Travel Guide

The Macedonian language belongs to the Slavic group of languages. It is closely related to Serbian and Bulgarian, but it is not a dialect of neither one of them, but a language on its own.

The first Slavic language used for literary purposes was Old Church Slavonic, written in the Cyrillic alphabet devised by the Macedonian missionaries Cyril and Methodius in the 9th century. As individual alphabets were later developed for the various Slavic languages, the choice was made entirely by religion. Orthodox Macedonians adopted the Cyrillic alphabet, which you can see in the text above.

It was in 1950 that the then professor of London University, Reginald de Bray stated unequivocally in his book “Guide to the Slavonic Languages”, that – “By an irony of history the people who ancestors gave to the Slavs their first literary language, were the last to have their modern language recognized as a separate Slavonic language, distinct from the neighboring Serbian and Bulgarian.” Mr. de Bray also put forward in his chapter on “Old Slavonic” that – “The first writings in Old Slavonic are now generally considered by philosophers to have been in the language of the Slavs of Macedonia of the second half of the ninth century”.

It is universally accepted that the credit for providing a written script for Slavic languages goes to Cyril and Methodius and was further refined by Clement and Naum. Cyril, whose real name was Constantine until he became a monk, was born in Salonica, of Macedonian parentage. His father Lev was a Macedonian Slav in the Byzantine service, occupying the post of assistant to the Salonica military commander.

In 855 A.D. Cyril and his brother Methodius (who was a provincial governor) were chosen as missionaries by the Emperor Michael III at the request of the Moravian Prince Ratislav, who wished to counteract Frankish influence in Moravia. It is reported that Emperor Michael said to Cyril and Methodius that – “You are Salonicans, and all Salonicans speak pure Slavic”. The brothers worked together to compose a Slavonic alphabet, which has become known as the “Glagolic” alphabet. This used Greek lettering, combined with the phonetic sounds of the Slavonic language of the peasants of Southern Macedonia.

The monks Clement and Naum (who were disciples of Cyril and Methodius) further simplified the Glagolic script and refined it into the “Cyrillic” alphabet that we use today. They used the alphabet to translate Christian scripture into the local dialect of the Slavs of Southern Macedonia. The Macedonian archbishopric of Ohrid became the ecclesiastic centre from which the Cyrillic script and the eastern Orthodox faith were spread throughout Serbia, Bulgaria, and Kievan Russia. The net effect of this is that the Macedonian people influenced the language and the culture of their neighbors and not vice-versa as they would have you believe.

One of the earliest records of Macedonian is to be found in the “Lexicon-tetraglosson” of Hadzi Daniil, first published in 1764 at Voskopje (Moschopolis) in Albania. Hadzi Daniil was a Vlack (Aromun) scholar whose object in this work was to teach Greek to, and attempt to Hellenize the non-Greek inhabitants of the southern Balkans. His Lexicons in four languages contains passages in Greek translated into Albanian, Vlach, and what he calls “Bulgarian”. But as Mazon and Vaillant pointed out their book “L’ Evangeliaire de Kulakia”, p.8 the language recorded is in fact actually a fairly exact picture of the language spoken in the region of “Bitolj” (Monastery – in Macedonian Bitola) in the middle of the eighteenth century.

Bulgarian nationalists have persistently claimed that Macedonian is nothing but a Bulgarian dialect. In the past, Serbian nationalists have also claimed the Macedonian dialect as one of their own. However, in 1890 a German scientist Karl Hron writing in his book “The Nationalist of the Macedonian Slavs”, discounted Bulgarian and Serbian claims to the language by explaining the relationship of the Macedonian language in relation to the neighboring languages and concludes that it was a distinct language. That very same year the French Slavist Louis Leger in the great French encyclopedia, speaking of Macedonia, characterized Macedonian as a separate south-Slav tongue. Croatian scholar Vatroslav Jagic (one of the most famous Slavists of his time) – recommended on several occasions that we consider the Macedonian language as a separate south-Slav tongue since even medieval manuscripts showed the same tendencies. Many important Slavists have come to the same conclusions, especially, in the period between the two world wars were such Slavists as Antoin Meyer, Andre Vajan and Mjeveslav Malecki all found that Macedonian was distinct and separate language differing from both Bulgarian and Serbian.

In 1950 professor de Bray established that there were six different Macedonian dialects which he divided according to their accent and certain other linguistic features into:

1. The Western dialects. – These are further subdivided into:
(a) the central group of the Veles, Prilep, Kicevo, and Bitola regions.
(b) the dialect of the Debar-Galicnik region.

2. The south-western dialect, of the Kostur (in Greek: Kastoria) – Lerin (Greek: Florina) region, spoken mainly in Northern Greece. The dialects of Tikves and Mariovo are also closely related.

3. The south-eastern dialect, spoken in the region of Gevgelija, Strumica and Lake Dorjan.

4. The dialect of the Kukush and Voden (in Greek: Kilkis and Edessa) regions in Northern Greece.

5. The Eastern Dialect of the Stip and Pirin (Bulgaria) region. The dialect of Malesevo and Gorna Dzumaja (Blagoevgrad, Bulgarian) are closely related.

6. The Eastern dialect of the Kumanovo-Kratovo region.

In scattered areas of Southern Macedonia we have traces the most solid area is in the region Kostur (Kastoria). There are six villages north-east of Salonica and four villages near Ser (Seres) with this pronunciation.

We now live in a day and age where the Macedonian language is a fact that cannot be ignored, even by those who formerly, for political reasons, attempted to prevent it from flourishing. There can be no doubting the individuality of the Macedonian language and time is on our side to witness its re-emergence on the world stage in all its glory.

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