MACEDONIAN LANGUAGE

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SOME FACTS

The Macedonian¤ language 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 Korce 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.

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 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".