The Macedonian Language

By Paul Markovski The Macedonian Language.....................................................................................................1 The Purpose........................................................................................................................2 The History of The Language .............................................................................................2 The Cyrillic Alphabet .....................................................................................................2 An Enriched Language .......................................................................................................3 In a Linguistic Context .......................................................................................................3 Macedonian grammar .........................................................................................................4 Historical review.............................................................................................................4 Nouns .................................................................................................................................5 Masculine nouns .............................................................................................................5 Feminine nouns ..............................................................................................................6 Neutral nouns .................................................................................................................6 The form of nouns depend on gender ..............................................................................7 Plural form of nouns .......................................................................................................7 Definite articles ............................................................................................................10 Verbs................................................................................................................................11 Negation of verbs..........................................................................................................11 Adjectives.........................................................................................................................13 Conjunctions ....................................................................................................................13 Numerals ..........................................................................................................................14 Pronouns ..........................................................................................................................14 Syntax ..............................................................................................................................16 Definite direct objects ...................................................................................................16 Possesion ......................................................................................................................16 Pronounciation .................................................................................................................17 Accent ..........................................................................................................................17 Concluding remarks..........................................................................................................17 Bibliography.....................................................................................................................18

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The Purpose
The purpose of this PM is to introduce the fundamental grammar in the Macedonian language, with the focus on nouns. This purpose has lead to a selection of parts of the grammar. Theory and comparisons with the Swedish language are intertwined throughout the text. The open word classes nouns, verbs and adjectives are the focii of the essay, where examples are given with presentation of grammatic rules. The presentation of nouns has been limited to the forms number and gender. The Macedonian verbs' three stems are presented, as well as how to negate verbs. The third and last word group is adjectives, with a number of examples that visualize how the adjectives are declined depending on gender, numerus, indefinite and definite article. I also describe the difference between declining adjectives when used with nouns in singular or plural. Basic information about other word groups has also been included, namely for conjunctions, pronouns and numerals. These have been chosen since the beginner language student will touch upon them quickly during the education. Other word classes have not been included due to the limits of this pro memoria, and its purpose as a simple introduction to the Macedonian language. At the end of the text I have woven the above knowledge together with syntax and some important pronounciation rules for Macedonian letters and words. Due to the lack of literature and an average dictionary (English-Macedonian MacedonianEnglish dictionary), I have enjoyed help with words and their meaning from several friends living in Skopje, Macedonia.

The History of The Language

The Macedonian language belongs to the south slavic language group, which is a part of the branch "Slavic languages" in the Indoeuropean language family. Except Macedonian there is also Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian in the south slavic language group ("Slavonic languages", The Hutchinson Encyclopedia). The Macedonian language is spoken as mother tongue by 1.7 million people in Macedonia. Earlier there were more than 300,000 people speaking dialects of the language in Greece, but due to the policy of minorities in Greece, this number has decreased considerably (one approximate number is 40,000 speakers of Macedonian in Greece). The language is also spoken in the neighbouring country Albania, where the number totals approximately 10,000 people. Both Macedonian and Bulgarian share the same grammatical structure and are also lexical similar. Some of the similarities are definite articles, the lack of case-declension, comparison with prefix, doubling of the object, the lack of an infinite form and a developed temporal and modal system. The latter contains the narrative mode, that signifies that the speaker has not witnessed the events that are told. (Nationalencyklopedin, "Makedonska", Roger Gyllin)

The Cyrillic Alphabet

Macedonian and Bulgarian also share history with regards to the cyrillic alphabet, which both use as the primiary alphabet. The cyrillic alphabet can be traced back to around year 860 A.C, when the church slavic sign language was developed. That in its turn was built on dialects spoken around Thessaloniki (then part of the Byzantine empire). Modern Macedonian formally acquired the status as an independent language in 1878, the year of the Berlin congress. The purpose of that congress was actually to modify the treaty of San Stefano, especially to decrease the territory of Bulgaria. At the time Bulgaria had a great deal of political support from Russia (World History Encyclopedia, 2001).

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During the same year as the Berlin congress, 1878, Bulgaria was split into three parts, where Macedonia was one and ended up under Ottoman rule. (Nationalencyklopedin, "Makedonska", Roger Gyllin) It would take additional 25 years after the congress, until 1903, before the foundation was laid for the Macedonian language, as it is known today. That was the year when Krste Misirkov published a book describing the foundation of the language. But Macedonian did not enjoy status as a sign language until 1944, in the federation of Yugoslavia. During the postwar time the language was developed into a standard language, built on western central dialects. The choice of western dialects was due to the wish of creating some distance between Macedonian and Bulgarian. (Nationalencyklopedin, "Makedonska", Roger Gyllin)

An Enriched Language
Due to the tumultous history of the Balkan peninsula, the Macedonian vocabulary has been enriched from several languages. There are several words with Bulgarian, French, Serbian, Greek, Turkish, Arabic and Persian origin. They were all assimilated into the language via the Turkish language during the Ottoman period. Here below I give examples of a few loan words from French, Serbo-Croatian and Turkish. Examples (French)

ofer

driver

(Serbo-Croatian) hrabar hrana (Turkish)

brave food

saat tapija

hour, clock document

Comment Today it remains common that Macedonian is influenced by English. Here follow two examples of more recent loan words: kompjuter computer komunikacija communication

In a Linguistic Context
The following broad observations have been made in comparison with the Swedish language. It should be noticed that since the writer of this document is not a trained linguist, these observations could be developed. But it is meant to be interesting for non-linguists. Macedonian is a so called SVO language, meaning that words are in the order subject, verb and object. Because it is a synthetic language, word-declination is more important than in Swedish (which is an analytical language). (Grammatiskt ABC, s. 50 och s. 57).

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Macedonian grammar
The cyrillic alphabet has 31 letters, of which there are 5 vowels and 26 consonants. It should be added that the consonat p also can be used as a vowel, in the sense that the graphemes can be placed as V in CVC sequences. Examples, one and two syllable words (usage of the Cyrillic alphabet) prv first tra (to) run mrmori (to) mumble krstonosec crusader crkva church The alphabet has been deduced from the Serbian (Cyrillic) alphabet, with the difference that Macedonian has the extra letter s (dz) and two letters are replaced in Macedonian, namely (g') and (k'). The language has three grammatical genders, masculine (, maki), feminine (, enski) and neuter (, sreden). The gender is often obvious by looking at the last letter in words. One new development is that loan words from the western countries (especially English) tend to be categorized in the language under the grammatical gender neuter.

Historical review
It has already been mentioned that the Macedonian vocabulary has been enriched from several languages during the course of history, for example from Turkish, Arabic and Persian. The loan words have been assimilated via Turkish during the Ottoman period, from the middle 14th century to the Balkan wars 1912-13 (World History Encyclopedia, 2001). Over time, Macedonian has come to differ alot from the Serbian standard language, concerning the grammatical structure. During the existence of Yugoslavia, the language was largely influenced by Serbo-Croatian. This can be understood with reference to the loan words that are used in colloquial Macedonian today. (see An Enriched Language, above).

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Nouns
Gender can often be determined by the last letter in words. It is interesting to note that masculine nouns generally end with a consonant, whilst some nouns with the ending -a also are masculine. Most feminine nouns have the ending -a, but some end with a consonant. This leads to the demand of attention when classifying nouns as either masculine or feminine. The neutral nouns almost explicitly end with -o and -e. This group of nouns is currently growing fast, thanks to the vast amount of foreign loan words.(seet Neutral nouns below). Nouns in the Swedish language Swedish uses grammatical and neuter gender. The grammatical genders are categorized into n-gender (words with the ending -n) and "neutrum" (words with the ending -t). This has no connection with the meaning of words, and is merely a way of classifying words using their last letters. Instead it is the neuter gender that reflect the meaning of nouns, that is, if they are persons or not. In the case of persons there are the subclasses masculine and feminine. (Grammatiskt ABC)

Masculine nouns
The masculine nouns in Macedonian are grouped together in six categories, where the three first contain most of the words. 1. Masculine nouns that end with a consonant, the largest category. 2. Masculine nouns that end with the vowel -a. These always refer to human subjects and can be occupations or personal names. 3. Masculine kinship terms, personal names and invectives with a negative meaning. 4. Masculine nouns that end with -e. Diminutive terms, person names and foreign loan words. 5. The names of the month. 6. A smaller set of nouns that end with other vowels than those mentioned above. These are foreign loan words. (Macedonian: A course for Beginning and Intermediate students) Examples (group 1) stolr mudrost Examples (group 2) zanaetija budala Examples (group 3) Petar Angel Stojan dedo brat glupava mrzlivec

chair wisdom

craftsman fool, simpleton

(personal name) (personal name) (personal name) grandfather brother idiot lazy bones

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Examples (grupp 4) Mile bate tate

Mile (from the personal name Milan) bro (brother) dad

Group 5, (months of the year) januari January fevruari February mart Mars april April maj May juni June juli July avgust August septemvri September oktomvri October noemvri November dekemvri December Examples (group 6) plako drdorko

whimperer chatter-box

Feminine nouns
Most of the feminine nouns end with -a, but there is also a smaller set with feminine nouns ending with a consonant. Examples

karta sudija radost sovrenost

card, ticket judge happiness perfection

Neutral nouns
The neutral nouns almost explicitly use the endings -o or -e. Foreign nouns with vowels as the last grapheme and that are not related to humans, are often categorized as neutrual nouns. Loan words: penkalo bide pen bid stapalo ime foot name

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The form of nouns depend on gender

Several nouns for occupations and nationality have different forms depending on gender (masculine or feminine). Most often the suffix - (ka) is used to symbolize the feminine form of a masculine noun. Eamples

student studentka

student (masculine) student (feminine)

In this contextit should also be mentioned that if the noun in masculine form end with - (k), then it will transform to - () before the suffix is added to the noun.

Plural form of nouns

Macedonian nouns can be declined in a multitude of forms according to the plural form. The largest number of plural forms (four) exist among the masculine nouns, that are followed by three methods of declining neutral nouns and only one method of declining feminine nouns. Due to the rule with intonation on the antepenultima2, the intonation of words also change with the forming of plural. The intonation is then simply moved to reflect the rule. However, this rule need not apply for more recent loan words, which tend to keep their fixed intonation. (Macedonian: A course for Beginning and Intermediate students) Swedish nouns in plural form The Swedish nouns are declined according to number. Most frequently, plural is denoted with an ending added to the singular form of words. There are five different declinations, where the last do not use any ending to denote plural. The first four declinations are -or, -ar, -er and -n. Below are examples of Swedish nouns with each declination. (Grammatiskt ABC) Declination 1 (-or) flicka (girl) flickor (girls) gata (street) gator (streets) Declination 2 (-ar) karl (man) karlar (men) stol (chair) stolar (chairs) Declination 3 (-er) tant (lady) tanter (ladies) bild (image) bilder (images) Declination 4 (-n) fr (seed) frn (seeds) pple (apple) pplen (apples) Declination 5 (plural without ending) barn (child) barn (children) arbetare (worker) arbetare (workers)
2

Nst sista stavelsen.

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Plural of masculine nouns, group #1 This group contains the nouns that end with a consonant and that have more than one syllable. To form plural the noun adds the ending - (i). Examples

mudrost mudrosti letok letoki sklad skladi

wisdom wisdoms pamphlet pamphlets harmony harmonies

In this group one has to note certain consonant changes. If the singular form of a Macedonian noun ends with a velar consonant: - (k), - (g), eller - (h), then these are switched with their respective letters - (c), - (z), och - (s). Examples

merak krug uspeh

need circle success

meraci kruzi uspesi

needs circles successes

Plural of masculine nouns, group #2 Here are the nouns with the ending -a (a). The suffix -a (a) changes to - (i), the velar consonants do not change. Examples

aramija saatdija

thief watchmaker

aramii saatdii

thiefs watchmakers

Plural of masculine nouns, group #3 This group contains nouns with only one syllable. The rule is that they add one of the endings - eller -. Examples

pat kraj

road end

patovi kraevi

roads endings (plural)

There are however exceptions to this rule. Here follow two. Examples

konj zab

horse tooth

konji zabi

horses teeth

The nouns that end with - (), - () and - () can either use the ending - (-ovi) or - (-evi). The nouns that end with - (j) only use - (-evi) (replaces the suffix). Examples

me no ko

sword knife basket

meovi noevi koevi

swords (plural) knives baskets

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aj

tea

aevi

teas

Plural of masculine nouns, group #4 The nouns that end with - (o), mainly male kinship terms, use the ending - (-ovci). Examples

dedo plako

grandfather whimperer

plako

dedovci grandfathers plakovci whimperers

Plural of feminine nouns All feminine nouns use the ending - (i) to denote plural form. Nouns ending with -a (-a) switch the suffix with - (-i). Examples

kritika dozvola

critique allowance

kritika dozvola

critique allowances

Within the category feminine nouns, consonants can change in two exceptional ways. Examples race hands raka hand noga foot, leg noze feet, legs (Macedonian: A course for Beginning and Intermediate students, s. 30) Plural of neutral nouns, group #1 Nouns with the ending -o (-o), switch the suffix with - (-a). Examples

drvo zrno

tree corn

drva zrna

trees corn (plural)

Plural of neutral nouns, group #2 Nouns with the ending -e (-e), switch the suffix with - (-inja). Examples

pole magare

field donkey

polinja magarinja

fields donkeys

Plural of neutral nouns, group #3 Neutral nouns with the ending -e (-e) found after (c), (t) or (nj), switch the suffix with -a (a). If the ending is (i), then it will switch with -ja. Examples 3

pilenca zdolnite praanje reenie

small bird skirt question solution

pilenca zdolnita praanja reenija

small birds skirts questions solutions

Diminutive term of pile (bird).

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Definite articles
As with Swedish, Macedonian uses definite articles attached to the end of nouns. Four different definite articles exist, that also denote gender and number. - (-ot) - (-ta) - (-to) - (-te) They are used as follows: Masculine nouns that end with a consonant use the definite article - (-ot). All nouns that end with -a (-a), disregarding gender and number, use the definite article - (-ta). Feminine nouns that end with a consonant use the definite article - (-ta). All remaining neutral nouns, foreign loan words and collective terms (as (lug'e) folk) use the definite article - (-to). In the plural form all nouns use the definite article - (-te). (Macedonian: A course for Beginning and Intermediate students) Definite articles in the Swedish language As in Macedonian, the Swedish language also uses definite articles attached to the end of nouns. Swedish has the variants -en or -n and -et. Examples stol lampa bord

chair lamp table

stolen lampan bordet

the chair the lamp the table

These definite articles are related to the indefinite articles en and ett, which in their turn are related to the two grammatical genders n-gender and neuter. (Grammatiskt ABC)

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Verbs
There is no infinite form of verbs in the Macedonian language. The verbs are divided into three stems, where the grouping is based upon the last vowel in the third person stem (all verbs in third person singular end with a vowel). In Macedonian dictionaries, verbs are printed in third person singular. a-stem (a), -stem(i) and e-istem (e) (Macedonian: A course for Beginning and Intermediate students) Conjugation of Macedonian verbs Singular Plural First person - (am) - (me) Second person - () - (te) (stem unchanged) - (at) Third person (Macedonian: A course for Beginning and Intermediate students) When a verb is used for a certain person and number, the suffix is added to the fundamental form of the verb concatenated with the verb (normally found in third person singular). Here below are two exceptions, namely for first person singular and third person plural: First person singualr requires that the last vowel in the stem is removed, before the suffix - is concatenated. Example: - . (tra - tram) Third person plural requires that the last vowel in the stem is removed if it is - (-i) or -e (-e), before the suffix - (-at) is concatenated. Example: - (odi - odat)

Verbs in the Swedish language Swedish verbs are not conjugated according to person and number, as with Macedonian verbs. Disregarding person they use the same form, for example I walk, you walk, he walk(s), we walk, they walk.

Negation of verbs
When Macedonian verbs are to be negated, they mostly use the particle (ne). It is placed before the verb. To answer negatively to questions (first person), the form is: , + verb in first person singular Examples I do not drive. , . ( - to drive) The only exception is the verb (ima) ("to have"), which has the negative corresponding verb (nema) ("to lack, to not have"). To conclude with examples, the sentences "I have a house" and "I do not have a house", are translated as follows: I have a house I do not have a house 2004-2006 Paul Markovski 11

Note: In colloquial speech the person is normally excluded, so the sentences above would lose "j". This is due to how verbs are conjugated taking into respect person and thus giving away the subject. More information in "In a Linguistic Context".

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Adjectives
When adjectives are used together with nouns, they have to be declined according to gender and number, as well as indefinite and definite form. Examples ( vesel ( star

jolly) taa e vesela old) ova e stariot grad

She is jolly. This is the old city.

When adjectives are used with nouns in plural form, gender is disregarded. This means that the same form of adjectives is used for masculine, feminine and neutral nouns when they are found in plural. One must however show that the noun is in plural form, which is shown with the suffix - (i). ( vesel ( umoren Comments: If the adjective has a fleeting wovel, it is removed before the suffix is concatenated with the adjective. Adjectives ending with - (-ski) have the same form regardless of if the noun is in singular or plural form. jolly) nie sme veseli tired) tie se umoreni

We are jolly. They are tired.

Adjectives in the Swedish language In the Swedish language, singular form is formed by adding -a or -e and in plural by adding a. Examples den lill-a flickan the little girl den lill-e pojken the little boy de stor-a frndringarna. the large changes

Conjunctions
There are two conjunctions in the Macedonian language corresponding to "and". Depending on the situation, one uses either "" (i), or "", a (the translation is then "and" or "but"). The first variant is used when two items are considered equivalent. Examples . I have a bicycle and you have a bicycle.

jac imam velosiped i ti ima velosiped.

The other variant is used when a contrast between two items should be emphasized. A comma sign is printed before "a".

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Examples , . I work but you do not work.

jac rabotam, a ti ne raboti.

There are also two words that correspond to the Swedish "men" (but). These are (ama) and (no), and they are used in different situations. The former word is loan word from Turkisk and is used in colloquial speech. The latter word is used in formal contexts, in written text as well as formal speech. The meaning is the same. ? Ama zoto nemate kola? , . Nie morame da planirame, no posle april. But why do you not have car? We must plan, but after April.

Numerals
The Macedonian word for zero is (nula). The next integer, "one", is used both as a noun and as an adjective. Thus it takes on the form relevant for the gender of a noun. (eden) (, maki, masculine) (edno) (, sreden, neutral) (edna) (, enski, feminine) There is also a plural form, (edni), meaning "several". The next integer, "two", has two forms. Ytterligare ett steg upp i den naturliga talen, br nmnas att ordet fr "tv" har tv former: (dva), the masculine form.. (dve), the feminine and neutral form. There are no special forms for any other integers.

Pronouns
Here follow examples of various types of pronouns, the first being used to signify interrogative pronouns, as well as demonstrative pronouns. ? koj? ovoj onoj toj who? this (close to the speaker) that (far from the speaker and the listener) - (far away from the speaker but close to the listener)

(toj) is the most neutral of the last three forms, and is mostly used as narrative form to illustrate the subject at hand, insteand of relations between objects. The forms are declined according to gender and number, as follows: (latin) koj ? a? ovoj aa onoj aa toj aa

(masculine) (neuter) 14

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 e? a a a (feminine) e e e (plural) (Macedonian: A course for Beginning and Intermediate students) When something is to be defined the neutral forms are used, as in the following example: " " (ova e mojot prijatel, this is my friend). In this particular context the neutral form does not correspond with the gender and number. This since the demonstrative pronoun is the subject in the sentence.

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Syntax
Definite direct objects
An important distinction is made in Macedonian between definite and undefinite objects. If the direct object is not definite, then the sentence can simply be concatenated. Examples jas zemam klu I take a bicycle.

If the direct object is in definite form, then a special marker must be introduced. These words do not have an accent, and are found at a fixed position in the sentence. In Macedonian the marker is placed before the verb. Markers for third person definite objects: / maki/sreden enski Singular (go) (ja) Plural (gi) (gi)

(The choice of marker thus depends on the gender of the noun) Example

jac go zemam kluot

I take the bicycle.

Possesion
Possesive constructions in Macedonian are of the model "the letter belonging to the man". The object is placed first and followed by the preposition (na) or (od), whereupon the subject is placed last. Both prepositions are typical for western dialects in Macedonia and have been accepted in the literary standard. Examples konjot od enata e na gradina. The horse belonging to the woman, is in the yard. ? dali gi znaesh konjiti na enata? Do you know the horses belonging to the woman? In colloquial speech the phrase usually start with the preposition and the owner, followed by the object. Example

konjot na enata

The woman's horse.

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Pronounciation
Pronounciation rules in Macedonian When voiced consonants occur in the end of words, they become voiceless, as follows: (b) (v) (g) (d) () (z) (p) (f) (k) (t) () (s)

The rule to determine which pronounciation to use, depends on observation of the last consonant.

Accent
The Macedonian words that have three or more syllables, use fixed intonation on the antepaenultima. Shorter words have the intonation on the first syllable. This intonation rule is so central in the language, that when suffixes are added to words, the accent in the word is moved so that it is on antepaenultima. Examples Two syllable words kniga knigata knigava knigana

Three syllable words book manastir the book manastirot the book here manastirov the book there manastiron

monastery the monastery the monastery here the monastery there

Concluding remarks
During the autumn and winter I have studied the Macedonian language part time, and during this period I have noticed that the following has required extra attention: Decling and conjugating word depend on words in the open word classes (nouns, verbs and adjectives) depending on gender and number. A large number of variants of pronouns, since these are declined differently depending on gender and number.

The bullet points above touch upon the fact that Macedonian is a synthetic language, as opposed to Swedish which is an analytical language. As mentioned before I am not a linguist, but my interest in languages has increased much thanks to having parents with different linguistic backgrounds. With this in mind it has become natural to discuss languages with relatives. Having friends from various parts of the world, discussions about languages is natural, as trying to deduce words to and from the mother tongues of friends.

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Bibliography
Nationalencyklopedin, "Makedonska" Roger Gyllin, oktober 1999 The Hutchinson Encyclopedia, 12:e utgvan, 2001 World History Encyclopedia, Philip's, 2001 utgva Text book, "Macedonian: A course for Beginning and Intermediate students" Christina E. Kramer, april 2003 Grammatiskt ABC, andra upplagan (2001) Gunilla Florby och Erik Flt English-Macedonian Macedonian-English dictionary (1995) Zoze Murgoski

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