Renowned Greek linguist and professor Giorgos Baniniotis talked about the value of language in a lecture held at the Wright Theatre of Medical School of Melbourne University, where he said that the ongoing name dispute between Greece and the Former Yugoslavia Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) has clouded the question of language and dialect between the countries as well.
The event was organized by the Australian Institute Of Macedonian Studies, Hellenic Museum and Pan-Macedonian Association of Melbourne in framework of DEMETRIA 2012. Babiniotis, a former Minister of Education and Religious Affairs in Greece, spooke as well of how words and phonology derived from the ancient Macedonian Language, a Greek dialect, which proved that Macedonians in ancient Greece had already developed phonologically a Doric Greek dialect, which was used in oral speech.
According to research at the beginning of the 20th-Century by German Linguists, and from 1988 by Babiniotis, there are 250 words, mostly nouns discovered in Homer and Herodotus eras, identified to have originated from the ancient Macedonian language.
He also referred to the current Bulgarian-Serb language spoken in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and said that, “We respect the language, history and traditions of the people in the neighboring country. However, the term Macedonian they use to name their language causes confusion and is historically and culturally unacceptable.”
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