Macedonian is an Eastern South Slavic language. It is part of the Indo-European language family, and is one of the Slavic languages, which are part of a larger Balto-Slavic branch. Spoken as a first language by around two million people, it serves as the official language of North Macedonia. Most speakers can be found in the country and its diaspora, with a smaller number of speakers throughout the transnational region of Macedonia. Macedonian is also a recognized minority language in parts of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, and Serbia and it is spoken by emigrant communities predominantly in Australia, Canada and the United States.
Slavic or Slavonicstudies, also known as Slavistics, is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic areas, languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was primarily a linguist or philologist researching Slavistics. Increasingly, historians, social scientists, and other humanists who study Slavic area cultures and societies have been included in this rubric.
The region of Macedonia is known to have been inhabited since Paleolithic times.
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 by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers.
The Balkan sprachbund or Balkan language area is an ensemble of areal features—similarities in grammar, syntax, vocabulary and phonology—among the languages of the Balkans. Several features are found across these languages though not all apply to every single language. The Balkan sprachbund is a prominent example of the sprachbund concept.
Megleno-Romanian is a Balkan Romance language, similar to Aromanian. It is spoken by the Megleno-Romanians in a few villages in the Moglena region that spans the border between the Greek region of Macedonia and North Macedonia. It is also spoken by emigrants from these villages and their descendants in Romania, in Turkey by a small Muslim group, and in Serbia. It is considered an endangered language.
Torlakian, or Torlak, is a group of Eastern South Slavic dialects of southeastern Serbia, Kosovo, northeastern North Macedonia, and northwestern Bulgaria. Torlakian, together with Bulgarian and Macedonian, falls into the Balkan Slavic linguistic area, which is part of the broader Balkan sprachbund. According to UNESCO's list of endangered languages, Torlakian is vulnerable.
Blaže Koneski was a Macedonian poet, writer, literary translator, and linguistic scholar.
The history of the Macedonian language refers to the developmental periods of current-day Macedonian, an Eastern South Slavic language spoken on the territory of North Macedonia. The Macedonian language developed during the Middle Ages from the Old Church Slavonic, the common language spoken by Slavic people.
Baku Slavic University (BSU) is a public university located in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Jovan Ajduković is a Serbian linguist.
The Gorani or Goranski, also Našinski language, is the variety of South Slavic spoken by the Gorani people in the border area between Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Albania. It is part of the Torlakian dialect group, which is transitional between Eastern and Western South Slavic languages.
Christina Elizabeth Kramer is Professor of Slavic and Balkan languages and linguistics at the University of Toronto and Chair of the university's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures which is part of the Faculty of Arts and Science.
The official language of North Macedonia is Macedonian, while Albanian has co-official status. Macedonian is spoken by roughly two-thirds of the population natively, and as a second language by much of the rest of the population. Albanian is the largest minority language. There are a further five national minority languages: Turkish, Romani, Serbian, Bosnian, and Aromanian. The Macedonian Sign Language is the country's official sign language.
The history of Macedonians has been shaped by population shifts and political developments in the southern Balkans, especially within the region of Macedonia. The ideas of separate Macedonian identity grew in significance after the First World War, both in Vardar and among the left-leaning diaspora in Bulgaria, and were endorsed by the Comintern. During the Second World War these ideas were supported by the Communist Partisans, but the decisive point in the ethnogenesis of this South Slavic people was the creation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia after the World War II, as a new state in the framework of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
The geographical distribution of speakers of Macedonian refers to the total number of native speakers of Macedonian, an East South Slavic language that serves as the official language of North Macedonia. Estimates of the number of native and second language speakers of Macedonian varies; the number of native speakers in the country ranges from 1,344,815 according to the 2002 census in North Macedonia to 1,476,500 per linguistic database Ethnologue in 2016. Estimates of the total number of speakers in the world include 3.5 million people. Macedonian is studied and spoken as a second language by all ethnic minorities in the country.
The Faculty of Philology is one of the constituent schools of the University of Belgrade. The school's purpose is to train and educate its students in the academic study or practice in linguistics and philology.
The Eastern South Slavic dialects form the eastern subgroup of the South Slavic languages. They are spoken mostly in Bulgaria and North Macedonia, 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 of South Slavic.
Samuil Borisovich Bernstein was a Soviet linguist, known for his work on Slavic languages, in particular Bulgarian.
The Albanian–Romanian linguistic relationship is a field of the research of the ethnogenesis of both peoples. The common phonological, morphological and syntactical features of the two languages have been studied for more than a century. Both languages are part of the Balkan sprachbund but there are certain elements shared only by Albanian and Romanian and its close relatives descended from Common Romanian. Aside from Latin, and from shared Greek, Slavic and Turkish elements, other characteristics and words are attributed to the Paleo-Balkan linguistic base: Illyrian, Thracian, Dacian and/or Thraco-Illyrian, Daco-Thracian. Similarities between Romanian and Albanian are not limited to their common Balkan features and the assumed substrate words: the two languages share calques and proverbs, and display analogous phonetic changes.
