Macedonian alphabet

Ѓ and Ќ

In "On Macedonian Matters", Krste Misirkov used the combinations Г and К to represent the phonemes /ɟ/ and /c/, which are unique to Macedonian among South Slavic languages. In his magazine Vardar, Misirkov used the letters Ѓ and Ќ. Eventually, Ѓ and Ќ were adopted for the alphabet.

In 1887, Temko Popov of the Secret Macedonian Committee used the digraphs гј and кј in his article "Who is guilty?". The following year, the committee published the "Macedonian primer" (written by Kosta Grupče and Naum Evro) which used the Serbian letters Ђ and Ћ for these phonemes.

Marko Cepenkov, Gjorgjija Pulevski and Partenij Zografski used ГЬ and КЬ.

Despite their forms, Ѓ and Ќ are ordered not after Г and К, but after Д and Т respectively, based on phonetic similarity. This corresponds to the alphabet positions of Serbian Cyrillic Ђ and Ћ respectively. These letters often correspond to Macedonian Ѓ and Ќ in cognates (for example, Macedonian "шеќер" (šeḱer, sugar) is analogous to Serbo-Croatian "шећер/šećer"), but they are phonetically different.

Ѕ

The Cyrillic letter Dze (S s), representing the sound /d͡z/, is based on Dzělo, the eighth letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet. Although a homoglyph to the Latin letter S, the two letters are not directly related. Although Ѕ is generally transcribed as dz, it is a distinct phoneme and is not analogous to ДЗ, which is also used in Macedonian orthography for /d.z/. Ѕ is sometimes described as soft-dz. Dimitar Mirčev was most likely the first writer to use this letter in print prior to the standardization of 1944.

The letter Ѕ was used by Kiril Pejčinovikj, Marko Cepenkov, and Dimitar Mirčev prior to the standardization of 1944.

Ј

Prior to standardization, the IPA phoneme /j/ (represented by Ј in the modern alphabet) was represented variously as:

• Й/й (by Gjorgjija Pulevski in "Macedonian fairy");
• І/і (by Misirkov in On Macedonian Matters, Marko Cepenkov, Dimitar Mirčev, in four of Gjorgjija Pulevski's works, in the "Macedonian primer" by the Secret Macedonian Committee and by members of the Loza movement);
• Ј/ј (by Gjorgjija Pulevski in his "Dictionary of four languages" and "Dictionary of three languages", and by Temko Popov in his article "Who is guilty?"). Krste Misirkov and Dimitrija Čupovski opposed the use of j and preferred the letter iota (i) instead. Eventually the Ј was selected to represent /j/.

Љ and Њ

The letters Љ and Њ (/ʎ/ and /ɲ/) are from the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet. Historically, Macedonian writers have also used:

• The digraphs ЛЬ and НЬ (used by Marko Cepenkov, Gjorgjija Pulevski and in the "Macedonian primer" of the Secret Macedonian Committee)
• The digraphs ЛЈ and НЈ (used by Temko Popov)
• The combinations Л and Н (used by Krste Misirkov and Dimitar Mirčev)

Џ

The letter Џ (representing the phoneme /dʒ/) was adopted from the Serbian alphabet. It was used by Georgi Dimovich in 18th century, Kiril Pejčinovikj, Marko Cepenkov, and Gjorgjija Pulevski in four of his works, as well as by the Secret Macedonian Committee and Dimitar Mirčev. Misirkov used the digraph ДЖ.

First Commission

The first commission held discussions from 27 November to 4 December 1944, and was composed of Macedonian academics, intellectuals and writers. Apart from Koneski, most of the other members of the commission were not professional linguists. Milka Balvanlieva-Đorđević and Venko Markovski recommended that everyone in Vardar Macedonia should be permitted to write "the way he wants". Gjorgji Kiselinov told the other participants to speed up the work "because we don't have time to wait until one of our dialects develops into a literary language." Milka Balvanlieva and Blaže Koneski suggested the adoption of Serbian Cyrillic. Per Victor Friedman, Koneski did so for linguistic and pedagogical reasons. However, most participants advocated for the creation of a distinct Macedonian alphabet. Koneski argued that most Macedonians were educated with Serbian Cyrillic and insisted that any other choice would make them illiterate. He suggested the Serbian palatal equivalents (ћ and ђ), but the other participants regarded them as "too Serbian." The letter ъ divided Markovski and Koneski, as the former supported it and the latter opposed it. While some Macedonian dialects contain a clear phonemic schwa and used a Bulgarian-style Ъ, according to Friedman and Koneski (being supported by other members of the commission such as Krum Tošev), the western dialects – on which the literary language is based – do not. Koneski objected to the inclusion of the Big Yer on the basis that since there was no Big Yer in the literary language (not yet standardized), there was no need for it to be represented in the alphabet and that by excluding it from the alphabet, speakers of schwa-dialects would more rapidly adapt to the standard dialect. On the other hand, Bulgarian opponents of Koneski indicated that this phoneme is distributed among the western Macedonian dialects too and a letter Ъ should be included in the literary language.

In his memoirs about the commission, Markovski depicted the conflict between him and Koneski as a national one, regarding Koneski among the people with pro-Serbian views, "dubious past" who were "not specialists". Due to his project on the alphabet and grammar not addressed by the commission, mostly because of Koneski, Gjorgji Kiselinov also said that he was marginalized by Koneski as his family was pro-Bulgarian, while Koneski's was pro-Serbian. However, the transcript of the debates does not support the national dimension as Markovski familiarized the other participants with Misirkov. Koneski was only present in the first day because he did not see the realization of productive results and the lack of young people in the commission.

The committee chose the dialects of Veles, Prilep and Bitola (referred to as "central" by the participants") as the basis for the literary language (as Misirkov had in 1903), and proposed a Cyrillic alphabet. Per academic Alexis Heraclides, these dialects were chosen because they were widely used and understood by most Macedonians and distant from both Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian. The first version of the alphabet was announced on 28 December 1944. The first commission's recommendations for the alphabet were the following:

• The Serbian Ј and Џ;
• The Early Cyrillic Ѕ;
• The Early Cyrillic Ъ (schwa)
• Markovski's versions of Љ, Њ, Ќ and Ѓ (which contained a small circle in the bottom-right of Л, Н and К, and a small circle in the top-right of Г).

The commission's recommendations were rejected by ASNOM. Per Friedman, there were two contradictory reasons for the rejection of the commission's work. One was because some political authorities, such as Strahil Gigov, who wanted to involve Russian linguists in the codification, while the other reason was the assessment of the commission's work as inconsistent and insufficiently independent. This latter reason was supported by Koneski.

Second Commission

The second language commission was established on 15 January 1945. The commission worked in March 1945. It included Vojislav Ilić, Vasil Iljoski, Blaže Koneski, Venko Markovski, Mirko Pavlovski and Krum Tošev. The entire agitprop section of the Central Committee of CPM was engaged to work with the members of the commission. Per revisionist historian Stojan Kiselinovski, Radovan Zogović and Milovan Djilas from Belgrade intervened in the commission's work. Serbian Cyrillic was accepted, along with early Cyrillic Ѕ. According to revisionist historian Stojan Risteski, Zogović was responsible for this decision. Gustav Vlahov accused Zogović of imposing his will regarding the adoption of Serbian Cyrillic.

Third Commission and adoption

With the rejection of the proposals of the previous commissions by Lazar Koliševski and his colleagues, a new commission was convened. It included Vasil Iljoski, Blaže Koneski, Venko Markovski, Mirko Pavlovski, Krum Tošev, Kiro Hadživasilev, Vlado Maleski, Ilija Topalovski, Gustav Vlahov and Ivan Mazov. In April 1945, the agitprop section of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia invited Blaže Koneski, Venko Markovski, and Veselinka Malinska to Belgrade for a conversation about the orthography. Per the memoirs of Djilas, Koneski's proposals were accepted. On 3 May 1945, the commission reached an agreement, with the proposal about the alphabet being signed by all participants, and presented its recommendations.

The commission's recommendations were:

• Acceptance of Serbian Ј and Џ;
• Acceptance of Early Cyrillic Ѕ;
• Adoption of Serbian Љ and Њ, which were similar in appearance to Markovski's proposed letters;
• Creation and adoption of Ќ and Ѓ (over Markovski's proposed letter forms); and
• Rejection of Early Cyrillic Ъ (Big Yer).

The Macedonian Ministry of Education accepted the proposal on the same day. On 5 May, the decision about the alphabet was adopted by the government of Democratic Federal Macedonia, which was published in Nova Makedonija. The official adoption of an orthography was realized on 7 June 1945. The governmental decision on the orthography was published in a brochure titled Macedonian Orthography and implemented in the first textbook, Dictionary with Reading Materials for the First Grade. Venko Markovski, Vasil Ivanovski, Pavel Šatev and Panko Brašnarov considered the alphabet as too "Serbified". Due to the absence of a letter for schwa in Macedonian, the apostrophe is used instead.

According to scholar of language politics Tomasz Kamusella, the alphabet is a slightly modified form of Serbian Cyrillic as it uses its graphemes j, љ, њ, џ, while the Macedonian diacritical letters ѓ and ќ were introduced to replace the Serbo-Croatian ђ and ћ. Per linguists Victor Friedman and Brian Joseph, the alphabet was modelled after Serbian Cyrillic.