Slavs migrate to Greece, push the Greeks out, then adapt Greek language and customs.

I've read that a few times, but I find it hard to believe. It's like the Pilgrims come to Massachusetts in 1620 and abandon English and take up whatever language the local Indians speak. Comments?
 

Keenir

Banned
I've read that a few times, but I find it hard to believe. It's like the Pilgrims come to Massachusetts in 1620 and abandon English and take up whatever language the local Indians speak. Comments?

wouldn't this go in one of the Chat forums?
 
I've read that a few times, but I find it hard to believe. It's like the Pilgrims come to Massachusetts in 1620 and abandon English and take up whatever language the local Indians speak. Comments?

That's not what happened. The Slavs pushed the Greek-speakers out, then the Byzantines subsequently reconquered Greece and re-Hellenized it, through force and importation of Greek-speakers from elsewhere.
 

NomadicSky

Banned
That's not what happened. The Slavs pushed the Greek-speakers out, then the Byzantines subsequently reconquered Greece and re-Hellenized it, through force and importation of Greek-speakers from elsewhere.

Wow and then the Turks pushed them even more back into ole Greece.

I never knew that.

I wonder what would exist there if the area wasn't re-Hellenized?
 

ninebucks

Banned
I've read that a few times, but I find it hard to believe. It's like the Pilgrims come to Massachusetts in 1620 and abandon English and take up whatever language the local Indians speak. Comments?

On the contrary, settlers often adopt the local language, making them quite indistinguishable from the 'natives' after only a couple of generations.

The first settlers in the Americans did learn the native languages, in order to trade and so on, but eventually, the institutions established by the settlers became more important than those established by the natives, making English the most essential language. In Greece this wasn't the case, there were institutions already in place where Greek was the spoken language. Speaking Greek was many magnitudes more beneficial to the Slavs than speaking Native American languages were to the 'Pilgrims'.

After that, how can you really tell how much of modern Greece is ethnically slavic, and, much more importantly, what does it matter?
 
Didn't a lot of them come from Byzantine Southern Italy, (which would form the later basis for Mussolini claiming that Greece and Italy were as one) or did I just dream that?

I thought it was Greeks from Anatolia, because up until the Turks came it was the Byzantine power base, most Greek-speaking people, more than enough to settle in Greece.
 
Didn't a lot of them come from Byzantine Southern Italy, (which would form the later basis for Mussolini claiming that Greece and Italy were as one) or did I just dream that?

I thought it was Greeks from Anatolia, because up until the Turks came it was the Byzantine power base, most Greek-speaking people, more than enough to settle in Greece.
I think it was both actually. After folks realized just what a futz Justinian made with his Italian shenanigans, they started evacuating folks from Sicily and southern Italy. A lot of folks from the frontiers of Anatolia (Probably because of poverty and/or constant raids in those territories forcing people to move) and folks from the capital (government administrators, go figure), but of course, that kind of information tends to be sketchy (It was the early Middle Ages, afterall) and I could well be wrong.
 
Also, I think some portions of Greece were never out of Byzantine control, especially towns and coastal areas, and they were the centers from which the Byzantines asserted (or reasserted, from their point of view) Imperial, Christian control.
 
After that, how can you really tell how much of modern Greece is ethnically slavic, and, much more importantly, what does it matter?

I guess it only matters to certain rather nationalistic folk in modern Greece, who want to claim a straight line of cultural inheritance from ancient and Byzantine Greece. Most Greek folk I know aren't too fussed about this.
 
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