MACEDONIAN LANGUAGE

Macedonian Makedonski Jazik South Slavic language that is most closely related to Bulgarian and is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Macedonian is the official language of the Republic of Macedonia, where it is spoken by more than 1.3 million people. The Macedonian language is also spoken in adjacent areas of Greek and Bulgarian Macedonia and in Australia, Yugoslavia, and Albania. Macedonian, like Bulgarian, no longer declines nouns for case. There are three main dialect groups: (1) the northern dialects, similar to the neighbouring Serbian dialects, (2) the eastern dialects, similar to and gradually shading into Bulgarian, and (3) the western dialects, most distinct from Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian and therefore chosen by the Yugoslav authorities in 1944 as the basis for the standard language.