Small languages and small language communities 17 BLAZE KONESKI: IN MEMORIAM VICTOR A. FRIEDMAN University of Chicago On 7 December 1993 Macedonia lost a leading intellectual light and the single most important figure in the standardization of Modern Macedonian, Blaze Koneski. It was Koneski's good fortune to be in the place and time that saw Macedonians able to realize the goal of a protracted struggle for their own modern literary language, and it was the good fortune of Macedonian to have a brilliant linguist and writer in Blaze Koneski to provide bis fellow countrymen with the example and guidance of a powerful and sensitive intellect. The Slavic dialects of the territory of Macedonia form a transition from the Serbo-Croatian dialects to their north and the Bulgarian dialects to their east. Closely related to, but distinct from, the dialects of these latter two languages, the Macedonian dialects and the territory on which they are spoken were claimed by both the Serbian and Bulgarian states in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, äs the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled them all for five hundred years, gradually declined and finally collapsed. The period after 1912 saw the Macedonians divided among four countries — Serbia (later Yugoslavia), Bulgaria, Greece and Albania — none of which recognized their language äs a legitimate vehicle of public — and in Greece even of private — discourse. The language was treated äs a Serbian dialect in Yugoslavia, äs Bulgarian dialect in Bulgaria, and was persecuted with a view to extermination in Greece. The efforts by Macedonian intellectuals throughout the nineteenth Century and into the twentieth to form a Macedonian literary language were not merely discouraged but were actively suppressed. It was into this environment that Blaze Koneski was born on 19 December 1921 in the village of Nebregovo, near Prilep in western Macedonia, which was then part of a Serbian province. Koneski spent bis first eight years in Nebregovo, where he began elementary school; then bis family moved to Prilep. Koneski attended high school in Kragujevac, Serbia (1934-1939) and studied Slavic linguistics and litera- tures at the Universities of Beigrade (1939-1941) and Sofia (1941-1943). With the bombing of Sofia at the end of 1943, that University closed 0165-2516/94/0108-0211 Int'l. J. Soc. Lang. 108 (1994), pp. 211-218 © Walter de Gruyter Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University Authenticated Download Date | 6/2/15 5:35 PM