>> Northern part of Aromanian Dialect means northern part of
>> Macedonia so faraway for any Daco-Romanian speakers.
>
> Megleno-Romanian is by all accounts an intermediate dialect between
> Aromanian proper and Daco-Romanian. The present-day geographical
> separation between MR and DR doesn't change the fact that the former is
> in many ways close to "standard" Romanian.
The Dacoromanian dialect speakers were in medieval (actually until more
recent times) much closer to Aromanian dialect speakers - namely, when
in the territories of former Yugoslavia and today's Bulgaria there
lived much more people (very numerous, according to... Ottoman Turkish
archives) speaking both dialects. Even today, despite being scattered
in isles of communities assimilating into being Serbian and Bulgarian
(most of them have Serbian and Bulgarian surnames, so you won't ever
know they are Romanians unless they don't disclose it to you), the
Dacoromanian dialect (i.e. Romanian proper) continues to be spoken a
1-2 hundred km West and Soth-West and South of the Romanian border;
even in remoter areas, such in Slavonia and/or Croatia. (This was shown
a couple of years ago by one representative of them, participant in
some conferences organized by the Romanian TV or some cultural
institution.)
At the same time, Aromanian communities existed and still exist in
Northern Balcanic areas as well (although rapidly assimilating in the
Slavic surrounding population), much closer to the Dacoromanian dialect
"belt", than the well-known, I'd say, "classic" areas in Southern
Albania, Kosovo, FYROM, Northern Greece and Southwestern Bulgaria.
These situations have virtually been ignored in Romania for about 85
years now, so that the overwhelming majority of contemporary Romanians
has no knowledge whatsoever about their "cousins" in the South. This
thing has been dealt with in Romanian mass-media only for about seven
years. Despite the fact that Romania has a numerous Aromanian minority,
much of which had to be replaced in 1940 from Southern Dobrudja (that
today is Bulgarian) into that territory that stayed Romania after the
Romanian kingdom had to give up Northern Transylvania, Southern
Dobrudja, Northern Bucovina and Eastern Moldavia. (The famous Romanian
soccer star, and now soccer coach in Turkey, George Hagi ['hadZi], is
of Aromanian descent.)
> Piotr
George