The Eastern South Slavic dialects form the eastern subgroup of the
South Slavic languages
The South Slavic languages are one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches (West Slavic la ...
. They are spoken mostly in
Bulgaria
Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...
and
North Macedonia
North Macedonia, officially the Republic of North Macedonia, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe. It shares land borders with Greece to the south, Albania to the west, Bulgaria to the east, Kosovo to the northwest and Serbia to the n ...
, and adjacent areas in the neighbouring countries. They form the so-called Balkan Slavic linguistic area, which encompasses the southeastern part of the
dialect continuum
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...
of South Slavic.
Linguistic features
Languages and dialects

Eastern South Slavic dialects share a number of characteristics that set them apart from the other branch of the
South Slavic languages
The South Slavic languages are one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches (West Slavic la ...
, the
Western South Slavic languages
The South Slavic languages are one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches (West and East) ...
. The Eastern South Slavic group consists of Bulgarian and Macedonian, and according to some authors encompasses the southeastern dialect of
Serbian, the so-called
Prizren-Timok dialect. The last is part of the broader transitional
Torlakian dialectal area. The Balkan Slavic area is also part of the
Balkan Sprachbund. The external boundaries of the Balkan Slavic/Eastern South Slavic area can be defined with the help of some linguistic structural features. The most important of them include: the loss of the
infinitive
Infinitive ( abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs that do not show a tense. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all ...
and case declension, and the use of enclitic
definite articles. In the Balkan Slavic languages,
clitic doubling
In linguistics, clitic doubling, or pronominal reduplication is a phenomenon by which clitic pronouns appear in verb phrases together with the full noun phrases that they refer to (as opposed to the cases where such pronouns and full noun phrases a ...
also occurs, which is a characteristic feature of all the languages of the Balkan Sprachbund. The grammar of Balkan Slavic looks like a hybrid of "Slavic" and "Romance" grammars with some Albanian additions. The Serbo-Croatian vocabulary in both Macedonian and Serbian-Torlakian is very similar, stemming from the border changes of 1878, 1913, and 1918, when these areas came under direct
Serbian linguistic influence.
Areal
The external and internal boundaries of the linguistic sub-group between the transitional Torlakian dialect and Serbian and between Macedonian and Bulgarian languages are not clearly defined. For example, standard Serbian, which is based on its Western (
Eastern Herzegovinian dialect
The Eastern Herzegovinian dialect (, sh-Latn-Cyrl, istočnohercegovački dijalekt, источнохерцеговачки дијалект, separator=" / ") is the most widespread subdialect of the Shtokavian supradialect or language, both by ...
), is very different from its Eastern (
Prizren-Timok dialect), especially in its position in the Balkan Sprachbund. During the 19th century, the Balkan Slavic dialects were often described as forming the ''
Bulgarian language
Bulgarian (; , ) is an Eastern South Slavic, Eastern South Slavic language spoken in Southeast Europe, primarily in Bulgaria. It is the language of the Bulgarians.
Along with the closely related Macedonian language (collectively forming the ...
''. At the time, the areas east of
Niš
Niš (; sr-Cyrl, Ниш, ; names of European cities in different languages (M–P)#N, names in other languages), less often spelled in English as Nish, is the list of cities in Serbia, third largest city in Serbia and the administrative cente ...
were considered under direct Bulgarian ethnolinguistic influence and in the middle of the 19th century, that motivated the Serb linguistic reformer
Vuk Karadžić
Vuk Stefanović Karadžić ( sr-Cyrl, Вук Стефановић Караџић, ; 6 November 1787 (26 October OS)7 February 1864) was a Serbian philologist, anthropologist and linguist. He was one of the most important reformers of the moder ...
to use the Eastern
Herzegovina
Herzegovina ( or ; sh-Latn-Cyrl, Hercegovina, separator=" / ", Херцеговина, ) is the southern and smaller of two main geographical Regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being Bosnia (reg ...
dialects for his standardisation of Serbian. Older Serbian scholars believed that the Yat border divides the Serbian and Bulgarian languages. However, modern Serbian linguists such as
Pavle Ivić
Pavle Ivić ( sr-Cyrl, Павле Ивић, ; 1 December 1924 – 19 September 1999) was a Serbian South Slavic dialectologist and phonologist.
Biography
Both his field work and his synthesizing studies were extensive and authoritative. A few ...
have accepted that the main isoglosses bundle dividing Eastern and Western South Slavic runs from the mouth of the
Timok river alongside
Osogovo mountain and
Sar Mountain. In Bulgaria this isogloss is considered the eastern most border of the broader set of transitional Torlakian dialects.
In turn, Bulgarian linguists prior to World War II classified the Torlakian dialects or, in other words, all of
Balkan Slavic as Bulgarian on the basis of their structural features, e.g., lack of case inflection, existence of a postpositive definite article and
renarrative mood, use of
clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic ( , backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...
s, preservation of final ''l'', etc.
[Tomasz Kamusella, Motoki Nomachi, Catherine Gibson as ed., The Palgrave Handbook of Slavic Languages, Identities and Borders, Springer, 2016; , p. 434.] Individual researchers, such as
Krste Misirkov, in one of his Bulgarian nationalist periods, and Benyo Tsonev have pushed the linguistic border even further west to include the
Kosovo-Resava dialects or, in other words, all Serbian dialects having analytical features. Both countries currently accept the state border prior to 1919 to also be the boundary between the two languages.
Defining the boundary between Bulgarian and Macedonian is even trickier. During much of its history, the Eastern South Slavic dialect continuum was simply referred to as "Bulgarian", and Slavic speakers in Macedonia referred to their own language as ''balgàrtzki'', ''bùgarski'' or ''bugàrski''; i.e. Bulgarian.
However, Bulgarian was standardized at the end of the 19th century on the basis of its eastern
Central Balkan dialect, while Macedonian was standardized in the middle of the 20th century using its west-central
Prilep-Bitola dialect. Although some researchers still describe the standard Macedonian and Bulgarian languages as
varieties of a
pluricentric language
A pluricentric language or polycentric language is a language with several codified standard forms, often corresponding to different countries. Many examples of such languages can be found worldwide among the most-spoken languages, including but n ...
, they have very different and remote dialectal bases.
According to Chambers and
Trudgill, the question whether Bulgarian and Macedonian are distinct languages or dialects of a single language cannot be resolved on a purely linguistic basis, but should rather take into account sociolinguistic criteria, i.e., ethnic and linguistic identity. As for the
Slavic dialects of Greece
The Slavic dialects of Greece are the Eastern South Slavic dialects of Macedonian language, Macedonian and Bulgarian language, Bulgarian spoken by Minorities in Greece, minority groups in the regions of Macedonia (Greece), Macedonia and Thrace ...
, Trudgill classifies the dialects in the east Greek Macedonia as part of the
Bulgarian language
Bulgarian (; , ) is an Eastern South Slavic, Eastern South Slavic language spoken in Southeast Europe, primarily in Bulgaria. It is the language of the Bulgarians.
Along with the closely related Macedonian language (collectively forming the ...
area and the rest as
Macedonian dialects.
[Trudgill P., 2000, "Greece and European Turkey: From Religious to Linguistic Identity". In: Stephen Barbour and Cathie Carmichael (eds.), Language and Nationalism in Europe, Oxford : Oxford University Press, p.259.] Jouko Lindstedt
Jouko Lindstedt (born 15 July 1955) is a Finnish linguist and a professor at the University of Helsinki. Lindstedt is a member of the Academy of Esperanto and was nominated as the Esperantist of the Year in 2000 (with Hans Bakker and Mauro La ...
opines that the dividing line between Macedonian and Bulgarian is defined by the linguistic identity of the speakers, i.e., the state border;
but has suggested the reflex of the back yer as a potential boundary if the application of purely linguistic criteria were possible.
According to Riki van Boeschoten, the dialects in eastern Greek Macedonia (around
Serres
Serres ( ) is a city in Macedonia, Greece, capital of the Serres regional unit and second largest city in the region of Central Macedonia, after Thessaloniki.
Serres is one of the administrative and economic centers of Northern Greece. The c ...
and
Drama
Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...
) are closest to Bulgarian, those in western Greek Macedonia (around
Florina
Florina (, ''Flórina''; known also by some alternative names) is a town and municipality in the mountainous northwestern Macedonia, Greece. Its motto is, 'Where Greece begins'.
The town of Florina is the capital of the Florina regional uni ...
and
Kastoria
Kastoria (, ''Kastoriá'' ) is a city in northern Greece in the modern regions of Greece, region of Western Macedonia. It is the capital of Kastoria (regional unit), Kastoria regional unit, in the Geographic regions of Greece, geographic region ...
) are closest to Macedonian, while those in the centre (
Edessa
Edessa (; ) was an ancient city (''polis'') in Upper Mesopotamia, in what is now Urfa or Şanlıurfa, Turkey. It was founded during the Hellenistic period by Macedonian general and self proclaimed king Seleucus I Nicator (), founder of the Sel ...
and
Salonica
Thessaloniki (; ), also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, Salonika, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece (with slightly over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area) and the capital cit ...
) are intermediate between the two.
History
Some of the phenomena that distinguish ''western and eastern subgroups'' of the South Slavic people and languages can be explained by two separate migratory waves of different Slavic tribal groups of the future
South Slavs
South Slavs are Slavic people who speak South Slavic languages and inhabit a contiguous region of Southeast Europe comprising the eastern Alps and the Balkan Peninsula. Geographically separated from the West Slavs and East Slavs by Austria, ...
via two routes: the west and east of the Carpathian Mountains.
[The Slavic Languages, Roland Sussex, Paul Cubberley, Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2006, , p. 42.] The western Balkans was settled with ''
Sclaveni
The ' (in Latin language, Latin) or ' (Sclaveni#Terminology, various forms in Greek language, Greek) were Early Slavs, early Slavic tribes that raided, invaded and settled in the Balkans in the Early Middle Ages and eventually became one of the p ...
'', the eastern with ''
Antes''. The early habitat of the Slavic tribes, that are said to have moved to Bulgaria, was described as being in present
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
and
Belarus
Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...
. The mythical homeland of the Serbs and Croats lies in the area of present day
Bohemia
Bohemia ( ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. In a narrow, geographic sense, it roughly encompasses the territories of present-day Czechia that fall within the Elbe River's drainage basin, but historic ...
, in the present-day
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...
and in
Lesser Poland
Lesser Poland, often known by its Polish name ''Małopolska'' (; ), is a historical region situated in southern and south-eastern Poland. Its capital and largest city is Kraków. Throughout centuries, Lesser Poland developed a separate cult ...
. In this way, the Balkans were settled by different groups of Slavs from different dialect areas. This is evidenced by some
isoglosses of ancient origin, dividing the western and eastern parts of the South Slavic range.
The extinct
Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic ( ) is the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic languages, South Slavic subgroup of the ...
, which survives in a relatively small body of
manuscripts
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has c ...
, most of them written in the
First Bulgarian Empire
The First Bulgarian Empire (; was a medieval state that existed in Southeastern Europe between the 7th and 11th centuries AD. It was founded in 680–681 after part of the Bulgars, led by Asparuh of Bulgaria, Asparuh, moved south to the northe ...
during the 10th century, is also classified as Eastern South Slavic. The language has an Eastern South Slavic basis with small admixture of Western Slavic features, inherited during the mission of
Saints Cyril and Methodius
Cyril (; born Constantine, 826–869) and Methodius (; born Michael, 815–885) were brothers, Byzantine Christian theologians and missionaries. For their work evangelizing the Slavs, they are known as the "Apostles to the Slavs".
They are ...
to
Great Moravia
Great Moravia (; , ''Meghálī Moravía''; ; ; , ), or simply Moravia, was the first major state that was predominantly West Slavic to emerge in the area of Central Europe, possibly including territories which are today part of the Czech Repub ...
during the 9th century.
New Church Slavonic represents a later stage of the Old Church Slavonic, and is its continuation through the liturgical tradition introduced by its precursor.
Ivo Banac
Ivo Banac (; 1 March 1947 – 30 June 2020) was a Croatian-American historian, a professor of European history at Yale University and a politician of the former Liberal Party in Croatia, known as the Great Bard of Croatian historiography. , Bana ...
maintains that during the Middle Ages, Torlakian and Eastern Herzegovinian dialects were Eastern South Slavic, but since the 12th century, the
Shtokavian dialects, including Eastern Herzegovinian, began to separate themselves from the other neighboring Eastern dialects, among them Torlakian.
The specific contact mechanism in the Balkan Sprachbund, based on the high number of second Balkan language speakers there, is among the key factors that reduced the number of Slavic morphological categories in that linguistic area. The
Primary Chronicle
The ''Primary Chronicle'', shortened from the common ''Russian Primary Chronicle'' (, commonly transcribed ''Povest' vremennykh let'' (PVL), ), is a Rus' chronicle, chronicle of Kievan Rus' from about 850 to 1110. It is believed to have been or ...
, written ca. 1100, claims that then the
Vlachs
Vlach ( ), also Wallachian and many other variants, is a term and exonym used from the Middle Ages until the Modern Era to designate speakers of Eastern Romance languages living in Southeast Europe—south of the Danube (the Balkan peninsula ...
attacked the Slavs on the Danube and settled among them. Nearly at the same time are dated the first historical records about the emerging
Albanians
The Albanians are an ethnic group native to the Balkan Peninsula who share a common Albanian ancestry, Albanian culture, culture, Albanian history, history and Albanian language, language. They are the main ethnic group of Albania and Kosovo, ...
, as living in the area to the west of the
Lake Ohrid
Lake Ohrid is a lake which straddles the mountainous border between the southwestern part of North Macedonia and eastern Albania. It is one of Europe's deepest and oldest lakes, with a unique aquatic ecosystem of worldwide importance, with more th ...
. There are references in some
Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...
documents from that period to "''Bulgaro-Albano-Vlachs''" and even to "''Serbo-Albano-Bulgaro-Vlachs''". As a consequence, case inflection, and some other characteristics of Slavic languages, were lost in Eastern South Slavic area, approximately between the 11th–16th centuries. Migratory waves were particularly strong in the 16th–19th century, bringing about large-scale linguistic and ethnic changes
on the Central and
Eastern Balkan South Slavic area. They reduced the number of Slavic-speakers and led to the additional settlement of Albanian and Vlach-speakers there.
Separation between Macedonian and Bulgarian
The
rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire
The rise of the Western notion of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire eventually caused the breakdown of the Ottoman ''millet'' system. The concept of nationhood, which was different from the preceding religious community concept of the millet sys ...
began to degrade its specific social system, and especially the so-called
Rum millet, through constant identification of the religious creed with ethnicity. The national awakening of each ethnic group was complex and most of the groups interacted with each other.
During the
Bulgarian national revival
The Bulgarian Revival (, ''Balgarsko vazrazhdane'' or simply: Възраждане, ''Vazrazhdane'', and ), sometimes called the Bulgarian National Revival, was a period of socio-economic development and national integration among Bulgarian pe ...
, which occurred in the 19th century, the Bulgarian and Macedonian Slavs under the supremacy of the Greek Orthodox clergy wanted to create
their own Church and schools which would use a common modern "Macedono-Bulgarian" literary standard, called simply ''Bulgarian''. The national elites active in this movement used mainly ethnolinguistic principles to differentiation between "Slavic-Bulgarian" and "Greek" groups. At that time, every ethnographic subgroup in the Macedonian-Bulgarian linguistic area wrote in their own local dialect and choosing a "base dialect" for the new standard was not an issue. Subsequently, during the 1850s and 1860s a long discussion was held in the Bulgarian periodicals about the need for a dialectal group (eastern, western or compromise) upon which to base the new standard and which dialect that should be. During the 1870s this issue became contentious, and sparked fierce debates. The general opposition arose between Western and Eastern dialects in the Eastern South Slavic linguistic area. The fundamental issue then was in which part of the ''Bulgarian lands'' the Bulgarian tongue was preserved in a most true manner and every dialectal community insisted on that. The Eastern dialect was proposed then as a basis by the majority of the Bulgarian elite. It was claiming that around the last medieval capital of Bulgaria
Tarnovo
Veliko Tarnovo (, ; "Great Tarnovo") is a city in north central Bulgaria and the administrative centre of Veliko Tarnovo Province. It is the historical and spiritual capital of Bulgaria.
Often referred to as the "''City of the Tsars''", Velik ...
, the Bulgarian language was preserved in its purest form. It was not a surprise, because the most significant part of the new Bulgarian intelligentsia came from the towns of the Eastern
Sub-Balkan valley in Central Bulgaria. This proposal alienated a considerable part of the then Bulgarian population and stimulated regionalist linguistic tendencies in Macedonia. In 1870
Marin Drinov
Marin Stoyanov Drinov (, ; 20 October 1838 – 13 March 1906) was a Bulgarian historian and Philology, philologist from the Bulgarian National Revival, National Revival period who lived and worked in Russia through most of his life.
He was one o ...
, who played a decisive role in the standardization of the Bulgarian language, practically rejected the proposal of
Parteniy Zografski and
Kuzman Shapkarev for a mixed eastern and western Bulgarian/Macedonian foundation of the standard Bulgarian language, stating in his article in the newspaper ''
Makedoniya'': "Such an artificial assembly of written language is something impossible, unattainable and never heard of." and instead suggested that authors themselves use dialectal features in their work, thus becoming role models and allowing the natural development of a literary language.
[Tchavdar Marinov. In Defense of the Native Tongue: The Standardization of the Macedonian Language and the Bulgarian-Macedonian Linguistic Controversies. in Entangled Histories of the Balkans – Volume One. p. 443] In turn, this position was heavily criticised by Eastern Bulgarian scholars and authors such as
Ivan Bogorov and
Ivan Vazov, the latter of whom noting that "Without the beautiful words found in the Macedonia dialects, we will be unable to make our language either richer or purer."
"Macedonian dialects" at the time generally referred to the
Western Macedonian dialects rather than to all Slavic dialects in the geographic region of
Macedonia
Macedonia (, , , ), most commonly refers to:
* North Macedonia, a country in southeastern Europe, known until 2019 as the Republic of Macedonia
* Macedonia (ancient kingdom), a kingdom in Greek antiquity
* Macedonia (Greece), a former administr ...
. For example, scholar
Yosif Kovachev from
Štip
Štip ( ) is the largest urban agglomeration in the eastern part of North Macedonia, serving as the economic, industrial, entertainment and educational focal point for the surrounding municipalities.
As of the 2021 census, the city of Štip had ...
in Eastern
Macedonia
Macedonia (, , , ), most commonly refers to:
* North Macedonia, a country in southeastern Europe, known until 2019 as the Republic of Macedonia
* Macedonia (ancient kingdom), a kingdom in Greek antiquity
* Macedonia (Greece), a former administr ...
proposed in 1875 that the "Middle Bulgarian" or "Shop dialect" of
Kyustendil
Kyustendil ( ) is a town in the far west of Bulgaria, the capital of the Kyustendil Province, a former bishopric and present Latin Catholic titular see.
The town is situated in the southern part of the Kyustendil Valley, near the borders of ...
(in southwestern Bulgaria) and
Pijanec (in eastern North Macedonia) be used as a basis for the Bulgarian literary language as a compromise and middle ground between what he himself referred to as the "Northern Bulgarian" or
Balkan
The Balkans ( , ), corresponding partially with the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throug ...
dialect and the "Southern Bulgarian" or "
Macedonian" dialect.
Moreover, Southeastern
Macedonia
Macedonia (, , , ), most commonly refers to:
* North Macedonia, a country in southeastern Europe, known until 2019 as the Republic of Macedonia
* Macedonia (ancient kingdom), a kingdom in Greek antiquity
* Macedonia (Greece), a former administr ...
east of the ridges of the
Pirin
The Pirin Mountains ( ) are a mountain range in southwestern Bulgaria, with the highest peak, Vihren, at an altitude of .
The range extends about from the north-west to the south-east and is about wide, spanning a territory of . To the north ...
and then of a line stretching from
Sandanski
Sandanski ( ; , formerly known as Sveti Vrach, , until 1947) is a town and a recreation center in southwestern Bulgaria, part of Blagoevgrad Province. Named after the Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary Yane Sandanski, it is situated in Sanda ...
to
Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki (; ), also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, Salonika, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece (with slightly over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area) and the capital cit ...
, which is located east of the Bulgarian
Yat boundary and speaks
Eastern Bulgarian dialects that are much more closely related to the Bulgarian dialects in the Rhodopes and Thrace than to the neighbouring Slavic dialects in Macedonia, largely did not participate at all in the debate as it was mostly Hellenophile at the time.
In 1878, a distinct Bulgarian state was established. The new state did not include the region of Macedonia which remained outside its borders in the frame of the
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...
. As a consequence, the idea of a common compromise standard was finally rejected by the Bulgarian codifiers during the 1880s and the eastern
Central Balkan dialect was chosen as a basis for standard Bulgarian.
Macedono-Bulgarian writers and organizations who continued to seek greater representation of Macedonian dialects in the Bulgarian standard were deemed separatists. One example is the
Young Macedonian Literary Association, which the Bulgarian government outlawed in 1892. Though standard Bulgarian was taught in the local schools in Macedonia till 1913, the fact of political separation became crucial for the development of a separate Macedonian language.
With the advent of
Macedonian nationalism, the idea of linguistic separatism emerged in the late 19th century, and the need for a separate Macedonian standard language subsequently appeared in the early 20th century. In the Interwar period, the territory of today's
North Macedonia
North Macedonia, officially the Republic of North Macedonia, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe. It shares land borders with Greece to the south, Albania to the west, Bulgaria to the east, Kosovo to the northwest and Serbia to the n ...
became part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Bulgarian was banned for use and the local vernacular fell under heavy influence from the official Serbo-Croatian language. However, the political and paramilitary organizations of the Macedonian Slavs in Europe and the Americas, the
Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization
The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO; ; ), was a secret revolutionary society founded in the Ottoman territories in Europe, that operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Founded in 1893 in Salonica, it initia ...
(IMRO) and the
Macedonian Patriotic Organization (MPO), and even their left-wing offsets, the IMRO (United) and the Macedonian-American People's League continued to use literary Bulgarian in their writings and propaganda in the interbellum. During the World wars Bulgaria's short annexations over Macedonia saw two attempts to bring the Macedonian dialects back towards Bulgarian. This political situation stimulated the necessity of a separate Macedonian language and led gradually to its codification after the Second World War. It followed the establishment of
SR Macedonia
The Socialist Republic of Macedonia (), or SR Macedonia, commonly referred to as Socialist Macedonia, Yugoslav Macedonia or simply Macedonia, was one of the six constituent republics of the post-World War II Socialist Federal Republic of Y ...
, as part of Communist Yugoslavia and finalized the progressive split in the common Macedonian–Bulgarian language.
During the first half of the 20th century the national identity of the Macedonian Slavs shifted from predominantly Bulgarian to ethnic Macedonian and their regional identity had become their national one. Although, there was no clear separating line between these two languages on level of dialect then, the Macedonian standard was based on its westernmost dialects. Afterwards, Macedonian became the official language in the new republic, Serbo-Croatian was adopted as a second official language, and Bulgarian was proscribed. Moreover, in 1946–1948 the newly standardized Macedonian language was introduced as a second language even in Southwestern Bulgaria. Subsequently, the sharp and continuous deterioration of the political relationships between the two countries, the influence of both standard languages during the time, but also the strong Serbo-Croatian linguistic influence in Yugoslav era, led to a horizontal cross-border dialectal divergence. Although some researchers have described the standard Macedonian and Bulgarian languages as
varieties of a
pluricentric language
A pluricentric language or polycentric language is a language with several codified standard forms, often corresponding to different countries. Many examples of such languages can be found worldwide among the most-spoken languages, including but n ...
, they in fact have separate dialectal bases; the
Prilep-Bitola dialect and
Central Balkan dialect, respectively. The prevailing academic consensus (outside of Bulgaria and Greece) is that Macedonian and Bulgarian are two
autonomous languages within the eastern subbranch of the
South Slavic languages
The South Slavic languages are one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches (West Slavic la ...
. Macedonian is thus an ''
ausbau language
In sociolinguistics, an abstand language is a language variety or cluster of varieties with significant linguistic distance from all others, while an ausbau language is a standard variety, possibly with related dependent varieties. Heinz Klos ...
''; i.e. it is delimited from Bulgarian as these two standard languages have separate dialectal bases. The uniqueness of Macedonian in comparison to
Bulgarian is a matter of
political controversy
In politics, a political scandal is an action or event regarded as morally or legally wrong and causing general public outrage. Politicians, government officials, Political party, party officials and Lobbying, lobbyists can be accused of various ...
in Bulgaria.
[Language profile Macedonian](_blank)
, UCLA International Institute
Differences between Macedonian and Bulgarian
Phonetics
*
Word stress
In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as i ...
in Macedonian is
antepenultimate
In linguistics, the ultima is the last syllable of a word, the penult is the next-to-last syllable, and the antepenult is third-from-last syllable. In a word of three syllables, the names of the syllables are antepenult-penult-ultima.
Etymology
Ul ...
, meaning it falls on the third from last
syllable
A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...
in words with three or more syllables, on the second syllable in words with two syllables and on the first or only syllable in words with one syllable. This means that Macedonian has fixed accent and for the most part automatically determined. Word stress in Bulgarian, just like Old Church Slavonic, is free and can fall on almost any syllable of the word, as well as on various morphological units like prefixes, roots, suffixes and articles. However, the easternmost dialects in North Macedonia like the
Maleshevo dialect, the
Dojran dialect and most
Slavic dialects in Greece have free word stress.
* Reflexes of Pra-Slavic *tʲ/kt and *dʲ: Bulgarian has kept the Old Church Slavonic reflexes щ // and жд // for Pra-Slavic *tʲ/kt and *dʲ, whereas Macedonian developed the velar ќ // and ѓ // in their place under Serbian influence in the Late Middle Ages. However, many dialects in North Macedonia and the wider Macedonian region have retained the consonants or use the transitional шч // and жџ //.
* Vowels: There are six
vowels in Bulgarian, compared to five in
Macedonian. While the
schwa (ъ () is part of standard Bulgarian phonology, it use in standard Macedonian is marginal. Nevertheless, the schwa is phonemic in a number of Macedonian dialects, e.g. the
Northern Macedonian dialects, the
Ohrid dialect, the
Upper Prespa dialect, etc., while it is missing from the phonetic inventory of a number of Western Bulgarian dialects, e.g., the
Elin Pelin dialect,
Vratsa dialect,
Samokov dialect. In other words, the difference is owing to a specific choice made during codification.

* Loss of ''х''
'' in Macedonian: The development of the Macedonian dialects since the 16th century has been marked by the gradual disappearance of the ''x'' sound or its replacement by ''в''
or ''ф''
(шетах
�etah→ шетав
�etav, whereas standard Bulgarian, just like Old Bulgarian/Old Church Slavonic, has kept х in all positions. However, most Bulgarian dialects, except for the southern
Rup dialects
The Rup dialects (), or the Southeastern dialects, are a group of Bulgarian dialects located east of the yat boundary, thus being part of the Eastern dialect. The range of the Rup dialects includes the southern part of Bulgaria, i.e. Strandzha, ...
, have lost х in most positions, as well. The consonant was kept in the literary language for the sake of continuity with Old Bulgarian, i.e., the difference is again owing to a choice made during codification.
* Hard and palatalized consonants: Many consonant phonemes in the
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...
come in "hard" and "soft" pairs. However, at present, only four consonants in Macedonian have a "soft pair": -, -, -, - plus the stand-alone glide . At the same time, the situation in Bulgarian is extremely unclear, with older phonology handbooks claiming that almost every consonant in Bulgarian has a palatalised equivalent, and newer research asserting that this palatalisation is very weak and that the so-called "palatal consonants" in the literary language are actually pronounced as a sequence of consonant + glide . The reanalysis means that Bulgarian has only one palatal consonant, the semivowel , which makes it the least palatal Slavic language.
* The consonant group ''чр''-
͡ʃr-in the beginning of the word, which was present in the
Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic ( ) is the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic languages, South Slavic subgroup of the ...
, predominantly was replaced with ''чер-'' in Bulgarian. In Macedonian this consonant group is replaced with ''цр-''. There are examples that this process of replacing ''чр-'' with ''цр-'' was already happening in the 14th century in the
Northern and
Western Macedonian dialects.
Morphology
* Definite article: The Macedonian language has three
definite article
In grammar, 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" ...
s pertaining to position of the object: ''unspecified'', ''proximate'' (or ''close''), and ''distal'' (or ''distant''). All three have different gender forms, for masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns and adjectives. Bulgarian has only one definite article pertaining to ''unspecified'' position of the object. The difference is owing again to a choice made during codification: dialects in eastern North Macedonia have only one definite article, while there are dialects in Bulgarian that have triple definite article, such as the
Tran dialect,
Smolyan dialect, etc. Torlak dialects in Serbia also have triple definite article.
* Short and long definite articles: In Bulgarian, the masculine gender has two forms of definite articles: long (-ът, -ят) and short (-а, -я), depending on whether the noun has the role of subject or object in the sentence. The long form is used for a noun that's the subject of a sentence, while the short form is used for nouns that are direct/indirect objects. In Macedonian language, such a distinction is not made, and there is only the -от form for masculine nouns, besides, of course, the other two forms (-ов, -он) of the triple definite article.
:Example:
:Bulgarian
: Професорът е много умен. -''The professor is very smart.'' (The professor is a subject → long form -ът)
: Видях професора. -''I saw the professor.'' (The professor is a direct object → short form -а)
:Macedonian
: Професорот е многу паметен. -''The professor is very smart.''
: Го видов професорот. -''I saw the professor.''
:However, no Bulgarian dialect has both a short and a long definite article—all of them have either or. The rule is an entirely artificial construct suggested by one of the earliest Bulgarian men of letters,
Neofit Rilski
Neofit Rilski () or Neophyte of Rila (born Nikola Poppetrov Benin; 1793 – January 4, 1881) was a 19th-century Bulgarian monk, teacher and artist, and an important figure of the Bulgarian National Revival. Biography
He was born in the south ...
, himself from
Pirin Macedonia
Pirin Macedonia or Bulgarian Macedonia () (''Pirinska Makedoniya or Bulgarska Makedoniya''), which today is in southwestern Bulgaria, is the third-biggest part of the geographical region of Macedonia. This part coincides with the borders of Blag ...
, in an attempt to preserve the case system in Bulgarian. For more than a century, this has been one of the most reviled grammatical rules in Bulgarian and has consistently been described as artificial, unnecessary and snobbish.
* Demonstrative pronouns: Similar to the article, the demonstrative pronouns in the Macedonian standard language have three forms: for pointing close objects and persons (овој, оваа, ова, овие), distant objects and persons (оној, онаа, она, оние) and pointing without spatial and temporal determination (тој, таа, тоа, тие). There are only two categories in the Bulgarian standard language: closeness (този/тоя, тази/тая, това/туй, тези/тия) and distance (онзи/оня, онази/оная, онова/онуй, онези/ония). For pointing objects and persons without spatial and temporal determination are used the same forms for closeness.
* Plural with the suffix -''иња''
njafor neuter nouns: In the standard Macedonian language, some neuter nouns ending in -e form the plural with the suffix -''иња''. In the Bulgarian language, neuter nouns ending in -e usually form the plural with the suffix -е(та)
(e)taor -е(на)
(e)na and the suffix -''иња'' does not exist at all.
* Present tense : Verbs of all three conjugations in Macedonian have unified ending -ам in 1st person singular: (пеам, одам, имам) for 1st person singular. In Bulgarian, 1st and 2nd conjugation use -а (-я): пея, ходя, and only 3rd conjugation uses - ам: имам.
* Past indefinite tense with ''има'' (to have): The standard Macedonian language is the only standard Slavic language in which there is a past indefinite tense (the so-called
perfect), which is formed with the auxiliary verb to have and a verbal adjective in the neuter gender. This grammatical tense in linguistics is called ''have-perfect'' and it can be compared to the present perfect tense in English, Perfekt in German and passé composé in French. This construction of ''има'' with a verbal adjective also exists in some non-standard forms of the Bulgarian language, but it is not part of the standard language and is not as developed and widespread as in Macedonian.
:Example: ''Гостите имаат дојдено''. - The guests have arrived.
* Changing the root in some imperfect verb forms is characteristic only for the Bulgarian language. Like all Slavic languages, Macedonian and Bulgarian distinguish perfect and imperfect verb forms. However, in the Macedonian standard language, the derivation of imperfect verbs from their perfect pair takes place only with a suffix, and not with a change of the vowel in the root of the verb, as in the Bulgarian language.
* Clitic doubling:
Clitic doubling
In linguistics, clitic doubling, or pronominal reduplication is a phenomenon by which clitic pronouns appear in verb phrases together with the full noun phrases that they refer to (as opposed to the cases where such pronouns and full noun phrases a ...
in the standard
Macedonian language
Macedonian ( ; , , ) is an Eastern South Slavic language. It is part of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family, and is one of the Slavic languages, which are part of a larger Balto-Slavic languages, Balto-Slavic branch. Sp ...
is always obligatory with
definite direct
Direct may refer to:
Mathematics
* Directed set, in order theory
* Direct limit of (pre), sheaves
* Direct sum of modules, a construction in abstract algebra which combines several vector spaces
Computing
* Direct access (disambiguation), ...
and
indirect object
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
s, which contrasts with standard Bulgarian where clitic doubling is mandatory in a more limited number of cases. Non-standard dialects of Macedonian and Bulgarian have differing rules regarding clitic doubling.
:Example: "I know that man."
:Го познавам тој човек. (Macedonian)
:Познавам този човек. (Bulgarian)
* Present active participle: All Slavic dialects in Bulgaria and Macedonia lost the Old Bulgarian present active participle ('сегашно деятелно причастие') in the Late Middle Ages. New Bulgarian readopted the participle from Church Slavonic in the 1800s, and it is currently used in the literary language. In spoken Bulgarian, it is replaced by a relative clause. Macedonian only uses a
relative clause
A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phrase and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments in the relative clause refers to the noun or noun phrase. For example, in the sentence ''I met a man who wasn ...
with the relative pronoun ''што''.
:Example:
:''Уплаших се от лаещите кучета.'' / ''Уплаших се от кучетата, които лаеха.'' - I was scared by the barking dogs./I was scared by the dogs that barked. (Bulgarian)
:''Се исплашив од кучињата што лаеја'' - I was scared by the dogs that barked. (Macedonian)
* Conditional mood: In Bulgarian it is formed by a special form of the auxiliary 'съм' (to be) in conjugated form, and the aorist active participle of the main verb, while in Macedonian it is formed with the unconjugated form 'би' (would), and the aorist active participle of the main verb.
* Future-in-the-past: Both languages have this complex verb tense, but its formation differs.
In Bulgarian it is made up of the past imperfect of the verb ща (will, want) + the particle да (to) + ''the present tense of the main verb''.
In Macedonian it is formed with the clitic ќе + ''imperfect of the verb''.
Example (''чета''/''чита'', to read):
Vocabulary
A primary objective of Bulgarian men of letters in the 1800s was to restore the
Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic ( ) is the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic languages, South Slavic subgroup of the ...
/Old Bulgarian vocabulary that had been lost or replaced with Turkish or Greek words during Ottoman rule through the mediation of
Church Slavonic
Church Slavonic is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia. The ...
. Thus, originally Old Bulgarian higher-style lexis such as ''безплътен'' (incorporeal), ''въздържание'' (temperance), ''изобретател'' (inventor), ''изтребление'' (annihilation), ''кръвопролитие'' (bloodshed), ''пространство'' (space), ''развращавам'' (debauch), ''създание'' (creature), ''съгражданин'' (fellow citizen), ''тщеславие'' (vainglory), ''художник'' (painter), was re-borrowed in the 1800s from Church Slavonic and Russian, where it had been adopted in the Early Middle Ages.
There are 12 phono-morpohological that point at the Old Bulgarian origin of a word in Church Slavonic or Russian:
* Use of the Bulgarian reflexes щ and жд for Pra-Slavic *tʲ/kt and *dʲ instead of the native Russian ones ч // and ж //, e.g., ''заблуждать'' (mislead), ''влагалище'' (vagina);
* Replacement of East Slavic pleophonic ''-olo/-oro'' with ''-la/-ra''. Thus, East Slavic forms such as ''голова'' (head) and ''город'' (city) exist side by side with Old Bulgarian ''главный'' (primary) and ''гражданин'' (citizen);
* Use of word-initial a, e, ю, ра and la, e.g., ''единовластие'' (absolutism) rather than ''одиноволостие'', which would be the expected form based on East Slavic phonology, ''юность'' (youth), which replaced Old Russian ''ѹность'', ''работа'' (work), which replaced Old Russian ''робота'';
* Use of prefixes such as воз- and пре- instead of the native East Slavic вз- and пере-, e.g., ''воздержание'' (abstention) or ''преображать/преобразить'' (transform);
* Use of Old Bulgarian suffixes such as ''-тель'', ''-тельность'', ''-ствие'', ''-енство'', ''-ес'', ''-ание'', ''-ащий'', ''-ущий'', -''айший'', ''-ение'', ''-ейший'', e.g., ''благоденствие'' (prosperity), ''упражнение'' (exercise), ''пространство'' (space), ''стремление'' (aspiration), etc. etc. that can be traced back to use in Old Bulgarian manuscripts.
* Etc.
Nevertheless, none of this went without a problem. In the end, a number of Russified Old Bulgarisms replaced preserved native Old Bulgarisms, e.g., the Russified ''невежа'' and ''госпожа'' ("ignoramus" & "Madam") replaced the native ''невежда'' and ''госпожда'', a number of other words were adopted with Russified phonology, e.g., ''утроба'' (O.B. ''ѫтроба'', "uterus") rather than ''ътроба'' or ''вътроба'', ''свидетел'' (O.B. ''съвѣдѣтель'', "withness") rather than ''сведетел'', ''началник'' (O.B. ''начѧльникъ'', "superior") rather than ''начелник''—which is what would have been expected given the phonetic development of the Bulgarian language, others had changed their meaning completely, e.g., ''опасно'' (O.B. ''опасьно'') readopted in the meaning of "dangerously" rather than "meticulously", ''урок'' (O.B. ''ѹрокъ'') readopted in the meaning of "lesson" rather than "condition"/"proviso", yet many, many others that ended up being Russian or Church Slavonic new developments on the basis of Old Bulgarian roots, suffixes, prefixes, etc.
Unlike Bulgarian which borrowed part of its linguistics from Russian, Macedonian has borrowed it mostly from Serbian.
See also
*
Slavic dialects of Greece
The Slavic dialects of Greece are the Eastern South Slavic dialects of Macedonian language, Macedonian and Bulgarian language, Bulgarian spoken by Minorities in Greece, minority groups in the regions of Macedonia (Greece), Macedonia and Thrace ...
*
Pomak language
*
Shopi
Shopi or Šopi ( South Slavic: Шопи) is a regional term, used by a group of people in the Balkans. The areas traditionally inhabited by the ''Shopi'' or ''Šopi'' is called ''Shopluk'' or ''Šopluk'' (Шоплук), a mesoregion. Most of ...
Notes
References
Bibliography
*
{{Slavic languages
Languages of the Balkans
South Slavic languages
Serbian dialects
Dialects of the Macedonian language
Dialects of the Bulgarian language