This article is based on research funded by a Fellowship for East European Studies from the American Council of Learned Societies and a grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board (1REX) with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the United States Department of State, which administers the Title VIII Program, and the IREX Scholarship Fund. Warm thanks go to Keith Brown, Susan L. Woodward, and especially Victor A. Friedman who read multiple drafts with unflagging enthusiasm and unstinting generosity and provided wonderful comments and extremely helpful suggestions for revision. The article has also benefited greatly from the feedback of four anonymous reviewers. None of the above-mentioned organizations and individuals is responsible for the views expressed.

1. Smitheman, Geneva, Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America (1977; reprint, Detroit, Mich., 1986)Google Scholar. Unlike the term nigger, as of this writing, the label šiptar has not become a commodity for popular entertainment. For a discussion of nigger in minstrelsy and rap, see LaGrone, Kheven Lee, “From Minstrelsy to Gangsta Rap: The ‘Nigger' as Commodity for Popular American Entertainment,” Journal of African American Men 5, no. 2 (September 2000): 117–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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5. Ibid., 45 (emphasis in the original).

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20. I am grateful to Victor A. Friedman for this comment.

21. See Malcolm, Noel, Kosovo: A Short History (New York, 1998), 320–25Google Scholar; Friedman, “Language Planning and Status in the Republic of Macedonia and in Kosovo.“

22. See Friedman “Albania,” 3:1878.

23. I am grateful to Susan L. Woodward for bringing to my attention that the republican, not the federal, government undertook these efforts. I am also grateful to an anonymous reviewer who clarified the pre-1969 status of the university in Prishtina.

24. As Robert Hayden notes, even though the right to secession was included in the introduction to the federal constitution, the operative text mentioned that the consent of all republics was needed for the external boundaries of Yugoslavia to change. The Constitutional Court of Yugoslavia therefore did not judge unilateral decisions to secede favorably. See Hayden, Robert M., Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts (Ann Arbor, 1999), 45–46 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 183.

25. These measures, which took place throughout the 1980s, included the decrease in the number of Albanian employees in state administration, the dismissal of Albanian teachers, the closing of the Albanian section of the Pedagogical Academy, official refusal to register baby names that were taken as an index of support for Albanian nationalism (for example, Flamur “Flag,” or Enver because it was the name of Albania's ruler), and the cancellation of classes held in the Albanian language that lacked “sufficient” enrollment of Albanian pupils. See Friedman, “Language Policy and Language Behavior in Macedonia,“ 73-99; Poulton, Who Are the Macedonians'? 128-30.

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27. Albanians did not make demands for the concession of minority rights, but rather for the creation of two distinct constitutive nations (one Macedonian, the other Albanian), thus still excluding all other ethnic groups, such as Turks and Roma, from a potential redistribution of political power. The term lllirida'is formed by the conjunction of Illyri[a] and Da[rdania]. Prior to the Roman conquest, Illyria was a region in the western part of the Balkans whose borders remain unclear; in this same period, before 28 BC, the Dardanian boundaries included (at various times) Kosovo, southern parts of Serbia, western parts of Macedonia, and northeastern parts of Albania. See Poulton, Wlw Are the Macedonians'? 136.

28. The most significant amendments included the following: in areas where at least 20 percent of the population spoke a language other than Macedonian, that language became official—this measure meant that in many predominantly Albanian-populated municipalities Albanian became an official language; state funds were provided for university-level education in the Albanian language; and the percentage of Albanians in government and civil service positions, such as the police and the army, was increased.

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37. See also Chock, Phyllis Pease, “The Irony of Stereotypes: Toward an Anthropology of Ethnicity,” Cultural Anthropology 2, no. 3 (August 1987): 347–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The ungrammatical use of the definite article on the vocative Siptaritewhen used by Albanian men is explicable as a reference to the use of the definite form in graffiti and shouted slogans, which are used by ethnic Macedonians against Albanians, such as Smrl na Siptarite, “Death to the Albanians,“ and Uu-aa Siptarite, “Boo [to] the Albanians.” Victor A. Friedman, e-mail communication, 25 September 2008.

38. The influx after the earthquake was not limited to Albanians and urban-rural tensions during that period were not ethnicized.

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48. Victor A. Friedman, e-mail communication, 21 April 2008.

49. Also see Thiessen, Waiting for Macedonia.

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