Macedonian Alphabet & Letters

The Macedonian alphabet has 31 letters, in this order: А Б В Г Д Ѓ Е Ж З Ѕ И Ј К Л Љ М Н Њ О П Р С Т Ќ У Ф Х Ц Ч Џ Ш. Its spelling is highly phonemic: letters generally represent one phoneme each, though pronunciation can change by context—for example, final б in леб (bread) is often devoiced to [p]. Many letters look and sound like their Latin cousins (А, Е, К, М, О, Т); some look Latin but are not: В is v, Н is n, Р is r, С is s, У is u and Х is h.

The familiar Slavic ones: Ж ж is zh, the s in pleasure (жена, woman); Ц ц is ts (цвет, flower); Ч ч is ch (чаша, glass); Ш ш is sh (што, what). Ј ј is the y sound of yes, borrowed from the Latin J (јас, I; Македонија). Ј also writes the y glide before a vowel, so ја, ју and јо are simply spelled with two letters.

Four letters each represent a single consonant. Љ љ is a soft l, like lli in million (љубов, love), and Њ њ a soft n, like ny in canyon (њива, field). Џ џ is the j of jam (џеб, pocket). Ѕ ѕ, called dze, is dz, as in ѕвезда (star) and ѕид (wall). Ѕ looks exactly like the Latin S and Ј like the Latin J, but they are different characters: copy them from the Cyrillic set, or a search, a spell checker or a password will not match.

Ѓ, Ќ and Ѕ: the letters only Macedonian has

Ѓ ѓ and Ќ ќ are a Г and a К with an acute accent, and they are the letters that make written Macedonian recognisable at a glance. They stand for soft palatal sounds made with the middle of the tongue against the palate: ѓ is close to the gy of Hungarian Magyar, ќ close to the ty of Hungarian, somewhere between k-y and ch. You meet them constantly: ќе (will, the future particle), куќа (house), ќерка (daughter), среќа (luck, happiness), меѓу (between), ѓавол (devil). Words that have ќ and ѓ in Macedonian often have ћ and ђ in Serbian (Serbian кућа, Macedonian куќа) and шт, жд in Bulgarian.

Ѕ ѕ is one of the oldest letters in Cyrillic: dzelo was in the alphabet of the earliest Slavonic manuscripts and later fell out of use. Macedonian brought it back as a living letter in 1945, and it is now the only standard language that writes it. That is why people search for "the Macedonian letter dz": in Macedonian it is one letter, not two.

The accents are not optional decoration. Ѓ and Ќ are single Unicode characters (U+0403 Ѓ, U+0453 ѓ, U+040C Ќ, U+045C ќ), not a letter plus a mark. They sit in Unicode's basic Cyrillic block next to the Serbian and Ukrainian letters, so every common font has them.

Ѐ ѐ, Ѝ ѝ, the apostrophe and Macedonian quotation marks „ “

Macedonian spelling uses a grave accent on two short words so that they do not look like others. ѝ is the short pronoun "to her" and stands apart from и, "and": Ѝ ја дадов книгата (I gave her the book). сѐ means "everything" or "still" and stands apart from се, "oneself" or "(they) are": Сѐ е во ред (everything is fine). Both letters have their own Unicode characters: Ѐ U+0400, ѐ U+0450, Ѝ U+040D, ѝ U+045D. Typing a plain е or и in their place is a common shortcut in chats, but it is not the standard spelling.

Stress is not marked in ordinary text. In most native Macedonian words of three or more syllables, it falls on the third syllable from the end: македонски, Македонија (Ma-ke-do-ni-ja). An apostrophe ’ marks the neutral vowel in a few words that begin with a vowel-like р, such as ’рж (rye) and ’рбет (spine), and the schwa of dialect words when they are written down.

Macedonian opens quotations low and closes them high: „Бели мугри“, the title of Kočo Racin's poetry collection. The closing mark is the one English uses to open a quote, “. A dash – introduces dialogue in fiction, and the ellipsis … is the same as in English.

How to type Macedonian letters on a keyboard and phone

Windows: in Settings, under Time & language, add Macedonian and choose one of its keyboard layouts, then switch with Win + Space or Alt + Shift. The Macedonian layout is largely phonetic: А sits on A, С on S, Д on D, Ф on F and Ј on J. Mac: add the Macedonian input source in System Settings under Keyboard. Phones: add Macedonian in Gboard, Samsung Keyboard or the iPhone keyboard settings and switch with the globe key; if ѐ or ѝ is not offered on a long press of е or и, copy it from this page.

For a single character in Microsoft Word, type its code and press Alt + X: 0453 for ѓ, 045C for ќ, 0455 for ѕ, 0458 for ј, 0459 for љ, 045A for њ, 045F for џ, 0450 for ѐ, 045D for ѝ, 201E for „. In HTML write ѓ for ѓ, ќ for ќ, ѕ for ѕ, ѐ for ѐ, ѝ for ѝ, „ for „ and “ for the closing “.

Macedonian letters to English: Cyrillic to Latin

Most letters map one to one. The special ones are written in two styles. The everyday style, used in passports, on many signs and in English-language texts, writes ж zh, ч ch, ш sh, ѓ gj, ќ kj, ѕ dz, џ dzh or dž, ј j, љ lj, њ nj, ц c and х h: Ѓорѓи is Gjorgji, Кочо Kocho. A scholarly diacritic style writes ž, č and š (also used in Serbian and Croatian Latin), plus ǵ and ḱ for Macedonian's special letters: so you will meet both Štip and Shtip, Kičevo and Kichevo for the same towns.

Going the other way is usually straightforward because Macedonian spelling is phonemic: map each Latin letter or digraph to its Cyrillic equivalent. The main traps are pairs that look like one sound in English, dz (Ѕ or Д + З) and dž (Џ), which Macedonian resolves word by word.

Where Macedonian is spoken, and where its alphabet comes from

CLDR estimates about 1.6 million Macedonian speakers, about 1.4 million of them in North Macedonia 🇲🇰, where it is the official language. CLDR also counts some 170,000 speakers of Macedonian in northern Greece 🇬🇷 and around 15,000 in Albania 🇦🇱, near Lake Prespa and in Golo Brdo, and there are large Macedonian communities in Australia, Canada, the United States and Germany. The 2018 Prespa Agreement, under which the country took the name North Macedonia in 2019, names the language Macedonian and places it among the South Slavic languages. For the flag, food and festival emoji of the country, see the North Macedonia collection.

The Ohrid region was an important center of early Slavic literacy. In 886 Saint Clement of Ohrid, a disciple of Saints Cyril and Methodius, founded the Ohrid Literary School on the shore of Lake Ohrid, where thousands of pupils learned to read and write Slavonic. North Macedonia keeps two public holidays for it: 24 May, the day of Saints Cyril and Methodius, and 8 December, Saint Clement's day.

The modern alphabet is young. Krste Misirkov argued for a Macedonian standard in his 1903 book За македонцките работи (On Macedonian Matters), and the alphabet of today was officially adopted on 5 May 1945 by the People's Government of Federal Macedonia, after a commission that included the poet and linguist Blaže Koneski had prepared it. It took Ј, Љ, Њ and Џ from Serbian Cyrillic, revived Ѕ and created Ѓ and Ќ. Macedonian's closest relative is Bulgarian, and the two are largely mutually intelligible; Serbian, Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian also write in Cyrillic, and each has its own collection on this site.