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This article discusses thephonological system ofStandard Macedonian (unless otherwise noted) based on thePrilep-Bitoladialect. For discussion of other dialects, seeMacedonian dialects. Macedonian possesses fivevowels, onesemivowel, threeliquid consonants, threenasal stops, three pairs offricatives, two pairs ofaffricates, a non-paired voiceless fricative, nine pairs of voiced and unvoiced consonants and four pairs ofstops.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | ɛ | (ə) | ɔ |
| Open | a |
Theschwa is phonemic in many dialects (varying in closeness to[ʌ] or[ɨ]) but its use in the standard language is marginal.[1] It is written with an apostrophe:’рж, за’ржи, В’чков, К’чев, К’шање, С’лп.[3] It can also be used for dialectal effect, e.g.,к’смет,с’нце. When spelling aloud, each consonant is followed by the schwa. The individual letters ofacronyms are pronounced with the schwa in the same way:МПЦ ([mə.pə.t͡sə]).[1] The lexicalized acronymsСССР ([ɛs.ɛs.ɛs.ɛr]) andМТ ([ɛm.tɛ]) (a brand of cigarettes), are among the few exceptions.[1]
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Vowel length is not phonemic. Vowels in stressed open syllables in disyllabic words with stress on the penult can be realized as long, e.g.,Велес[ˈvɛːlɛs]ⓘ 'Veles'. The sequence/aa/ is often realized phonetically as[aː]; e.g.,саат/saat/[saːt]'hour'.
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar | Palatal | Velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n3 | ɲ | ||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | c1 | k | ||
| voiced | b | d | ɟ1 | g | |||
| Affricate | voiceless | ts | tʃ | ||||
| voiced | dz | dʒ | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | x4 | ||
| voiced | v | z | ʒ | ||||
| Approximant | ɫ2,3 | l2 | j | ||||
| Trill | r | ||||||
^1/c/ and/ɟ/ are officially[according to whom?] dorsal-palatal plosives, and some speakers pronounce them that way. They have various other pronunciations, depending on dialect. In someNorthern Macedonian dialects they are alveolo-palatal affricates[t͡ɕ] and[d͡ʑ] (just like inSerbo-Croatian), while in the urban Prilep subdialect of thePrilep-Bitola dialect, they have merged into/t͡ʃ/ and/d͡ʒ/, respectively.
^2 Thevelarised dental lateral/ɫ/ (always written⟨л⟩) and the non-velarised alveolar lateral/l/ contrast inminimal pairs such asбела/ˈbɛɫa/'white' andбеља/ˈbɛla/'trouble'. Before/ɛ/,/i/, and/j/, only/l/ occurs and is then written⟨л⟩ instead of⟨љ⟩.[6]
^3 The alveolar trill (/r/) issyllabic between two consonants, e.g.,прст[ˈpr̩st]'finger'. The dental nasal (/n/) and velarised lateral (/ɫ/) are also syllabic in certain foreign words, e.g.,њутн[ˈɲutn̩]'newton',Попокатепетл[pɔpɔkaˈtɛpɛtɫ̩]'Popocatépetl'.
^4 The velar fricative/x/ does not occur natively in the language. It has been introduced or retained in Standard Macedonian under the following circumstances: (1) new foreign words:хотел/xɔˈtɛɫ/'hotel', (2) toponyms:Охрид/ˈɔxrit/'Ohrid', (3)Church Slavonicisms:дух/dux/'spirit', (4) new literary words:доход/ˈdɔxɔt/'income', and (5) to disambiguate between potential homophones:⟨храна⟩/ˈxrana/'food' vs.⟨рана⟩/ˈrana/'injury, wound'.[4]
At morpheme boundaries (represented in spelling) and at the end of a word (not represented in spelling), voicing opposition isneutralized.
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Theword stress in Macedonian isantepenultimate, meaning it falls on the third from lastsyllable in words with three or more syllables, and on the first or only syllable in other words. This is sometimes disregarded when the word has entered the language more recently or from a foreign source. The following rules apply:
Exceptions include:
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)Macedonian language (македонски јазик) | ||
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