Macedonian alphabet

The Macedonian alphabet () is an adaptation of the Cyrillic script used to write the Macedonian language. It consists of 31 letters.

The alphabet was standardized in 1945 by a commission formed in Yugoslav Macedonia after the Yugoslav Partisans took power at the end of World War II in Yugoslavia. The alphabet used the same phonemic principles employed by Vuk Karadžić (1787–1864) and Krste Misirkov (1874–1926).

Before standardization, the language had been written in a variety of different versions of Cyrillic by different writers, influenced by Early Cyrillic, Russian, Bulgarian and Serbian orthography.

The alphabet The following table provides the upper and lower case forms of the Macedonian alphabet, along with the IPA value for each letter:

Letter IPAName А а A Б б Be В в Ve Г г Ge Д д De Ѓ ѓ Gje Е е E Ж ж Zhe З з Ze Ѕ ѕ Dze И и I Letter IPAName Ј ј Je К к Ka Л л , El Љ љ Lje М м Em Н н En Њ њ NjeО о OП п PeР р ErС с Es Letter IPANameТ т TeЌ ќ Kje У у UФ ф EfХ х KhaЦ ц Tse Ч ч CheЏ џ DzheШ ш Sha

In addition to the standard sounds of the letters Ѓ and Ќ above, in some dialects these letters represent and , respectively.

Cursive alphabet

The above table contains the printed form of the alphabet; the cursive script is significantly different, and is illustrated below in lower and upper case (letter order and layout below corresponds to table above).

Specialized letters Macedonian has a number of phonemes not found in neighboring languages. The committees charged with drafting the alphabet decided on the phonemic principle of Serbian Cyrillic with a one-to-one match between letters and distinctive sounds.

Unique letters

Ѓ and Ќ

In "On Macedonian Matters", Krste Misirkov used the combinations Г and К to represent the phonemes and , which are unique to Macedonian among South Slavic languages. In his magazine Vardar, Misirkov used the letters Ѓ and Ќ. Eventually, Ѓ and Ќ were adopted for the alphabet.

In 1887, Temko Popov of the Secret Macedonian Committee used the digraphs гј and кј in his article "Who is guilty?". The following year, the committee published the "Macedonian primer" (written by Kosta Grupče and Naum Evro) which used the Serbian letters Ђ and Ћ for these phonemes.

Marko Cepenkov, Gjorgjija Pulevski and Partenij Zografski used ГЬ and КЬ.

Despite their forms, Ѓ and Ќ are ordered not after Г and К, but after Д and Т respectively, based on phonetic similarity. This corresponds to the alphabet positions of Serbian Cyrillic Ђ and Ћ respectively. These letters often correspond to Macedonian Ѓ and Ќ in cognates (for example, Macedonian "шеќер" (šeḱer, sugar) is analogous to Serbo-Croatian "шећер/šećer"), but they are phonetically different.

Ѕ

The Cyrillic letter Dze (S s), representing the sound , is based on Dzělo, the eighth letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet. Although a homoglyph to the Latin letter S, the two letters are not directly related. Although Ѕ is generally transcribed as dz, it is a distinct phoneme and is not analogous to ДЗ, which is also used in Macedonian orthography for . Ѕ is sometimes described as soft-dz. Dimitar Mirčev was most likely the first writer to use this letter in print prior to the standardization of 1944.

The letter Ѕ was used by Kiril Pejčinovikj, Marko Cepenkov, and Dimitar Mirčev prior to the standardization of 1944.

Letters analogous to Serbian Cyrillic Ј

Prior to standardization, the IPA phoneme (represented by Ј in the modern alphabet) was represented variously as: Й/й (by Gjorgjija Pulevski in "Macedonian fairy"); І/і (by Misirkov in On Macedonian Matters, Marko Cepenkov, Dimitar Mirčev, in four of Gjorgjija Pulevski's works, in the "Macedonian primer" by the Secret Macedonian Committee and by members of the Loza movement); Ј/ј (by Gjorgjija Pulevski in his "Dictionary of four languages" and "Dictionary of three languages", and by Temko Popov in his article "Who is guilty?"). Krste Misirkov and Dimitrija Čupovski opposed the use of j and preferred the letter iota (i) instead. Eventually the Ј was selected to represent .

Љ and Њ

The letters Љ and Њ ( and ) are from the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet. Historically, Macedonian writers have also used: The digraphs ЛЬ and НЬ (used by Marko Cepenkov, Gjorgjija Pulevski and in the "Macedonian primer" of the Secret Macedonian Committee) The digraphs ЛЈ and НЈ (used by Temko Popov) The combinations Л and Н (used by Krste Misirkov and Dimitar Mirčev)

Џ

The letter Џ (representing the phoneme ) was adopted from the Serbian alphabet. It was used by Georgi Dimovich in 18th century, Kiril Pejčinovikj, Marko Cepenkov, and Gjorgjija Pulevski in four of his works, as well as by the Secret Macedonian Committee and Dimitar Mirčev. Misirkov used the digraph ДЖ.

Accented letters The accented letters Ѐ and Ѝ are not regarded as separate letters, nor are they accented to signify a different pronunciation (as in French, for example). Rather, they are the standard letters Е and И topped with an accent when they stand in words that have homographs, so as to differentiate between them (for example, "сѐ се фаќа" – sè se faḱa, "everything is touchable"; "и ѝ рече" – i ì reče, "and he/she told her").

History

The decline of the Ottoman Empire from the mid-19th century coincided with Slavic resistance to the use of Greek in Orthodox churches and schools. The Macedonian Slavs referred to their language as Bulgarian. There was a disagreement between Macedonian Slavs and Bulgarian Slavs for the basis of standard Bulgarian. At the end of 1879, Despot Badžović published the Alphabet Book for Serbo-Macedonian Primary Schools () written in "Serbo-Macedonian dialect".

From the Balkan Wars of 1912/1913, and until the end of the Second World War, Vardar Macedonia (modern North Macedonia) was part of Serbia (later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) and occasionally of Bulgaria, and standard Serbian and Bulgarian were imposed as the official languages. The Serbian and Bulgarian authorities considered Macedonian to be a dialect of Serbian or Bulgarian respectively."Language Policy and Language Behavior in Macedonia: Background and Current Events", Victor A Friedman, in "Language Contact – Language Conflict", edited Eran Fraenkel and Christina Kramer, Balkan Studies, Vol 1., p. 76."Language Planning in Macedonia and Kosovo", Victor A Friedman, in "Language in the Former Yugoslav Lands", edited by Ranko Bugarski and Celia Hawkesworth (2004), p. 201. Some books in Macedonian dialects were published in Bulgaria,Марковски, Венко. Огинот, Стихотворения, София 1938, 39 с. (, ), Марковски, Венко, Луня. Македонска лирика, София 1940, 160 с. (, ), Марковски, В., Илинден, София 1940, 16 с., Марковски, В., Лулкина песна, София 1939, 40 с.Друговац, Миодраг. Историја на македонската книжевност, Скопје 1990, p. 194. while some texts in Macedonian dialect were published in Yugoslavia in the 1920s and 1930s as well.Друговац, Миодраг. Историја на македонската книжевност, Скопје 1990, с. 92.Иванов, Костадин. Ролята на списание "Луч" в национално-освободителната борба на българите във Вардарска Македония, Македонски преглед, бр.2, 2008, pp. 25–51.Рацин, Кочо, Бели мугри, Загреб, 1939

Standardization The Antifascist Assembly of the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM) made the Macedonian language official on 2 August 1944. In 1944, Blaže Koneski participated in the first attempts to codify the alphabet, initiated by the Macedonian Partisans in the village Gorno Vranovci. In a meeting of ASNOM on 30 September, a provisional alphabet with 25 letters was proposed. After the capture of Skopje in November 1944, the Presidium of ASNOM met there and appointed the Commission for the Establishment of the Macedonian Language, Alphabet and Orthography to prepare a proposal about the alphabet and orthography of the Macedonian language.

First Commission

The first commission held discussions from 27 November to 4 December 1944, and was composed of Macedonian academics, intellectuals and writers. Apart from Koneski, most of the other members of the commission were not professional linguists. Milka Balvanlieva-Đorđević and Venko Markovski recommended that everyone in Vardar Macedonia should be permitted to write "the way he wants". Gjorgji Kiselinov told the other participants to speed up the work "because we don't have time to wait until one of our dialects develops into a literary language." Milka Balvanlieva and Blaže Koneski suggested the adoption of Serbian Cyrillic. Per Victor Friedman, Koneski did so for linguistic and pedagogical reasons. However, most participants advocated for the creation of a distinct Macedonian alphabet. Koneski argued that most Macedonians were educated with Serbian Cyrillic and insisted that any other choice would make them illiterate. He suggested the Serbian palatal equivalents (ћ and ђ), but the other participants regarded them as "too Serbian." The letter ъ divided Markovski and Koneski, as the former supported it and the latter opposed it. While some Macedonian dialects contain a clear phonemic schwa and used a Bulgarian-style Ъ,Hill, P. (2014). Formation of the Standard Language: Macedonian. In K. G. S. K. T. B. A. P. K. (Ed.), Die slavischen Sprachen/The Slavic Languages: An International Handbook of their Structure, their History and their Investigation (1st ed., Vol. 2, pp. 1470-1477). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110215472.1470 according to Friedman and Koneski (being supported by other members of the commission such as Krum Tošev), the western dialectson which the literary language is baseddo not. Koneski objected to the inclusion of the Big Yer on the basis that since there was no Big Yer in the literary language (not yet standardized), there was no need for it to be represented in the alphabet and that by excluding it from the alphabet, speakers of schwa-dialects would more rapidly adapt to the standard dialect. On the other hand, Bulgarian opponents of Koneski indicated that this phoneme is distributed among the western Macedonian dialects too and a letter Ъ should be included in the literary language.Кочев, Иван и Иван Александров. Документи по съчиняването на т.нар. македонски книжовен език, София 1993. Stoykov, Stoyko. Bulgarian dialectology, Sofia 2002, p. 177-179

In his memoirs about the commission, Markovski depicted the conflict between him and Koneski as a national one, regarding Koneski among the people with pro-Serbian views, "dubious past" who were "not specialists". Due to his project on the alphabet and grammar not addressed by the commission, mostly because of Koneski, Gjorgji Kiselinov also said that he was marginalized by Koneski as his family was pro-Bulgarian, while Koneski's was pro-Serbian. However, the transcript of the debates does not support the national dimension as Markovski familiarized the other participants with Misirkov. Koneski was only present in the first day because he did not see the realization of productive results and the lack of young people in the commission.

The committee chose the dialects of Veles, Prilep and Bitola (referred to as "central" by the participants") as the basis for the literary language (as Misirkov had in 1903), and proposed a Cyrillic alphabet. Per academic Alexis Heraclides, these dialects were chosen because they were widely used and understood by most Macedonians and distant from both Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian. The first version of the alphabet was announced on 28 December 1944. The first commission's recommendations for the alphabet were the following: The Serbian Ј and Џ; The Old Church Slavonic Ѕ; The Old Church Slavonic Ъ (schwa) Markovski's versions of Љ, Њ, Ќ and Ѓ (which contained a small circle in the bottom-right of Л, Н and К, and a small circle in the top-right of Г).