The existence and distinctiveness of the Macedonian language is disputed in Bulgaria and the name of the language was disputed by Greece. By signing the Prespa Agreement, Greece accepted the name "Macedonian language" in reference to the official language of North Macedonia. Macedonian dialects form a continuum with Bulgarian dialects as part of the Eastern South Slavic sub-group; they in turn form a broader continuum with Serbo-Croatian through the transitional Torlakian dialects. Throughout history, Macedonian has been referred to as a variant of Bulgarian. It was standardized in Yugoslavia in 1945 based on the central-western dialects of the region of Macedonia.Matthew H. Ciscel, Multilingualism and the disputed standardizations of Macedonian and Moldovan, pp. 309–328; in Matthias Hüning, Ulrike Vogl, Olivier Moliner as ed., Standard Languages and Multilingualism in European History, John Benjamins Publishing, 2012, , p. 314. Macedonian was recognized as a minority language in Bulgaria from 1946 to 1948. Though, it was subsequently described in Bulgaria again as a dialect or regional norm of Bulgarian.Ranko Bugarski, Celia Hawkesworth as editors, Language in the Former Yugoslav Lands, Slavica Publishers, 2004, , p. 201.

Although Bulgaria was the first country to recognize the independence of the Republic of Macedonia in 1991, most of its academics, as well as the general public, continue to regard the language spoken there as a form of Bulgarian. However, after years of diplomatic impasse caused by this academic dispute, in 1999, the language issue was settled between the Bulgarian and Macedonian government with a Joint Declaration which used the formulation: in Macedonian, pursuant to Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia, and in Bulgarian, pursuant the Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria. Nevertheless, the Bulgarian government and academia continue to deny Macedonian as a separate language.Wayne C. Thompson, Nordic, Central, and Southeastern Europe 2018-2019, Edition 18, Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, , p. 584. This issue was one of the main reasons for which the Bulgarian government has hindered accession of North Macedonia to the European Union.

Historical overview

Yoakim Karchovski and Kiril Peychinovich, who wrote in Macedonian dialects, called their language "Bulgarian". Bosnian folklorist Stefan Verković wrote in the preface of the 1860 collection Folk Songs of the Macedonian Bulgarians: "I named these songs Bulgarian, and not Slavic because today when you ask any Macedonian Slav: Who are you? He immediately answers: I am Bulgarian and call my language Bulgarian…" When the Bulgarian national movement got underway in the second quarter of the 19th century, some cities in Macedonia were among the first to demand education in Bulgarian and Bulgarian-speaking clerics for their churches.F. A. K. Yasamee "NATIONALITY IN THE BALKANS: THE CASE OF THE MACEDONIANS" in Balkans: A Mirror of the New World Order, Istanbul: EREN, 1995; pp. 121-132. By the 1860s, however, it was clear that the Central Balkan regions of Bulgaria were assuming leadership in linguistic and literary affairs. This was to a large extent due to the fact that the wealthy towns on both sides of the Central Balkan range were able to produce more intellectuals educated in Europe than the other Bulgarian regions, which were relatively less developed. Consequently, when the idea that the vernacular rather than Church Slavonic should be represented in the written language gained preponderance, it was the dialects of the Central Balkan region between Veliko Tarnovo and Plovdiv that were most represented.Струкова, К. П. Общественно-политическое развитие Македонии в 50-70-е гг XIX века, Российская Академия наук, Москва 2004, стр. 85-136. From 1860, during the Bulgarian Revival, there was a question on which dialects should literary Bulgarian be based. Some Bulgarian educators from Macedonia like Parteniy Zografski and Kuzman Shapkarev called for a stronger representation of Macedonian dialects in the Bulgarian language but their advice was not heeded at the time. Zografski wrote that there were two main dialects of Bulgarian, the one spoken in Bulgaria and Thrace, and the one spoken in Macedonia, and he suggested the second as the basis of literary Bulgarian. However, the dominant view was to use the eastern dialects as the basis of literary Bulgarian. Shapkarev wrote textbooks in the western dialects and criticized the supremacy of the eastern dialects, which he claimed as incomprehensible in Macedonia. In his Great Bulgarian Textbook from 1868, he expressed his intention to write in a language which his compatriots, the Macedonian Bulgarians, could understand. The Bulgarian press condemned his views, accusing him of advocating the existence of a distinct Macedonian language and a distinct history of Macedonian people. When the teacher and Uniate priest Veniamin Machukovski wanted to write a "Bulgarian grammar according to the Macedonian idiom", the Bulgarian press criticized him too. Natives of central and eastern Bulgaria often did not regard Macedonian dialects as "proper Bulgarian", perceiving the Macedonian vernacular as being corrupted by Albanian, Aromanian, Greek or Serbian influence. Zografski's language was referred to as a "mixture of Bulgarian and Serbian". Per political scientist Alexis Heraclides, Macedonian Slavs did not want to create a separate language from Bulgarian because they "did not have a clearly defined national or territorial consciousness or a sense of belonging". According to historian Tchavdar Marinov, it is not realistic to interpret the linguistic debates between authors from Bulgaria and Macedonia from the 1860s and 1870s as a conflict between two national sides. Macedonian Bulgarian writers did not regard the Macedonian vernacular as different from the Bulgarian language or wanted to codify a separate literary norm. The primary issue was the basis for the literary Bulgarian language. In 1870, philologist Marin Drinov rejected the proposal for a mixed eastern/western Bulgarian/Macedonian basis of the Bulgarian standard language. Per Marinov, the adoption of the eastern Bulgarian dialects as the basis of literary Bulgarian "was largely decisive for the development of a separate Macedonian norm".

In 1890, Austrian linguist Karl Hron, in his book The nationality of the Macedonian Slavs, expressed the opinion that the Macedonians "are a separate nation by its history as well as by its language". This view was also held by linguists Petar Draganov, Leonhard Masing, Pyοtr Lavrov and Jan Baudouin de Courtenay. In the late 19th century, the Russian Empire was trying to find a balance between Bulgarian and Serbian influence in Macedonia, and accepted the idea that the local Slavs were neither Serbs, nor Bulgarians. Among international ethnologists and linguists, there were two views from the last decades of the 19th century until the eve of World War II: Macedonian is a dialect of Bulgarian or Macedonian is an in-between language, between Bulgarian and Serbian, closer to Bulgarian. The first view prevailed until the beginning of the 20th century, among linguists, ethnographers, geographers, historians and diplomats who had served in Ottoman Macedonia. Such people include Gustav Weigand, André Mazon, Arnold Toynbee, H. N. Brailsford, and Arthur Evans. Macedonian linguistic separatism emerged in the late 19th century. In 1902, the Austrian-Hungarian consul in Bitola (Manastir) suggested the publication of primers in the Macedonian language. In the late 1920s, French linguists André Meillet and André Vaillant recognized Macedonian as a distinct language. After visiting the Macedonian region, Polish linguist Mieczysław Małecki asserted that Macedonian was a mixture of Bulgarian and Serbian, and thus a distinct language. In the 1930s, Russian and Soviet Slavic studies recognized the existence of a separate Macedonian language and ethnicity. From the 1930s, the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) and the Comintern sought to foster a separate Macedonian nationality and language as a means of achieving autonomy for Macedonia within a Balkan federation. Consequently, it was Bulgarian-educated Macedonians who were the first to work on developing a literary Macedonian language, culture and literature.Доц. д-р Петър Галчин "МАКЕДОНСКИ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕН КРЪЖОК (1938–1941 г.)" ,Македонски Преглед, София, бр. 1 & 2, 2002Юлия Митева, "Идеята за езика в Македонския литературен кръжок - естетически и идеологически аспекти" On 2 August 1944, the Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia declared Macedonian as the official language of the declared Macedonian state within Yugoslavia. When Socialist Macedonia was formed as part of Federal Yugoslavia, Bulgarian-trained cadres got into a conflict over the language with the more Serbian-leaning activists, who had been working within the Yugoslav Communist Party. Since the latter held most of the political power, they managed to impose their views on the direction the new language was to follow, much to the dismay of the former group.Palmer, S. and R. King, Yugoslav Communism and the Macedonian Question, Archon Books, 1971, p. 137.

After 1944 the communist-dominated government sought to create a Bulgarian-Yugoslav Balkan Communist Federation and part of this entailed giving "cultural autonomy" to the Pirin region. Consequently, Bulgarian communists recognized Macedonian as distinct from Bulgarian. After the Tito–Stalin split in 1948, those plans were abandoned. This date also coincided with the first claims of Bulgarian linguists as to the Serbianization of Macedonian.Friedman, V. (1998) "The implementation of standard Macedonian: problems and results" in International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Issue 131. pp. 31-57 Bulgaria continued to support the idea of a Macedonian unification and a Macedonian nation but within the framework of a Balkan Federation and not within Yugoslavia.Palmer and King, p. 126 However, a reversal in the Macedonization policy was already announced in the secret April plenum of the BCP in 1956 and openly proclaimed in the plenum of 1963. 1958 was the first time that a "serious challenge" to the Macedonian position was launched by Bulgaria.Palmer and King, p. 163. The national belonging of the Macedonian dialects was disputed between Bulgarian scholars and Yugoslav Macedonian scholars. The Macedonian language was taught in departments of Slavic studies in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and United States. Throughout history, Macedonian has been referred to as a variant of Bulgarian, Serbian or a distinct language of its own.Max K. Adler. Marxist Linguistic Theory and Communist Practice: A Sociolinguistic Study; Buske Verlag (1980), p.215 The international consensus is that Macedonian is an autonomous language within the Eastern South Slavic dialect continuum. The language is recognized by 138 member states of the United Nations.

Macedonian views