Macedonian Language

As the official language of the Republic of Macedonia, Macedonian is written using its Cyrillic alphabet. The Macedonian literary standard is a modern European language, which according to its characteristics is different from the neighbouring and other Slavic and non-Slavic languages.1

Macedonian is an Indo-European language from the family of Slavic languages belonging to the South-Slavic group. Apart from being the official language in the Republic of Macedonia, Macedonian is spoken by the Macedonian Diaspora in many European countries, Australia, the United States, Canada and New Zealand.2

Macedonian is recognised as a minority language in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania and Serbia. It is taught in universities in a number of countries, including Australia, Canada, Croatia, Italy, Russia, Serbia, the USA and the UK.3

The Macedonian language is used in international bodies, such as the United Nations and the World Health Organisation.4

Macedonian Alphabet

Macedonian literature started to emerge during the 19th century. Each writer wrote in their own dialect and with their own spelling system. A modern standard written version of Macedonian using the Cyrillic alphabet was codified in 1945. Since then many literary works have been published in Macedonian. Literary Macedonian is based on the dialects of the West Central region (Prilep, Kičevo, Bitola, Kruševo and Lerin).5

Official government decree enacting the Macedonian alphabet in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, May 16, 1945. Note the hand-written Ѕ, Ј and Џ in the typewritten line, and the hand-written diacritics added to create Ѓ and Ќ.

The Macedonian alphabet consists of 31 letters.6 There is one symbol for each sound, that is, there are as many letters as sounds (31), making it completely phonetic.7

Cyrillic alphabet for Macedonian (македонска азбука)

Macedonian cursive alphabet (Македонска ракописна кирилица)

Romanisation of Macedonian

Macedonian Language on a keyboard

Source: B. Jankuloski, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons

References

  1. www.makedonija.info >Macedonian Language > http://www.makedonija.info/language.html ↩︎
  2. www.makedonija.info >Macedonian Language > http://www.makedonija.info/language.html ↩︎
  3. Omniglot >https://www.omniglot.com/writing/macedonian.htm ↩︎
  4. Omniglot >https://www.omniglot.com/writing/macedonian.htm ↩︎
  5. Omniglot >https://www.omniglot.com/writing/macedonian.htm ↩︎
  6. https://handwiki.org/wiki/Social:Macedonian_alphabet ↩︎
  7. https://vmacedonia.com/language/the-macedonian-language.html ↩︎