Macedonian

Introduction

Macednonia Map Macedonian belongs to the east sub-group of the South Slavic group of the Slavic branch of Indo-European languages. It is so closely related to Bulgarian that some scholars consider it to be a dialect of Bulgarian -- a position that is debated by others.

Sunset Macedonian is spoken by 1.3 million people in the Republic of Macedonia. It is also spoken in the neighboring countries of Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, and Slovenia. According to Ethnologue, the total number of speakers of Macedonian worldwide is about 1.6 million.

The status of Macedonian in the countries where it is spoken is as follows:

Macedonia
Standard Macedonian is used in all areas of public and private life, along with Serbian. While Macedonian is used as a medium of instruction in elementary and secondary schools, there is lack of textbooks at the university level, resulting in the use of Serbian textbooks.
Bulgaria
In Bulgaria, Macedonian is viewed as a dialect of Bulgarian. It is officially forbidden to use Macedonian in publications.
Greece
Macedonian is considered to be a dialect of Greek, rather than a Slavic language. It is banned from all areas of public life, including all forms media and education.
Albania
Macedonian is not recognized.

Dialects

Macedonian is divided into West and East dialect areas, each of which, in turn, has a Northern division. The Western dialect area includes of a large central area, and a peripheral area along the Albanian and Serbian borders. The Eastern area includes the Macedonian dialects of Bulgaria and Greece. Standard Macedonian is based on the West Central varieties with some features of the Northern variety spoken in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia.

Structure

Sound System

Children

Children laughing

Women talking

Vowels
Macedonian has five vowels: /i/, /e/, /a/, /u/, /o/. Unstressed vowels are not reduced.

Consonants
Below is a table of Macedonian consonant phonemes, i.e., sounds that make a difference in word meaning.

.	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar	Alveo-palatal	Palatal	Velar
Stops	p-b	.	t-d	..	.	ќ - ѓ	k-g
Fricatives	.	f-v	s-z	.	š-ž	.	x
Affricates	.	.	ts-dz	.	tš-dž	.	.
Nasals	m	.	n	.	.	ń	.
Lateral	.	ł	.	l	.	.	.
Trill	.	.	.	r	.	.	.
Semi-vowel	.	.	.	.	.	j	.

Stress
Stress is normally fixed on the antepenultimate (third to the last) syllable of the word.

Click here to hear some basic phrases in Macedonian.

Grammar

School child

boys barrying wood

Macedonian grammar is quite similar to that of Bulgarian.

Nouns

Gender
Nouns have three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter). Gender has different endings only in the singular, there is only one endings for nouns of all genders in the plural.
Number
There are two numbers: singular and plural. Plural endings depend on the form of the noun.
Definiteness
Macedonian is the only Slavic language that makes three distinctions in definiteness: unmarked, proximate, and distal. These are marked by suffixes attached to the first noun, adjective, or pronoun in the noun phrase. Below is an example of the unmarked definite article attached as a suffix to the noun.
Case
Like Bulgarian, Macedonian last lost its cases. There are a few vestiges of the vocative case, and a distinction is made between animate and inanimate nouns in the accusative case, i.e., case of the direct object.

Numerals
There are two sets of numerals in Macedonian: one set is used with non-human nouns, while the other set is used with male or mixed gender human groups, e.g., dva konja "two horses," but dvajca maži "two men."

Verbs
Macedonian verbs agree with their subjects in person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and number (singular and plural). Verbs are marked for the following categories:

Tense
There are three tenses: present, past, and future. Present, imperfect, and aorist are expressed by simple forms, all the other forms are represented with the auxiliary verbs sum " be" or ima "have".
Aspect
There are two aspects: imperfective and perfective. Perfective verbs are usually formed by prefixation.
Mood
There are four moods: indicative, imperative, conditional, and hypothetical.

Word order
The normal word order in Macedonian sentences is Subject-Verb-Object. However, other orders are possible. Word order is principally determined by topic (what the sentence is about, or old information) and focus (new information). Constituents with old information precede constituents with new information, or those that carry the most emphasis.

Click here for a detailed description of Macedonian grammar.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary
Like all Slavic languages, Macedonian has borrowed words from other languages, especially from Greek and Serbian. Most of its vocabulary comes from a common Slavic stock, and is very similar to the vocabulary of other South Slavic languages, particularly Bulgarian.

Below are some common phrases in Macedonian.

Here are the number 1-10 in Macedonian in Cyrillic and Latin scripts.

Writing

Wheel Chair sign

Macedonia writing

Spoken Macedonian started to appear in written form at the end of the 16th century. However, serious attempts to create a standard Macedonian literary language began only in the 19th century. In 1945, Standard Macedonian, based on the West-Central dialect, was established as the official language of the Republic of Macedonia. The creation of a standardized literary language led to the publication of many literary works.

The Macedonian alphabet, as all Slavic Cyrillic alphabets, is based on the Cyrillic alphabet of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius. It was adapted from Vuk Karadžic's alphabet for Serbian. There are a few differences between the Serbian and Macedonian Cyrillic alphabets. Although both the Cyrilic and the Latin alphabet are used in Macedonia, Cyrilic is the preferred orthography. Street signs are usually given in both orthographies.

Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Macedonian.

Resources

Click here to find out where Macedibuab is taught in the United States.
Click here to find teaching materials for Macedonian.

Resources for the study of Macedonian language and culture
Ethnologue entry for Macedonian
UCLA Language Profile for Macedonian
SEELRC Webliography for Macedonian
Yamada Language Center Guide for Macedonian
Omniglot Guide for writing Macedonian
Wikipedia: Macedonian Language
BBC News Country Profiles: Macedonia
Library of Congress Portals to the World: Macedonia
Macedonian Language Links
Macedonian Grammar Online