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This article is about the Slavic Macedonian language. For the language spoken by the ancient Macedonians, see: Ancient Macedonian language.

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The Macedonian language (Македонски, Makedonski) is a language in the Eastern group of South Slavic languages. It is spoken by some 2 million people, primarily in the Republic of Macedonia, the Macedonian Slavs.

The Macedonian language is most closely related to the Bulgarian language. Macedonian also has similarities with Serbian, particularly Old Serbian. Bulgarian and Macedonian share typological similarities with Romanian, Greek, and Albanian. These five languages make up the Balkan language league, even though they are all from different language families (Romanian is a Romance language, while Greek and Albanian comprise their own branches in the Indo-European family).

Macedonian is the official language in the Republic of Macedonia, and officially recognized in the District of Korçë in Albania. Native speakers are also found in Serbia and Montenegro, Greece, and Albania. All the languages of the ethnic communities with over 20% of representation in municipalities are municipal official languages. These include Albanian, Turkish, Serbian and Romany. Macedonian is the only Slavic language apart from Bulgarian which has no noun cases, but three different definite articles (-ot,-ta,-to,-te:-ov,-va,-vo,-ve;-on,-na,-no,-ne), which are used as suffixes.

A modified Cyrillic script, Macedonian Cyrillic with 31 letters, is used for writing.

Cyrillic, with Glagolitic, was an old Slavic script, used for the original Old Slavonic language. Only Cyrillic is used today, probably because the letters are simpler and more easily learnt when scholars like Saint Cyril introduced Christian writings to the Slavic people.

Macedonian is taught as a subject in several university centres in the world, and is being taught in all universities of the former Yugoslavia.

History

The 19th century, accompanied by pan-Slavic nationalism, saw the first attempts to resolve the question of linguistic norms in the Bulgarian-Macedonian diasystem. Writers from Macedonia advocated a common Bulgarian language based on the Slavic dialects in Macedonia or on a compromise between the upper-Bulgarian (northeastern Bulgarian) and the western Macedonian dialects. Writers from Bulgaria, however, insisted on the adoption of the northeastern Bulgarian dialect only. The establishment of an autonomous Bulgarian principality north of the Stara Planina led eventually to the adoption of the Eastern literary variant although the preservation of the letters ѣ and ѫ even after the codification of the Bulgarian language in 1899 maintained some differences between eastern Bulgarian and western Bulgarian and Macedonian dialects. (All this notwithstanding, it's important to remember that the Macedonians have not recognized themselves as a nation until relatively recently; excepting the minority that defined itself as Serbian, the predecessors of the modern Macedonians called themselves Bulgarians.)

Bulgarian view on the Macedonian language

Although it was the first country to recognise the independence of the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria has refused to recognise the existence of a separate Macedonian nation and a separate Macedonian language. It is argued that the language of the Macedonian Slavs was regarded as a Bulgarian dialect before the 1940s and that Macedonian linguists resort to falsifications of history and documents in order to further the opinion that there was a consciousness of a separate Macedonian language before that time. Apart from this historical argument, the supporters of the Bulgarian view often state that the differences between Bulgarian and Macedonian, from an everyday and/or linguistical point of view, are insufficient to justify the recognition of the latter as a separate language. To assess the validity of these arguments in a broader perspective, see dialect.

Greek propaganda on the Macedonian language

After Treaty of Bucharest, 1913 Aegean part of Macedonia was annexed by Greece. Around a million of Macedonians have to leave their homes and immigrate in the rest of the world. Greek military and army burned many Macedonian villages. Greek government prohibited Macedonian language. A lot of books that were written in Macedonian - burned. So, the name of the language is considered "offensive" by Greece and many Greeks, who assert that the Ancient Macedonian language spoken by Alexander the Great in ancient Macedon is the only "Macedonian language". They further argue that since Slavic immigration to the region did not begin until well after the decline of the Macedonian Empire, it is historically inaccurate to refer to a Slavic language as Macedonian. Quite often Greek "arguments" are similar to the Bulgarian ones, mainly that Macedonian was created artificially by Tito for political reasons. However, most non-Greek parties such as international news organizations and language scholars refer to the language as "Macedonian". See Republic of Macedonia for more on the related naming dispute.

Alphabet

The Macedonian alphabet, as any Slavic Cyrillic alphabet, is ultimately based on the Cyrillic alphabet of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius; it is an adaptation of Vuk Karadžić's phonetic alphabet.

Similarities to other languages

The Macedonian, Bulgarian, and Serbian languages are related, but they are significantly different. A lexicological comparison between Macedonian and Bulgarian reveals that roughly 15% of the whole vocabulary of both languages is different, although most words usually exist in the other language with a different or slightly modified meaning. 65% of the words are only differently accented, and 20% are identical. Lexical differences are owing to a great extent to loanwords borrowed by Bulgarian from Russian and by Macedonian from Serbian in the middle and the end of the 20th century. Compared to other languages the statistical differences between Bulgarian and Macedonian are similar to those between Afrikaans and Dutch language. Generally, there is little trouble for a Macedonian speaker to understand and communicate with Serbian, Bulgarian, Russian and Ukranian speakers, and vice versa.

External links

• Ethnologue report for Macedonian
• BBC Education - Languages: Macedonian, Makedonski
• Macedonian - English Dictionary
• Reading and Pronouncing Macedonian: An Interactive Tutorial

Note

¤ The use of the terms Republic of Macedonia and Macedonian(s) throughout this article is not meant to imply an official position on the naming dispute between Athens and Skopje. See Foreign relations of the Republic of Macedonia: Naming Dispute, Republic of Macedonia: Naming Dispute and United Nations Resolution 817 (1993)

• Languages of the Republic of Macedonia
• Slavic languages