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This page is about the South Slavic language. For the extinct language, see Ancient Macedonian language.

Macedonian
македонски makedonski
Pronunciation	[maˈkɛdɔnski]
Native to	North Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia
Region	Balkans
Ethnicity	Macedonians
Native speakers	(1.4–3.5 million cited 1999–2011)
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic South Slavic Eastern South Slavic Macedonian
Dialects	Macedonian dialects
Writing system	Cyrillic (Macedonian alphabet) Macedonian Braille
Official status
Official language in	North Macedonia
Recognised minority language in	Albania Bosnia and Herzegovina Romania Serbia
Regulated by	Macedonian Language Institute "Krste Misirkov" at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje
Language codes
ISO 639-1	mk
ISO 639-2	mac (B) mkd (T)
ISO 639-3	mkd
Glottolog	mace1250
Linguasphere	53-AAA-ha (part of 53-AAA-h)
The Macedonian-speaking world:   regions where Macedonian is the language of the majority   regions where Macedonian is the language of a significant minority

Macedonian (/ˌmæsɪˈdoʊniən/; македонски јазик, translit. makedonski jazik, pronounced [maˈkɛdɔnski ˈjazik] ^ⓘ) is an Eastern South Slavic language. Spoken as a first language by around two million people, it serves as the official language in North Macedonia. Most speakers can be found in the country and its diaspora, with a smaller number of speakers throughout the transnational region of Macedonia. Macedonian is also a recognized minority language in parts of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, and Serbia and spoken by emigrant communities predominantly in Australia, Canada and the United States.

As it is part of a dialect continuum with other South Slavic languages, Macedonian has a high degree of mutual intelligibility with Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian. Macedonian orthography is phonemic with a correspondence of one grapheme per phoneme and is written using an adapted 31-letter version of the Cyrillic script. In addition to influences from Bulgarian and Serbian, Macedonian vocabulary has also been historically influenced by Turkish and Russian.

Standard Macedonian was declared the official language of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia within Yugoslavia in 1944 and has since developed a modern literature. Most of the codification was formalized during the same period with the adoption of the alphabet and orthography ensuing in 1945. Since Macedonian and Bulgarian are mutually intelligible and historically related, linguists are divided in their views of the two as separate languages or as a single pluricentric language. The classification and acknowledgement of the language as a separate entity are a source of political dispute between the countries' scholars and politicians.

Classification and related languages

Classification of Macedonian within the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. Macedonian belongs to the Eastern group.

The modern Macedonian language belongs to the eastern group of the South Slavic branch of Slavic languages in the Indo-European language family, together with Bulgarian and the extinct Old Church Slavonic. Some authors also classify the Torlakian dialects to this group. Macedonian's closest relative is Bulgarian followed by Serbo-Croatian and Slovene, although the last is more distantly related. Macedonian has a high degree of mutual intelligibility with the former two languages.

All South Slavic languages, including Macedonian, form a dialect continuum that is a legacy of the linguistic developments during the height of the Preslav and Ohrid literary schools. Macedonian, along with Bulgarian and Torlakian, falls into the Balkan Slavic linguistic area, which is part of the broader Balkan sprachbund, a group of languages that share typological, grammatical and lexical features based on geographical convergence, rather than genetic proximity. This continuum includes Romanian, Greek and Albanian, all of which belong to different genetic branches of the Indo-European family.

Macedonian and Bulgarian are sharply divergent from the remaining South Slavic languages, Serbo-Croatian and Slovene, and indeed all other Slavic languages, in that they do not use noun cases (except for the vocative, and apart from some traces of once productive inflections still found scattered throughout the languages) and have lost the infinitive. They are also the only Slavic languages with any definite articles (unlike standard Bulgarian, which uses only one article, standard Macedonian as well as some south-eastern Bulgarian dialects have a set of three based on an external frame of reference: unspecified, proximal and distal definite article). Macedonian and Bulgarian are the only Indo-European languages that make use of the narrative mood.

History

Main article: History of the Macedonian language

The front page of the Abecedar, school book published by the Greek government in 1925. The book was in the Lerin dialect and Latin script

According to Macedonian scholars, the history of the Macedonian language can be divided into nine developmental stages. Blaže Koneski distinguishes two different periods in the development of the Macedonian language, namely, old from the 12th to the 15th century and modern after the 15th century. According to the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU), the development of the Macedonian language was effectuated using two different scripts, namely the Glagolitic and Cyrillic scripts.

Medieval

The "canonical" Old Church Slavonic period started in the 9th century and lasted until the first half of the 10th century. During this period common to many Slavic languages, Greek religious texts were translated to Old Church Slavonic. According to Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Old Church Slavonic was originally based on a Macedonian dialect spoken in Thessaloniki despite linguistic features characteristic of Old Bulgarian. The Macedonian recension of Old Church Slavonic (referred to as such due to works of the Ohrid Literary School, current-day North Macedonia) span between the 11th and 13th century and during this period, in addition to translation of canonical texts, religious passages were created including praising texts and sermons (слова/беседи) of saints such as Saint Clement of Ohrid. These texts use an orthography, morphology and syntax that differs from other Old Church Slavonic and since it was characteristic of the region of current-day North Macedonia, this version can also be referred to as Old Macedonian. During this period which also aligns with the conquest of the region by the Ottoman Empire, grammatical and linguistic changes that characterize Macedonian as a member of the Balkan sprachbund became dominant. During the time of the Ottoman rule which lasted for 500 years, loanwords from Turkish entered the Macedonian language, which by extension have an Arabo-Persian origin.

Modern era

The latter half of the 18th century saw the rise of modern literary Macedonian. Macedonian dialects started being used during this period for ecclesiastical and didactic works and the vernacular used was referred to as "Bulgarian" by writers. Between 1840 and 1870, there was a struggle to define a dialectal base of the vernacular used, with two different literary centers arising - one in current-day northeastern Bulgaria and one in current-day southwestern North Macedonia; Macedonian intellectuals emerged who proposed a Bulgarian literary language based on Macedonian dialects although their attempts were rejected. In Krste Petkov Misirkov's book Za makedonckite raboti (On Macedonian Matters) published in 1903, the author postulated the principle that the Prilep-Bitola dialect be used as a dialectal basis for the formation of the Macedonian standard language.

Prior to the codification of the standard language (Standard Macedonian), Macedonian dialects were described by linguists as being dialects of Bulgarian or Serbian, or forming an entirely distinct language. Similarly, Torlakian was also widely regarded as Bulgarian. The boundaries between the South Slavic languages had yet to be "conceptualized in modern terms," and codifiers of Serbian even found it necessary to argue that Bulgarian was not a Serbian dialect as late as 1822. Many Macedonian intellectuals maintained that their language "was neither a dialect of Serbian nor of Bulgarian, but a language in its own right". It has been argued that Bulgarian authorities lost an opportunity to create a pluricentric South-East Slavic literary language by not accommodating Macedonian proposals for a composite Macedonian-Bulgarian literary language as proposed in the late 19th century.

Standardization

On 2 August 1944 at the first Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM) meeting, the Macedonian language was declared the official language of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia within the borders of Yugoslavia. With this, Macedonian became the last of the major Slavic languages to achieve a standard literary form. Some linguists argue that during its codification the Macedonian language was Serbianized; Bulgarian linguists found Serbianization prominent with regards to the orthography. The standardization of Macedonian established a second standard language in within a dialect continuum comprising Macedonian, Bulgarian and the Torlakian dialects, itself a legacy of the linguistic developments during the height of the Preslav and Ohrid literary schools. Some argue that the standardization of Macedonian was done with the need to differentiate from Serbian and Bulgarian in mind but it should be noted that the dialects chosen for the base of the standard language had never yet been covered by an existing standard, so the codification of Macedonian was not exactly a separation from an existing pluricentric language. Some argue that the codification was done intentionally on the variant most unlike Standard Bulgarian (i.e. the Prilep-Bitola dialect), while others argue that this view does not take into account the fact that a Macedonian koiné language was already in existence. The policy is argued to stem from the works of Krste Misirkov, who suggested that Standard Macedonian should abstract on those dialects "most distinct from the standards of the other Slavonic languages".

Geographical distribution

Sign in North Macedonia advertising the Struga Poetry Evenings festival, written in four languages with Macedonian on top.

Further information: Geographical distribution of the Macedonian language and Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia

Although the precise number of native and second language speakers of Macedonian is unknown due to the policies of neighbouring countries and emigration of the population, estimates ranging between 1.4 million and 3.5 million have been reported. According to the 2002 census, the total population of North Macedonia was 2,022,547, with 1,344,815 declaring Macedonian their native language. Macedonian is also studied and spoken to various degrees as a second language by all ethnic minorities in the country.

Outside North Macedonia, there are small ethnic Macedonian minorities that speak Macedonian in neighboring countries including 4.697 in Albania (1989 census), 1,609 in Bulgaria (2011 census) and 12,706 in Serbia (2011 census). The exact number of speakers of the Macedonian language in Greece is difficult to ascertain, with estimates ranging between 20,000 and 250,000. Other sources put the numbers of speakers at 180,000 220,000 250,000 and 300,000 in the period of 2000. The number of speakers of Macedonian in Greece is difficult to establish since part of the Slavophone Greek population are also considered speakers of Bulgarian. In recent years, there have been attempts to have the language recognized as a minority language in Greece. Approximately 580,000 Macedonians live outside North Macedonia per 1964 estimates with Australia, Canada, and the United States being home to the largest emigrant communities. Consequently, the number of speakers of Macedonian in these countries include respectively 66,020 (2016 census), 15,605 (2016 census) and 22,885 (2010 census).

The Macedonian language has the status of an official language only in North Macedonia, and is a recognized minority and official language in parts of Albania (Pustec), Romania, Serbia (Jabuka and Plandište) and Bosnia and Herzegovina. There are provisions to learn the Macedonian language in Romania as Macedonians are an officially recognized minority group. Macedonian is taught in some universities in Australia, Canada, Croatia, Italy, Poland, Russia, Serbia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries.

Dialects

Main article: Dialects of Macedonian

Dialect divisions of Macedonian
Northern   Lower Polog   Crna Gora   Kumanovo / Kratovo Western   Central   Upper Polog   Reka   Mala Reka / Galičnik   Debar   Drimkol / Golo Brdo   Vevčani / Radožda   Upper Prespa / Ohrid   Lower Prespa	Eastern   Mariovo / Tikveš   Štip / Strumica   Maleševo / Pirin Southern   Korča   Kostur   Nestram   Solun / Voden   Ser / Drama

During the standardization process of the Macedonian language, the dialectal base selected was primarily based on the West-Central dialects, which spans the triangle of the communities Makedonski Brod, Kičevo, Demir Hisar, Bitola, Prilep, and Veles. These were considered the most widespread and most likely to be adopted by speakers from other regions. The initial idea to select this region as a base was first proposed in Krste Petkov Misirkov's works as he believed the Macedonian language should abstract on those dialects that are distinct from neighbouring Slavic languages, such as Bulgarian and Serbian. Likewise, this view does not take into account the fact that a Macedonian koiné language was already in existence.

Based on a large group of features, Macedonian dialects can be divided into Eastern and Western groups (the boundary geographically runs approximately from Skopje and Skopska Crna Gora along the rivers Vardar and Crna). Variations in consonants occur between the two groups, with most Western regions losing the /x/ and the /v/ in intervocalic position (глава (head): /ɡlava/ = /ɡla/: глави (heads): /ɡlavi/ = /ɡlaj/) while Eastern dialects preserve it. Stress in the Western dialects is generally fixed and falls on the antipenultimate syllable while Eastern dialects have non-fixed stress systems reminiscent of Bulgarian dialects. Additionally, Eastern dialects are also distinguishable by their fast tonality, elision of sounds and the suffixes for definiteness.

In addition, a more detailed classification can be based on the modern reflexes of the Proto-Slavic reduced vowels (yers), vocalic sonorants, and the back nasal *ǫ. That classification distinguishes between the following 6 groups:

Western Dialects:

• Ohrid-Prespa Group: Ohrid dialect, Struga dialect, Vevčani-Radožda dialect, Upper Prespa dialect and Lower Prespa dialect.
• Debar Group: Debar dialect, Reka dialect, Drimkol-Golo Brdo dialect, Galičnik dialect, Skopska Crna Gora dialect and Gora dialect
• Polog Group: Upper Polog dialect, Lower Polog dialect, Prilep-Bitola dialect, Kičevo-Poreče dialect and Skopje-Veles dialect
• Kostur-Korča Group: Korča dialect, Kostur dialect and Nestram-Kostenar dialect

Eastern Dialects:

• Northern Group: Kumanovo dialect, Kratovo dialect, Kriva Palanka dialect and Ovče Pole dialect
• Eastern Group: Štip - Kočani dialect, Strumica dialect, Tikveš-Mariovo dialect, Maleševo-Pirin dialect, Solun-Voden dialect and Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop dialect.

Phonology

Spoken Macedonian in Prilep-Bitola dialect.

Main article: Macedonian phonology

The phonological system of Standard Macedonian is based on the Prilep-Bitola dialect. Macedonian possesses five vowels, one semivowel, three liquid consonants, three nasal stops, 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. Out of all the Slavic languages, Macedonian has the most frequent occurrence of vowels relative to consonants with a typical Macedonian sentence having on average 1.18 consonants for every one vowel.

Vowels

The Macedonian language contains 5 vowels which are /a/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /o/, and /u/. For the pronunciation of the middle vowels /е/ and /о/ by native Macedonian speakers, various vowel sounds can be produced ranging from [ɛ] to [ẹ] and from [o] to [ọ]. Unstressed vowels are not reduced, although they are pronounced more weakly and shortly than stressed ones, especially if they are found in a stressed syllable. The five vowels and the letter /р/ which acts as a semivowel when found between two consonants (e.g. црква, "church"), can be syllable-forming.

The schwa is phonemic in many dialects (varying in closeness to [ʌ] or [ɨ]) but its use in the standard language is marginal. When writing a dialectal word and keeping the schwa for aesthetic effect, an apostrophe is used; for example, ⟨к’смет⟩, ⟨с’нце⟩, etc. When spelling aloud, each consonant is followed by the schwa. The individual letters of acronyms are pronounced with the schwa in the same way: ⟨МПЦ⟩ ([mə.pə.t͡sə]). The lexicalized acronyms ⟨СССР⟩ ([ɛs.ɛs.ɛs.ɛr]) and ⟨МТ⟩ ([ɛm.tɛ]) (a brand of cigarettes), are among the few exceptions. Vowel length is not phonemic. Vowels in stressed open syllables in disyllablic words with stress on the penultimate can be realized as long, e.g. ⟨Велес⟩ [ˈvɛːlɛs] ^ⓘ 'Veles'. The sequence /aa/ is often realized phonetically as [aː]; e.g. ⟨саат⟩ /saat/ [saːt] 'colloq. hour', ⟨змии⟩ - snakes. In other words, two vowels appearing next to each other can also be pronounced twice separately (e.g. пооди - to walk).

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	ɛ	(ə)	ɔ
Open		a

Consonants

The consonant inventory of the Macedonian language consists of 26 letters and distinguishes three groups of consonants (согласки): voiced (звучни), voiceless (безвучни) and sonorant consonants (сонорни). Typical features and rules that apply to consonants in the Macedonian language include assimilation of voiced and voiceless consonants when next to each other, devoicing of vocal consonants when at the end of a word, double consonants and elision.

Map of the use of the intervocalic phoneme kj in the Macedonian language (1962)

Map of the use of the intervocalic phoneme gj in the Macedonian language (1962)

Consonants

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal		m	n̪1		ɲ
Plosive	voiceless	p	t̪		c	k
	voiced	b	d̪		ɟ	ɡ
Affricate	voiceless		t̪͡s̪		t͡ʃ
	voiced		d̪͡z̪		d͡ʒ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s̪		ʃ	x
	voiced	v	z̪		ʒ
Approximant			ɫ̪1	lʲ	j
Trill				r1

^1 The alveolar trill (/r/) is syllabic between two consonants; for example, ⟨прст⟩[ˈpr̩st] 'finger'. The dental nasal (/n/) and dental lateral (/ɫ/) are also syllabic in certain foreign words; e.g. ⟨њутн⟩[ˈɲutn̩] 'newton', ⟨Попокатепетл⟩[pɔpɔkaˈtɛpɛtɫ̩] 'Popocatépetl', etc. The labiodental nasal[ɱ] occurs as an allophone of /m/ before /f/ and /v/ (e.g. ⟨трамвај⟩[ˈtraɱvaj] 'tram'). The velar nasal[ŋ] similarly occur as an allophone of /n/ before /k/ and /ɡ/ (e.g. ⟨англиски⟩[ˈaŋɡliski] 'English'). The latter realization is avoided by some speakers who strive for a clear, formal pronunciation.

Phonological processes

At morpheme boundaries (represented in spelling) and at the end of a word (not represented in spelling), voicing opposition is neutralized.

Stress

The word stress in Macedonian is antepenultimate, meaning it falls on the third from last syllable in words with 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 or from a foreign source. The following rules apply:

• Disyllabic words are stressed on the second-to-last syllable.

For example, ⟨дете⟩ [ˈdɛtɛ] 'child', ⟨мајка⟩ [ˈmajka] 'mother' and ⟨татко⟩ [ˈtatkɔ] 'father'.

• Trisyllabic and polysyllabic words are stressed on the third-to-last syllable.

For example, ⟨планина⟩ [ˈpɫanina] 'mountain', ⟨планината⟩ [pɫaˈninata] 'the mountain' and ⟨планинарите⟩ [pɫaniˈnaritɛ] 'the mountaineers'.

Exceptions include:

• Verbal adverbs (i.e. words suffixed with ⟨-ќи⟩): e.g. ⟨викајќи⟩ [viˈkajci] 'shouting', ⟨одејќи⟩ [ɔˈdɛjci] 'walking'.
• Foreign loanwords: e.g. ⟨клише⟩ [kliˈʃɛ] 'cliché', ⟨генеза⟩ [ɡɛˈnɛza] 'genesis', ⟨литература⟩ [litɛraˈtura] 'literature', ⟨Александар⟩ [alɛkˈsandar], 'Alexander' (Possibly based on hellenised variations of indigenous Bryges and/or Enchele naming conventions), etc.

Grammar

Main article: Macedonian grammar

Macedonian grammar is markedly analytic in comparison with other Slavic languages, having lost the common Slavic case system. 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, and a perfect tense formed by means of an auxiliary verb "to have", followed by a past participle in the neuter, also known as the verbal adjective.

Macedonian syntax has a subject-verb-object (SVO) word order which is nevertheless flexible and can be tropicalized.

Nouns

Macedonian nouns (именки, imenki) belong to one of three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter) and are inflected for number (singular and plural), and marginally for case. The gender opposition is not distinctively marked in the plural. Masculine nouns usually end in a consonant or -a, -o or -e and neuter nouns end in -o or -e. Virtually all feminine nouns end in the consonant -a.

The vocative of nouns is the only remaining case in the Macedonian language and is used to address a person directly. The vocative case always ends with a vowel, which can be either an -у (мажу; "you man") or an -e (јунаку: "you hero") to the root of masculine nouns. For feminine nouns, the most common final vowel ending in the vocative is -o (душо, "sweetheart"; жено, wife). The final suffix -e can be used in the following cases: three or polysyllabic words with the ending -ица (мајчице, "oh mother"), female given names that end with -ка:Ратке and -ја: Марија becomes Марије ir Маријо. There is no vocative case in neuter nouns and there is a general tendency of vocative loss in the language and the vocative can be simply expressed by changing the tone.

There are three different types of plural: regular, counted and collective. The first plural type is most common and is used to indicate regular plurality of nouns. маж - мажи (a man - men), маса - маси (a table - table), село - села (a village - villages). There are various suffixes that are used and they differ per noun gender. Counted plural is used when a number or quantifier precedes the noun and the suffixes to create it differ from the other regular plural: два молива (two pencils), три листа (three leaves), неколку часа (several hours). The collective plural is used for nouns that can be viewed as a single unit: лисје (a pile of leaves), ридје (a ... of hills). Irregular plural forms also exist in the language: дете - деца (child - children).

Definiteness

A characteristic feature of the nominal system is the indication of definiteness. As with other Slavic languages, there is no indefinite article in Macedonian. The definite article in Macedonian is postpositive, i.e. it is added as a suffix to nouns. An individual feature of the Macedonian language is the use of three definite articles, inflected for gender and related to the position of the object, which can be unspecified, proximate or distal.

• Definite articles -ов, -ва, -во, -ве are used for objects located close to the speaker (човеков: - this person here)
• Definite articles -он, -на, -но, -не are used for objects located further away from the speaker that can still be perceived (женана: - that woman there)
• Definite articles -от, -та, -то, -те are most commonly used as general indicators of definiteness regardless of the referred object's position (детето: the child). Additionally, these suffixes can be used to indicate objects referred to by the speaker that are in the proximity of the listener, e.g. дај ми ја книгата што е до тебе - give me the book next to you.

Proper nouns are per definition definite and are not usually used together with an article, although exceptions exist in the spoken and literary language such as Совчето, Марето, Надето to demonstrate feelings of endearment to a person.

The definite articles

	Singular			Plural
	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Unspecified	−от (-ot)	−та (-ta)	−то (−то)	−те (-te)		−та (-ta)
Proximate	−ов (-ov)	−ва (-va)	−во (-vo)	−ве (-ve)		−ва (−va)
Distal	−он (−on)	−на (−na)	−но (−no)	−не (−ne)		−на (−na)

Pronouns

Macedonian personal pronouns

Person	Singular	Plural
1.	јас	ние
2.	ти вие (formal)	вие
3.	тој (masculine) таа (feminine) тоа (neuter)	тие

Three types of pronouns can be distinguished in Macedonian: personal (лични), personal-... (лично-предметни) and demonstrative (показни). Case relations are marked in pronouns.

Personal pronouns in Macedonian appear in three genders and both in singular and plural. They can also appear either as direct or indirect object in long or short forms. Depending on whether a definite direct or indirect object is used, a clitic pronoun will refer to the object with the verb: Јас не му ја дадов книгата на момчето ("I did not give the book to the boy"). The direct object is a remnant of the accusative case and the indirect of the dative. Examples of personal pronouns are shown below:

• Personal pronoun: Јас читам книга. ("I am reading a book")
• Direct object pronoun: Таа мене ме виде во киното. ("She saw me at the cinema")
• Indirect object: Тој мене ми рече да дојдам. ("He told me to come")

Verbs

Macedonian has a complex system of verbs. Generally speaking Macedonian verbs have the following characteristics, or categories as they are called in Macedonistics: tense, mood, person, type, transitiveness, voice, gender and number.

According to the categorization, all Macedonian verbs are divided into three major groups: a-group, e-group and i-group. Furthermore, the i-subgroup is divided into three more subgroups: a-, e- and i-subgroups. This division is done according to the ending (or the last vowel) of the verb in the simple present, singular, third person. Regarding the form, the verb forms can be either simple or complex.

The Macedonian simple verb forms are:

• Present tense (сегашно време)
• Imperfect (минато определено несвршено време, 'past definite incomplete tense')
• Aorist (минато определено свршено време, 'past definite complete tense')
• Imperative (заповеден начин)
• Verbal l-form (глаголска л-форма)
• Verbal adjective (глаголска придавка)
• Verbal noun (глаголска именка)
• Verbal adverb (глаголски прилог)

The Macedonian complex verb forms are:

• Perfect of imperfective verbs (минато неопределено несвршено време, 'past indefinite incomplete tense')
• Perfect of perfective verbs ( минато неопределено свршено време, 'past indefinite complete tense')
• Past perfect tense (предминато време)
• Future tense (идно време)
• Future-in-the-past (минато-идно време)
• Future perfect tense (идно прекажано)
• Potential mood (можен начин)
• Have-construction (има-конструкција)
• Be-construction (сум-конструкција)
• To-construction (да-конструкција)

Prepositions

Prepositions (предлози, predlozi) are part of the closed word class that are used to express the relationship between the words in a sentence. Because Macedonian lost its case system, the prepositions are very important for creation and expression of various grammatical categories. The most important Macedonian preposition is 'na' ('of', 'on', 'to'). Regarding the form, the prepositions can either be simple or complex. Based on the meaning the preposition express, they can be divided into prepositions of time, place, manner and quantity.

Vocabulary

See also: Balkan sprachbund § Vocabulary

Macedonian police car, with the Macedonian word Полиција (Policija), for "police".

As a result of the close relationship with Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian shares a considerable amount of its lexicon with these languages. With the latter language, there was increased language contact during the period when the country became part of Yugoslavia. Serbo-Croatian was implemented as a compulsory second language in the country, which led to increased linguistic mixing as people were enthusiastic about adopting the new language and "speaking pseudo-Serbian". Other languages that have been in positions of power, such as Ottoman Turkish and, increasingly, English since 1980 have also provided a significant proportion of the loanwords. Prestige languages, such as Old Church Slavonic—which occupies a relationship to modern Macedonian comparable to the relationship of medieval Latin to modern Romance languages—and Russian also provided a source for lexical items. Other technical terms and vocabulary also came from prestige languages such as French and German. Loanwords from Greek and Albanian can also be found.

During the standardization process, there was deliberate care taken to try to purify the lexicon of the language. Serbianisms and Bulgarianisms, which had become common due to the influence of these languages in the region were rejected in favor of words from native dialects and archaisms. This is not to say that there are no Serbianisms, Bulgarianisms or even Russianisms in the language, but rather that they were discouraged on a principle of "seeking native material first".

The language of the writers at the turn of the 19th century abounded with Russian and, more specifically, Old Church Slavonic lexical and morphological elements that in the contemporary norm are substituted with native words or calqued using productive morphemes. Thus, the now slightly archaicized forms with suffixes –ние and –тел, adjectives with the suffixes –телен and others, are now constructed following patterns more typical of Macedonian morphology. For example, дејствие (Russ. действие) corresponds to дејство 'action', лицемерие (Russ. лицемерие) → лицемерство 'hypocrisy', развитие (Russ. развитие) → развиток 'development', определение (Russ. определение) → определба 'determination, orientation', движение (Russ. движение) → движење 'movement', продолжител (Russ. продолжитель) → продолжувач 'extender, continuator', победител (Russ. победитель) → победник 'winner, victor', убедителен (Russ. убедительный) → убедлив 'convincing, persuasive', etc. Many of these words are now obsolete or archaic (as with развитие), synonymous (лицемерие and лицемерство) or have taken on a slightly different nuance in meaning (дејствие 'military act' vs. дејство 'act, action' in a general sense).

The use of Ottoman Turkish loanwords is discouraged in the formal register when a native equivalent exists (e.g. комшија (← Turk. komşu) vs. сосед (← PSl. *sǫsědъ) 'neighbor'), and these words are typically restricted to the archaic, colloquial, and ironic registers.

New words were coined according to internal logic and others calqued from related languages (especially Serbo-Croatian) to replace those taken from Russian, which include известие (Russ. известие) → извештај 'report', количество (Russ. количество) → количина 'amount, quantity', согласие (Russ. согласие) → слога 'concord, agreement', etc. This change was aimed at bringing written Macedonian closer to the spoken language, effectively distancing it from the more Russified Bulgarian language, representing a successful puristic attempt to abolish a lexicogenic tradition once common in written literature.

Writing system

Alphabet

Main articles: Macedonian alphabet and Macedonian braille

The official Macedonian alphabet was codified on 5 May 1945 by the Presidium of the Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (abbreviated as ASNOM in Macedonian) headed by Blaže Koneski. There are several letters that are specific for the Macedonian Cyrillic script, namely ѓ, ќ, ѕ, џ, љ and њ, with the last three letters being borrowed from the Serbo-Croatian phonetic alphabet adapted by Serbian linguist Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, while the grapheme ѕ has an equivalent in the Church Slavonic alphabet. Letters љ and њ were previously used by Macedonian writer Krste Petkov Misirkov written as л' and н'. The Macedonian alphabet also uses the apostrophe sign (') as a sound. It is used to describe the syllable forming /р˳/ , at the beginning of the word ('рж - rye, 'рбет - spine) and to show the phoneme ə. А diacritical sign (`) is used only over three vowels in orthography: ѝ - her, different from и - and, нè - us, different from не - no and сè - everything different from сe - reflexive form of reflexive verbs . The standard Macedonian alphabet contains 31 letters. The following table provides the upper and lower case forms of the Macedonian alphabet, along with the IPA value for each letter:

Cyrillic IPA	А а /a/	Б б /b/	В в /v/	Г г /ɡ/	Д д /d/	Ѓ ѓ /ɟ/	Е е /ɛ/	Ж ж /ʒ/	З з /z/	Ѕ ѕ /d͡z/	И и /i/
Cyrillic IPA	Ј ј /j/	К к /k/	Л л /ɫ, l/	Љ љ /l/	М м /m/	Н н /n/	Њ њ /ɲ/	О о /ɔ/	П п /p/	Р р /r/	С с /s/
Cyrillic IPA	Т т /t/	Ќ ќ /c/	У у /u/	Ф ф /f/	Х х /x/	Ц ц /t͡s/	Ч ч /t͡ʃ/	Џ џ /d͡ʒ/	Ш ш /ʃ/

Orthography

Similar to the Macedonian alphabet, the Macedonian orthography was officially codified on 7 June 1945 at an ASNOM meeting. Rules about the orthography and orthoepy (correct pronunciation of words) were first collected and outlined in the book Правопис на македонскиот литературен јазик (Orthography of the Macedonian standard language) published in 1945. Updated versions have subsequently appeared with the most recent one published in 2016. Macedonian orthography is consistent and phonemic in practice, an approximation of the principle of one grapheme per phoneme. This one-to-one correspondence is often simply described by the principle, "write as you speak and read as it is written". There is only one exception to this rule with the letter /л/ which is pronounced as /l/ before front vowels (e.g. лист (leaf); pronounced as [list]) and /j/ (e.g. полјанка (meadow) pronounced as poljana) but velar /ł/ elswhere (e.g. бела (white) pronounced as [beła]), specifically with the letter schwa discussed above and the pronunciation of the letter "l". An example of Macedonian orthography is shown with the lyrics of The Lord's Prayer below.

Оче наш (Cyrillic alphabet)

Оче наш, кој си на небесата,

да се свети името Твое,

да дојде царството Твое,

да биде волјата Твоја,

како на небото, така и на земјата;

лебот наш насушен дај ни го денес

и прости ни ги долговите наши

како и ние што им ги проштеваме на нашите должници;

и не нѐ воведувај во искушение,

но избави нѐ од лукавиот.

Oče naš (Latinic version)

Oče naš, koj si na nebesata

da se sveti imeto Tvoe,

da dojde carstvoto Tvoe,

da bide voljata Tvoja,

kako na neboto, taka i na zemjata;

lebot naš nasušen daj ni go denes

i prosti ni gi dolgovite naši

kako i nie što im gi proštevame na našite dolžnici

I ne nè voveduvaj vo iskušenie,

no izbavi nè od lukaviot.

Political views on the language

Main articles: Political views on the Macedonian language and Macedonian language naming dispute

Politicians and scholars from North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Greece have opposing views about the existence and distinctiveness of the Macedonian language. Through history and especially before its codification, Macedonian has been referred to as a variant of Bulgarian, Serbian or a distinct language of its own. Part of the argument also includes that the Western and central in opposition to Eastern dialects were selected as the dialectal basis to distance the language significantly from Bulgarian. Bulgarian scholars have and continue to widely consider Macedonian part of the Bulgarian dialect area. Numerous historians also question the historical development and periods of the language.

In many Bulgarian and international sources before the World War II, the southern Slavonic dialect continuum covering the area of today's North Macedonia and Northern Greece was referred to as a group of Bulgarian dialects. Some scholars argue that the idea of linguistic separatism emerged in the late 19th century with the advent of Macedonian nationalism and the need for a separate Macedonian standard language subsequently appeared in the early 20th century. Local variants used to name the language were also balgàrtzki, bùgarski or bugàrski; i.e. Bulgarian. Although Bulgaria was the first country to recognize the independence of the Republic of Macedonia, most of its academics, as well as the general public, regard the language spoken there as a form of Bulgarian.^[2] After years of diplomatic impasse caused by an academic dispute, in 1999 the government in Sofia signed a Joint Declaration in the official languages of the two countries. As of 2019, disputes regarding the language and its origins are ongoing in academic and political circles in the countries. Macedonian is still widely regarded as a dialect by Bulgarian scholars, historians and politicians alike including the Government of Bulgaria and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, which denies the existence of a separate Macedonian language and declares it a written regional form of the Bulgarian language. The current academic consensus outside of Bulgaria is that Macedonian is an autonomous language within the South Slavic dialect continuum. As such, it is recognized as the official language of North Macedonia by 138 countries of the United Nations.

The Greek scientific and local community was opposed to using the denomination Macedonian to refer to the language in light of the Greek-Macedonian naming dispute. The term is often avoided in the Greek context, and vehemently rejected by most Greeks, for whom Macedonian has very different connotations. Instead, the language is often called simply "Slavic" or "Slavomacedonian" (translated to "Macedonian Slavic" in English). Speakers themselves variously refer to their language as makedonski, makedoniski ("Macedonian"), slaviká (Greek: σλαβικά, "Slavic"), dópia or entópia (Greek: εντόπια, "local/indigenous [language]"), balgàrtzki or "Macedonian" in some parts of the region of Kastoria, bògartski ("Bulgarian") in some parts of Dolna Prespa along with naši ("our own") and stariski ("old"). With the Prespa agreement signed in 2018 between the Government of North Macedonia and the Government of Greece, the latter country accepted the use of Macedonian to refer to the language using a footnote to describe it as Slavic.

See also

• Romanisation of Macedonian
• Abstand and ausbau languages

Bibliography

• Bojkovska, Stojka; Minova-Gjurkova, Liljana; Pandev, Dimitar; Cvetanovski, Živko (2008), Општа граматика на македонскиот јазик [Grammar of the Macedonian language], Skopje: Prosvetno Delo, ISBN 9789989006623
• Comrie, Bernard; Corbett, Greville (2002), "The Macedonian language", The Slavonic Languages, New York: Routledge Publications
• Dostál, Antonín (1965), "The Origins of the Slavonic Liturgy", Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 19, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University: 67–87, doi:10.2307/1291226, JSTOR 1291226
• Hill, P. (1999), "Macedonians in Greece and Albania: A comparative study of recent developments", Nationalities Papers, 27 (1): 17, doi:10.1080/009059999109163
• Friedman, Victor (1998), "The implementation of standard Macedonian: problems and results", International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 131: 31–57, doi:10.1515/ijsl.1998.131.31
• Friedman, Victor (2001), Macedonian, Slavic and Eurasian Language Resource Center (SEELRC), Duke University
• Friedman, Victor (2001), Garry, Jane; Rubino, Carl (eds.), Macedonian: Facts about the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the Worlds Major Languages, Past and Present (PDF), New York: Holt, pp. 435–439
• Levinson, David; O'Leary, Timothy (1992), Encyclopedia of World Cultures, G.K. Hall, p. 239, ISBN 0-8161-1808-6
• Lunt, Horace G. (1952), Grammar of the Macedonian Literary Language, Skopje{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Mahon, Milena (1998), "The Macedonian question in Bulgaria", Nations and Nationalism, 4 (3): 389–407, doi:10.1111/j.1354-5078.1998.00389.x
• Poulton, Hugh (2000), Who Are the Macedonians?, United Kingdom: C. Hurst & Co. Ltd., ISBN 0-253-34598-7
• Seriot, Patrick (1997), "Faut-il que les langues aient un nom? Le cas du macédonien" [Do languages have to have a name? The case of Macedonian], in Tabouret-Keller, Andrée (ed.), Le nom des langues. L'enjeu de la nomination des langues (in French), vol. 1, Louvain: Peeters, pp. 167–190, archived from the original on 5 September 2001
• Topolinjska, Z. (1998), "In place of a foreword: facts about the Republic of Macedonia and the Macedonian language", International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 131: 1–11, doi:10.1515/ijsl.1998.131.1
• Trudgill, Peter (1992), "Ausbau sociolinguistics and the perception of language status in contemporary Europe", International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2 (2): 167–177, doi:10.1111/j.1473-4192.1992.tb00031.x
• Usikova, Rina Pavlovna (1994), О языковой ситуации в Республике Македонии [About the language situation in the Republic of Macedonia] (in Russian), Moscow: Nauka, pp. 221–231, ISBN 5-02-011187-2

External links

• Институт за македонски јазик, „Крсте Петков Мисирков“ – Institute for Macedonian language "Krste Misirkov", the main regulatory body for the Macedonian language (in Macedonian)
• Дигитален речник на македонскиот јазик – Online dictionary of the Macedonian language
• Kramer, Christina (2003), Macedonian: A Course for Beginning and Intermediate Students. (2nd ed.), University of Wisconsin Press, ISBN 978-0-299-18804-7