The Debar dialect ( mk, Дебарски дијалект, ''Debarski dijalekt'') is a member of the subgroup of the western and north-western dialects of the western group of
dialects
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that is ...
of
Macedonian. The dialect is mainly spoken in the city of
Debar
Debar ( mk, Дебaр ; Albanian: ''Dibër''/''Dibra'' or ''Dibra e Madhe;'' ) is a city in the western part of North Macedonia, near the border with Albania, off the road from Struga to Gostivar. It is the seat of Debar Municipality. Debar has a ...
and the surrounding areas in
North Macedonia
North Macedonia, ; sq, Maqedonia e Veriut, (Macedonia before February 2019), officially the Republic of North Macedonia,, is a country in Southeast Europe. It gained independence in 1991 as one of the successor states of Yugoslavia. It ...
. The Debar dialect is closed with the Reka dialect and the
dialect of Galicnik. In the dialect are used a lot of archaic words.
Phonological characteristics
*fixed accent
*/d͡ʒ/ deaffricated and merged with /ʒ/
*the Proto-Slavic ''*ǫ'' has denazalized to
(*rǫka → рока)
*use of ''o'' instead of the soft form (крв > корв)
*absence of the intervocalic in the plural forms of monosyllabic nouns (e.g. лебо(в)и, дождо(в)и, etc.)
Morphological characteristics
*use of ''ќа'' instead of ''ќе''
*three
definite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" a ...
s pertaining to the position of the object (see
Macedonian grammar
The grammar of Macedonian is, in many respects, similar to that of some other Balkan languages (constituent languages of the '' Balkan sprachbund''), especially Bulgarian. Macedonian exhibits a number of grammatical features that distinguish i ...
)
*use of the suffix ''-т'' for third person singular
Notes
{{Macedonian dialects
Dialects of the Macedonian language
Debar Municipality