Many Macedonians and Slovenes still speak or understand what used to be called Serbo-Croat as a second language.
"The Macedonians should copy the example of Switzerland, Belgium and Canada, " he said.
To put the question differently: if the native language of the Macedonians is Greek, what is its Macedonian dialect?
They dearly want the European Union to grant visa-free travel to Macedonians this year (and then open membership talks).
It is unlikely to push quickly for outright union with Bulgaria, a prospect that still makes most Macedonians shudder.
Mr Holbrooke then found time to nip off (during his lunchbreak?) to broker a deal between the Greeks and Macedonians.
His troops, mostly Macedonians by then, went crazy with joy and relief.
Not our mortars, said the Macedonians, but no one thinks that the ethnic-Albanian guerrillas of Kosovo's newborn National Liberation Army were responsible.
Brown then drilled a powerful strike into the side-netting after skipping by a couple of challenges when a quick free-kick had caught the Macedonians napping.
Aelian described how Macedonians did it on a river called the Astraeus.
Western mediators sweated on to arm-twist rival Macedonians into a peace deal.
Others say they have conceded enough, and they are the Macedonians who will be making their displeasure clear by voting in the referendum.
For instance, last year while visiting Afghanistan I found Macedonians (from a military totaling 8000 personnel) manning the gates at Camp Eggers in Kabul.
Scotland spurned a chance to equalise 10 minutes later when McFadden delayed his shot on the edge of the area, allowing the Macedonians to regroup.
It is thus not surprising that the Macedonians considered themselves to be, and were treated by Alexander the Great as being, separate from the Greeks.
Macedonians and maybe Montenegrins may get visa-free travel early next year.
It may be proven that Macedonians spoke Greek since Macedon, the ancestor of Macedonians, was a brother of Magnes, the ancestor of Thessalians, who spoke Greek.
Yet because of its 20-year-old name dispute with Greece, including an international court case brought by the Macedonians, the Greeks will veto this proposal in December.
Moreover, while Serbs have been making mayhem in the Balkans, other southern Slavs (Macedonians, Bulgars and Slovenes, among them) have been striving valiantly to nurture their new democracies.
If the ancient Greeks referred to the Macedonians as barbarians only because of political conflict, then why other Greek tribes are not called barbarian or non-Greek by the ancient Greeks.
George Papandreou, the new foreign minister, helped smooth over an awkward row between the Albanian and Macedonian prime ministers when the Macedonians at first tried to keep out thousands of the refugees.
It should be pointed out that Hammond had been proven incorrect in many matters (not just the ethnicity of the ancient Macedonians) regarding the history of Macedonia, specifically by the Macedonian specialist Borza.
But political negotiations have broken down over Albanian demands for a new constitution giving them a veto on all major decisions by the state -- a positions ethnic Macedonians say amounts to partition.
But, says Pasko Kuzman, an archaeologist at the culture ministry, Macedonians are a mix of all the people who have ever lived in the region, so they have every right to treat Alexander as a symbol.
The arrest in Kosovo, earlier this month, of six alleged members of the so-called Ilirida Republican Army, a new Albanian-nationalist group, produced sighs of relief in Skopje, where Slav-Macedonians often accuse the West of coddling armed Albanians.
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