Romanization of Macedonian

The Romanization of Macedonian is the transliteration of text in the Macedonian language from the Macedonian Cyrillic alphabet into the Latin alphabet.

Whilst transliteration into the Latin script is easy in principle, there is currently much confusion about which standard to use. For example, the Cyrillic letters ж, ш and ч were always written as "ž", "š" and "č" respectively. In recent times however, the use of "zh", "sh" and "ch" (following English phonetic conventions) or simply "z" "s" and "c" has gained currency, and the former has been officially introduced in the passports issued in the Republic of Macedonia [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/macedonian.htm Omniglot: Macedonian language, alphabet and pronunciation] ] . The use of the latter is quite common when writing Macedonian on the internet as users can tell which sound the letter corresponds to depending on the word. Equally problematic may be the Cyrillic letter џ, which can be found transliterated into Latin as "dž, dzh, dz" or occasionally "x".

Traditionally, Macedonian Romanization was heavily influenced by the Serbo-Croat chapter in its history. Because Macedonian is almost exclusively written in Cyrillic, there has been little need for routine transliteration. Although Macedonian was a recognised as a separate language in post-war Yugoslavia, the majority of dual-alphabet road signs remain which use the old Serbo-Croatian system of Romanization using the special characters "c, č, ć, đ, dž, h, j, lj, nj, š, ž" as well as the exceptional "dz", so road signs point to "Štip", "Kočani", "Medžitlija", "Ćafa San", "Sveti Đorđe", "Ohrid" and the like. All were installed before Macedonian independence.

Since 1991, as measures have been taken to further distance the literary language from its Serbo-Croatian influenced past, there have been some alterations with the transliterations themselves: Cyrillic ќ is transliterated as Latin "ḱ" rather than "ć", but for practical reasons, it may instead be "kj" (this causes little if any confusion). Correspondingly, its voiced counterpart ѓ is rendered as "ǵ" rather than "đ", although it also be found in the shape of "Gj". "Lj" and "Nj" sometimes appears as "ĺ" and "ń".

The ISO 9 transliteration standard contains one version where every Cyrillic character is rendered by a single Latin letter with diacritic. This necessitates the use of uncommon letter-accent combinations such as "ẑ" (instead of "dz"), "l̂" (instead of "lj"), and "d̂" (instead of "dž").

A version described by members of the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1970Macedonian Latin alphabet, Pravopis na makedonskiot literaturen jazik, B.Vidoeski, T.Dimitrovski, K.Koneski, K.Tošev, R.Ugrinova Skalovska- Prosvetno delo Skopje, 1970, p.99] is regarded as officially codified todayVictor Friedman, "Macedonian", in: B. Comrie (ed.), "The Slavonic Languages"; see also [http://www.seelrc.org:8080/grammar/pdf/stand_alone_macedonian.pdf extended online version] . See also US Library of Congress romanization tables [http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/serbian.pdf] .] and is taught in schools in the Republic of Macedonia. ["Da čitame i pišuvame Latinica", primary school textbook.]

See also

* Macedonian alphabet
* Macedonian language
* Romanization
* Romanization of Belarusian
* Romanization of Bulgarian
* Romanization of Russian
* Romanization of Ukrainian

Notes and references