Dimitrov: Macedonian language Originates from Local Bulgarian dialects

A statement of the Bulgarian Co-president of the Macedonian-Bulgarian Commission on Historical Issues Angel Dimitrov in which he claims that the Macedonian language originates from a group of local Bulgarian dialects with borrowed letters from the Serbian alphabet, once again stirred up the public in Macedonia and Bulgaria. “The truth is that around 1945, two commissions have assembled in order to create a new lingual construction, based on three local Bulgarian dialects, with a writing system that borrows several letters from the Serbian alphabet. The main goal of these commissions was for the new lingual construct to be very distinctive from the standard Bulgarian language, hence the origins of the present-day Macedonian language,” Dimitrov said in an interview for “Tomorrow’s Bloc” on the Bulgarian TV BNT. IN meantime, several citizens of Macedonia staged a protest in front of the Bulgarian Embassy in Skopje, as a response to the official position of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAN), that the Macedonian language does not exist, and that the Macedonians speak a variety of Bulgarian language. The American linguist Victor Friedman comments the position of BAN as an attempt of the Bulgarian government to deny the existence of the ethnic Macedonian minority in Bulgaria. “The latest positions of BAN and the Bulgarian government are returning the region 80 years back in time, around the late 1930s during the rule of fascism, when they claimed that the Macedonian language did not exist. In the beginning of the 1990s Bulgaria recognised the independence of Macedonia, hence recognising the language of the Republic of Macedonia. The politics of certain scientists in this region is still connected with fascist ideologies and those periods of history. It was the Prespa Agreement that opened the appetites of official Sofia. The modern Macedonian language exists since the end of the 19th century, and is clearly distinctive from the Bulgarian language,” Friedman comments.