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The Macedonian alphabet (Macedonian: Македонска азбука, Makedonska azbuka) is an adaptation of the Cyrillic alphabet used to write the modern Macedonian language.

The Macedonian alphabet was standardized in 1944 by a committee formed in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia (then part of the federation of Yugoslavia) after the liberation from the Nazis in World War II. The alphabet was similar to, and influenced by, the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, and used the same phonemic principles employed by Vuk Karadžić and Krste Petkov Misirkov. It was officially adopted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia on May 16, 1945.

Before standardization, the language had been written in a variety of different versions of Cyrillic by different writers, influenced by Bulgarian, Early Cyrillic or 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:

In addition to the standard sounds of the letters Ѓ and Ќ above, in some accents these letters represent /dʑ/ and /tɕ/, respectively.

Cursive Alphabet

The above table contains the printed form of the Macedonian 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

The Macedonian language contains a number of specialized and unique phonemes. The committees charged with drafting the Macedonian alphabet decided on a phonetic alphabet, with one letter representing each phoneme. In his 1903 book "On Macedonian Matters", Krste Misirkov argued for the standarization of the Macedonian language (based on the central dialects), and for a phonetic orthography. Misirkov's book is considered one of the most important foundational works of the modern Macedonian language and nation.

Macedonian has two unique phonemes (Ѓ and Ќ).

Unique Letters

Ѓ and Ќ

Main articles: Ѓ and Ќ

In "On Macedonian Matters", Misirkov used the combinations Г' and К' to represent the phonemes /ɟ/ and /c/, which are unique to Macedonian among the local languages. Marko Cepenkov used ГЬ and КЬ. Eventually, Ѓ and Ќ were adopted for the Macedonian alphabet.

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/Croatian Ђ/Đ and Ћ/Ć respectively. These letters often correspond to Macedonian Ѓ and Ќ in cognates (for example, Macedonian "шеќер" (šeḱer, sugar) is analogous to Serbian/Croatian "шећер/šećer"), but they are phonetically different.

Ѕ

Main article: Ѕ

The Cyrillic letter Ѕ (IPA value /dz/) is based on Dzělo, the eighth letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet. Although a homoglyph to the Latin alphabet letter S, the two letters are not directly related. Both the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet and the Russian alphabet also had a letter Ѕ, although the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet in the 1860s, and the letter Ѕ was abolished in Russian in the early 1700s.

It should be noted that while Ѕ is generally transcribed as dz, it is a distinct phoneme and is not analogous to ДЗ, which is also used in Macedonian orthography. Ѕ is sometimes described as soft-dz.

Letters Adopted from Serbian Cyrillic

Ј

Main article: Je (Cyrillic)

Prior to standardization, the IPA phoneme /j/ (represented by Ј in the modern Macedonian alphabet) was represented variously as:

• Й/й (as in Bulgarian and Russian orthographies);
• І/і (used by Misirkov in On Macedonian Matters and Marko Cepenkov); or
• Ј/ј (as in Serbian orthography)

Eventually the Ј was selected to represent /j/.

Љ and Њ

Main articles: Љ and Њ

The letters Љ and Њ (/ʎ/ and /ɲ/) were adopted from the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet. Misirkov used Л' and Н' in On Macedonian Matters. Some earlier texts used ЛЬ and НЬ.

Џ

Main article: Џ

The letter Џ (representing the phoneme /dʒ/) was adopted from the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet. Misirkov used the digraph ДЖ, where Џ is used today. The letter Џ was introduced to Serbian in the 17th century from the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet.¹

Accented Letters

The accented letters È, Ѝ and Ô are not regarded as separate letters, nor are they accented letters (as in French, for example). Rather, they are the standard letters Е, И and О topped with an accent when they stand in words that have homographs, so as to differentiate between them (for example, "сè се фаќа" - se se fakja, "all may be touched").

Development of the Macedonian alphabet

Until the modern era, Macedonian was predominantly a spoken language, with no standardized written form of the vernacular dialects. Formal written communication was usually in the Church Slavonic language² (in Pirin and Vardar Macedonia) or in Greek (in Greek Macedonia)³, which were the languages of liturgy, and were therefore considered the 'formal languages'.⁴

The decline of the Ottoman Empire from the mid-19th century coincided with Slavic resistance to the use of Greek in Orthodox churches and schools⁵, and a resistance amongst many Macedonians to the introduction of standard Bulgarian in Vardar Macedonia⁶. The latter half of the 19th century saw increasing literacy and political activity amongst speakers of Macedonian dialects, and an increasing number of documents were written in the dialects. At the time, transcriptions of Macedonian used the Cyrillic alphabet, with adaptations drawing from Old Church Slavonic, Serbian and Bulgarian, depending on the preference of the writer.

Early attempts to formalize written Macedonian included Krste Misirkov's book "On Macedonian Matters" (1903). Misirkov used the Cyrillic alphabet with several adaptations for Macedonian:

• i (where Ј is used today);
• л' (where Љ is used today);
• н' (where Њ is used today);
• г' (where Ѓ is used today);
• к' (where Ќ is used today); and
• ѕ (as used today).

Another example is from Marko Cepenkov in his book "An anthology of folklore, science and literature" (1892). As with Misirkov, Cepenkov used a version of the Cyrillic alphabet with his own adaptations for Macedonian. He did not use ѣ, using е instead, and did not use the ъ in the final position of masculine nouns. Other adaptations included:

• і (where Ј is used today)
• шт ;
• ль (where Љ is used today);
• нь (where Њ is used today);
• гь (where Ѓ is used today);
• кь (where Ќ is used today);
• дж (where Џ is used today); and
• ѫ (for the shwa).

Between the expulsion of the Ottoman Empire from Vardar Macedonia in the Balkan Wars of 1912/13, and the liberation of Vardar Macedonia from the Nazis in 1944, Vardar Macedonia was divided between Serbia (within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) and Bulgaria, and Serbian and Bulgarian were the official languages. The Serbian and Bulgarian authorities considered Macedonian to be a dialect of Serbian or Bulgarian respectively, and proscribed its use⁷⁸⁹¹⁰ (see also History of the Macedonian language). Greek was used in areas under Greek control.

Standardization of the Macedonian Alphabet

With the liberation of Vardar Macedonia from the Nazis in 1944 and the incorporation of the territory into the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, the Yugoslav authorities recognized a distinct Macedonian ethnic identity and language. The Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM, effectively the Macedonian provisional government) formed a committee to standardize the literary Macedonian language and alphabet.

ASNOM rejected the first committee's recommendations, and formed a second committee, whose recommendations were accepted. The (second) committees' recommendations were strongly influenced by the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet (28 of the Macedonian alphabet's 31 letters are common to both Macedonian and Serbian, the letters unique to Macedonian being Ѓ, Ѕ, and Ќ), and by the works of Krste Misirkov.

Committee Controversy

See also: Political views on the Macedonian language

The extent (if any) to which Yugoslav politics overshadowed linguistics in the decisions behind the standardization of the Macedonian language and alphabet will never be fully known.

It is widely assumed by many commentators that there was some political pressure exerted by Yugoslav authorities to ensure that the Macedonian literary language and alphabet were sufficiently dissimilar to Bulgarian to deflect Bulgarian nationalist claims to the Macedonian language and ethnicity.

There were also pragmatic pressures to adopt an alphabet similar to the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, which was already an official alphabet of Yugoslavia.

The First Committee

The first committee meeting, November 1944. From left to right: Vasil Iljoski, Hristo Zografov, Krum Tošev, Dare Džambaz, Venko Markovski, Mirko Pavlovski, Mihail Petruševski, Risto Prodanov, Georgi Kiselinov, Georgi Šoptrajanov, Jovan Kostovski.

The first committee met from November 27, 1944 to December 4, 1944, and was composed of prominent Macedonian academics and writers (see list below). The committee chose the dialects of Veles, Prilep and Bitola as the basis for the literary language (as Misirkov had in 1903), and proposed a Cyrillic alphabet. The first committee's recommendation was for the alphabet to use

• the Serbian Ј and Џ;
• the Old Church Slavonic Ѕ;
• the Old Church Slavonic Ъ (schwa); and
• Venko 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)¹¹.

ASNOM rejected the first committee's recommendations, and convened a second committee. Although no official reason was provided, several reasons are supposed for the rejection of the first committee's recommendation, including internal disagreement over the inclusion of Ъ (the schwa, as used in Bulgarian), and the view that its inclusion made the alphabet "too close" to the Bulgarian alphabet. The true reasons for the rejection of the committee's recommendations may never be known.

While some Macedonian dialects contain a phonemic schwa and used a Bulgarian-style Ъ, the western dialects – on which the literary language is based – do not. Blaže Koneski objected to the inclusion of the schwa on the basis that since there was no schwa in the literary language, there was no need for it to be represented in the alphabet. By excluding it from the alphabet, speakers of schwa-dialects would more rapidly adapt to the standard dialect¹².

The Second Committee and Adoption

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.

With the rejection of the first committee's draft alphabet, ASNOM convened a new committee with five members from the first committee and five new members. On May 3, 1945, the second committee presented its recommendations, which were accepted by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia that same day, and published in Nova Makedonija, the official newspaper.

The committee's recommendations were:

• acceptance of Serbian Ј and Џ;
• acceptance of Old Church Slavonic Ѕ;
• adoption of Serbian Љ and Њ, which were similar in appearance to Markovski's proposed letters;
• creation and adoption of Ќ and Ѓ (over Markovski's proposed letter forms); and
• rejection of Old Church Slavonic and Bulgarian Ъ (schwa), on the basis that the literary Macedonian language did not have a schwa.

The rejection of the schwa (Ъ), together with the adoption of four Serbian Cyrillic letters (Ј, Џ, Љ and Њ), led to accusations that the committee was "Serbianizing" Macedonian, while those in favor of including the schwa (Ъ) were accused of "Bulgarianizing" Macedonian. Irrespective, the new alphabet was officially adopted in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia on May 16, 1945, and is still used in the Republic of Macedonia and among Macedonian communities around the world.

Committee Members

See also

• Macedonian language
• Political views on the Macedonian language
• Serbian Cyrillic alphabet
• Cyrillic alphabet
• Transliteration of Macedonian
• Scientific transliteration of Slavic languages
• Anti-Fascist Assembly of the National Liberation of Macedonia

External links

• Omniglot - Macedonian Alphabet
• Hear the sounds of the Macedonian letters

References

• Стојан Киселиновски "Кодификација на македонскиот литературен јазик", Дневник, 1339, сабота, 18 март 2006. (Macedonian)

Footnotes

1. ^ Петар Ђорђић, "Историја српске ћирилице", Београд, 1970, p. 203 (Serbian)
2. ^ The Macedonian Language in the Balkan Language Environment
3. ^ The Macedonian Language in the Balkan Language Environment
4. ^ Prior to the autocephaly of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in 1872, Old Church Slavonic and Greek were the liturgical languages of Orthodox Christians in Macedonia, and therefore had higher status than the local dialects (see diglossia).
5. ^ "The first philological conference of the Macedonian alphabet and Macedonian literary language: Its precedents and consequences", Victor A. Friedman (1993), pages 162
6. ^ "The first philological conference of the Macedonian alphabet and Macedonian literary language: Its precedents and consequences", Victor A. Friedman (1993), pages 162-3
7. ^ "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., p76.
8. ^ "The Sociolinguistics of literary Macedonian", Victor A Friedman, in the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 1985, Vol. 52, p49.
9. ^ "The first philological conference for the establishment of the Macedonian alphabet and Macedonian literary language: Its precedents and consequences", Victor A Friedman, in "The Earliest Stages of Language Planning", edited by Joshua A Fishman, 1993, p163.
10. ^ "Language Planning in Macedonia and Kosovo", Victor A Friedman, in "Language in the Former Yugoslav Lands", edited by Ranko Bugarski and Celia Hawkesworth (2004), p201.
11. ^ "The first philological conference of the Macedonian alphabet and Macedonian literary language: Its precedents and consequences", Victor A. Friedman (1993), p169.
12. ^ "The first philological conference of the Macedonian alphabet and Macedonian literary language: Its precedents and consequences", Victor A. Friedman (1993), p171.
13. ^ "The first philological conference of the Macedonian alphabet and Macedonian literary language: Its precedents and consequences", Victor A. Friedman (1993), pages 166, 170.