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. The status of Macedonian in the countries where it is spoken is as follows:
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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. |
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Vowels Consonants
Stress Click here to hear some basic phrases in Macedonian. |
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Macedonian grammar is quite similar to that of Bulgarian. Nouns
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Numerals Verbs
Word order Click here for a detailed description of Macedonian grammar. |
Vocabulary Below are some common phrases in Macedonian. Here are the number 1-10 in Macedonian in Cyrillic and Latin scripts. |
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. |
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Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Macedonian. |
Click here to find out where Macedibuab is taught in the United States. Resources for the study of Macedonian language and culture |
How difficult is it to learn Macedonian? Macedonian is considered to be a Category II language in terms of difficulty for speakers of English. |