Bulgaria insists on denying “Macedonian language”

“There is no point of equality between a language and a literary language. One is a family concept and the other a form (of it). The Bulgarian language includes history and dialects and then the modern literary rule. As for the situation of the so-called literary language of North Macedonia – its history and dialects are Bulgarian.”

This was stated by Anna Kotseva, Associate Professor at the Institute for Bulgarian Language of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, commenting on the recently published pamphlet “The Official Language of the Republic of North Macedonia” on the morning show on BTV’s Novinite news website.

“There is a written regional rule of the Bulgarian language in North Macedonia, which is the result of civil engineering (political machinations) during 1944-45. Since then, we have been talking about the ‘official language’ according to the constitution of North Macedonia. Its wording, whatever it is, does not apply to our constitution,” she said.

According to this period, after World War II, three language committees were formed, the first of which was in fact linguistic and the other two policies, which rejected the directives directly from Belgrade and Moscow.

“The initial attempt, according to Belgrade’s orders, was to accept the Serbian alphabet. It was not accepted,” she continued.

She said the Bulgarian committee had made many concessions.

“We have made many concessions, including the term ‘common history.’ Until 1944-45, we did not have a common history, but there is a history, because there is a political entity, a country, Bulgaria,” said Kotseva, who regularly intervenes in the language issue of North Macedonia, expressing the Bulgarian positions.

Last month, Bulgaria asked Skopje to drop claims that there is a “Macedonian” minority in Bulgaria and to stop claiming the existence of a “Macedonian language,” as reported by Greek City Times.

Although the Macedonian name dispute was resolved between Greece and what we now call North Macedonia with the signing of the Prespa Agreement in 2018, opening the way for the Slavic country to join NATO and the European Union, Bulgaria put these conditions on the neighbouring country before they will green light their accession to the Bloc.

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