According to the national constitution:[2] On 15 January 2019 the Law on the Use of Languages came into effect, despite the refusal of President Gjorge Ivanov to sign off on it.

Standard Macedonian was implemented as the official language of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia in 1945[12] and has since developed a thriving literary tradition.

[13][14] Albanian (gjuha shqipe) is an Indo-European language spoken by over 7.3 million people world-wide, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western North Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and Greece.

Small Turkish-speaking communities can be found in several places in North Macedonia, such as Vrapčište, Skopje and Gostivar.

Serbian (српски, srpski) is a standardized register of the Serbo-Croatian language[19][20][21] spoken by Serbs,[22] mainly in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and North Macedonia.

[24] Most of the Bosnian-speaking Macedonian citizens live in the Vardar region, though they do not form greater than the 20% threshold in any municipality in the country.

[18] Aromanian (Limba Armãneascã) or Vlach is an Eastern Romance language spoken in several pockets across Southeastern Europe.

It shares many features with modern Romanian, having similar morphology and syntax, as well as a large common vocabulary inherited from Latin.

The Macedonian sign language (Macedonian: македонски знаковен јазик, romanized: makedonski znakoven jazik or македонски гестовен јазик / makedonski gestoven jazik) is a sign language of the deaf community in North Macedonia.

The precise number of signers in North Macedonia is not known, but 6,000 people in 2012 requested signed news on Macedonian television.

[26] The learning and the usage of the language, as well as the rights of the deaf community in North Macedonia are regulated by a national law.

A rapidly declining share of the population, consisting almost entirely of elderly people, has knowledge of Serbo-Croatian, French or German.