History of the Macedonian language
Standard Macedonian was formally proclaimed an official language on 2 August 1944 by the Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM).
During this period common to all Slavic languages, Greek religious texts were translated to Old Church Slavonic (based on a dialect spoken in Thessaloniki).
[10] This period, whose span also included the Ottoman conquest, witnessed grammatical and linguistic changes that came to characterize Macedonian as a member of the Balkan sprachbund.
[5][9] During the five centuries of Ottoman rule in Macedonia, loanwords from Turkish entered the Macedonian language, which by extension had an Arabo-Persian origin.
[9] The earliest lexicographic evidence of the Macedonian dialects, described as Bulgarian,[15][16] can be found in a lexicon from the 16th century written in the Greek alphabet.
Texts reflecting vernacular Macedonian language features appear in the second half of the 16th century (translations of the sermons of the Greek writer Damascene Studite).
Macedonian dialects started being used during this period for ecclesiastical and didactic works although the vernacular used was referred to as "Bulgarian" by writers.
[10] Writers of that period, namely Joakim Krchovski and Kiril Pejchinovik opted for writing in their dialects since they wanted to make the language of the first printed books understandable to the people.
[20] Bulgarian and Macedonian Slavs wanted to create their own Church and schools, which would use a common modern Macedono-Bulgarian literary standard.
[25] In 1875, Gjorgji Pulevski, in Belgrade published a book called Dictionary of Three Languages (Rečnik od tri jezika, Речник од три језика) which was a phrasebook composed in a "question-and-answer" style in Macedonian, Albanian and Turkish, all three spelled in Cyrillic.
[27][non-primary source needed] Krste Petkov Misirkov's book Za makedonckite raboti (On Macedonian Matters) published in 1903, is the first attempt to create a separate literary language.
[29][25] Thus, the creation of boundaries within the South Slavic linguistic continuum is "relatively recent", with the distinction between Bulgarian and Serbian still being contested in 1822 among European Slavists.
[10] In the interwar period, the territory of today's North Macedonia became part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the local vernacular fell under the influence of Serbo-Croatian.
[31] During the World wars Bulgaria's short annexations over Macedonia saw two attempts to bring the Macedonian dialects back towards Bulgarian linguistic influence.
[43] After the Tito–Stalin split in 1948, under the auspices of some Aegean Macedonian intellectuals in Bucharest, anti-Yugoslav alphabet, grammar, and primer closer to Bulgarian, purported to be "purified" of the Serbo-Croatian loanwords of the "language of Skopje" were created.
As a result, the Greek communist publisher "Nea Ellada" issued a Macedonian grammar (1952) and developed a different alphabet.
This failed attempt of codification included the Ъ, Ь, Ю, Я, Й and was merely a linguistic norm of the Bulgarian language.
[48] However, the printed editions of the refugees from Aegean Macedonia in Eastern Europe published until 1977 continued to be written in this linguistic norm.
[57] Politicians and scholars from North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Greece have opposing views about the existence and distinctiveness of the Macedonian language.
[21] Until 1999, Macedonian had never been recognized as a minority language in Greece and attempts to have Macedonian-language books introduced in education have failed.
[67] 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, regarded the language spoken there as a form of Bulgarian.
[25] The current international consensus outside of Bulgaria is that Macedonian is an autonomous language within the Eastern South Slavic dialect continuum.
[4] The Greek scientific and local community was opposed to using the denomination Macedonian to refer to the language in light of the Greek-Macedonian naming dispute.
Speakers themselves variously refer to their language as makedonski, makedoniski ("Macedonian"),[72] slaviká (Greek: σλαβικά, "Slavic"), dópia or entópia (Greek: εντόπια, "local/indigenous [language]"),[73] balgàrtzki (Bulgarian) or "Macedonian" in some parts of the region of Kastoria,[74] bògartski ("Bulgarian") in some parts of Dolna Prespa[67] along with naši ("our own") and stariski ("old").
