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the language of the present-day Macedonians; one of the principal languages of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Macedonian belongs to the eastern branch of the South Slavic languages. The main dialect groups are the western, eastern, and northern.
The Macedonian literary language had formed by the mid-1940’s from the central subdialects of the western dialect, which is similar to the colloquial language. The alphabet is Slavic (Cyrillic). Literary Macedonian has five vowel phonemes (i, e, a, o, and u) and a syllabic r. Stress is mobile, occurring on the antepenultimate syllable (prochitav, prochitavme). Consonants specific to Macedonian include the affricates S (dz) and U (d£), and the mediopalatals K and g (from Common Slavic *tj and * dj). Nouns have three types of postpositional definite article; oblique case inflections have been lost. The future tense is formed by means of the particle Ke; there are four past tenses (including a perfect tense of the type imam videno, “I have seen”), and indirect tense forms of the indicative and conditional mood. Analytism has developed in Macedonian, as in the other Balkan languages.
REFERENCESSelishchev, A. M. Ocherki po makedonskoi dialektologii, vol. 1. Kazan, 1918.
Usikova, R. P. Morfologiia imeni sushchestvil’nogo iglagola vsovremennom makedonskom literaturnom iazyke. Skopje, 1967.
Koneski, B. Gramatika na makedonskiot literaturen jazik, parts 1-2. Skopje, 1967.
Koneski, B. Istorija no makedonskiot jazik. Skopje, 1965.
Tolovski, D., and V. M. Illich-Svitych. Makedonsko-russkiislovar’. Moscow, 1963.
R. P. USIKOVA