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Pontic locatives
In the last post, I said—somewhat flippantly—that the locative adverbs of Pontic are neurotic; and John Cowan asked me to spell out how.
To do so, I’ve gone through the 60 pp discussion of George Drettas’ 1993 grammar of Pontic, Aspects pontiques. I have to say, I don’t like Drettas’ grammar; as a friend said to me, “it’s very French”. By that, I don’t just mean that it’s *in* French—which makes it looking through a dark glass for me; it also means that it takes an approach to grammar which I’m unfamiliar with, and its exposition is rather too leisurely, and at times woolly.
On the other hand, it has the rare benefit among grammars of Modern Greek dialects that it treats the dialect as a linguistic system in its own right, and it does not merely list the ways it differs from Standard Modern Greek—as most dialect grammars do. Some of the paths Pontic grammar has taken are quite alien to the Standard dialect; so this is well-justified for Pontic. In fact, Drettas gives his Pontic in IPA; given my readership, I’m transliterating back to Greek.
I won’t resist the comparison to Modern Greek locatives either. As I said last post, Standard Modern Greek is rather limited in its means of expressing location. A couple of prepositions: από (motion from, location away from), σε (motion to, location on), and I guess μέχρι/ώς (up to). The rest is done by adverbs: μπροστά, μέσα, πάνω, πίσω “front, inside, above, behind” etc. The adverbs can be prefixed with απο- , which still means “away from” (motion or location); so βάλ’ το πάνω “put it up”, βάλ’ το αποπάνω “put it up from = put it over, put it above”.
Pontic also has a limited repertoire of spatial prepositions: σ’, ας, ους, corresponding to Standard σε, από, ώς. (Etymologically ας corresponds to Ancient ἐκ ~ ἐξ, which elsewhere survived as αχ ~ οχ.) It also has a list of adverbs to supplement them, quite similar to Standard Greek. So Pontic distinguishes between άν “up” and απάν “above”, and κά “down” and αφκά “below”; the latter pair corresponds to κάτω and αποκάτω, and the former to πάνω and αποπάνω. (Etymologically πάνω is itself a compound of ἐπί + ἄνω “on + up”, and Pontic άν is of course merely ἄνω.) So απάν, αφκά, and απές “inside” are primitive adverbs of Pontic that already include the απο- prefix etymologically.
But beyond those etymological instances, Pontic can also prefix απο- optionally to a productive range of locative adverbs. Those locative adverbs start with words for “here” and “there”.
Pontic has three words for “here” and “there”, ακεί means “yonder”; αδά means “here (close to me)”, and ατού means “there (not close to me, though still nearby)”. By default, ατού means “close to you”; but if you’re next to me, I would use αδά and not ατού. The distinction corresponds to the three-way distinction in Latin of hic, iste, ille (and I render it here as “here, there, yonder”)—but not to Modern Greek εδώ and εκεί. (ατού corresponds to Modern Greek αυτού “there”, but αυτού is deprecated in the Standard, and I’m not aware that it is systematically distinguished from εκεί.)
Pontic can prefix these locations with από, and so far that is just like Standard Greek: Standard Greek αποδώ, αποκεί “over here, over there; from here, from there”, Pontic απαδά, απατού, απακεί.
But Pontic goes further. “Here” and “there”, whether or not with a “from” prefix, can be suffixed with the adverbs for “above, below, inside, behind”, απάν, αφκά, απές, οπίς. So “Go away” in Standard Greek is φύγε από δω, “leave from here”. In Pontic, it is φύγον απατουπές, “leave from there inside” (από + ατού + απές). “Come up!”, “He fell down”, and “Look in!” are έλ αδαπάν “come here up”, έρουξεν εκιαφκά “he fell yonder down”, and τέρεν ατουπές “look there inside”. You can use the adverbs on their own (as you would in Standard Greek), but Pontic tends to insert the location as the starting point.
What gets even harder to pin down are the four additional particles that can be added on after the adverbs; they are impossible to gloss in Standard Greek, and not much easier to gloss in French. Drettas’ 15 pp discussion does not leave me much clearer about what they mean, but I gather that:
- κες means “trajectory, direction, orientation, vector”
- κιάν means “space, volume moved through, space apart from”
- κα means “this is the new reference point of the discourse; this is a specific location”
- κεκά means “in the vicinity of”
I’m going to give examples from Drettas’, which are supposed to illustrate how this all works, though some of them leave me even more confused:
- επίεν οκςςου-κές “he went out” (in the direction of outside)
- εκάθουμνες οκςςο-κά “we were sitting outside” (and “outside” is now the reference point for what I say next)
- αδα-κές “hither”
- πού-κες “whither?”
- οψές επέρασα ασην Αθήναν κες “last night I passed through Athens” (emphasis on going through Athens, following a path)
- οψές επέρασα ασην Αθήναν κιαν “last night I passed through Athens” (emphasis on getting away from Athens) [hilariously, a Pontic speaker used them to show Drettas the difference between κες and κιαν—but he glosses them identically]
- σύρεατεν σο φουρνίν κιαν “he threw her into the oven” (“at the oven movement-through”)
- σύρεατεν σο φουρνίν κες “he threw her towards the oven” [I made up this example, hoping I got it right]
- εσύ αδα-κές μαναςςέσα πώς είσαι; “how did you end up here all alone?” (the subject is not still moving, but κές means she has moved)
- ατείν τα εικόνας-ατουν είχαν-ατ αφκα-κές, εσκάλεζαν κ’ επέγνανε, καταφύιον εποίνανε και είχανε τα εικόνας εκειαφκά “they kept their icons downwards (= hiding them under the floorboards); they kept digging, made a shelter, and kept their icons down yonder [no added particle]”
- ατου-κιάν “over there” (across from here)
- ας εκείν την ημέραν κιαν “from that day forward…” (that day is set apart from the future)
- ο ήλιον αφκά-κιαν ‘κι στεκ “the sun won’t stay down” (“down”, conceived as being within the space between the earth and the heavens, that the sun can move through)
- θα κόφτω και τεσόν το κιφάλ θα βάλ-ατ εκε-κά “I’ll chop of your head, and I’ll put it yonder (in my sack)” (“yonder” relative to the here-and-now, but “here” relative to the story’s context: that is the reference point)
- αβούτο κείτ εκε-κά και ‘κ’ ελέπσ-ατο “it’s sitting right there and you can’t see it” (it’s there, but “there” is now where we’re focussing attention in the discussion, as the reference point)
- εκαλάτςςεβαμ εκε-κά κάτ ελέγαμεν “we were speaking there, we were saying something” (the action has a reference point as its location, so it is a specific instance)
- ποντιακά εκαλάτςςεβαμ ε-κές “we were speaking Pontic thither” (the action has a direction rather than a reference point as its location, so it is not specific: it is interpreted as “we used to speak in Pontic in general”)
- πού-κεκα “where exactly?” (in the vicinity of where)
- έτρεξεν κ’ έρθεν σον α-Εάνην κεκά “he ran up to St John’s church” (lit. “he ran and went to the vicinity of St John”)
- εκατήβαν εκεί σα χοράφ-εαμουν κεκά “they came down yonder, near our fields” (lit. “to the vicinity of our fields”)
- ασό δρανίν απαν-κεκά ετέρναν “they looked from up on the roof” (lit. “they looked from the roof, in the vicinity of above”)
- αδα-κά, ακε-κά, σο καφούλ οπισ-κεκά “right here, right there, behind that bush” (lit. “in the vicinity of behind the bush”)
The distinctions are extraordinarily subtle, and I’m not sure I’ve quite got them. Often enough, it seems, κες means “towards” (“hither”, “passed through”) and κιάν means “away from” (“from that day forward”, “into the oven”). But ποντιακά εκαλάτςςεβαμ ε-κές “we were speaking Pontic thither” does not involve any motion towards, but some notion of κες as a generic location; while the sun in ο ήλιον αφκά-κιαν ‘κι στεκ “the sun won’t stay down” is not yet away from the horizon, κιαν merely indicates that it *will* move away. And I’m sure I’m vague on the perspective shift introduced by κα.
Now that said, none of this is that unusual from the viewpoint of human languages: there are other languages that will say things like φύγον απατουπές, “leave from there inside”, or will do perspective shifts like κα does, or will distinguish between vectors and spaces like κες and κιαν do. But there’s nothing particularly Indo-European about how Pontic has done it: Pontic is regaining the subtleties of Ancient Greek prepositions, but it isn’t using cases and lots of prepositions to do it. And John Cowan has surely been reminded of Lojban from about the third paragraph of this post; but I’m reasonably certain Pontic hasn’t picked this behaviour up from Lojban either.
As will be no surprise to anyone, this looks like influence from Caucasian languages, as Drettas concludes: the neighbouring Laz has at least 48 different preverbs indicating spatial orientation and direction. (And “Laz” is what Pontians actually called themselves before the scholars renamed them after the Black Sea.) The picture of the Laz preverbs Sylvia Kutscher sketches is absurdly rich. Pontic’s locative adverbs, its “above” and “inside” and “behind”, are not ultimately alien from the rest of Greek even if their combinatorics are. Laz is certainly on a much more neurotic level still; Pontic does not make distinctions like dolo- vs. mola- (pouring into the mouth of someone lying down vs. pouring into the mouth of someone standing up; the bottle is in the basket vs. the cup is in the cupboard.)
But the parameters Laz appeals to, such as orientation, shape, and horizontal vs vertical (which Setatos before Drettas had suggested to explain κες vs κιαν)—all sound like they have rubbed off on their Greek-speaking neighbours.
Going from X = Going past X
Way, way back, Tipoukeitos asked if I could comment on the seemingly illogical use of πάω από Χ “to go past X”, which has attracted opprobrium from at least one Modern Greek language maven. (“Language maven” is not intended here as a term of praise.) What is seemingly illogical about the construction is that it literally means “to go from X”, but X is the destination and not the origin of going. So how can such an expression have come about? If you’re going to X, how can you say you’re going “from X”?
I have no idea if someone has already worked this out, and I’m not going to bother checking, because the explanation is fun and simple. You may have already worked out what is going on yourselves; if not, this will be quick.
I start by noting that Modern Greek is pretty impoverished when it comes to prepositions. In contrast to the prodigious combinatorics of prepositions and cases in Ancient Greek, and the neurotically precise locative adverbs of Pontic, Standard Modern Greek makes do with very little: από for motion from (or distance from), σε for motion to (or proximity to), and a few adverbs for clarification. Ancient Greek could deal with motion past by a simple παρά; but that is not available to the modern language.
So with the limited means of “from” and “to”, Modern Greek needs to convey a notion of a temporary destination. What it does is not particularly uncommon in colloquial, vivid language: it has come up with an expression that is economical, but that is not the obvious way to say it. That is what makes it vivid language, the first time you see it: like a punchline to a joke, you have to think about it to get it. The expression conveys the notion of a temporary destination, which will then also serve as a point of departure later on. So X is both a destination and an origin.
To achieve this, X is marked as a destination in one way, and an origin in another way. It is marked as an origin by the preposition, “from”. It is marked as a destination by the context, because the expression only works if you’re not already at X. That’s what makes you have to think about it, in classic punchline mode—that is, in conversational implicature:
- Πάμε από την Πανεπιστημείου “We’re going from University St”
- But we’re not already at University St
- So we’re going to have to go *to* University St, so we can then go *from* University St to somewhere else
- So we’re going to stay at University St only briefly: we’re going past University St
You also use this expression to emphasise this X is part of a route: you go to X precisely in order to get to somewhere else, so X is the origin for your ultimate destination. Hence Tipoukeitos’ example:
- θα πάμε από Πανεπιστημίου γιατί η Ακαδημίας είναι κλειστή “We’ll go *via* University St because Academy St is blocked off.”
In fact από “from” is the way Modern Greek expresses “via”.
Now expressions like this, with odd prepositions after verbs, work by analogy with other verbs. Prepositions are quite flexible in their meaning, according to the verb that governs them: English prepositions’ meanings are so hard to pin down because they are determined by verbs.
There is a verb where “from = past” is already well established in Modern Greek, and it is of course περνάω, “to go past, to go through”. In fact, “from” after περνάω has the same shade of meaning there as well, compared to the normal expression:
- Πάω στην Πανεπιστημίου “I’m going to University St”
- Περνάω την Πανεπιστημίου “I’m passing through University St”
- Πάω από την Πανεπιστημίου “I’m going past University St”
- Περνάω από την Πανεπιστημίου “I’m going past University St”
Normally, you go to (πάω σε X) a destination; by saying “from”, you’re making the destination an origin as well. Normally, you go through, or overtake a tangent (περνάω X); by saying “from”, you’re making the tangent an origin—which implies you’re stopping by there long enough for the tangent to become an origin. If you don’t say “from”, X remains a tangent, and you can’t be stopping there:
- Πέρασα από την Πανεπιστημίου να δω το Γιώργο “I went past University St to see George (at University St)”
- Πέρασα την Πανεπιστημίου να δω το Γιώργο “I went through University St to see George (at the next street)”
Cf. Tipoukeitos’ example:
- θα πάω απ’ την πεθερά μου πρώτα να πάρω τον μικρό “I’ll go by my mother-in-law’s first, to pick up the kid”.
And because περνάω/πάω από is strongly associated with places as origins, you can’t use it with persons:
- Πάω στο Γιώργο “I go to George”
- Πάω στου Γιώργου “I go to George’s (place)”
- ??Πάω από το Γιώργο “I go from George”
- Πάω από του Γιώργου “I go past George’s”
- Περνάω το Γιώργο “I overtake George”
- ??Περνάω του Γιώργου “I pass through George’s”
- Περνάω από του Γιώργου “I go past George’s”
- Περνάω από το Γιώργο Not “I pass from George”, but “I go past George’s”
As for the purported illogicality of the expression—language is not formal logic: if it was, you wouldn’t get defeasible implicatures (assumptions by your listener about what you mean, which may turn out to be wrong), and you wouldn’t get the exploitation of defeasible implicatures (punchlines—you assumed I meant X, when I actually meant Y, so I momentarily tricked you in what I said). Defeasible implicatures is what makes language vivid.
And as we saw, the expression makes sense just fine, once you allow that people can both go to a place, and (then) from that place. Maybe you can’t do that in Language Maven World; but Language Maven World is not a place you want to spend a lot of time in anyway.
“Neighbouring Bulgaria” project
In a previous blog post, I went through Shishmanov’s listing of erstwhile Bulgarian villages in Asia Minor, and tried to map their location—to get a sense of how isolated Kızderbent was, and whether that would account for the heavy Turkicisation that Trakatroukika reportedly underwent.
Stoyan Shivarov, of the Ottoman Archive in the Bulgarian National Library, has been in touch to ask about my sources, and that has made me aware of his own ongoing research into the Anatolian Bulgarians. Shivarov and his colleagues Georgi Zelengora and Konstantin Panayotov have been undertaking archival research as well as visits to the sites of the villages; so his own Google map of the villages is going to be rather more reliable than my own.
Here’s my uninformed map (blue = Bulgarian villages, red = Kızderbent):
View Anatolian Bulgarians in a larger map
And here’s his well-informed map, with notes on the identifications if you click through:
View bulgarian villages in anatolia in a larger map
Shivarov has a blog about the “Neighboring Bulgaria” research project. He has just come back from his second field trip, and he is finding new villages not previously reported, as well as identifications of previously reported villages. He has also found some Bulgarian still spoken in the region (Kocapınar), by Pomaks.From this post, it looks like Pomaks were already settling the region in 1878, and more came after 1922 from Drama.
So Christian speakers of Bulgaro-Macedonian settle in Bithynia between the 1500s and 1875, mostly from southern Bulgaria, though also from Kastoria and probably Ohrid. Muslim speakers of Bulgaro-Macedonian settle in Bithynia from 1878 on, also from southern Bulgaria but also from Greece. Most of the Christians ended up going back to Bulgaria. Some Christians ended up going to Greece instead. So you can speak Bulgarian, but your descendants, depending on your credal choices, end up Bulgarian, Greek, or Turkish. Yes, ethnicity in the Balkans is a complex thing.
As to why the Pomaks came to Bithynia, maybe the Ottomans decided to settle them where there was already Bulgarian spoken, maybe they chose the location themselves. I’d be fascinated to find out about how the Christian and Muslim Bulgarian-speakers of Kocapınar got along: finding themselves together in a strange place, similar but not the same.
Like the Trakatroukides and the indigenous villagers in Polypetro, say.
You’ll see that Kızderbent looks rather more isolated in his map than mine, although I was uncertain about the villages closest to it. That is circumstantial evidence for why the language of Kızderbent was so Turkicised, although I still don’t have a real sense of how its Turkicisation really worked.
A Turkish etymology for both α and σιχτίρ?
Language advisory
In the last obscenity-filled post on this blog, Pierre left a comment on α σιχτίρ “fuck off”, which is derived from Turkish:
The Turkish is sıçdırmak ( ﺼﭽﺩﺭﻣﻕ ) with a chim, rather than a kha, and it gets “shit” right back into the context. Actually, it is a causative form and means “to make (someone? / yourself?) shit” and it appears to be imperative. My guess is that “ey sıçdır” is all Turkish and means “Go take a shit.”
In fact, there really is a Turkish verb sikmek “to fuck” (“Turkic cognates include Azeri sikmək and Uzbek sikmoq“), and this discussion thread goes through the diffusion of siktir into the Balkans and Armenian.
What I did *not* know from the thread though, is that the interjection siktir in Turkish has a variant hassiktir. And that makes me look at the α in α σιχτίρ, and speculate whether it too is Turkish in origin—and not Ancient Greek, as is normally assumed.
α in α σιχτίρ or ά γαμήσου corresponds to get in get fucked or get lost. It’s a hortative particle, and I think what is commonly assumed about its origin is wrong.
Modern Greek has four similar hortative particles.
- άμε is a verb in origin; it’s derived from Classical ἄγωμε “let’s go”, but in Modern Greek is used as “go!”, as an exhortation. We know that because in Early Modern Greek, ἄγωμε was used to mean “go!” instead of “let’s go”: (ἄγωμε μὲ τὴν κάμηλον τὴν μακροσφονδυλάτην “go with the long-neckled camel!”, Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds 768)
- άντε has been argued (tortuously) to be a verb in origin as well: ἄγε δή “go indeed!” The etymology makes no sense, and though the Triantaphyllides dictionary vacillates, and the other dictionaries are unrepentant, the obvious derivation is from the Turkish exclamation haydi. (I have 12 pages of an uncompleted paper arguing this; there are straightforward cognates throughout Turkic, and in Russian and Ukrainian via Tatar.) Notwithstanding its origin, άντε does act in some ways as a verb, including picking up a plural ending (άντεστε), and taking subjunctive complements (άντε να δεις “go to see, go and see”)
- The other two particles are άι ~ άει and α. They are assumed to be related; this is the entry from the Triantaphyllides dictionary on the pair:
α2 & άι interj.: before exclamation (cf. άντε); depending on context and intontation expresses (a) indignation, annoyance, dismissal; “go, get”: (with an imperative or να + subjunctive with a comparable meaning) α/άι πνίξου / παράτα μας / χάσου / να χαθείς “go drown! / go leave us alone! / get lost!” / || (with σε “to”, article and noun) α/άι στην ευχή / στο διάβολο / στο καλό “to the blessing! / to hell! / to the good!”. α/άι στη δουλειά σου “to your business”: “mind your own business, continue what you are doing”. || friendly reproach: ~ να χαθείς! “get lost!” (b) exhortation: Άι στο καλό, παιδί μου, και πρόσεχε “go to the good (farewell), my child, and be careful”: go on, go to the good [= farewell]. || wondering about what will happen: α/άι να δούμε πώς θα τα βγάλουμε πέρα “let’s see how we get through this”. α/άι να δούμε τι θα γίνει “let’s see what will happen”. [α: truncation of άι· άι: άε < Ancient ἄγε "onwards!" (imperative of ἄγω "go") deleting intervocalic [ɣ] and diphthongised]
(It’s α2, to distinguish it from the interjection “ah!”, α1.)
Now, unlike άμε and άντε, άι and α do not act like independent verbs. They are prefixed to imperatives, which means they are not verbs with a dependent verb: they are acting like interjections—or serial verbs. άμε can’t precede an imperative; άντε can, because άμε is not an interjection and άντε is. (άι and α do precede the subjunctive as well, but the subjunctive is also used as a gentler command; so it’s consistent with άι and α behaving as interjections.)
- άμε/άντε/*άι/*α να δεις ποιος είναι “go to see who it is”
- *άμε/άντε/άι/*α δες ποιος είναι “go, see who it is”
They also cannot appear on their own as verbs (or for that matter as interjections): they must always introduce something.
- άμε/άντε/*άι/*α “go on!”
And άι/α has no flexibility with what prepositions it can take: it cannot take από “from”, meaning “go past”:
- άμε/άντε/*άι/*α από την αγορά “go past the market”
The only prepositional phrase άι/α can take is σε “to” with a definite article:
- άμε/άντε/άει/α στο διάολο “go to the devil” (to hell)
Surely that means άι/α is behaving like a verb here? Well, no. If it is a verb, why the constraint on having a definite article?
- άμε/άντε/*άι/*α σε κανένα μπουντρούμι “go to a dungeon”
Now, it turns out that you can use σε phrases with a definite article on their own, as an oath, a blessing or curse, hoping that someone ends up there. You can’t leave the article out if you do that: it won’t be the same oath:
- στο καλό!/στο διάολο! “to the good” (farewell), “to the devil”
- *σε καλό!/*σε διάολο! “to good” (farewell), “to a devil”
These expressions of course imply “go!”, but they have still settled into a template of requiring a definite article, and expressing wishes. άι/α is being prefixed to those established expressions: that does not mean it is acting as a real verb. You can’t use άι/α before στο if an oath is *not* involved:
- άμε/άντε/άι/α στο διάολο “go to the devil”
- άμε/άντε/??άι/*α στο γιατρό “go to the doctor”
Which suggests that, whatever άντε was originally, it is now (also) a verb; and whatever άι used to be, it is now not behaving as a verb, but just an exclamation, a particle introducing verbs and oaths.
In fact, that’s reason enough to suspect άι did not start out as a verb at all, but as an interjection—such as, say, I dunno, the Turkish interjection hay. The thing is though, there are several instances from the Historical Dictionary of Modern Greek (Modern dialect dictionary) of “missing link” particles in dialect, between the verb ἄγε and άι:
- Leucas: άγε, Lesbos: άγι, Sikinos: έγε
- Cyprus: άγι̮α
- Thessaly, Cephallenia, Cyme, Leucas, Siphnos etc. άε
- Maina: χάε
Still, multiple causation does happen, and the very similar exclamation hay! may have encouraged άγε > άι to be restricted to exclamation-like use.
But there’s something interesting about the Triantaphyllidis definition. In all its examples but one, it uses άι and α interchangeably. All the examples I’ve given have been interchangeable as well, although I hesitated over ??άι/*α στο γιατρό “go to the doctor”. The one time Triantaphyllidis does not use α but only άι, is in the following pair:
- *άμε/*άντε/άι/α στο καλό “oh, to the good” (euphemism for “oh, to the devil” = “well I’ll be! what the deuce!”)
- άμε/άντε/άι/*α στο καλό “go to the good” (= “farewell”)
στο καλό is ambiguous between a literal blessing, and a euphemistic curse. άι can be used both the bless and to curse. α is not used to bless: only to curse. Curses such as can be found at slang.gr:
- α σιχτίρ “get fucked!”
- α γαμήσου “get fucked!”
- α να χαθείς “get lost!”
- α στο διάολο “go to hell!” > ασταδγιάλα ~ ασταδιάλα
- α να σε γαμήσω “I’m gonna fuck you!” (not as foreplay, but as one man threatening another—hence the joke reply given there by Vrastaman, “I’d rather we just stay friends”.)
There’s a further complication that the phrase is actually used as a deferred threat: “A peculiar expression said (usually twice) instead of ‘I will fuck you’ during stand-offs, but usually with a desire to avoid trouble with someone who is trouble anyway. Like ‘count yourself lucky’, but leaving everything open, especially if the other talks back.” (Halikoutis) (Pritsapirdulas adds in comments: “We also say it (1) when something is broken and we can’t fix it; (2) when we react to something startling us.”) But a curse it still is.
- α πάγαινε ~ α πάαινε ~ ρε α πάαινε “get lost”, where Standard Greek has retained this dialectal imperative “be going” only in the context of this curse:
ρε α πάαινε: an abbreviated form of the expression “pardon me sir/madam, could you possibly relocate yourselves a smidgeon in the opposite direction from me? I thank you in advance for your understanding.” It is used to show beyond doubt that the speaker is not disposed to be serviceable towards his interlocutor, and that the discussion is probably coming to its definitive conclusion right about now:
—Pardon me sir, could you please park a bit further on, so my car can fit in too?
—Ρε α πάαινε, wanting to park, no less! As if you had a car back in your village, you FUCKING HILLBILLY! (acg)
So α is used consistently in contexts reminiscent of α σιχτίρ “get fucked!” I suspect now that Greeks heard both hassiktir and siktir, reanalysed the former as a sixtir, and related the a back to άι—but only in contexts to do with cursing, like the original hassiktir. This would have been helped along by the existence in Greek of α1, the interjection “ah!”
- In the expression α γεια σου “ah your health!” ~ α μπράβο “ah bravo” = “that’s more like it!”, it’s not immediately obvious which of the two α is involved; it could be either the pure exclamation α1 (“aha! that’s more like it!”), or the hortative α2 (ά μπράβο = άντε μπράβο: “go on! that’s more like it!”) The restriction of α otherwise to curses makes me suspect the former, but I’m being schematic there.
Closing Kızderbent
Having exhausted the online resources for Kızderbent and its language, I’m closing off the posts on it, for now at any rate.
So what have we learned about Kızderbent?
The people who lived in Kızderbent speak a Slavonic-based language, called Trakatroukika, with a significant Turkish admixture. The Turkish admixture is definitely there in the vocabulary; I don’t have enough information yet on whether the admixture also extended to the grammar, making Trakatroukika a true mixed language. The basic vocabulary is still Slavonic; that only the numbers 1–4 remain Slavonic is consistent with the pervasive influence of Turkish as the trade language. (Rural populations only need large numbers for commerce.)
There are claims of Armenian elements in Trakatroukika, but they are made in passing, and no evidence has turned up of such influence. My guess is that Armenians lived in the village, and authors lazily assumed Armenian had made it into the language mix. There is some Greek presence in Trakatroukika, but it is underwhelming; outside of cultural loans, there are two cooking terms, “thank you”, and two place names. I think these show contact with Greek-speakers, maybe even contact where the Trakatroukides came from; but they do not show extensive presence of Greek-speakers in Kızderbent. There is a slight presence of Albanian in the vocabulary.
Kızderbent was an affluent village on a major trade route; the village was initially established to guard the route, and enjoyed tax exemptions. It was settled sometime between the 16th and 18th century—likelier earlier than later. This makes it roughly contemporary to the other waves of settlement in Bithynia, by Greeks (including Tsakonians) and Bulgarians; the Balkan peoples of the Ottoman Empire were mobile, and there were many landed settlements in the parts of present-day Turkey closest to the Balkans (Eastern Thrace, Bithynia; in fact the Greek of the Western Asia Minor coast has been argued to be a resettlement in Ottoman times from the Greek islands, and its dialect is quite close to the dialect of Crete and the Cyclades.)
The village appears to have been isolated from other Bulgarian-speaking villages, though we know nothing of the nearby Pamuk-Dervent. Early 19th century accounts of the village call it either entirely Bulgarian (Salvatore, Tancoigne, Keppel) or entirely Greek (Irby & Mangles, Leake, Conder citing Leake). Given that Ottoman identity was credal, and there was no ecclesiastical autonomy for Bulgarians at the time, this is still consistent with Greek not being spoken in Kızderbent.
The linguistic shift of Kızderbent towards Turkish is mentioned several times, and there also appears to have been a cultural shift (Anatolian dances, songs in Turkish, oil wrestling.) It has been suggested that the shift to Turkish language and cultural practices but Greek identity means Kızderbent was influenced by Turkish-speaking Christians, who identified as Greek.
With the imposition of 19th century nationalisms, the Slavophone villages of Asia Minor had to choose whether to identify as Bulgarian or Greek: there was clearly disagreement in many of the villages, with Hellenising Slavophones derided as Grecomans—as occurred in the Balkans. We have no evidence that the dispute translated into violence as it did in the Balkans; but with the wars of the early 20th century, these populations were made to move on, not to where the settlers came from, but to where the settlers now identified with—and where the countries receiving them could find room for them.
So the majority of Trakatroukides ended up scattered through Greek Macedonia and Western Thrace after 1922 (after Kızderbent was burned down by Turkish irregulars in 1920), and a minority of Trakatroukides had already settled in Bulgaria by 1891. (So there was disagreement about identity in Kızderbent as well.) Kızderbent is now inhabited by Turkish refugees from the Kavala region, and the broader region had already been settled by Muslim refugees by 1919. There are several more such stories: Patriarchists coming to Greece from Bulgaria (Petrich > Neo Petritsi); Southern Albania > Eastern Thrace > Serres prefecture; Kostur/Kastoria > Stengelköy > Degeagaç/Alexandroupoli > Bulgaria; and the intriguing story pointed out by Anon of the Gallipoli Serbs.
(Robert Greenberg on Ivić in his 1957 study trying to prove the Slavs of Gallipoli were Serbs; Henning Anderson mentioning Ivić’s data in a purely linguistic context, although the pitch accent described is indeed characteristic of Serbo-Croat and not Bulgaro-Macedonian; Website claiming them for Greece—and commenter claiming them for Serbia—with some indication that a Greek identity is being cultivated in their new home of Pehčevo, then Serbia, now FYROM; Greek blog post on same.)
The local tradition is that the Slavonic base of Trakatroukika is from Ohrid: this would make Kızderbent distinct from the other Slavonic-speaking settlements of Bithynia, which are from Haskovo, and it would mean that like Stengelköy, the Slavonic base is Macedonian and not Bulgarian. I don’t know what the linguistic evidence says (the word lists on the Motley Word, the YouTube recording), but any speaker of Bulgarian would be able to tell immediately. I have not seen a serious counterproposal for a Bulgarian place of origin of Trakatroukika (Jireček’s guess of Momim Prohod is not serious); the few Albanian words of Trakatroukika, though, also point West rather than East for its origins. Trakatroukika is mutually intelligible with the Slavonic of Kilkis and Thessalonica prefectures (though also clearly not identical to it: voda ~ odam); but mutual intelligibility across the Bulgaro-Macedonian continuum is possible, so it does not prove one way or another.
Trakatroukika survived a generation, though the youngest speakers would be the children of the refugee generation, and past middle age by now. Young Trakatroukides have some emblematic phrases of Trakatroukika. A sense of Trakatroukis identity persists, and Kızderbent folklore (dance troups, cultural associations) has been cultivated over the past three decades. Indigenous Macedonian Slavonic speakers and Trakatroukides coexist and have intermarried in villages like Polypetro and Nikomidino (though not Valtotopi—which prides itself on being purely from Kızderbent.) Polypetro seems to make more of its Kızderbent roots than its indigenous roots, and there are complexities of identity and identification there that I can only guess at.
Slavophone refugees to Greece
To check further on Kızderbent, I got hold of the 2001 book Γλωσσική Ετερότητα στη Ελλάδα [Linguistic Otherness in Greek], to see what it said about Trakatroukika. The book is a transcription of a series of panels on linguistic minorities in Greece. Most sessions passed without incident, except for the Vlach session (which the organisers unwisely held in situ in Thessaly, instead of in Athens).
The session on “Slavic dialects of Greece” includes a four page presentation by Leonidas Empirikos (son of the surrealist writer), reporting on a survey he did with Lambros Baltsiotis on the geographical distribution of Slavonic in present-day Greece. Trakatroukika is mentioned on p. 155. I give the citation here, because Kızderbent turns out not to be the only settlement of Slavonic speaking refugees to Greece:
I should also note that this is a large contiguous region [where Slavonic is spoken]; by that I mean that it is a continuous population of rural origin, to this day. A survey of Slavophony in Greece would not be complete without mentioning at least five special cases:
- The Slavonic-speaking Muslims of Western Thrace, who were not subject to the population exchanges and are called Pomaks;
- A few people in some of the Nestus villages of Stavroupoli, Xanthi;
- The “Trakatroukides” with refugee origins (Slavonic-speakers from Nicomedia in Asia Minor, settled here and there in various regions of Greek Macedonia and Western Thrace);
- The few Slavonic-speaking Patriarchists from Eastern Thrace who chose to settle in Greece;
- Slavonic-speaking Patriarchist refugees, mainly from Strumica (who settled in Kilkis), but also from Petrich, Startsevo and Nevrokop [= Gotse Delchev] (who settled in Eastern Macedonia, from New Petritsi/Veterna to Drama, Iraklia and Prosotsani).
View Greek Slavophone refugees in a larger map
The last couple of populations need explanation. Modern Bulgarian nationalism started out as an assertion of ecclesiastical independence, with the establishment of an autonomous Bulgarian Exarchate within the Orthodox church. Identity in the Ottoman Empire was credal under the Millet system, and the local bishop administered the Orthodox Christians; if Bulgarians wanted to not be Greek under that framework, they had to have their own bishops. This led to contention between Exarchists, aligned with the newly autonomous Bulgarian church, and Patriarchists, remaining loyal to the Greek Patriarch.
Linguistic or ethnic identity did not necessarily align with credal identity—as in so many instances in the Ottoman Empire; so people could speak Bulgarian (or Macedonian Slavonic—or for that matter Aromanian), but be Patriarchists. I don’t know of reverse cases, native speakers of Greek being Exarchists, but I wouldn’t rule anything out. After all, not all the Greek-speakers of Eastern Rumelia left for Greece in 1919, either.
The dispute between Exarchists and Patriarchists turned violent in Macedonia, culminating in the guerilla conflict that Greeks call the Macedonian Struggle. But from Shishmanov’s survey, the dispute had also spread to Asia Minor, with several villages reported as containing Grecomans (the Exarchist disparagement for Patriarchists: the term is intended to mean “wannabe Greeks”). We would in fact expect the dispute to have spread anywhere in the Ottoman Empire where Slavonic-speaking populations had a Greek clergy. There was no force field between Sofia and Nicomedia, to prevent people coming across to convince the locals they were Bulgarians, and not just Christians.
I think that’s the subtext to surprise at Kızderbent that I perceive from the Bulgarian Wikipedia. Bulgarian researchers found out about the other Asia Minor villages in the 1860s, and went over to encourage their Bulgarian national sentiment; Kızderbent was known about in the West fifty years earlier, and a Bulgarian national sentiment does not seem to have taken root.
(Greeks reading this should not get too smug: blogger Doctor has posted at Sarantakos’ blog reports from Greek officials in Eastern Thrace, annoyed that they too had to work on the locals’ national sentiment, and convince the locals they were Greeks and not just Christians.)
So when time came for the population exchanges with Bulgaria and Turkey (and the preceding violence in Turkey), the criterion for who chose to go to Greece was not linguistic but ecclesiastical. Patriarchists, who were derided as wannabe Greeks, wanted to be Greeks, and chose to go to Greece. That applied to Bulgaria—Empirikos’ fifth group. It also applied to settlers from Bulgaria and Macedonia in Turkey: Eastern Thrace, Empirikos’ fourth group, but also the Trakatroukides, Empirikos’ third group. From Shishmanov’s survey, several other Bulgarian villages of Bithynia chose Greece as well, though they don’t appear to have got attention.
I don’t know anything about Empirikos’ second group, btw, but populations did move around in the Ottoman Empire; there’s a village of Albanian Christians in Serres prefecture (Koimisi, in Irakleia municipality), for example, who are refugees from Eastern Thrace—like Empirikos’ fourth group. So the Stavroupoli Bulgarians would have moved there from elsewhere in the Bulgaro-Macedonian continuum.
Stazybo’s harvest on Kızderbent
I am wrapping up the series of posts on Kızderbent with the rich harvest of material that Stazybo Horn found for me, which I present with the odd comment. Then I’ll put up a post on what the material found online—thanks to Butcher of Yore and Stazybo Horn more than me—seems to be telling us.
I haven’t made my mind up yet on whether I’ll keep researching Kızderbent: any serious linguistic work needs to be done by a Slavist, preferably someone with a good knowledge of Turkish, and I’m neither. (Not to mention, I no longer am research-active.) Just as clearly though—as Butcher of Yore said at the start—someone should do the work, while Trakatroukika is still spoken. More on that later on though.
Trakatroukika on Facebook
Before Stazybo’s list, here’s one item from me. I noted there are two Facebook groups for Kizderveniotes. From the Wall of the second group, some emblematic language use:
Dimitris Chatzidimitriou:
sonta pravas trakatroukides? takae touka FACEBOOK(April 9, 2009 at 10:32am)
Kostas Mpesias:metafrasi tou poio kato....ti kanete trakatroukides??eiste edo sto facebook[Translation of the foregoing: How are you, Trakatroukides? You are here on Facebook] (April 10, 2009 at 6:23am)
Tasos Petmezas:NE RETSIO TAKA....(April 10, 2009 at 7:09am)
Kostas Moustik:so de pras ?(July 10, 2009 at 10:54am)
Anyone want to translate the rest?
Studies
I’ve given the titles of the three books by Nikolaos Ververidis: Οικογένειες Κιζδερβενιωτών Μικράς Ασίας, Οι Ροκατζήδες, Η έξοδος των Κιζδερβενιωτών της Μικράς Ασίας. Both Stazybo and Butcher of Yore would like me to try to get hold of these books; I have not made my mind up yet, like I said.
I already mentioned there is a postgrad thesis on how the Kızderbent refugees integrated in their new homes: Fotini Karalidou, Η περίπτωση ενσωμάτωσης των κατοίκων του Κίζδερβεντ Μ. Ασίας στον ελλαδικό χώρο. Postgraduate Thesis, History & Archaeology Dept, Aristotle University, Thessalonica 1992, 128 pp. + 5 photos + 7 maps, addendum on methodology. Stazybo Horn found the same author’s PhD thesis: Κοινωνικές σχέσεις, ταυτότητες και τοπική αυτοδιοίκηση στο Δήμο Αξιούπολης και στο Δήμο Χέρσου του Νομού Κιλκίς: (η εφαρμογή του Ν. 2539 “Καποδίστριας”) [Social relations, identities and local government in Axioupolis and Chersos municipalities, Kilkis prefecture: the application of the Kapodistrias Law 2539].
The Kapodistrias law reduced the number of municipalities: the thesis looks at the impact on identity in the local villages, including Valtotopi, which is where she is from and which is what she had investigated in her previous thesis. (p. 25, noting the distinction between indigenous and refugee villages: “The distinction between Us and Them and its transformations in time, in Valtotopi of present-day Axioupolis municipality, were the subject of my postgraduate thesis which I undertook in 1986 under Alki Kyriakidou-Nestoros.”) [Kyriakidou-Nestoros, a second-generation folklorist, died in 1988.] The municipality mergers ran against this division, and the different identities it expressed—but the old divisions are already fading anyway.
p. 129 has a villager from Valtotopi talk about the history of the village, and the effects of the Greek Civil War:
In Valtotopi we were all of the same stock. There were folk from our village, Kizdervent in Asia Minor, in other villages too; but here, people were only from our village. [That is, Valtotopi’s population is exclusively from Kızderbent.] With the Civil War, the village split. There were two cafés. They were at odds with each other. In ’44 the partisans killed one café owner, Andreas Kyriakidis, who was the village alderman. Then they started hating each other, that he had been betrayed, and such. The other café owner left the village with all his family… Then the entire village was armed by PAO [Πανελλήνιος Απελευθερωτική Οργάνωση, paramilitary fighting the communist resistance]. The whole village was burned down, twenty-four victims.
The Kizdervent Association of Thessalonica was established in 1982, and rehearses every week; they often organise trips to Kızderbent; its dance troupe (whose members are not descended from Kızderbent) often give performances. (p. 147, 178) Valtotopi promotes itself as an “authentic” village, preserving Kızderbent traditions, such as the Kurban communal meal—with an indigenous Macedonian, married to a Valtotopi man, taking the lead in the festivities. (p. 168–9) There are attempts by the association to record Trakatroukika, which is spoken only by first- and second-generation refugees. (p. 185)
On mentioning Trakatroukika, Karalidou gives a citation: Μπαλτσιώτης Λ., «Η πολυγλωσσία στην Ελλάδα» [Multilingualism in Greece]. Σύγχρονα θέματα Vol. 63, April–June 1997, pp. 89-95. I’m assuming it’s a glancing mention.
From cyberstalking, Fotini Karalidou is teaching in secondary education, and has recently been transferred from Kilkis to Thessalonica prefecture.
Roditis
One of the villages the Trakatroukides settled in is Roditis, near Komotini; I speculated that Trakatroukika will be well preserved there, for lack of contact with Bulgarian or (likely) Turkish. Roditis was formerly called Brokteion (Μπρόκτειον), and is mentioned in this Album on Thrace and Macedonia (Λεύκωμα Θράκης – Μακεδονίας) published in 1932. (WARNING: 210 MB PDF !!!)—p. 142, in a listing of land, and on p. 305, under Kosmion municipality:
Refugee settlement of Brokteion, from the town planner Broktos who laid it out. Population of 406 inhabitants, refugees from Eastern Thrace and Asia Minor. Industrious and hospitable, with the help of the government they have been almost completely reinstated agriculturally. Public buildings: a primary school erected by the Resettlement Agency. Water pump around 160 m deep.
The album is really a collection of government reports on Thrace, and has a wealth of information—and of course is very much a piece of its time; lots of photos of senators and ministers, a photo of education minister George Papandreou (grandfather of the current prime minister, and looking more like him then than he did thirty years on, as the “Old Man of the Democracy”) overseeing the matter-of-fact rationale for limiting access to “foreign” schools: “a large number of Greek children flocked to those schools, which dripped into their souls contempt for their religion and fatherland.” (p. 195) (I’m assuming this means the Rumanian schools set up for Vlachs.)
The Komotini school principal Thanasis Papatriantaphyllou has written some nationalist poetry which mentions Kızderbent:
It was in 1922,
the Feast Day of the Rood,
When we were rendered refugees
by a nation crude.
We left behind Malagra,
Isopos, Pasithea,
Kizderven (sic), Evandros,
and Bursa fair.
We ended up down here
and found a lovely shire.
We started a new life
with effort and desire.
Nikomidino
Another village settled by Trakatroukides is Nikomidino, in Thessalonica Prefecture. This page from the Nikomidino kindergarten is about cultivating appropriate national sentiment and appreciation of the Heroes of The Macedonian Struggle; but it also mentions the Trakatroukides:
a village half of whose inhabitants are native Macedonians and the other half are Macedonian refugees from our Byzantine Ohrid, with a peculiar linguistic idion, “takatoukika” (sic).
Given the political tenor of the site, it’s not at all obvious that “Macedonian” means “speaker of Macedonian Slavonic”; see the kindergarten’s protest against Microsoft Encarta listing a Macedonian language as something other than Greek. But given the early 20th century language boundaries between Greek and Macedonian Slavonic, the same coexistence of Trakatroukika and indigenous Macedonian Slavonic seen in Polypetro is also likely for Nikomidino.
Fr Ververidis (he’s named as both Nikolaos and Ioannis, but I’m assuming it’s Nikolaos) gave a speech on the defence of Kızderbent against a raid by Turkish irregulars (çete, τσέτες) on 14 September 1920. He donated his book on the expulsion of the Trakatroukides (Η Έξοδος των Κιζδερβενιωτών της Μικράς Ασίας), as well as a collection of lullabies (Ανθολόγιο Νανουρισμάτων)—in Trakatroukika, or more general?
According to the kindergarten’s history of the village, it was called Voreno/Vereno/Vyreno in Byzantine times, was destroyed around 1400, and was reestablished under Ottoman rule as Megale Agia Paraskevi; it was renamed as Nikomidino after the arrival of refugees from around Nicomedia (= İzmit)—which is indeed 64 km from Kızderbent.
The online genealogy bug has spread to Greece; the Skarmoutsos family lists among its ancestors a Stylianos Koukoulekidis, born Kızderbent (date not given), died Nikomidino, 1955.
Another geneaology site unearths a destination for Trakatroukides I was not aware of: “Dimitrios Pantikidis, born in Kızderbent 1912, and Triantafyllia Yakoumi Pantikidou, born in Kızderbent 1919, inhabitants of Fotolivos, Drama” (in Sitagroi municipality).
Polypetro
The YouTube video in a previous post was filmed in Polypetro. The village history says that “The village is mixed. It consists of indigenous Macedonians who established the village around 1875, and refugees from Asia Minor (Kizdervent of Nicomedia) who settled in the village in 1924.” The primary school closed down in 1995, and students now go to neighbouring Evropos. Makedonikos of Polypetros Football Club has recently closed down. The village had a population of 552 in 2001.
I mentioned that blogger Partizana, who comments on the Pontus and the Left blog, is from Polypetro. On the Pontus and the Left blog, Blogger Omer cites a history of Polypetro by a D. Plagaridis (comment #43): the village was founded around 1875, purchased by “indigenous” inhabitants of the surrounding villages from Bea Sali’s feudal property. The village was named Kosinovo or Kusinovo, after an existing settlement inhabited by both Muslims and Christians, 500 m east of the present day village. The village was renamed as Polypetro in 1927 (a time of mass hellenisation of village names). The 1920 census counted 206 inhabitants; 42 refugee families settled in 1924, swelling the population to 393 by the 1928 census. The village customs include a Yule fire lighting on Dec 23, called Kolde.
Folklore performances
The YouTube video from Polypetro featured members of the Kizderveniot Association of Thessalonica. The association is actively promoting Kızderbent folklore, and there are photos up of a performance they gave at the Pontic Club of Trikala three years ago—including traditional dress, and dances: “St Basil’s Dance; Kerchief Dance; Aptaliko (Aptal/Abdal Havası); Spoon Dance (Turkish Wikipedia link)”. Some photos also turn up on the Orthodox World blog, reported as being from Dora Stratou’s troupe. The locales listed for the dress are Kızderbent, Bursa (82 km south), and Kütahya (Κιουτάχεια, ancient Cotyaeum) (205 km south)
The president of what appears to be another Kızderbent association gave a speech at the same club last year: the “Kizderveniotes” Association of Asia Minor Nicomedians. More people will have heard of Nicomedia in Greece than Kızderbent, so it makes sense for Kızderbent refugees to take on the name of Nicomedia. But there were certainly Greek-speaking Christians in Kütahya and Bursa, whose dances the Thessalonica association presents. So presumably the associations represent refugees from the broad Nicomedia/Nicaea region, and the Kızderbent refugees are presumably the most prominent subgroup.
A performance given in 2007 appears to include a third group, the Kizdervent Cultural and Educational Association of Asia Minor Greeks (Εκπολιτιστικός Μορφωτικός Σύλλογος Μικρασιατών Ελλάδας «ΚΙΖΔΕΡΒΕΝΤ»).
Old accounts of Kızderbent
After Ververidis’ account of Kızderbent, I turn to Shishmanov’s, from his 2001 book Необикновената история на малоазийските българи (The Extraordinary History of the Anatolian Bulgarians). This is mediated through Google Translate, and I’m happy to take corrections on my lack of Bulgarian. Shishmanov turns out to mostly talk about the early accounts of Kızderbent; I do my own Googling, and compare results.
(Warning: lots of Google Books embeds)
Kızderbent was the first documented Bulgarian-speaking village of Anatolia, and Shishmanov cites the following sources:
- D. Salvatore, 1807, letter (reprinted by Josef Dobrovský, “Bulgaren in Kleinasien”, Slovanka 1 (1814), Prague, p. 86.): “One day to go before Nicaea, spent the night in a village called Kyz-Dervent, populated only by Bulgarians.” Reports that seven families had fled there two centuries ago, and that they produced flax, silk, and fruit.
- J.M. Tancoigne, 1817, diplomat in Persia; his account was translated into English in 1820 (A Narrative of a Journey into Persia. London: William Wright. p. 10): “We… arrived rather early at Kiz Dervend … We were no less [surprised] in seeing the costume worn on the banks of the Danube, and on hearing the Sclavonian language spoke in a country to which we should have supposed it quite a stranger. … The inhabitants acquainted us they were of Bulgarian origin, and that the village was founded, about a century ago, by an emigration of their ancestors.” Hemp and corn. “The inhabitants of this village are Christians of the Greek church.”
- George Keppel, 1829: Narrative of a Journey across the Balcan, 1831, London: Henry Colburn & Richard Bentley. Vol II, p. 160. “It contains about one hundred houses, and the inhabitants are all Bulgarians”. Story of the village being sold by an Armenian banker. Portrays the villagers as overburdened by taxation.
I’m going to take the opportunity here to look up other instances of the village in Google Books:
- W. M. Leake. 1824. Journal of a Tour in Asia Minor. London: John Murray. p. 6. (Google Books also has a French translation from 1823, in Nouvelles annales des voyages, de la géographie et de l’histoire Vol. 23.) Not surprising Shishmanov doesn’t cite this source: “Kizderwént (the pass of the girls) having the misfortune to lie upon the great road from Constantinople to Brusa, Kutáya, and Kónia, is exposed to a thousand vexations from passengers, notwithstanding the privileges and exemptions which have been granted to it by the Porte. It is inhabited solely by Greeks.” Remarks on poverty of inhabitants.
Leake was an antiquarian who is renowned for his accounts of Greece, so he recognised Greek when he heard it; but at the time “Greek” could be used to mean Greek Orthodox (Rum), so this is not necessarily a disproof of the previous three accounts. Google Books does not find “Bulgar” or “Bulgarian” in the book, so I can’t confirm Leake was distinguishing the two in this text. - H.E.H. Jerningham. 1873. To and from Constantinople. Can’t tell much from Snippet View.
- J. Conder. 1824. The Modern Traveller. Vol. 1. London: James Duncan. p. 332. “Kizderwent (the Pass of the Girls), a village five hours (twenty miles) from Isnik, is inhabited solely by Greeks.” Silk, vineyards, “tolerable wine”. The accounts looks like it’s taken from Leake.
- C.L. Irby & J. Mangles. 1823. Travels in Egypt and Nubia, Syria, and Asia Minor; during the years 1817 & 1818. London: T. White. p. 490. “In six hours we arrived at a village called Kisdervent… The natives of this village are entirely Greeks; they appeared an industrious people.” Again, no mention of “Bulgarian” in the book. On p. 223, Syrian Chrstians are spoken of as “of the Greek church, speaking the arabic language”. On p. 97, there is a reference to a building by “Greek Christians” in “Offidena” in Egypt.
- J. von Hammer. 1834. Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches. Vol 1. Pest: C.A. Hartleben. Wondering whether Kisderbend, which Leake calls Kizderwent, is to be identified with the pass of Kasiklü.
- Several hits of Kiz-Derbent seem to be about Momima Klisura in Bulgaria—presumanbly the same as Momim Prohod, given a Turkish name to match its Bulgarian name.
- W. Theyls. 1722. Memoires pour servir a l’histoire de Charles XIII roi de Suêde. Leiden: Jean du Vivier. A “Kisderwent” is mentioned on p. 307: the Sultan appoints his bostanjis (imperial guards) to guard the passes of Capuli and Kisderwent, also called Trajan’s Gate, from “militias”, in vain. Trajan’s Gate is in Bulgaria, so this may also be Momim Prohod rather than the Bithynian village.
- Revue internationale de la Croix-rouge. Vol. 3. 1921. p. 725: “Most Greek refugees—2800—came from the burned village of Kiz-Dervent, south of Karamusal; most Armenians came from Chinghelir, Yeni-Keui, …”
So we have early sources calling the village all-Bulgarian, and almost as early sources calling it all-Greek. Noone mentions Armenians in the village. Noone mentions Turks—at least, not Turkish-speaking Muslims; given the millet system, Turkish-speaking Christians were as likely to be called Greek.
The fact that one set of accounts speaks of all-Bulgarians while the other speaks of all-Greeks suggests to me that there was not a mixture of Greek-speaking and Bulgarian-speaking Kızderventiots, but instead that both accounts were right: Kızderbent was all-Bulgarian in language and all-Greek in creed. It feels odd to be second-guessing the descrption of someone as familiar with Greece as Leake; but given the very clear Slavonic component of Trakatroukika, and the ambiguity in the early 1800s of “Greek” (unmatched by a similar ambiguity of “Bulgarian”), I don’t see what other conclusion I can draw.
We turn back to Shishmanov. Jireček’s 1891 account in Das Fürstenthum Bulgarien, Vienna: F. Tempsky (Archive.org), mentions among the demographics of Bulgaria that
One noteworthy feature are the almost 1000 Bulgarians from Asia Minor, who have settled since 1880 in the regions of Svištov (Deli-Süle, Akčar, Alexandrovo) and Varna (Kozludža, Arajlari) and in Tuzluk (Kurudži-ören). They originate from two isolated enclaves, an older in the village of Kyzdervend near Nicaea and a newer one around Muhalič near Brusa. The inhabitants of the first must have arrived around the 17th century [based on Salvatore], and those of the latter at the end of the 18th century, from various parts of Thrace (Didymoteicho, Čirpan, etc.); they already speak half-Turkish. (p. 52)
The last sentence probably applies to both groups of Anatolian Bulgarians, but is ambiguous. The 1899 translation of the book into Bulgarian, Княжество България, Vol. 2: Пѫтувания по България. Plovdiv: Хр.Г. Данов. (Archive.org) has more detail—Jireček presumably augmented it himself, though I don’t think he did his own translation. (Прѣведе отъ чешки Стоянъ Аргировъ: “Translated from the Czech by Stojan Argirov”, right? But the original looked to be German…) A footnote refers to Salvatore’s account; the text adds that “their only intercourse with European Bulgarians was through tailors from Koprivshititsa, who would walk to Anatolia (С европейските българи били в сношение само посредством абаджиите в Копривщица, които ходят чак в Анадола).”
Jireček does not really have much to say about Kızderbent, then, and is just guessing that the villagers were from the namesake of the village in Bulgaria. Kanchov, as we saw, accepted the local tradition that the settlers were displaced from Ohrid to guard the pass.
Luk Iv. Dorosiev (Българските колонии в Мала Азия; Dorosiev had prepared the non-Kanchov list of Anatolian Bulgarian villages) retorts that the seven families of settlers that Salvatore reported could not have been enough to guard the pass on their lonesome, and that Bulgarians guarded passes in Bulgaria, not Anatolia. I’m not compelled by the argument. Dorosiev’s reports from old villagers was that Kızderbent was founded at the end of the 16th or beginning of the 17th centuries, “250 years ago”, because of страшни бозгунлуци (terrible persecutions?)
Shishmanov’s account of Kızderbent ends with a thud:
What happened to the Bulgarians of Kaz-Dervent?
At the end of the 19th century it ceased to be Bulgarian. Intermarriage with Greeks from the surrounding villages and the subjugation of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate facilitated its assimilation. Some Kaz-Derventtsi obviously were deported to Bulgaria [and Jireček already reported people from Kızderbent moving to Bulgaria in the 1880s], but the majority remained in the village until the collapse of the Greek army in Asia Minor in 1922. [Shishmanov does not mention that the village had already been burned down a couple of years beforehand.] In that year, together with the Greeks from other regions of Asia Minor, they sought refuge in Greece. Many settled in Western Thrace as Greek refugees from Asia Minor.
In an article in the journal Завет of September 9, 1943, A. Sp. Razboynikov writes that the Bulgarians of the oldest Bulgarian villages in Asia Minor—the villages of the Nicaean Group, Kaz-Dervent and Pamuk-Dervent—were displaced to Greece as Greek refugees, although they were Bulgarians, and ended up as Greeks with the same religion as the [Turkish-speaking] Karamanlides. (били изселени в Гърция като гръцки бежанци, въпреки че били българи, но претопени сред гърци и караманлии поради еднаквата религия) In the article, titled “Anatolian Bulgarians on the Aegean Sea” (Малоазийските българи в Беломорието), he added:
- “It is reported that they have ended up in Gyumyurdjinsky [i.e. Gümülcine, i.e. Komotini—the nearby village of Roditis, as seen]. Kaz-derventtsi are also housed in Kalitiya [Kallithea].
- Other Anatolian Bulgarians can be found in the village of Nea Iraklica, of Pravishta [Nea Iraklitsa, Eleftheron municipality. Pravishta in Greek is nearby Eleftheroupoli, formerly Pravi. I’ve seen no reports of Trakatroukides in Kavala prefecture; ironically, Kavala prefecture is where the current inhabitants of Kızderbent were expelled from].
- A third group is said to be in Kilkis and the Kilkis area, etc. [Valtotopi, Polypetro, and so on.]
It seems that they are quite scattered.”
The chapter on the language of the Anatolian Bulgarians mentions the assimilatory pressure of Greek and Turkish—with a lot more bitterness about the former: there are some tendentious words about гърцизма (Hellenising), and in the listing of Bulgarian villages several are reported to have Grecoman families. The dialect of the Anatolian Bulgarians is said to be Thracian, mostly Haskovo, except for Stengelköy whose inhabitants had recently migrated from Kastoria, and thus spoke “the Kostur Bulgarian dialect” (which most people would now call Macedonian).
Of the mixed language of Kızderbent, of what its linguistic antecedents are, and of whether it represented the “Ohrid dialect of Bulgarian”—not a word. I strongly suspect either Kanchov or Dorosiev would have written something, but for now I cannot find out about it.
Ververidis’ account of the Trakatroukides
A Trakatroukis, Nikolaos I. Ververidis, has written three non-academic books on the Trakatroukides/Rokatzides and Kızderbent:
- Οικογένειες Κιζδερβενιωτών Μικράς Ασίας: Families of Kizderveniotes of Asia Minor
- Η έξοδος των Κιζδερβενιωτών της Μικράς Ασίας: The Exodus of the Kizderveniotes of Asia Minor
- Οι Ροκατζήδες: The Rokatzides
Based on the last book, Ekaterini Asteriou-Kavazi has written summaries in the periodical of the Prosotsani Municipality Music and Dance Troup, Ηώς (Drama Prefecture), serialised over four issues (page 9 of each): #28, Aug 2005; #28, Oct 2005; #30, Dec 2005; #31, Feb 2006.
This is one source of information on the village available online; in the next post, I will report what Shishmanov says from the Bulgarian side (which is mostly about the early documented accounts of the village). The brief notes about the language are the point here. I summarise, with some reactions from Butcher of Yore; our reactions are italicised.
- #28: In the 1919 census, 650 families, 2700–2800 inhabitants. On the road from Constantinople to Bagdad. Agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, silkworm: the village was affluent, with two- and three-storey houses. 300 km2 of farmland. Refugees from the Russian–Turkish War settled the village lands from the Caucasus, Rumelia, and Bosnia: 11 villages of 50 to 100 families each; this restricted the extent of the village. (Question: did the refugees nearby accelerate the shift to Turkish in the village? The places cited don’t seem to explain a shift to Greek identity. Indeed they may have reinforced Slavonic language unless the refugees spoke Turkish.)
- #29: Sunday bazaar at the village, with sellers and buyers coming in from the nearby Greek, Turkish, and Armenian villages. Silkworm merchants came on 1 June–10 July, both Christian and Muslim. Animals sold for Constantinople markets: Ankara goats, Kürokli (?) Kurdish sheep. Dowry in clothing and bedspreads, prepared over a long time. Transport by cart and mule.
- #30: Entertainments: wrestling with medals to the victors, with participation from neighbouring villages—”even Turks”. (Oil wrestling is a popular Turkish sport.) Men and women danced separately, and never held hands in the dance. (Many Greek dances are single-sex, worth investigating further.) Instruments: violin, clarinet, drum; dances: syrtos, zeibekikos (Wikipedia: Turkish and Greek variants), karsilamas, tsifteteli (Only the first is specific to the Balkans, the rest originate in Turkey). Their songs were not in Greek or Trakatroukika, only in Turkish. (Not uncommon in language shift: the Tsakonians mostly sang in standard Greek, I think the Cappadocian Greeks sang in Turkish. Was there any recollection of their original Slavonic songs?)
- Foods: varú: trahanas, katsamáki: corn flour, ifká: wheat flour. Molasses (πετμέζι in article, Standard Greek πετιμέζι, pekmez) and retséli, grape must boiled with pumpkin. Meat only during major feast days and weddings. (Not unusual at the time even for a rich village.) Large church of St Paraskevi, small chapel of SS Constantine & Helen.
- Village set on fire by the Kemalist troops on 11 September 1920. (The Kızderbent villages were directly targetted in the hostilities. From a 1920 report from the Patriarchate of Constantinople: “In September, the village of Kiz Dervent , having being sacked, was set on fire. Its inhabitants ran off to the hills; many died, while the survivors took refuge in Kios and the district of Yalova.”)
The excerpt in #31 goes into the language and origins of the village:
- Language: 40% “Arabo–Perso–Turkish”, 40% “Serbo–Russo–Bulgarian”, 15% “Greek”, 5% “Arvanitika”.
If I can presume to translate: the vocabulary was evenly mixed between Bulgarian (or Macedonian Slavonic) and Ottoman Turkish. There was some Greek vocabulary (which does not necessarily prove native Greek speakers, given Greek’s role as the language of the church and culture). There was a small component of Albanian vocabulary, which would be consistent with the village being settled from Ohrid, and Albanian words having being borrowed into the Slavonic of Ohrid.
- “The pronunciation was more like Arvanitika and Slavic.”
I don’t know what either accent sounds like. It’s not inconsistent with a Bulgarian (or Macedonian Slavonic) substrate.
- “The Turks and Greeks of the region, because of the idiosyncrasy of their language, caled them Trakatroukides.”
This claim by Ververidis comes up a lot online, but it doesn’t explain why “bang bang” (quite possibly a Turkish onomapotpoeia, as TAK explained) relates to an unusual language. TAK speculated that their occasional slavicisms struck their interlocutors like fireworks—which is a Greek idiom. But the Slavic wouldn’t have been occasional enough to make a bang; it pervaded their language. I suspect it’s more to do with the accent—what Turkish spoken with a Slavic accent would have sounded like to native speakers of Turkish.
- Many Greek words for church terms: καμπάνα, σήμαντρο, παγκάρι, προσκυνητάρι, δίσκος, μανουάλι, νάρθηκας, γυναικωνίτης, ιερό βήμα, ιερό Ευαγγέλιο, Απόστολος, ωρολόγιο, ευχολόγιο, ψαλτήριο, μοναστήριο, άγιασμα, οκτώηχος “bell, wooden bell, bench (for candles), shrine, collection plate, candelabra, narthex (church antechamber), women’s section of church, holy pulpit, Holy Gospel, Acts of Apostles, Horologion (Book of Hours), Euchologion, Psalter, monastery, holy water, Ochtoechos (Byzantine modes)”—
Well.
The author is a priest, which explains why he has taken so much interest in church vocabulary, and the Kızderbent villagers had Greek church services; that was the decision point on whether they were considered Greek or Bulgarian. Church terminology does not prove anyone in the village natively spoke Greek of course, and if Greek was restricted to the church, it proves the opposite—just as the Greek in scientific English merely proves scientists used to have a classical education, and Norwegian terms like slalom in skiing English merely proves that Norwegians invented skiing.
To add to that though, I doubt many of the terms could fairly be said even to have belonged to vernacular Greek, as opposed to Greek specific to the Church. Narthex? Euchologion? Vital terms of the trade for a churchman, sure, but how many villagers in Greece in 1850 could tell you what they were? - The list goes on, in a less churchy direction: φυλλάδιο, πινακωτή, μασιά, προστιά, μαγκάλι, ευχαριστώ “pamphlet, bread peel, fire tongs, trivet, brazier, thank you”, place names: Μεσινοπόταμος “Mid-River” (Mesinadere), Καλοπόταμος “Good River” (Kaladere).
- μασιά and μαγκάλι are Standard Greek, but are still loans from Turkish: maşa, mangal
- There is a disproportionate presence of Greek in terms around cooking; is it just cooking? It’s not an indication of an elite language, but if it’s concentrated in one domain, it’s still suspect. It is the strongest indication of Greek, but it’s just two words, really, “bread peel” and “trivet”. (“Pamphlet” again points to Greek being a language of education, not necessarily of everyday use.)
- “thank you” does stand out as a common word; but Standard Bulgarian has formulaic borrowings from Greek as well: сполати σπολλάτη “congratulations!” < εἰς πολλὰ ἔτη “many years!”—not to mention елате ελάτε “come on!” The borrowing does prove Greek was a language of prestige to the settlers of Kızderbent, much like many a language has borrowed French merci. Butcher of Yore retorts that such a word would be used by urban populations before percolating to rural populations. If the villagers came from Ohrid, it’s not impossible that there were Greek-speaking of Hellenised settlers among them, to account for this. My own suspicion is if there were substantial numbers, we’d be seeing more Greek words than this.
- Placenames are very useful in language history because they stick around after the language has died out in a region (and among transplants from a region). The placenames suggest the settlers had been in contact with Greeks, but again not necessarily that they spoke Greek: they could easily have been old Greek placenames of the region around Ohrid (or wherever), and were brought across with the settlers.
- and the “Souliote” word básko, meaning “elder brother”.
The Souliotes were a mostly or entirely Albanian-speaking group in North-West Greece, whose inhabitants identified as Greek: this is merely a polite way of saying “Albanian word” (In Standard Albanian bashko is “to unite”, and bashkë is “together”; is the -o Slavonic?) As I’ve already speculated, one borrowed kinship term does not prove Albanian-speakers came to Kızderbent, but that the ancestors of the Kızderbent settlers had been in contact with Albanian-speakers—which makes sense if they came from Ohrid.
Ververidis’ account of the village’s origin is that it was settled around 1500 by thirty families from Ohrid and Monastir. The villagers protected the route from Bagdad to Istanbul, where tax revenues went through. (The myth around the name is that a maiden was killed on one such mission.) For their service protecting public moneys, they were rewarded by the Sultan with tax immunity, which encouraged “Greek-speakers, Turkish-speakers, Armenian-speakers and Bulgarian-speakers” to settle there. That suggests a Slavonic-speaking core with accretions which may still explain the bits of non-ecclesiastical Greek—Greek was as prestigious in Bithynia as in Ohrid. The Armenian vocabulary for the moment is still AWOL.
Trakatroukika on YouTube
First up, thank you again to Butcher of Yore—and now Stazybo Horn as well—for sending me links continuously about Kızderbent. There is a lot to go through and assimilate, so this blog is going to turn into Kızderbent Central for the next week or so.
[You will note btw that I keep saying Macedonian Slavonic instead of Macedonian (or “Skopian”). I hope you appreciate why (see for starters Macedonia (terminology), Macedonian language naming dispute, and the relative numbers agains the flags on the sidebar.) If you don’t appreciate why, well, it’s my blog, and it’s your right; but I have to pick which constituency to offend the least among my readers.]
Because the YouTube video is being asked for, I’m posting it first. The video doesn’t have any context, and as I said in comments it has been exploited for interminable online debates about Macedonia; comments on the video are disabled, so I’m translating the Greek forum link to it.
The videos came up in the discussion thread Ένα τραγούδι, πολλές ιστορίες Jovano Jovanke (“one song, many stories: Jovano Jovanke“), about a South Slavic song, and how it is used by a host of speakers of Slavonic languages with different national identities. The original poster, dna, has a good chuckle about the Bulgarian/FYROM argling over the song on YouTube:
Στη συνέχεια στα σχόλια μπινελικώνονται Βούλγαροι και κάτοικοι της ΠΓΔΜ.
– “γιατί τραγουδάτε μακεδονικά τραγούδια αφού δεν μπορείτε να τα πείτε καλά”?
– “έλα ρε, βουλγάρικα είναι, και εσείς βούλγαροι είστε, τι παριστάνετε τώρα”?
– “ουστ αποδώ μογγολοτάταροι, να πάρετε τον πρόγονό σας τον Ασπαρούχ και να πάτε στο Ταταρστάν, εμείς είμαστε
α)γνήσιοι σλάβοι
β) γνήσιοι μακεδόνες
Thereafter, Bulgarians and inhabitants of FYROM start flaming each other:
“Why are you singing Macedonian songs when you can’t speak it properly?”
“Oh come on, they’re Bulgarian songs, and you’re Bulgarian too, stop pretending.”
“The hell with you, Mongol Tatars, take your ancestor Asparukh and go back to Tatarstan, we’re (a) genuine Slavs and (b) genuine Macedonians.”
To my mind, the discussion on the forum quickly degenerates to that level anyway. But by way of rebuttal, poster kukos says the following (my comments in square brackets):
So, friend dna69, the people dancing and singing in this video:
are members of the Kizderventiot Association of Thessalonica. In the next video:
Mr “Christos” [I think he means Sotiris], who was singing, chats to some ladies also descended from the same region of Asia Minor (Kızderbent), and who ARE NOT LOCALS, as is erroneously subtitled. [Subtitled on the YouTube clip—i.e. they are not indigenous speakers of Macedonian Slavonic. “Local” (ντόπια) is the preferred way of referring to Macedonian Slavonic within Greek Macedonia.]
The guy who subtitled it in English is somewhat confused, so he draws wrong conclusions.
The lady speaking the most clearly states, of course, that “… I am Greek”. So when she says “our language matches theirs” but “we count in Turkish”, she means that the REFUGEE dialect matches the “local” dialect. [i.e. that Trakatroukika is similar to the indigenous Macedonian Slavonic of the village of Polypetro, where these Trakatroukides have settled].
But this local dialect is not used as a main language. The proof: the lady in question does not know how to count over four in “Bulgarian”. Whereas I have spent long enough among Yugoslav tourists [who have long been visiting Greece, and Chalkidike in particular], and I can count as much as you want: devet xiliante tsetrista dvananteset (9412)
[Followed by a history of the village of Polypetro in Kilkis, and of Kızderbent, copypasted from elsewhere.]
For my part, I’ll comment that no, the lady in question knowing only 1–4 in Slavonic does not prove that Bulgarian wasn’t their main language; it proves that their Slavonic was heavily Turkicised. Large numbers as opposed to small are the province of the marketplace rather than the hearth, so it’s common for languages to borrow large numbers from the local trade language, which would certainly have been Turkish.
So, turning to the video itself. Stazybo Horn has done detective work on Google through Wikipedia deletions—a curse on them; and he mailed me about the programme that featured this after I wrote the first draft of this post: it is from «Κάθε τόπος και τραγούδι» “A song from every region”, a Sunday programme on ET3 (State TV, Northern Greece), presented by Giorgos Melikis, and this episode was shown on Jan 21, 2007. From Googling, I see Melikis’ show does feature other languages of Northern Greece. Butcher of Yore tells me that Κυριακή στο Χωριό “Sunday in the Village”, on the same channel, has done so as well. Here’s the thread where the YouTube user announces he has posted it on the same day: his posting confirms Kukos’ surmise that he didn’t realise they were refugees from Turkey.
The video starts with 45 seconds of chat in Trakatroukika. Please God, someone who knows Bulgarian or Macedonian Slavonic, do tell me how Turcisised this sounds.
The English subtitles are pretty much correct, though summary. Sotiris (the man talking to the women at the start) is from Thessalonica: the host Melikis says so at 0:53. I don’t know if that means Sotiris is a native speaker of Macedonian Slavonic (in which case it is mutually intelligible with Trakatroukika), or that he is also a Trakatroukis. The Trakatroukides count up to four in “Bulgarian” (notice the chuckle when the B-word is spoken at 1:32); at Sotiris’ village they count in Slavonic at least up to six. That, and his initial question, make me suspect Sotiris is not a Trakatroukis.
The woman talking describes their party as Trakatroukides (right at 1:00—”he asked us, how you are here in the village, the Trakatroukides”). She says their languages “*almost* matches” the indigenous Slavonic; and their odam matches “local” vode “water”. (Another woman interjects at 1:15 “We talk the same [language]” and “We get along very well”—which suggests Trakatroukika and the Macedonian Slavonic of Polypetro are mutually intelligible anyway.) They explicitly claim Trakatroukika is not mutually intelligible with Turkish, and is partially mutually intelligible with Bulgarian, Serbian, and the Macedonian Slavonic of Gevgelija, on the FYROM side of the border. (Sotiris at 1:52 says, after Serbian is mentioned, “they’d catch the odd word”.)
“And one last question” (at 2:00)—”to come back to our songs and dances”, because this is a folklore show—but the question is not about songs or dances. “How do you feel inside?” “What, about our language?” one man says. Another realises where this is going, and says: “Our homeland is Greece”—straightforwardly. (It’s not like, if they felt differently they could very well say differently on Greek State TV—but Butcher of Yore informs me that has indeed happened, e.g. with a show by Maya Tsokli on villages in Florina, and that has made it to YouTube too.)
“Not just Greece”, the host adds expansively. “Greater Greece!” (Μεγάλη Ελλάδα). Um, somewhat unsophisticated of the host, in my opinion (and I’m not looking forward to discussing why I think that). He shouldn’t have to solicit proof of loyalty from Greek citizens who happen to speak a Turkicised Slavonic, and the phrasing is reminiscent of the irredentist Megali Idea. But anyway, it’s great that we have this document.
If we have to discount Sotiris’ language as not Trakatroukika, admittedly we have far less than 45 seconds’ worth; and if these Trakatroukides have lived for three generations together with Macedonian Slavonic speakers, their language will be much less Turkicised, and more similar to the local dialect. So it’s not pristine Trakatroukika (if it’s even meaningful to speak of such a thing). If you’re looking to avoid interference from other dialects of Bulgarian or Macedonian Slavonic, your best bet is in fact New Triglia, in Chalkidike.
Or Roditis. Roditis (formerly Proktio) is in Rodopi, 5km from Komotini, and Rodopi also is home to Pomaks, who are Bulgarian-speaking Muslims. But it is unlikely there has been any real contact between the Trakatroukides and the Pomaks. As an acquaintance from Komotini reminds me, the Pomaks were subject to travel restrictions until 1992; as he put it, “the Pomaks this side would come down to market in Komotini every Tuesday; the Pomaks that side would come down to market in Xanthi every Saturday—and that was it.” Moreover, as a Christian village Roditis would have had no contact with the Muslim ethnic Turks of the region either; and the village is now a suburb of Komotini.
One last thing: one of Pontus and the Left’s (Πόντος και Αριστερά) regular commenters, Partizana, is from the same village of Polypetro. Comment #36 in this thread is about how moved she was to discover her grandmother’s language documented elsewhere.