(in English)
Macedonian, Македонски јазик, Makedonski jazik.
Spoken natively in Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria,
Greece, Serbia, Macedonian diaspora.
Region - Balkans.
Ethnicity - Macedonians
Native speakers 1.6 – 3.0
million. (1985–1998)
Language family - Indo-European,
Balto-Slavic, Slavic, South Slavic, Eastern South Slavic, Macedonian.
Writing system Cyrillic
(Macedonian alphabet).
Macedonian (македонски јазик, makedonski jazik) spoken as a first
language by approximately 2–3 million people principally in the region of
Macedonia and the Macedonian diaspora. It is the official language of the
Republic of Macedonia and an official minority language in parts of Albania,
Romania and Serbia.
Standard Macedonian was implemented as the official language of the
Socialist Republic of Macedonia in 1945 and has since developed a thriving
literary tradition. Most of the codification was formalized during the same
period.
Macedonian dialects form a continuum with Bulgarian dialects; together in
turn they form a broader continuum with Serbo-Croatian through the transitional
Torlakian dialects.
The name of the Macedonian language is a matter of political controversy in
Greece as is its distinctiveness in Bulgaria.
Classification and related languages
The Macedonian language belongs to the eastern group of the South Slavic
branch of Slavic languages in the Indo-European language family, together with
Bulgarian. The modern Macedonian language is unrelated to the Ancient
Macedonian language. Macedonian's closest relative is Bulgarian, with which it
has a high degree of mutual intelligibility. The next closest relative is
Serbo-Croatian (and its standard variants Serbian, Montenegrin, Bosnian, and
Croatian).
All South Slavic languages, including Macedonian, form a dialect continuum.
Macedonian, along with Bulgarian and the transitional southern Serbian
varieties (Torlakian) also forms a part of the Balkan Sprachbund, a group of
languages which share typological, grammatical and lexical features based on
geographical convergence, rather than genetic proximity. Its other principal
members are Romanian, Greek and Albanian, all of which belong to different
genetic branches of the Indo-European family of languages (Romanian is a
Romance language, while Greek and Albanian each comprise their own separate
branches). Macedonian and Bulgarian are sharply divergent from the remaining
South Slavic languages, Serbo-Croatian and Slovene, and indeed all other Slavic
languages, in that they don't use noun cases (except for the vocative, and
apart from some traces of once productive inflections still found scattered
throughout the languages). They are also the only Slavic languages with any
definite articles, but only Macedonian has got three: unspecified, proximate
and distal article.
Prior to the codification of the standard language (Standard Macedonian),
Macedonian dialects were described by linguists as being either dialects of
Bulgarian or Serbian. Similarly, Torlakian was also widely regarded as
Bulgarian while the Bulgarians had elsewhere been described as speaking a
dialect of Serbian. The boundaries between the South Slavic languages had yet
to be "conceptualized in modern terms", and codifiers of Serbian even
found it necessary to argue that Bulgarian was not a Serbian dialect as late as
1822.
On the other hand, many Macedonian intellectuals maintained that their
language "was neither a dialect of Serbian nor of Bulgarian, but a
language in its own right". Some other linguists, such as Antoine Meillet,
also considered Macedonian dialects as comprising an independent language group
distinct from both Bulgarian and Serbian. Some linguists still consider
Macedonian and Bulgarian to be dialects of a single language, but this view is
politically controversial.
While it is often claimed that Standard Macedonian was codified on the base
of those dialects (i.e. the Prilep-Bitola dialect) which were most unlike
Bulgarian, this interpretation stems from the works of Krste Misirkov who
suggested that Standard Macedonian should abstract on those dialects "most
distinct from the standards of the other Slavonic languages". Likewise,
this view does not take into account the fact that a Macedonian koiné language
was already in existence. The codifiers ultimately chose the same dialects, but
did so because they were "most widespread and most likely to be adopted by
speakers of other dialects".
Language contact between Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian reached its height
during Yugoslav times, so much so that the colloquial speech of the city of
Skopje has been described as a "creolized form of Serbian" (cf. also
Surzhyk in Ukraine, Trasianka in Belarus).
Geographical distribution
The population of the Republic of Macedonia was 2,022,547 in 2002, with
1,644,815 speaking Macedonian as the native language. Outside of the Republic,
there are Macedonians living in other parts of the geographical area of
Macedonia. There are ethnic Macedonian minorities in neighbouring Albania, in
Bulgaria, in Greece, and in Serbia. According to the official Albanian census
of 1989, 4,697 ethnic Macedonians reside in Albania.
A large number of Macedonians live outside the traditional Balkan
Macedonian region, with Australia, Canada and the United States having the largest
emigrant communities. According to a 1964 estimate, approximately 580,000
Macedonians live outside of the Macedonian Republic, nearly 30% of the total
population. The Macedonian language has the status of official language only in
the Republic of Macedonia, and is a recognised minority and official language
in parts of Albania (Municipality of Pustec), Romania, and Serbia
(Municipalities of Jabuka and Plandište). There are provisions for learning the
Macedonian language in Romania as Macedonians are an officially recognised
minority group. The language is taught in some universities in Australia,
Canada, Croatia, Italy, Russia, Serbia, the United States, and the United
Kingdom among other countries.
Macedonian language in Greece
The varieties spoken by the Slavophone minority in parts of northern
Greece, especially those in the Greek provinces of West and Central Macedonia,
are today usually classified as part of the Macedonian language, with those in
East Macedonia being transitional towards Bulgarian. Bulgarian linguistics
traditionally regards them all as part of the Bulgarian diasystem together with
the rest of Macedonian. However, the codification of standard Macedonian has
been in effect only in the Republic of Macedonia, and the Slavonic dialects
spoken in Greece are thus practically "roofless", with their speakers
having little access to standard or written Macedonian.
Most of the language speakers in Greece do not identify ethnically as
"Macedonians", but as ethnic Greeks (Slavophone Greeks) or dopii
(locals). Therefore, the simple term "Macedonian" as a name for the
Slavic language is often avoided in the Greek context, and vehemently rejected
by most Greeks, for whom Macedonian has very different connotations.
Instead, the language is often called simply "Slavic" or
"Slavomacedonian", with "Macedonian Slavic" often being
used in English. Speakers themselves variously refer to their language as makedonski,
makedoniski ("Macedonian"), slaviká (Greek: σλαβικά, "Slavic"), dópia or entópia
(Greek: εντόπια, "local/indigenous
[language]"), balgàrtzki, bolgàrtski or bulgàrtski in
the region of Kostur, bògartski ("Bulgarian") in Dolna
Prespa along with naši
("our own") and stariski ("old").
The exact number of speakers in Greece is difficult to ascertain, with
estimates ranging between 20,000 and 250,000. Jacques Bacid estimates in his
1983 book that "over 200,000 Macedonian speakers remained in Greece".
Other sources put the numbers of speakers at 180,000,220,000 and 250,000, while
Yugoslav sources vary, some putting the estimated number of "Macedonians
in Greek Macedonia" at 150,000–200,000 and others at 300,000. The
Encyclopædia Britannica and the Reader's Digest World Guide both put the figure
of ethnic Macedonians in Greece at 1.8% or c.200,000 people, with the native
language roughly corresponding with the figures. The UCLA also states that
there are 200,000 Macedonian speakers in Greece. A 2008 article in the Greek
newspaper Eleftherotipia put the estimate at 20,000.
The largest group of speakers are concentrated in the Florina, Kastoria,
Edessa, Giannitsa, Ptolemaida and Naousa regions. During the Greek Civil War,
the codified Macedonian language was taught in 87 schools with 10,000 students
in areas of northern Greece under the control of Communist-led forces, until
their defeat by the National Army in 1949. In recent years, there have been
attempts to have the language recognised as a minority language.
Usage
The total number of Macedonian speakers is highly disputed. Although the
precise number of speakers is unknown, figures of between 1.6 million (from
Ethnologue) and 2–2.5 million have been cited; see Topolinjska (1998) and
Friedman (1985). The general academic consensus is that there are approximately
2 million speakers of the Macedonian language, accepting that "it is
difficult to determine the total number of speakers of Macedonian due to the
official policies of the neighbouring Balkan states and the fluid nature of
emigration" Friedman (1985:?). According to the 2002 censuses and figures,
the number of speakers of Macedonian is:
Dialects
Based on a large group of features, Macedonian dialects can be divided into
Eastern and Western groups (the boundary runs approximately from Skopje and
Skopska Crna Gora along the rivers Vardar and Crna). In addition, a more
detailed classification can be based on the modern reflexes of the Proto-Slavic
reduced vowels (yers), vocalic sonorants, and the back nasal *ǫ. That classification distinguishes between the following
5 groups:
Western Dialects:
Ohrid-Prespa Group
Ohrid dialect
Struga dialect
Vevčani-Radοžda dialect
Upper Prespa dialect
Lower Prespa dialect.
Debar Group
Debar dialect
Reka dialect
Drimkol-Golo Brdo dialect
Galičnik dialect
Skopska Crna Gora dialect
Gora dialect
Polog Group
Upper Polog dialect
Lower Polog dialect
Prilep-Bitola dialect
Kičevo-Poreče dialect
Skopje-Veles dialect
Kostur-Korča Group
Korča dialect
Kostur dialect
Nestram-Kostenar dialect
Eastern Dialects:
Northern Group
Kumanovo dialect
Kratovo dialect
Kriva Palanka dialect
Ovče Pole dialect
Eastern Group
Štip - Kočani dialect
Strumica dialect
Tikveš-Mariovo dialect
Maleševo-Pirin dialect
Solun-Voden dialect
Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop dialect.
The Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop dialect and Maleševo-Pirin dialect are also
considered to be Bulgarian dialects.
Phonology
Macedonian possesses five vowels, one semivowel, three liquid consonants,
three nasal stops, three pairs of fricatives, two pairs of affricates, a
non-paired voiceless fricative, nine pairs of voiced and unvoiced consonants
and four pairs of stops.
In addition, the schwa [ə] appears in certain
literary words in which it is always stressed. In orthography it is expressed
by an apostrophe, like in к'на ['kəna] (henna). A more common usage of the
schwa, however, is found in certain dialects or loanwords.
Macedonian exhibits final obstruent devoicing and syllabic /r/
Other than recent loanwords, word stress in Macedonian is antepenultimate,
meaning it falls on the third from last syllable in words with three or more
syllables, and on the first or only syllable in other words. By comparison, in
standard Bulgarian, the stress can fall anywhere within a word.
Grammar
Macedonian grammar is markedly analytic in comparison with other Slavic
languages, having lost the common Slavic case system. The Macedonian language
shows some special and, in some cases, unique characteristics due to its
central position in the Balkans. Literary Macedonian is the only South Slavic literary
language that has three forms of the definite article, based on the degree of
proximity to the speaker, and a perfect tense formed by means of an auxiliary
verb "to have", followed by a past participle in the neuter, also
known as verbal adjective.
Nouns
Macedonian nouns (именки, imenki) belong to one of three
genders (masculine, feminine and neuter) and are inflected
for number (singular and plural), and marginally for case. The
gender opposition is not distinctively marked in the plural. The Macedonian
nominal system distinguishes two numbers (singular and plural),
three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), case
and definiteness. Definiteness is expressed by three definite
articles pertaining to the position of the object (unspecified, proximate
and distal) which are suffixed to the noun.
Verbs
Macedonian has a complex system of verbs. Generally speaking Macedonian
verbs have the following characteristics, or categories as they are called in
the Macedonistics: tense, mood, person, type, transitiveness, voice, gender and
number.
According to the categorization, all Macedonian verbs are divided into
three major groups: a-group, e-group and i-group. Furthermore,
the e-subgroup is divided into three more subgroups: a-, e- and i-subgroups.
This division is done according to the ending (or the last vowel) of the verb
in the simple present, singular, third person. Regarding the form, the verb
forms can be either simple or complex.
The Macedonian simple verb forms
are:
Present tense (сегашно време)
Imperfect (минато определено
несвршено времe, 'past definite incomplete tense')
Aorist (минато определено свршено
време, 'past definite complete tense')
Imperative (заповеден начин)
Verbal l-form (глаголска л-форма)
Verbal adjective (глаголска
придавка)
Verbal noun (глаголска именка)
Verbal adverb (глаголски прилог)
The Macedonian complex verb forms
are:
Perfect of imperfective verbs
(минато неопределено несвршено време, 'past indefinite incomplete tense')
Perfect of perfective verbs (
минато неопределено свршено време, 'past indefinite complete tense')
Past perfect tense (предминато
време)
Future tense (идно време)
Future-in-the-past (минато-идно
време)
Future perfect tense (идно
прекажано)
Potential mood (можен начин)
Have-construction
(има-конструкција)
Be-construction
(сум-конструкција)
To-construction (да-конструкција)
Prepositions
Prepositions (предлози, predlozi) are part of the closed word class
that are used to express the relationship between the words in a sentence.
Since Macedonian lost the case system, the prepositions are very important for
creation and expression of various grammatical categories. The most important
Macedonian preposition is 'na' ('of', 'on', 'to'). Regarding the form, the
prepositions can either be simple or complex. Based on the
meaning the preposition express, they can be divided into prepositions of time,
place, manner and quantity.
Vocabulary
As a result of the close relatedness with Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian,
Macedonian shares a considerable amount of its lexicon with these languages.
Other languages which have been in positions of power, such as Ottoman Turkish
and increasingly English also provide a significant proportion of the loan
words. Prestige languages, such as Old Church Slavonic, which occupies a
relationship to modern Macedonian comparable to the relationship of medieval
Latin to modern Romance languages, and Russian also provided a source for
lexical borrowings.
During the standardization process, there was deliberate care taken to try
and purify the lexicon of the language. Serbisms and Bulgarisms, which had
become common due to the influence of these languages in the region were
rejected in favor of words from native dialects and archaisms. One example was
the word for "event", настан [ˈnastan],
which was found in certain examples of folk poetry collected by the Miladinov
Brothers in the 19th century, while the Macedonian writer Krste Misirkov had
previously used the word собитие [sɔˈbitiɛ]. This
is not to say that there are no Serbisms, Bulgarisms or even Russianisms in the
language, but rather that they were discouraged on a principle of "seeking
native material first".
The language of the writers at the turn of 19th century abounded with
Russian and, more specifically, Old Church Slavonic lexical and morphological
elements which in the contemporary norm are substituted with more current
models. Thus, the now slightly archaized forms with suffixes –ние
and –тел, adjectives with the suffixes –телен and
others, are now constructed following patterns more typical of Macedonian
morphology. For example, дејствие corresponds to дејство, лицемерие
→ лицемерство, развитие → развиток, определение → определба,
движение → движење, продолжител → продолжувач, победител
→ победник, убедителен → убедлив, etc. Many of these words
are now synonymous or have taken on a slightly different nuance in meaning.
New words were coined according to internal logic and others calqued from
related languages (especially Serbo-Croatian) to replace those taken from
Russian, which include известие → извештај, количество → количина,
согласие → слога, etc. This change was aimed at bringing written
Macedonian closer to spoken language, effectively distancing it from the
Bulgarian language which has kept its numerous Russian loans, and represents a
successful puristic attempt at abolishing a lexicogenic tradition once common
in written literature.
Writing system
Alphabet
The modern Macedonian alphabet
was developed by linguists in the period after the Second World War, who based
their alphabet on the phonetic alphabet of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, though a
similar writing system was used by Krste Misirkov in the early 20th century.
The Macedonian language had previously been written using the Early Cyrillic
alphabet, or later using the Cyrillic script with local adaptations from either
the Serbian or Bulgarian alphabets.
The following table provides the
upper and lower case forms of the Macedonian alphabet, along with the IPA value
for each letter:
Orthography
Macedonian orthography is
consistent and phonemic in practice, an approximation of the principle of one
grapheme per phoneme. A principle represented by Adelung's saying, "write
as you speak and read as it is written" („пишувај како што зборуваш и
читај како што е напишано“). However, as is common to language, there are
occasional inconsistencies or exceptions.
Examples
The Lord's Prayer:
Оче наш (Cyrillic
alphabet)
Оче наш, кој си на небесата,
да се свети името Твое,
да дојде царството Твое,
да биде волјата Твоја,
како на небото, така и на
земјата;
лебот наш насушен дај ни го денес
и прости ни ги долговите наши
како и ние што им ги проштеваме
на нашите должници;
и не нè воведувај во искушение,
но избави нè од лукавиот.
Амин!
Oče naš (Latinic version)
Oče naš, koj si na nebesata
da se sveti imeto Tvoe,
da dojde carstvoto Tvoe,
da bide voljata Tvoja,
kako na neboto, taka i na
zemjata;
lebot naš nasušen daj ni go
denes
i prosti ni gi dolgovite naši
kako i nie što im gi
proštevame na našite dolžnici
I ne nè voveduvaj vo
iskušenie,
no izbavi nè od lukaviot.
Amin!
History
The region of Macedonia and the
Republic of Macedonia are located on the Balkan peninsula. The Slavs first came
to the Balkan Peninsula in the sixth and seventh centuries AD. In the ninth century,
the Byzantine Greek monks Saints Cyril and Methodius developed the first writing system for
the Slavonic languages. At this time, the Slavic dialects were so close as to
make it practical to develop the written language on the dialect of a single region.
There is dispute as to the precise region, but it is likely that they were
developed in the region around Thessalonika. The Ohrid Literary School was
established in Ohrid in 886 by Saint Clement of Ohrid on orders of Boris I of
Bulgaria. In the fourteenth century, the Ottoman Turks invaded and conquered
most of the Balkans, incorporating Macedonia into the Ottoman Empire. While the
written language, now called Old Church Slavonic, remained static as a result
of Turkish domination, the spoken dialects moved further apart. During the
increase of national consciousness in the Balkans, standards for the languages
of Slovene, Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian were created. As Turkish influence in
Macedonia waned, schools were opened up that taught the Bulgarian standard
language in areas with significant Bulgarian population. The concept of the
various Macedonian dialects as a part of the Bulgarian language can be seen
from early vernacular texts from Macedonia such as the four-language dictionary
of Daniel Mоscopolites, the works of Kiril Peichinovich and Yoakim Karchovski,
and some vernacular gospels written in the Greek alphabet. These written works
influenced by or completely written in the local Slavic vernacular appeared in
Macedonia in the 18th and beginning of the 19th century and their authors
referred to their language as Bulgarian. The earliest lexicographic evidence of
these local dialects can be found in a lexicon from the 16th century written in
the Greek alphabet.
In 1845 the Russian scholar
Viktor Grigorovich travelled in the Balkans in order to study the south Slavic
dialects of Macedonia. His work articulated for the first time a distinct pair
of two groups of Bulgarian dialects: Eastern and Western (spoken in today
Western Bulgaria and Republic of Macedonia). According to his findings, a part
of the Western Bulgarian variety, spoken in Macedonia, was characterized by
traces of Old Slavic nasal vowels. It wasn't until the works of Krste Misirkov
that parts of what had been regarded as West Bulgarian dialects were defined as
a separate 'Macedonian' language. Misirkov was born in a village near Pella in
Greek Macedonia. Although literature had been written in the Slavic dialects of
Macedonia before, arguably the most important book published in relation to the
Macedonian language was Misirkov's On Macedonian Matters, published in
1903. In that book, he argued for the creation of a standard literary
Macedonian language from the central dialects of Macedonia which would use a
phonemic orthography.
After the first two Balkan wars,
the region of Macedonia was split among Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia (Kingdom
of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Yugoslavia). Yugoslavia occupied the area that
is currently the Republic of Macedonia incorporating it into the Kingdom as
"Southern Serbia". During this time, Yugoslav Macedonia became known
as Vardar Banovina (Vardar province) and the language of public life, education
and the church was Serbo-Croatian. In the other two parts of Macedonia, the
respective national languages, Greek and Bulgarian, were made official. In
Bulgarian (Pirin) Macedonia, the local dialects continued to be described as
dialects of Bulgarian.
During the second World War, a
part of Yugoslav Macedonia was occupied by the Bulgarian army, who were allied
with the Axis. The standard Bulgarian language was reintroduced in schools and
liturgies. The Bulgarians were initially welcomed as liberators from Serbian
domination until connections were made between the imposition of the Bulgarian
language and unpopular Serbian assimilation policies; the Bulgarians were
quickly seen as conquerors by communist movement.
There were a number of groups
fighting the Bulgarian occupying force, some advocating independence and others
union with Bulgaria. The eventual outcome was that almost all of Vardar
Banovina (i.e. the areas which geographically became known as Vardar Macedonia)
was incorporated into the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as a
constituent Socialist Republic with the Macedonian language holding official
status within both the Federation and Republic. The Macedonian language was
proclaimed the official language of the Republic of Macedonia at the First
Session of the Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia, held on
August 2, 1944. The first official Macedonian grammar was developed by Krume
Kepeski. One of the most important contributors in the standardisation of the
Macedonian literary language was Blaže Koneski. The first document written in
the literary standard Macedonian language is the first issue of the Nova
Makedonija newspaper in 1944. Makedonska Iskra (Macedonian Spark)
was the first Macedonian newspaper to be published in Australia, from 1946 to
1957. A monthly with national distribution, it commenced in Perth and later
moved to Melbourne and Sydney.
Common expressions
Здраво (Zdravo) — 'Hello'
Добро утро (Dobro utro) —
'Good morning'
Добар ден (Dobar den) —
'Good afternoon'
Добровечер (Dobrovečer) —
'Good evening'
Добра ноќ (Dobra nokj) —
'Good night'
До видување (Do viduvanje)
— 'Good bye'
Кој сте Вие? (Koj ste Vie?)
[formal, see T–V distinction] — 'Who are you?'
Какo сте? (Kako ste?) —
'How are you?'
Да (Da) — 'Yes'
Не (Ne) — 'No'
Можеби (Možebi) — 'Maybe'
Што правите? (Što pravite?)
— 'What are you doing?'
Добро сум (Dobro sum) —
'I'm fine'
Сè најдобро (Sè najdobro)
— 'All the best'
Поздрав (Pozdrav) —
'Regards'
Благодарам (Blagodaram) —
'Thank you'
Молам (Molam) — 'Please'
or 'You're welcome'
Извинете (Izvinete) —
'Sorry'
Те сакам (Te sakam) — 'I
love you'
Колку е часот? (Kolku e časot)
— 'What's the time?'
Колку чини ова? (Kolku čini
ova?) — 'How much does this cost?'
Дали зборувате…? (Zboruvate
li…?) — 'Do you speak…?'
…англиски (angliski) —
'English'
…македонски (makedonski) —
'Macedonian'
…германски (germanski) —
'German'
…руски (ruski) — 'Russian'
…грчки (grčki) — 'Greek'
…турски (turski) —
'Turkish'
…бугарски (bugarski) —
'Bulgarian'
…италијански (italijanski)
— 'Italian'
…француски (francuski) —
'French'
…шпански (španski) —
'Spanish'
…кинески (kineski) — 'Chinese'
…арапски (arapski) —
'Arabic'
Ќе се видиме наскоро (Kjе se
vidime naskoro) — 'We'll see each other soon'
Ќе се видиме утре (Kjе se
vidime utre) — 'We'll see each other tomorrow'
Political views on the language
As with the issue of Macedonian
ethnicity, the politicians, linguists and common people from Macedonia and
neighbouring countries have opposing views about the existence and
distinctiveness of the Macedonian language.
In the ninth century AD, saints
Cyril and Methodius introduced Old Church Slavonic, the first Slavic language
of literacy. Written with their newly invented Glagolitic script, this language
was based largely on the dialect of Slavs spoken in Thessaloniki; this dialect
is closest to present-day Macedonian and Bulgarian.
Although described as being
dialects of Bulgarian or Serbian prior to the establishment of the standard ,
the current academic consensus (outside of Bulgaria) is that Macedonian is an
autonomous language within the South Slavic dialect continuum.
Bulgarian view
In most sources in and out of
Bulgaria before the Second World War, the southern Slavonic dialect continuum
covering the area of today's Republic of Macedonia and Northern Greece was
referred to as a group of Bulgarian dialects. The local variants of the name of
the language were also balgàrtzki, bùgarski or bugàrski;
i.e. Bulgarian. Although Bulgaria was the first country to recognize the
independence of the Republic of Macedonia, most of its academics, as well as
the general public, regard the language spoken there as a form of Bulgarian.
However, after years of diplomatic impasse caused by an academic dispute, in
1999 the government in Sofia solved the problem of the Macedonian language by
using the euphemistic formula: "the official language of the country (Republic
of Macedonia) in accordance with its constitution".
Greek view
Greeks object to the use of the
"Macedonian" name in reference to the modern Slavic language, calling
it "Slavomacedonian" (Greek: σλαβομακεδονική γλώσσα), a term coined by some members of the
Slavic-speaking community of northern Greece itself.
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