Travels in Southeastern Europe

The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.

THE STORY OF THE PEOPLE. 79 but, on the other hand, the adjective is compared not by inflection, as in Servian, but by prefixing 'more' and 'very,' as in Bulgarian and Albanian. Many genuine Serb words are used with distorted meanings, and the endings of proper names are often clipped off (e.g.,' Danil,' not ' Danilo '). Some words are forms used in Bulgaria and not Servia. The truth is that the dialect of the Macedonian Slav is neither Servian nor Bulgarian, but 'betwixt and between,' as he is himself, but I doubt if the dialect of Ochrida differs more from literary Servian than does broad ' Zummerzet ' from literary English. Much that was incomprehensible at first I found later to be not so much a difference of word as of accent and pronunciation. Writing of his travels in I673, Dr. Brown says, 'Schlavonian is spoken in Servia, Bulgaria, and a great part of Macedonia,' which seems to point to the fact that, until they were crystallized into literary form later, Servian and Bulgarian were not markedly differentiated into two tongues. Standard Bulgarian has, in fact, only been evolved in the last twenty-five years. Previous to that time the language seems to have been as inchoate as is now Albanian. The author of 'The Peoples of Turkey,' writing in I878, says: 'The difference between the written and spoken language is so great that the former can scarcely be understood by the bulk of the population. No less than seven grammars are in existence, but they agree neither in general
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Title
The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.
Author
Durham, Mary Edith, 1863-1944.
Canvas
Page 79
Publication
London :: Nelson,
[1905]
Subject terms
Eastern question (Balkan)
Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel.

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"The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham." In the digital collection Travels in Southeastern Europe. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 30, 2025.
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