Macedonian language

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

Macedonian^¤ (Македонски)
Spoken in:	Republic of Macedonia^¤, Serbia and Montenegro, Greece, Albania
Region:	The Balkans
Total speakers:	2 million
Ranking:	not in top 100
Genetic classification:	Indo-European Slavic South Eastern Macedonian^¤
Official status
Official language of:	Republic of Macedonia^¤
Regulated by:	---
Language codes
ISO 639-1	mk
ISO 639-2	mac (B), mkd (T)
SIL	mkd
See also: Language – List of languages

The Macedonian^¤ language (Македонски, Makedonski) is a language in the Eastern group of South Slavic languages. It is spoken by some 1.5 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. Presently, the Macedonian government is voting on whether Albanian should become the second official language in the Republic of Macedonia.

Macedonian is the only Slavic language apart from Bulgarian which has no noun cases, but three different definite articles, 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.

Contents

1 History

2 Bulgarian view on the Macedonian language

3 Greek view on the Macedonian language

4 Alphabet

5 Similarities to other languages

6 External links

7 Note

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 and 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.

Greek view on the Macedonian language

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 the arguments are similar to the bulgarian view, mainly that macedonian was created artificially by Tito for political reasons. Moderate greeks would refer to the langage as slavo-macedonian. 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 is based on the Cyrillic alphabet of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius.

Macedonian alphabet
Upper case	Lower case	IPA
А	а
Б	б
В	в
Γ	г
Д	д
Ѓ	ѓ
Е	е
Ж	ж
З	з
Ѕ	ѕ
И	и
Ј	ј
К	к
Л	л
Љ	љ
М	м
Н	н
Њ	њ
О	о
П	п
Р	р
С	с
Т	т
Ќ	ќ
У	у
Ф	ф
Х	х
Ц	ц
Ч	ч
Џ	џ
Ш	ш

Similarities to other languages

The Macedonian, Bulgarian, and Serbian languages are related, but they are significantly different. 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 is similar to those between Afrikaans and Dutch language. However, such statistical analysis should be not be lightly taken as if we take a look at the actual alphabets of the Macedonian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian and Mongolian people we will see great similarities to the Old Slavonic Church Alphabet ( http://www.krysstal.com/writing_cyrillic.html) 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 (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=MKJ)
BBC Education - Languages: Macedonian, Makedonski (http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/european_languages/countries/macedonia.shtml)
Macedonian - English Dictionary (http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Macedonian-english/)
Reading and Pronouncing Macedonian: An Interactive Tutorial (http://www.unc.edu/~bbiljana/MKDtutorial.html)