• LESSON 1
  
  Macedonian language and alphabet
  The Letters of the Macedonian alphabet
  Pronunciation
  —The pronunciation of the vowels
  —The pronunciation of the consonants
  The Greetings
  
   

MACEDONIAN LANGUAGE AND ALPHABET

Macedonian, the official language of the Republic of Macedonia, is an Indo-European language from the family of Slavic languages belonging to the South-Slavic group. At the same time, it is a Balkan language. It was proclaimed the official language of the Republic of Macedonia at the First Session of the Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia, held on August 2, 1944. Macedonian Standard is based on the central variants of the western dialects.

Macedonian shares a set of grammatical features that set it apart from all other Slavic languages except the Bulgarian language:
— a suffixed definite article that comes after the noun, the adjective or the possessive pronoun (kniga - book; knigata - the book);
— the loss of case forms, except the vocative form in some situations (zemja - land; zemjo moja - you, my land);
— analytic declination - in Macedonian, as in English, prepositions have replaced cases as a way of showing the grammatical relationships between different parts of a sentence (Daj mu ja knigata na deteto! - Give the book to the child!; Knigata za deteto. - The book about the child.);
— three-syllable accent (the accent always falls on the third syllable from the end in words of three syllables or more) and the clear pronunciation of unaccented vowels; (pla-ni-na ; pla-ni-na-ta ; pla-ni-na-ri-te);
— double object (Jas ja sakam nea. - I love her.; Jas go sakam nego. - I love him.);
— constructions with ima / nema - has / hasn't (Imam videno... - I have seen...; Nemam videno... - I have not seen...);
— constructions with sum (to be) + verb-adjective (Ne sum jaden utrovo. - I didn't eat this morning.), etc.

The Macedonian language uses the Cyrillic alphabet. There are 31 sounds in the Macedonian language. In the Macedonian Cyrillic alphabet, there is one symbol for each sound, that is, there are as many letters as sounds (31), making it completely phonetic. Spelling in Macedonian does not present any difficulties since there is one symbol for each sound. Thus, Macedonian is surely one of the easiest languages to learn to read and write

THE LETTERS OF THE MACEDONIAN ALPHABET

The Macedonian Cyrillic alphabet has 31 letters (5 vowels and 26 consonants).

The Letters of the Macedonian alphabet are:

PRONUNCIATION


THE PRONUNCIATION OF THE VOWELS

The vowels а, е, и, о, у are pronounced like their English equivalents in the following words:

NOTE: The consonant Р (latin equivalent: R) in some positions in a word has a vowel function. In some of those positions, when a word begins with р or when there is a vowel before the р, then the letter р is writen using the sign " ' " before it:  'р. When р (latin equivalent: r) has a vowel function it sounds much like the middle sound in the English words girl, bird or serve:
          
For example, the consonant Р has a vowel function in these words:
                    прст  /prst/ - finger  >  pronunciation: something like perst (pirst) ; like ir in English first
                    прв  /prv/ - first  >  pronunciation: something like perv
                    дрво  /drvo/ - tree  >  pronunciation: something like dervo
                    четврток /chetvrtok/ - Thursday  >  pronunciation: something like chet-ver-talk
                    'рж  /'rzh/ - rye  >  pronunciation: something like erzh
                    'рбет  /'rbet/ - back, backbone  >  pronunciation: something like erbet
                    за'ржи  /za'rzhi/ - to start neighing  >  pronunciation: something like zah-er-zhee   *green is the accent

The vocal schwa [ə] that appears in some dialects and words is written using the sign '`': к`смет [kəsmet], с`ска [səska], ф`стак [fəstak], т`нка [tənka], т`га [təga], В`лков [Vəlkov] etc.
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF THE CONSONANTS

The consonants б,в,г,д,ѓ,ж,з,ѕ,ј,к,л,љ,м,н,њ,п,р,с,т,ќ,ф,х,ц,ч,џ,ш are pronounced like their English equivalents in the following words:

THE GREETINGS

Here are the Macedonian greetings and their English equivalents. The most common greeting expression is Здраво! /zdrávo/ - Hello!.

Here are other greetings:

Добро утро! /dobró utro/ - Good morning!
Добар ден! /dóbar den/ - Good afternoon!
Добровечер! /dobróvecher/ - Good evening!
Добра ноќ! /dóbra nókj/ - Good night!
Пријатно! /príjatno/ - Have a nice day! ; Good bye!
Довидување! /dovidúvanje/ - Good bye!
Збогум! /zbógum/ - Farewell!
Како сте? /káko ste/ - How are you? ; How do you do?
Многу добро! /mnógu dóbro/ - Very well!
Благодарам! /blagódaram/ - Thank you!