Macedonian language

This article is about the Slavic language. For the non-Slavic language spoken in the ancient world, see Ancient Macedonian language.

Macedonian
Македонски, Makedonski
Native to	Republic of Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro and in the Macedonian diasporas.
Region	The Balkans
Native speakers	2 million (approximately) [1]
Language family	Indo-European Slavic South Slavic Eastern South Slavic Macedonian
Official status
Official language in	Republic of Macedonia
Language codes
ISO 639-1	mk
ISO 639-2	mac (B) mkd (T)
ISO 639-3	mkd

The Macedonian language (Македонски, Makedonski) is a language in the Eastern group of South Slavic languages and is the official language of the Republic of Macedonia. Macedonian is also spoken in Serbia and Montenegro, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, and in the Macedonian diasporas in Western Europe, North America and Australia.

Macedonian is closely related to Bulgarian. It also has some similarities with standard Serbian and is closest to the Torlakian dialect spoken mostly in southern Serbia and in western Bulgaria. Bulgarian and Macedonian language 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).

Along with Bulgarian, Macedonian is the only Slavic language not to use noun cases (except for vocative) and to have a definite article.

History

Main article: History of the Macedonian language

The Macedonian standard language has been codified in August 1944, when a provisional government run by the Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM) declared the Macedonian republic. This date is not precise as prior work had been done, however as Friedman states, "it nonetheless functions as the symbolic act demarcating the beginning of the period in which efforts received the official sanction that enabled standardization to reach the stage of implementation" ^[2].

It should be noted however that work had been done on standardising the Macedonian language prior to 1944.

Some of the varieties of Old Church Slavonic, the one of the Ohrid Literary School (one of the literary schools of the First Bulgarian Empire) from the 10th century on and written primarily in Glagolitic, as well as the language used by Saints Cyril and Methodius to translate the Bible from Greek in the 9th century AD (which was primarily based on the Slavic dialect of Thessaloniki/Solun) ^[3], are sometimes regarded as based on Macedonian local dialects due to the variety reflecting the local Slavic vernacular of the region.

There were three schools of Macedonian Slavic linguists in the recent history of Macedonia. The first one had Bulgarian consciousness and was called from some authors the "Bulgarophiles". It tried to reach the linguistic and political unity with Bulgaria. This group tried, in the 19th century, accompanied by pan-Slavic nationalism, to make the first attempt to resolve the question of linguistic norms in what they considered the Bulgarian-Macedonian diasystem. Bulgarophile writers from Macedonia (Kuzman Šapkarev, Miladinov Brothers, Grigor Prlichev) 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, which they considered as Bulgarian. Writers from northern 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; still, even after the codification of the Bulgarian language in 1899 ^[4], the preservation of the letters ѣ and ѫ with dialect-dependant double reading allowed some differences between eastern Bulgarian and western Bulgarian and Macedonian dialects within the codified norm.

At the same time, the Serbian scholars and a part of intellectuals from Macedonia, called the "Serbophiles", considered the Macedonian language merely a southernmost dialect of Serbian language, thus forcing this idea that become official in Vardar Macedonia after the Balkan Wars and World War I. Between the world wars in Serbia Macedonian dialects was treated as a Serbian dialects. Literary Serbo-Croatian was the language of education, media, and public life; even so Macedonian literature was tolerated as a local dialectal folkloristic form. The "Serbophile" idea was later abandoned in favour of the formation of separate Macedonian language in 1944, when the third group of linguists, led by Blaže Koneski, codified the Macedonian literary language.

Phonology

The phoneme inventory of standard literary Macedonian contains 31 phonemes. These consist of five vowels, four semivowels, three nasal consonants, three pairs of fricatives, two pairs of affricates, a non-paired voiceless fricative, nine pairs of voiced and unvoiced consonants and four pairs of stops ^[5].

Vowels

Macedonian vowels
	Front	Central	Back
High	и /i/		у /u/
Mid	е /ɛ/		о /ɔ/
Low		а /a/

In addition the schwa /ə/ may appear in certain dialects or loanwords.

Consonants

Consonant Phonemes of Macedonian
	Bilabial		Labio- Dental		Dental		Alveolar		Post- Alveolar		Palatal		Velar
Plosives	p	b			t	d							k kʲ	g gʲ
Nasals	m				n						ɲ
Fricatives			f	v			s	z	ʃ	ʒ			x
Affricates							ʦ	ʣ	tʃ	dʒ
Approximants											j
Trills					r
Laterals					l						ʎ

At the end of a word, the 'voiced — voiceless' opposition is neutralised. All consonants are pronounced as voiceless.

Word stress

The word stress in Macedonian is antepenultimate, meaning it falls on the third from last syllable in words with more than three or more syllables, and on the first or only syllable in other words. This is sometimes disregarded when the word has entered the language more recently and from a foreign source. For example: Meнаџмент (Management) is pronounced /mɛnadʒ'mɛnt/ with the stress falling on the last syllable.

Alphabet

Main article: Macedonian 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, which is the official alphabet of Serbian language. It is different from Serbian Cyrillic in letters Ќ and Ѓ (which have distinct phonetic value from their Serbian counterparts Ћ and Ђ), while Dze (Ѕ, ѕ) is a unique letter preserved from Old Church Slavonic in Macedonian Cyrillic.

Grammar

Definiteness (article)

The article is postfixed, as in Bulgarian and Romanian. One feature that has no parallel in other Balkan languages is the existence of three definite articles pertaining to position of the object. Bulgarian only has the basic (unspecified) form, although three definite article forms also exist in certain Bulgarian dialects, notably the vernaculars of Tran and parts of the Rhodopes .

The definite articles
Gender	Distance
	Unspecified	Close (this)	Distant (that)
Masculine	-от	-ов	-он
Feminine	-та	-ва	-на
Neuter	-то	-во	-но
Plural	-те	-ве	-не

Dialects

A major bundle of isoglosses running roughly from Skopje and Crna Gora along the rivers Vardar and Crna divides Macedonian territory into Eastern and Western regions shows the main dialect regions. The vocalic inventories of the West Central dialects are characterized by a five-vowel system, /a, e, i, o, u/. With the exception of Mala Reka, Reka, Drimkol-Golobrdo, Radožda-Vevčani, Nestram, Korca and parts of Lower Prespa, all the remaining dialects also have phonemic /ə/. Phonemic /å/ is found in all of these latter schwa-less dialects except Mala Reka and Korca. Phonemic /ä/ occurs in Radožda-Vevčani, Suho and Visoka and Korca. Vocalic /l/ occurs in Mala Reka. Vocalic /r/ is absent from those dialects that decompose original r, except Radožda-Vevčani. Korca also has phonemic /ü/.

The dialects of the Western region all tend to fixed stress, antepenultimate in the Republic of Macedonia, penultimate in Greece and Albania. The Eastern region, along with the neighboring Bulgarian dialects, has various non-fixed stress systems. In Lower Vardar and Seres-Nevrokop unstressed /a, e, o/ are reduced (raised) to /ə, i, u/. It must be noted that the Seres-Nevrokop group is in fact located mostly outside of the republic of Macedonia (in Greece and Bulgaria, respectively) and hence its identification as a group of Macedonian dialects is a controversial issue. Bulgarian linguists regard both as dialects of Bulgarian . Interestingly, the reduction of unstressed vowels is characterisic of East Bulgarian as opposed to West Bulgarian dialects, so Bulgarian linguists regard these dialects are regarded as transitional between East and West Bulgarian .

Most dialects have /e/ from original ě, but the Eastern region is characterized by the development of ě to /a/ after /c/: Eastern cal, Western cel (whole). In easternmost Aegean and Pirin Macedonia ě gives /a/ or /ä/ under stress, in the Aegean dialects regardless of the environment, in the Pirin dialects /a/ if there is a back vowel in the following syllable, /e/ if there is a front vowel, as can be seen in 'white', Seres-Drama: b'ala - b'ali, Suho and Visoka: b'äla - b'äli, Nevrokop: b'ala - bell. In Korca, ě gives /iä/ under stress.

The modern reflexes of the Proto-Slavonic reduced vowels (jers), vocalic sonorants and the back nasal (o) can be used to separate the dialects into six groups: (1) North (Tetovo, Skopje Crna Gora, Kumanovo-Kriva Palanka), (2) Peripheral (Gostivar, Ohrid-Prespa, Kostur-Korca, Lower Vardar), (3) West Central (Prilep, Kicevo, Bitola, Lerin), (4) East Central (Tikves-Mariovo, Stip-Strumica, Malesevo-Pirin), (5) Debar and (6) Seres-Nevrokop.

For consonantal features, the entire Western region is distinguished from the East by loss of /x/ (except Tetovo, Gora and Korca) and the loss of /v/ in intervocalic position (except Mala Reka and parts of Kostur-Korca): glava (head) = gla, glavi (heads) = glaj. The Eastern region preserves /x/ (except Tikves-Mariovo and Kumanovo-Kriva Palanka) and intervocalic /v/. The East is also characterized by the development of prothetic /v/ before original o where the West has prothetic /j/: Eastern vaglen (coal) but Western jaglen. The diphonemic reflexes are most characteristic of the Pirin and Aegean dialects, Kostur-Korca and Ohrid-Prespa. The Seres-Nevrokop dialects have a series of phonemically palatalized consonants.

Classification and related languages

The Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian and Bulgarian languages are related to Macedonian, but they are significantly different, except for Bulgarian which is largely mutually intelligible with Macedonian. They all compose the South Slavic dialect continuum for the Southern branch of the Slavic languages. Bulgarian and Macedonian compromise the Eastern South Slavic dialect continuum, distinct from the Western South Slavic continuum of Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian ^[6]. The exact classification of the Macedonian language is a political issue.

With Serbia's standard language being based a good distance from Macedonia's border, the transitional dialect linking Macedonian and Bulgarian with Serbo-Croatian is Torlakian, which is spoken in Northern Macedonia and North-Western Bulgaria and all over Southern and Eastern Serbia (Republic of Serbia is, in fact, roughly diagonally divided into two equal pieces from Djerdap to Metohija, with the "upper", North-Western half speaking Shtokavian, and the "lower", South-Eastern half speaking Torlakian dialects, which Southern branch is very similar to the literary Macedonian).

On the other hand, the fact is that the people of Macedonia usually understand better the Southern Serbian dialects or literary Serbian itself, because of the cultural and historical links with Serbia (and they speak Serbian more or less fluently due to historical reasons). The modern slang of Macedonian is usually identical with the Serbian slang, thus increasing the Macedonian-Bulgarian differences.

Both Bulgarian and Serbian nationalist commentators and linguists have attempted to pronounce Macedonian as merely a dialect of their own respective languages. The academic consensus outside Bulgaria and Serbia is that Macedonian is an autonomous language within the South Slavic dialect continuum ^[7].

Some specific features of the Macedonian language

The Macedonian language shows some special and in some cases unique characteristics due to its central position in the Balkans.

Literary Macedonian is the only South Slavic literary language that has:

• three forms of the definite article, based on the degree of proximity to the speaker.
• fixed stress on the antepenultimate (third syllable from the end).
• the possibility to form the perfect tense with the verb има "to have" and a neuter past passive participle, as is common in Germanic and Romance languages, and in some non-Slavic Balkan Sprachbund languages. In Slavic languages that have perfect tenses, these are almost universally built with the verb "to be" and a past active participle; that is also an option in Macedonian. The older common Slavic form with сум "to be" is predominant in the east of the country, while the form with "to have" is more widespread in the west, but has spread in the younger gernerations due to the influence of the standard language. Example: имам галено (new perfect) - сум галил/галел (old perfect) - I have caressed.
• the phoneme "dz". The unique Macedonian letter written as the latin "S" is associated to that sound. Neither Bulgarian nor any other South Slavic language possesses that characteristic letter, and while the phoneme does occur in Bulgarian, it is restricted to foreign proper names and isn't considered a part of its standard phonemic inventory. This phoneme has not been present in Serbian alphabet either since the reforms of Vuk Karadžić in the 19th century, although it is present in all the areas adjascent to Macedonia (Torlakian dialects), and, as in Bulgarian, in foreign proper names. The reason of dropping the letter from both Serbian and Bulgarian alphabets is the fact that the literary languages of those two nations deliberatery avoided the influence of Torlakian or Shop dialects, where "DZ" is frequently pronounced. It is also present in Serbian dialects from Boka Kotorska.

Macedonian has several other interesting features, which, however, are shared with Bulgarian:

• double object (which is avoided in most cases in written Bulgarian)
• the mediative mood (called renarrative mood in Bulgarian linguistics, and sometimes admirative in general linguistics, see mood). The mediative is a mood that designs the transmission of thoughts and enounciations which have been pronounced by another person, but the locutor has heard them through rumors or gossip.

Common phrases

Translation	Phrase	Transliteration	IPA	Remarks
Macedonian (language)	македонски	makedonski	/ma'kɛdɔnski/
hello	здраво	zdravo	/'zdravɔ/	lit. "healthy"
good morning	добро утро	dobro utro	/'dɔbrɔ 'utrɔ/
good day	добар ден	dobar den	/'dɔbar dɛn/	more common than "здраво" when greeting
good evening	добро вечер	dobro večer	/'dɔbrɔ 'vɛtʃɛr/
good night	добра ноќ	dobra noć	/'dɔbra nɔkʲ/
goodbye	пријатно	prijatno	/'prijatnɔ/
farewell	довидување	doviduvanje	/dɔvi'duvaɲɛ/	lit. "until seeing"
please, you're welcome	молам	molam	/'mɔlam/
thank you	благодарам	blagodaram	/bla'gɔdaram/	formal
thank you	фала	fala	/'fala/	informal
excuse me, pardon me	простете	prostete	/'prɔstɛtɛ/
sorry	извинете	izvinete	/iz'vinɛtɛ/
do you manage well?	се снаоѓате добро?	se snaođate dobro?	/'sɛ sna'ɔgʲatɛ 'dɔbrɔ/
how are you?	како сте?	kako ste?	/'kako stɛ/	formal; plural
how are you?	како си?	kako si?	/'kako si/	informal; singular
i'm well, thanks	добар сум, фала	dobar sum, fala	/'dɔbar sum 'fala/

Political views on the language

Main article: Political views on the Macedonian language

As with the issue of Macedonian ethnicity, the politicians, linguists and common people from Macedonia and neighboring countries have opposing views about the existence and distinctivity of the Macedonian language. Macedonian dialects are indeed a part of dialectal continuum which stretches from Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian Shtokavian dialect through Torlakian on the northwest, to western and eastern Bulgarian dialects on the East. Like many other languages, Macedonian language is just a standardized form of a (group of) dialect(s).

According to the Macedonian view, now prevalent and official in the books in Republic of Macedonia, Macedonian was the first official language of the Slavs, thanks to the St. Cyril and St. Methodius's introduction of Slavic literacy language through the Glagolitic script, that was based on the Southern Macedonian dialect of Thessaloniki (Solun) ^[8].

Bulgarian and Serbian views state, each in its own favor, that "Macedonian" is a modern coinage which merely denotes the western Bulgarian or southern Serbian dialects of the area, and that the "Macedonian language" is merely a dialect of their respective languages. Bulgarian linguists and the non-Bulgarian linguists J. Henniger and Michel Malherbe view Macedonian as another literary form of Bulgarian ^{[9] [10]}. Bulgaria recognised the Macedonian language between 1944 and 1948, the date of the Tito-Stalin split ^[11]. This date also coincided with the first references efforts of Bulgarian linguists to the serbianisation of the Macedonian language ^[12]. Although Bulgaria was the first country to recognize the independence of the Republic of Macedonia, it has since refused to recognize the existence of a separate Macedonian nation and a separate Macedonian language. Serbia gradually accepted both, although extreme nationalistic views still exist.

Naming dispute

The language is occasionally referred to as Macedonian Slavic, usually in a Greek context. The name of the language is considered offensive by many Greeks , who assert that the ancient Macedonian language is the only "Macedonian language" and that it was a northern Greek dialect . Although Greeks do not generally participate in the language-versus-dialect dispute, they object to the use of the "Macedonian" name in reference to the modern language, calling it "Slavomacedonian" or "Skopjan".

See also

• Balkan linguistic union
• Romanisation of Macedonian
• Macedonian alphabet
• Torlakian dialect

Notes

1. ^ Although the precise number of speakers is unknown, figures of between 1.6 million [13] and 3 million [14] have been cited. The general academic consensus is that there are approximately 2 million speakers of the Macedonian language.
2. ^ Friedman, V. (1998) "The implementation of standard Macedonian: problems and results" in International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Issue 131. pp. 31-57
3. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica - Old Church Slavonic
4. ^ Tomić, O. (1991) "Macedonian as an Ausbau language" in Pluricentric Languages: Different Norms in Different Nations. (Berlin : Mouton de Gruyter)
5. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica - Old Church Slavonic
6. ^ Henniger, J. (1994) "Bulgarian and Macedonian." in R. E. Asher, ed. The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. 1 pp. 429-430. (Oxford: Pergamon Press) [15]
7. ^ Malherbe, M. (1995). Les langages de l'Humanité. (Paris: Robert Laffont)
8. ^ Mahon, M. (1998) "The Macedonian question in Bulgaria" in Nations and Nationalism Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 389-407
9. ^ Lunt, H. (1952) Grammar of the Macedonian Literary Language p. 1
10. ^ Trudgill, P. (1992) "Ausbau sociolinguistics and the perception of language status in contemporary Europe" in International Journal of Applied Linguistics. Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 167-177
11. ^ Friedman, V. (1998) "The implementation of standard Macedonian: problems and results" in International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Issue 131. pp. 31-57

References

1. Lunt, H. (1952) Grammar of the Macedonian Literary Language (Skopje)

External links

• A grammar of Macedonian by Victor Friedman
• Macedonian - English, Greek, Albanian, German, French, Italian translator
• Ethnologue report for Macedonian
• BBC Education - Languages: Macedonian, Makedonski
• The Macedonian Language
• Macedonian - English Dictionary
• Reading and Pronouncing Macedonian: An Interactive Tutorial
• Otto Kronsteiner. The Collapse of Yugoslavia and the Future Prospects of the Macedonian Literary Language
• UCLA Language materials project
• Krste Misirkov - Za Makedonckite Raboti (Complete text of the book)
• Nature of Standard Macedonian lanuage by Mladen Srbinovski