They speak a Romance language called Macedoromanian which is a close dialect of Romanian. Due to the common language foundation, historians believe that the language link with Romania was interrupted between the 7th and 9th century, after the most important features of the language were formed.
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2 Aromanians in Albania 3 Aromanians in Romania 4 Aromanians in Macedonia 5 See also 6 External links |
In Greece, their number is estimated to be between 600,000 and 1,200,000, but they are not even recognised as a minority, being considered to be Latin-speaking Greeks, although the culture and language have much in common with Romanians, rather than Greeks, which suggests a link with Romanians (the most likely hypothesis is that Aromanians came to Northern Greece from the Danube region).
The pressure against them to abandon their language and traditions is not something new, since it can traced back to the 18th century, the assimilation efforts were encouraged by the Greek missionary Ayios Kosmas (that lived between 1714 to 1779) who taught that Aromanians were speaking "the language of the devil".
The Aromanians, mostly herdsmen living in high mountains (especially in the Pindus area) in Northern Greece never had complete education in their language, although until 1948, the Romanian state subsidized schools, the communist regime in Romania stopped all links and until now there is almost no education for the Aromanian children in their mother tongue and it is just a matter of time until they will be completely assimilated into the Greek society.
The European Parliamentary Assembly examined a report on the issue of the Aromanians in 1997 and adopted a recommendation that underlined the importance that the Greek government should do whatever is necessary to respect their culture and facilitate education in Aromanian and its use in schools, churches and media, but little has been done since then.
The second biggest Aromanian community after the one in Greece, it counts for between 100,000 to 200,000 persons. The Albanian economy is still under a shock after the economic crisis and the Kosovo war, so there is currently no education in their native language, but unlike in Greece, the Vlachs are a recognised national minority in the Albanian constitution despite the claim of the Greek government of all 400,000 Albanian Orthodoxs as Greeks.
Since the Middle Ages, due to the Turkish occupation, many Aromanians fled their homeland in the Balkans to settle Romanian Kingdoms, countries that had a similar language and had a certain degree of autonomy from the Turks. These isolated cases of families settling in Romania were assimilated by the majority culture.
After the national awakening, in 1860 the Romanian government opened almost 100 schools in regions of Greece, Macedonia and Albania to help the minority keep its culture.
In 1925, after Dobruja was unified with Romania, king Carol II of Romania gave the Aromanians land to settle in this region of Romania. The result was that currently about 50,000 or 15% of the population of Dobruja speaks the Aromanian dialect. They do not consider themselves an ethnic minority, but a cultural minority.
Although not very numerous (about 20,000), in Republic of Macedonia the Aromanians have a much better situation than in other countries, being representated in the Macedonian Parliament and having the right to preserve their ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity and the right of education in their language.
They also received support from the Romanian government since it conditioned the recognition of the independence of Macedonia with the rights of the Aromanians in this country.Aromanians in Greece
Aromanians in Albania
Aromanians in Romania
Aromanians in Macedonia