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Macedonian alphabet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Macedonian language |
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Like all modern Cyrillic alphabets, the modern Macedonian alphabet (Macedonian: Македонска азбука, Makedonska azbuka) is ultimately based on the Cyrillic alphabet (кирилица, kirilica) of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius. The modern Macedonian alphabet was developed by Krum Tošev, Krume Kepeski and Blaže Koneski, who in turn based their alphabet on Vuk Karadžić's Serbian phonetic alphabet, and on the work of Krste Misirkov. The alphabet was officially adopted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia on May 3, 1945. Previously, Macedonian had been written using the Early Cyrillic alphabet, or later using the Cyrillic alphabet with local adaptations and/or characters from the Serbian or Bulgarian alphabets.
This article treats the application of Cyrillic to the Macedonian language exclusively.
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Macedonian is a southern Slavic language with about 2 million speakers in the Republic of Macedonia, Greece, Albania, the USA, Canada and Australia. Macedonian became the official language of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia in 1944.
From the end of the 16th century vernacular Macedonian dialect, referred in contemporary texts as Bulgarian, began to appear in writing[citation needed]. The modern standard written version of Macedonian only appeared in 1945 - the first edition of Nova Makedonia newspaper. Since then many literary works have been published in Macedonian. Earlier attempts to write in Macedonian included Krste Misirkov's "On the Macedonian Matters" published in 1903. Venko Markovski is one of the creators of the first version of the Macedonian alphabet, which did not contain the letters taken from the Serbian alphabet but contained the "ъ" vowel, characteristic of the Bulgarian alphabet. His version was rejected and a second version, which was closer to the Cyrillic alphabet of Serbo-Croatian was approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.
The following table provides the upper and lower case forms of the Macedonian alphabet, along with the IPA value for each letter:
| Cyrillic IPA |
А а /a/ |
Б б /b/ |
В в /v/ |
Г г /ɡ/ |
Д д /d/ |
Ѓ ѓ /ɟ/ |
Е е /ɛ/ |
Ж ж /ʒ/ |
З з /z/ |
Ѕ ѕ /ʣ/ |
И и /i/ |
Ј ј /j/ |
| Cyrillic IPA |
К к /k/ |
Л л /l/ |
Љ љ /ʎ/ |
М м /m/ |
Н н /n/ |
Њ њ /ɲ/ |
О о /ɔ/ |
П п /p/ |
Р р /r/ |
С с /s/ |
Т т /t/ |
Ќ ќ /c/ |
| Cyrillic IPA |
У у /u/ |
Ф ф /f/ |
Х х /h/ |
Ц ц /ʦ/ |
Ч ч /ʧ/ |
Џ џ /ʤ/ |
Ш ш /ʃ/ |
Apart from the standard sounds of the letters Ѓ and Ќ above, in certain dialects these letters posses the sounds of /ʥ/ and /ʨ/, respectively.
The above table contains the printed form of the Macedonian alphabet, whereas the handwritten alphabet below is significantly different.
Here each letter is illustrated first in its lower, then in its upper case.
The Macedonian language contains a small number of unique phonemes, hence the need for unique Macedonian letters.
With the codification of the Macedonian literary language in 1944, the alphabet adopted was ultimately based on that of Vuk Karadžić's Serbian phonetic alphabet. This has subsequently led to criticisms of "Serbianisation", particularly from Bulgarian linguists. However, the rationale for adopting a phonetic alphabet can be explained by looking at earlier Macedonian texts, namely, Krste Misirkov's landmark book On Macedonian Matters (Macedonian: За Македонцките Работи, Za Makedonckite Raboti).
In "On Macedonian Matters", Misirkov used the combinations г' and к' to represent the phonemes /ɟ/ and /c/, while Marko Cepenkov used гь and кь. Eventually, Ѓ and Ќ were adopted for the Macedonian alphabet.
The Cyrillic letter Ѕ (IPA value /dz/) is based on Dzělo, the eighth letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet. Both the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet and the Russian alphabet also had a letter Ѕ, although the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet has been out of use since the 1860s, and the letter Ѕ was abolished in Russian in the early 1700s. Although a homoglyph to the Latin alphabet letter S, the two letters are not related.
The letters Љ and Њ are undoubtedly of Serbian origin, but their predecessors are clearly illustrated in Misirkov's book as Л' and Н', and even earlier in other texts as ЛЬ and НЬ.
In On Macedonian Matters, Misirkov uses the letter І where Ј is used today. Ј and Џ were adopted from the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet.
The accented letters ѐ, ѝ and ô are not regarded as separate letters, nor are they accented letters (as in French, for example). Rather, they are the standard letters е, и and о topped with an accent when they stand in words that have homographs, so as to differentiate between them (for example, сè се фаќа, sè se faća - all may be touched).
- Стојан Киселиновски "Кодификација на македонскиот литературен јазик", Дневник, 1339, сабота, 18 март 2006. (Macedonian)