Christina Elizabeth Kramer | |
---|---|
Education | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (PhD, MA) Beloit College (BA) |
Occupation(s) | Professor, Slavic Linguistics |
Employer | University of Toronto |
Christina Elizabeth Kramer is Professor of Slavic and Balkan languages and linguistics at the University of Toronto and Chair of the university's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures which is part of the Faculty of Arts and Science. [1]
Kramer worked as a translator for Berlitz Translation Service for some time, translating documents from Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, and Turkish. [2]
Since 1986 Kramer has been a member of the University of Toronto faculty. She was promoted to full professor in May 2001. [4]
Kramer is a specialist on Balkan languages and semantics, specifically on South Slavic languages. Her research focus on synchronic linguistics, sociolinguistics, verbal categories, language and politics.
Kramer authored Macedonian: A Course for Beginning and Intermediate Students. The book – first published in 1999, revised and expanded in 2003 and 2011 – is the most recent English-Macedonian textbook. She is a noted translator of literature from Bulgarian and Macedonian, [5] receiving a Literature Translation Fellowship from the NEA in 2018. [6]
Kramer co-invented the language "Lavinian" for Nicolas Billon's play Butcher. [7]
Christina E. Kramer's translations of several Bulgarian and Macedonian novels (by Luan Starova, Goce Smilevski, Lidija Dimkovska, and Aleko Konstantinov) have been published by the University of Wisconsin Press and Penguin Books. [8]
Kramer received the 2006 Book Award from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages for best contribution to language pedagogy for her book Macedonian: A Course for Beginning and Intermediate Students. [9]
In 2014, Kramer was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant to fund her work on translating a novel from Luan Starova's Balkan Saga cycle, The Path of the Eels (or the Pyramid of Water). [10] This was the first time ever a NEA grant was awarded to support a translation from Macedonian to English. [11] Her translation of Lidija Dimkovska's "A Spare Life" made the long list for the Best Translated Book of 2017 Award. [5]
In 2022, Kramer's translation of The Summer You Weren’t There by Petar Andonovski, from Macedonian to English, won a PEN Translates Award from English PEN. [12]
The Cyrillic script, Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, North Asia, and East Asia.
Slavic or Slavonicstudies, also known as Slavistics is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic areas, languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was primarily a linguist or philologist researching Slavistics. Increasingly, historians, social scientists, and other humanists who study Slavic area cultures and societies have been included in this rubric.
Macedonians are a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group native to the region of Macedonia in Southeast Europe. They speak Macedonian, a South Slavic language. The large majority of Macedonians identify as Eastern Orthodox Christians, who speak a South Slavic language, and share a cultural and historical "Orthodox Byzantine–Slavic heritage" with their neighbours. About two-thirds of all ethnic Macedonians live in North Macedonia and there are also communities in a number of other countries.
The Balkan sprachbund or Balkan language area is an ensemble of areal features—similarities in grammar, syntax, vocabulary and phonology—among the languages of the Balkans. Several features are found across these languages though not all apply to every single language. The Balkan sprachbund is a prominent example of the sprachbund concept.
The Saints Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje is the oldest and largest public university in North Macedonia. It is named after the Byzantine Christian theologians and missionaries Cyril and Methodius. As of 2018–19 school year, a total of 25,220 students are enrolled at the university. Furthermore, the teaching and research staff number 2,390 people; this is further supported by over 300 members in the university's institutions.
South Slavs are Slavic peoples who speak South Slavic languages and inhabit a contiguous region of Southeast Europe comprising the eastern Alps and the Balkan Peninsula. Geographically separated from the West Slavs and East Slavs by Austria, Hungary, Romania, and the Black Sea, the South Slavs today include Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs, and Slovenes, respectively the main populations of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia.
Torlakian, or Torlak is a group of South Slavic dialects of southeastern Serbia, Kosovo, northeastern North Macedonia, and northwestern Bulgaria. Torlakian, together with Bulgarian and Macedonian, falls into the Balkan Slavic linguistic area, which is part of the broader Balkan sprachbund. According to UNESCO's list of endangered languages, Torlakian is vulnerable.
Blaže Koneski was a Macedonian poet, writer, literary translator, and linguistic scholar.
The history of the Macedonian language refers to the developmental periods of current-day Macedonian, an Eastern South Slavic language spoken on the territory of North Macedonia. The Macedonian language developed during the middle ages from the Old Church Slavonic, the common language spoken by Slavic people.
Macedonian literature begins with the Ohrid Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire in 886. These first written works in the dialects of the Old Church Slavonic were religious. The school was established by St. Clement of Ohrid. The Macedonian recension at that time was part of the Old Church Slavonic and it did not represent one regional dialect but a generalized form of early Eastern South Slavic. The standardization of Macedonian in the 20th century provided good ground for further development of the modern Macedonian literature and this period is the richest one in the history of the literature itself.
The Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop dialect is a dialect currently treated both in the contexts of the southeastern group of Bulgarian dialects and the southeastern subgroup of dialects of the Macedonian. Prior to the codification of standard Macedonian in 1945, the dialects of Macedonia were classified as Bulgarian. The dialect is dynamic and is well known for the shortening of the words, and also characterised by the excessive use of for the Proto-Slavic yat even in cases where standard Bulgarian has, a feature which is typical for a number of dialects spoken in southern and southwestern Bulgaria . The Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop dialect is closely related to the neighbouring dialects. It is closer to all Eastern Bulgarian dialects than to all Western. Macedonian shares much less features with the dialect than it does with the Maleševo-Pirin dialect of Macedonian and Bulgarian. Some Bulgarian dialects are more similar to Macedonian than the Ser-Nevrokop dialect, the Samokov dialect shares more features with Macedonian than both the Ser-Nevrokop and the Pirin-Malasevo dialects do, even though it is not considered a Macedonian dialect, the most of the western Bulgarian dialects and the Smolyan dialect share more similarities with Macedonian than the Ser dialect does. The Samokov dialect, most remarkably, shares with Macedonian and the Maleševo-Pirin dialect—the "to be" verb for future tense—"ke", which in contrast is "shte" in the Ser-Nevrokop dialect and in the Bulgarian language. The Yat border passes through the Maleševo-Pirin dialect and divides it on such a way that in the northern area of the dialect the yat is pronounced "e" and in the south—"ya". In the Ser-Nevrokop dialect the yat is pronounced in most places "ya", therefore the city of Serres, after which the dialect is named, is called "Syar" by the locals, as opposed to "Ser" in Macedonian. The first person singular is as in Bulgarian, ending with "a" or "am" as opposed to the constant "am" in Macedonian and the Bulgarian Smolyan dialect. The words for man -"m'zh" and for a dream "s'n" are as in Bulgarian, unlike the Macedonian "mazh" and "son". The words for night and tear—"nosht" and "s'lza" are as the Bulgarian, unlike the Macedonian "nok" and "solza".
Eppes Wayles Browne is a linguist, Slavist, translator and editor of Slavic journals in several countries. Browne is Professor emeritus of Linguistics at Cornell University, with research interests in Slavic and general linguistics, notably the study and analysis of Serbo-Croatian, where he is one of the leading Western scholars.
Russell Scott Valentino is an American author, literary scholar, translator, and editor. Currently, he is a professor of Slavic and comparative literature, and serves as chair of the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, at Indiana University, Bloomington.
Zbigniew Gołąb was a Polish-American linguist and Slavist. He was described as "one of the world's greatest experts on the Macedonian language and the leading expert on Macedonian–Arumanian contact."
Victor A. Friedman is an American linguist, Slavist. He is the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Service Professor in Humanities at the University of Chicago. He holds an appointment in the Department of Linguistics and an associate appointment in the Department of Anthropology. He has published numerous articles in English, Macedonian, and Albanian.
The Eastern South Slavic dialects form the eastern subgroup of the South Slavic languages. They are spoken mostly in Bulgaria and North Macedonia, and adjacent areas in the neighbouring countries. They form the so-called Balkan Slavic linguistic area, which encompasses the southeastern part of the dialect continuum of South Slavic.
Lidija Dimkovska is a Macedonian poet, novelist and translator. She was born in Skopje and studied comparative literature at the University of Skopje. She proceeded to obtain a PhD in Romanian literature at the University of Bucharest. She has taught Macedonian language and literature at the University of Bucharest and world literature at the University of Nova Gorica in Slovenia. She now lives in Ljubljana, working as a freelance writer and translator of Romanian and Slovenian literature.
Luan Arif Starova was an Albanian writer who lived in North Macedonia. He published his works both in Albanian and in Macedonian.
Samuil Borisovich Bernstein was a Soviet linguist, known for his work on Slavic languages, in particular Bulgarian.
Katica Ḱulavkova is a Macedonian writer and academic. She has published over forty books, including twenty collections of poetry. Kulavkova is a professor in the philology faculty at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje and a vice president of the literary organization PEN International.