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Problem is that majority of Vlachs don't consider themselves as Romanians,nor that their language is Romanian.
Every attempt to create Vlach linguistic autonomy is blocked by Romanian accusation that Serbia wants to deny romanian identity of Vlachs.
On other hand any attempt to allow official romanian language as Vlach language ends with accusation of Vlach majority that they don't understand Romanian,and that Romania denies their right of self-determination.
I agree with both of you, Luctor and Socrates.I couldn`t agree more Luctor![]()
In short , this is alpha and omega of all troubles and questions about Vlachs.
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I agree the majority of the Vlachs of North-East Serbia do not consider themselves to be Romanian in the modern conception of that word. I agree that they consider themselves to be Serbs in all matters having to do with government, state and various social, economic and political activities.
But --in agreement with the scientific article I posted some time ago and have so far failed to get you (Luctor) to consider-- the Vlachs of NE Serbia have an internal Romanian identity stemming from fundamental ethnological features. The Romanian identity is not about the modern literary language, the modern Romanian people or the modern Romanian state. Instead it traces its deep Romanian roots in the dialects of Romanian they speak, in the customs they practice for purposes of individual self-definition, in their folk wear, folk music, folk poetry, folk legends, folk superstition --including the vaunted belief in magic. And let's face it: there are excellent indications that the ancestry of a large number, if not the majority of the Vlachs of NE Serbia originated on the other side of the Danube, in the Romanian Banat, in Transylvania and in Oltenia, starting some three centuries ago. Regrettably, many Vlachs of NE Serbia are reluctant to bring this up for fear of being ethnically cleansed, i.e., being forced to leave the home they've known for two to three centuries and expelled to Romania. (I know this statement will be regarded as highly inflammatory, but it's time we faced the facts. I don't think they have anything to worry about. The time of ethnic cleansing is past.)
As to the language of the Vlachs of NE Serbia, I stated already, from intimate personal knowledge, that some 75% of them speak a dialect that is identical to my native dialect. So I take it personally when I hear that my mother tongue is not Romanian. The remaining 25% of the Vlachs of NE Serbia speak a dialect identical to the Romanian dialect in Oltenia, or they speak transitional versions of these two major dialects: Ungurean and Tsaran.
Because Serbs are educated in Serbian, many are unaware of the role education plays in determining everyday language. These Serbs tend to think that there is no difference between dialects and official language. That is largely correct in Serbia, with some minor exceptions and one major exception: the Torlak dialect. But throughout the world --in Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, just to name a few-- generally a language has many dialects, all of which recognize one single form as their literary language. It is in that sense that my native dialect (the Ungurean dialect) is a dialect of Romanian and not an independent language.
So a Romanian (who is unfamiliar with the political fragmentation rampant in the countries of ex Yugoslavia) naturally regards the dialects spoken by the Vlachs of NE Serbia as being a part of the Romanian language. Science does that too. I repeat, it is the position of science that the dialects of the Vlachs of NE are part of the Romanian language. Science also considers Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian to be one language. And as you know, the differences in the three Croat dialects (kajkavski, cakavski and stokavski) are much greater than the differences between literary Croatian and literary Serbian.
One more time: science considers the dialects spoken by the Vlachs of NE Serbia as dialects of Romanian. There is no such thing as vlaski jezik!
Getting back to your points, I know many Vlachs of NE Serbia experience literary Romanian as a foreign tongue and resist the idea of having it introduced as the language of education (about the Vlachs, for the Vlachs, by the Vlachs of NE Serbia). It is a difficult issue that many Romanians, many Vlachs and many Serbs do not have a proper appreciation for.
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