Macedonian IDN Domains

Macedonian is a language primarily spoken in the Republic of Macedonia, where it is the official language. Macedonian is also a recognized minority language in Albania, Romania, and Serbia. Macedonian falls under the Indo-European language family. It is derived from the Baltic-Slavic language group and continues to be divided further into the Slavic language group, then into the South Slavic group, and finally into the Eastern South Slavic language group.

Macedonian is the native language of approximately 2 to 2.5 million people and it is regulated by the Macedonian Language Institute. Macedonian uses the Macedonian alphabet and a Cyrillic script. The Macedonian alphabet was developed by linguists after World War II. Prior to the modern Macedonian alphabet, the Macedonia written language used the Early Cyrillic alphabet and the Cyrillic script with influence from the Serbian or Bulgarian alphabets.

There has been some debate over the distinctiveness of the language. Some describe Macedonian as being a dialect of Bulgarian or Serbian, however the general consensus among academics consider Macedonian its own language within the South Slavic dialect.