one hand, these confrontational strategies determine the polemic nature of urban space, understood as both material cultural space established on the basis of places of memory and cultural artefacts, and, on the other hand, they are a product of space as an area of activity of actors and social and political networks, often used to construct incoherent self-defining processes within the space defined by the influence of ethnocultural processes.
The penetration of foreings in the terminology of some vital areas in Albania and Kosovo
European Journal of Social Sciences Education and Research, 2015
Albanian language in its current shape is conditioned by historical factors, social, economic, political, and by internal factors of its development. An important direction of development of language is dealing with borrowings, once they benefited from this mutual enrichment between languages in contact, the times words are superimposed where the consequences are evident in the course of development of the host language. Even the Albanian language has a similar approach as both in Albania and Kosovo. Her relationship with neighboring languages, and not only with them, have made her face be the result and reflection of this phenomenon.The trend/tendence of recent years of Albanian people using foreign words as a result of political and social factors we have observed in Albania and Kosovo. Languages of which we have received most borrowings word are mainly from two countries English, Italian and less from French.Foreign words penetrated many vital aspects of the Albanians people life...
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Slavia Meridionalis, 2015
Enforced linguistic conversion: translation of the Macedonian toponyms in the 20th centuryThe article deals with the issue of forced conversion of Macedonian toponyms, considered as a form of linguistic and cultural dislocation or luxation (the Latin luxatio originating from luxus – dislocated). The toponyms are not just eminently linguistic but also a part of civilization’s memory of nations and of humankind, and that is why they are protected by international regulations. The act of translating toponyms from one language to another, within the frames of culturally and ethnically marked space, is undeniable violence against the cultural heritage. A change of a toponym, its forced translation into another language is, according to these legal acts, a crime against culture. For a toponym is a true reflection of historical facts and historical memories. Toponyms can be transcribed onto a different alphabet, letter‑by‑letter (transliteration), but should not be translated, especially n...
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The rapid unification of communication and the world’s conquest by technical and scientific English, lead us towards raising some question marks in the role that some countries should play to setting terminologies in various branches. The constant presence of borrowing raises the need to, firstly, control them, to avoid the use of unnecessary foreign words, and secondly, to avoid the generalization of the so-called, international term. Terminology work helps in cleaning and enriching the general lexicon. Town planning terminology is the linguistic material on which this article is based. It aims to analyze the state of foreign words in this terminology, use cases, the accuracy of use and the possibilities to use, instead of borrowing, the Albanian word.The national linguistic policies necessarily collide with the free choice of the terminology and they get in touch with the international liberalization requirements which let aside some concepts as the preservation of the cultural an...
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Relying on the fact that Macedonia since its independence has been faced with various challenges in the path of Euro-Atlantic integration of the country, and as one of the main challenges still remains the name dispute resolution with Greece. In this regard, we notice that the political parties but especially the citizens do not have a common standpoint on this issue. In fact, the opposite extreme positions that have built communities on how to resolve the aforementioned dispute increase the gap between them. Precisely, in this paper dilemmas will be shown about the Euro-Atlantic future of Macedonia concerning the resolution of the dispute with the state name, seen from the standpoint of citizens. In particular, it will analyze the empirical data arising from the survey conducted with the citizens of the Albanian community in Macedonia, about their beliefs on the state name dispute resolution - as an obstacle to Euro-Atlantic integration of the country. I believe that the results of...