The difference in Bulgarian and Macedonian
A non-political article on the difference between the two closely related Slavic languages
Bulgarian and Macedonian are both Eastern South Slavic languages. They evolved from Old Church Slavonic or Old Bulgarian, the first attested Slavic language.
Old Church Slavonic evolved into Middle Bulgarian. Modern Bulgarian developed in the 16th century.
In the 19th century, the western dialects of Bulgarian were termed Macedonian. Macedonian was standardised in 1945.
Bulgarian and Macedonian show some level of mutual intelligibility, but they are not as close as Serbo-Croatian dialects. As East South Slavic is a dialect continuum, the western dialects of Bulgarian are really close to Macedonian.
North Macedonia faced constant Serbianisation and anti-Bulgarian policies whenenever Serbian powers controlled it. In turn, Bulgarian powers also enforced Bulgarisation and anti-Serbian policies whenever they controlled it.
As a result, there is a great Serbian influence on Macedonian. Macedonian has been purified to reduce words which are common in Bulgarian or Serbian, replacing them with archaic or regional vocabulary.
Bulgarian, on the other hand, has more Turkish and Russian words, which were replaced in the 19th century with Old Church Slavonic words. In Macedonian, Russian words were replaced by coining new words or with their Serbo-Croatian equivalents.
In Macedonian, vowels occur more commonly per sentence compared to any other Slavic language. Ironically, Bulgarian has six vowels while Macedonian has five.
The sixth vowel, schwa, is found in standard Bulgarian but rarely in Macedonian. Macedonian has more consonants; 26, compared to the 21 consonants of Bulgarian.
Standard Bulgarian has preserved the consonant [h], found in Old Church Slavonic. In Macedonian, it has been replaced with [v] or [f]. However, [h] has disappeared in most Bulgarian dialects as well.
While most Bulgarian dialects have only one definite article, Macedonian has three of them: the, this and that, each with their masculine, feminine and neutral forms. The only definite article in standard Bulgarian is the.
Macedonian is more analytic compared to other Slavic languages, and uses prepositions frequently. Bulgarian has a freer word order than most languages. Macedonian has a subject-verb-object (SVO) word order, although flexible.
Bulgarian has a free word stress, i.e. the stress can fall on any syllable of the word. This is also the case for Old Church Slavonic and the easternmost dialects of Macedonian.
In the other dialects of Macedonian, however, the stress is antepenultimate. That is, the third-last syllable is stressed in polysyllabic words while the second syllable is stressed in bisyllabic words. A monosyllabic word is always stressed.
Originally posted on Quora.
