Macedonia One - Transcription
I was born in Macedonia, in its capitol, Skopje, more than twenty-five years ago. Where I was living 'til August 2000. I was there almost all the time. I haven't been living anywhere else during that time so I was born there and I was living there. I got my education there also. I finished University, Computer Science. And right now, I'm here in United States in Kansas. I'm a graduate student at Kansas University. The official language is Macedonian. But there are a lot of dialects according to the area in Macedonia, so people speak different dialects. There are areas that seem, especially for the strangers, that seem kind of different than the Macedonian language because the dialect if very different. But we understand each other. Also since there are groups of minorities, Albanian language is spoken, Turkish language also, and different minorities also speak their own languages, like gypsy language, like Serbo-Croatian language and so on. There is, as far as I know, there is a region in Greece, in Northern Greece, called Macedonia. And people over there, old people, some of them know Macedonian, some dialect of Macedonian language and they can speak that. Our country is, was, part of former Yugoslavia and it was called Republic of Macedonia at that time and now its an independant country with name Republic of Macedonia. So far, it's named Former Republic of Macedonia because of that conflict with Greece because they somehow do not allow us to have that name Macedonia, as Macedonia. We have four weather seasons, so we have all kinds of weather, like spring summer fall and winter. We have everything, like fields, like mountains, lakes. We have one big river that flows through the central part of Macedonia so it divides Macedonia actually into left and right side, or east and west side. So you can find places for skiing, you can find places for summer holiday. You can find some fields for growing different vegetables or cultures and everything else... fruits. Here's my favorite saying or statement and it says;
Boze, daj mi sila da go izdrzam ona shto nemozam da go smenam; hrabrost da go smenam ona shto mozam; mudrost da go razlikuvam ednoto od drugoto. [TRANSLATION: God give me strength to endure the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can. And wisdom to distinguish between the two.]
Transcribed by Hannah Ballou