The geographical distribution of speakers of Macedonian refers to the total number of native speakers of Macedonian, an East South Slavic language that serves as the official language of North Macedonia. Estimates of the number of native and second language speakers of Macedonian varies; the number of native speakers in the country ranges from 1,344,815 according to the 2002 census in North Macedonia to 1,476,500 per linguistic database Ethnologue in 2016. Estimates of the total number of speakers in the world include 3.5 million people. Macedonian is studied and spoken as a second language by all ethnic minorities in the country.
Outside of the country, Macedonian is spoken as a native language by migrant communities throughout the Balkan Peninsula, predominantly by Macedonians who live in the geographical region of Macedonia and post-Yugoslav countries. The actual number of Macedonian native and second language speakers in the region of Macedonia is difficult to establish due to political policies of Greece, Bulgaria and Albania. Several Macedonian dialects are also considered dialects of the Serbian or Bulgarian language, which further hinders establishing the number of native speakers of Macedonian.
Macedonian is also spoken in continental Europe, predominantly in countries of Western and Northern Europe. Other speakers can also be found in the rest of the world, predominantly Australia, Canada and the United States. A 1964 estimate of the emigrant population put the number of Macedonian speakers outside the Balkans at approximately 580,000 people.
North Macedonia
In North Macedonia, according to the 2002 census, among the country's total population of 2,022,547 people, 1,344,815 spoke Macedonian as a native tongue. The number of native speakers in the capital Skopje included 341,340 people. According to data from the census, speakers of Macedonian are the majority in all regions of North Macedonia, except the North-Western regions, which are predominantly populated by native speakers of Albanian. Macedonian is the native language of 70% of all inhabitants of the country. In addition to the Macedonian population, ethnic Albanians, Serbians, Romani, Turkish and Aromanians speak the language to various degrees as secondary speakers.
American linguist Victor Friedman estimated there were 3.5 million speakers in 2001. The annual linguistic database Ethnologue estimated that there were 1,476,500 native speakers of Macedonian in 2016.
Geographical region of Macedonia The areal span of Macedonian that was formed with the settlement of Slavic people to the Balkans covered the historico-geographical region of Macedonia until the beginning of the 20th century. This territory includes Vardar Macedonia – the territory corresponding to today's North Macedonia – and the bordering regions that were conquered by Albania (Mala Prespa and Gollobordë), Greece (Greek Macedonia; north region of current-day Greece) and Bulgaria (Pirin Macedonia; South-West region of current-day Bulgaria) after the Balkan Wars. Macedonian is predominantly spoken in Vardar Macedonia on the territory of North Macedonia. Speakers of Macedonian dialects of Bulgarian have a Bulgarian linguistic and national sense of identity and in Greece, following the Greek Civil War, the number of speakers decreased to a negligible number due to historical events and policies.
According to the official census of 2011, the number of speakers of Macedonian in Albania was 4,443, and 1,404 in Bulgaria (2011). The number of speakers of Macedonian in North Macedonia and regions and territories that are part of the historical region of Macedonia include: CountryPopulation Native speakers Year Estimates Year of estimateNorth Macedonia1,344,8152002 census2.022.500The total number of the population of the Republic of North Macedonia according to the 2002 census. According to Friedman, the vast majority of the country's ethnic minorities who did not indicate Macedonian as their native language speak it to various degrees as a second language.2002Greece——40,000 2004Albania4,443201130,000 2011Bulgaria1,4042011 census——
Greek Macedonia
In Greece, there is no official statistical measure that reports the number of people who have a Macedonian national identity or who speak Macedonian. In the beginning of the 20th century and until the Balkan Wars, the number of Slavophones in the geographical region of Greek Macedonia included 350,000 people (including approximately 41,000 Muslim Slavs). As a result of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey that took place in 1923, and following migration of the Slavic population, caused by the Greek Civil War in the period of 1946–1949, there were approximately 250,000 "Slavophone Greeks" remaining in the country according to the 1951 census. The approximate number of speakers of Macedonian in Greece in the 2000s, according to several different sources ranges between 10,000 and 250,000 people: 10,000–50,000 (according to Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2001); 80,000–120,000 (according to German linguist Harald Haarmann, 2002); up to 200,000 (according to dates published by Russian linguist Rina Pavlovna Usikova, including the number of all Greek Macedonians, regardless of their knowledge of Macedonian).
In Greece, speakers of Macedonian are located predominantly in the Northern regions of the country and in prefectures in the peripheral administrative divisions. Speakers of Macedonian can be found in the prefectures of Central Macedonia, including Pella, Thessaloniki, partially Kilkis (South region), Imathia (Northern region) and Serres (several villages); in the periphery of Western Macedonia, including Florina (70–72 villages), Kastoria (77 villages), partially Kozani (North-Western part); and in the periphery of Epirus in Ioannina (several villages). The number of native speakers and Macedonian language use in these regions has decreased and only a small minority of residents profess a Macedonian ethnic identity. Several Macedonian dialects are native to the Greek region of Macedonia, including Lerin, Lower Prespa, Maleševo-Pirin, Nestram-Kostenar, Kostur, Korča, Solun-Voden and the Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop dialect.
However, according to Riki van Boeschoten, the Slavic dialects of Eastern Greek Macedonia are closer to Bulgarian, and the Central dialect used in the area between Edessa and Salonica is an intermediate between Macedonian and Bulgarian. Peter Trudgill also classifies certain peripheral dialects in the far east of Greek Macedonia as part of the Bulgarian language area. Victor Friedman considers those Macedonian dialects, spoken east from Kilkis, to be transitional to the Bulgarian language.
Some Greek Macedonians after the civil war of 1946–1949 moved to countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Around 40,000 Macedonians from the Greek region of Macedonia migrated to countries of Eastern Europe, including: Albania, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and to Soviet Union countries such as Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Belarus. A part of the Slavic Greeks also migrated to Australia, the United States and Canada. In the 1970s, some Macedonians repatriated from emigration regions to their historical homeland and they mostly returned to the Yugoslav SR Macedonia.
Bulgarian Macedonia
In Bulgaria, speakers of Macedonian are located in the South-Western part of the country, predominantly in the region of Blagoevgrad. According to the 2011 Bulgarian census, 1404 persons in Bulgaria (561 of them in Blagoevgrad Province) declared Macedonian as their native language. The Macedonian language has been subject to different views in Bulgaria through history. Its existence as a minority language was recognized in Communist Bulgaria shortly following World War II. This led to its declaration as official in the region of Pirin Macedonia in 1947, which also included the publishing of newspapers and books in Macedonian and introducing the language as a subject in schools. Following the Tito–Stalin split taking place at the end of 1947, the Bulgarian government and Academy of Sciences turned slowly back to their pre-1946 view that Macedonian was a variant of Bulgarian and that the Slavic population in Blagoevgrad was Bulgarian. After 1958, Macedonian in Bulgaria was restricted to home use only. Changes in attitudes about the existence of the Macedonian ethnicity were also reflected in the number of people reporting to be Macedonian in censuses in the Pirin region: 252,908 in 1946, 178,862 in 1956 and 8,750 in 1965 following complete suppression of the language. Although there is not a clear separating isogloss between the two languages, the influence of both standards during the time, but also the strong Serbo-Croatian linguistic influence over Macedonian dialects in Yugoslav era, led to a horizontal cross-border dialectal divergence. Jouko Lindstedt has assumed that this dividing line maybe in fact the Yat border,Tomasz Kamusella, Motoki Nomachi, Catherine Gibson as ed., The Palgrave Handbook of Slavic Languages, Identities and Borders, Springer, 2016; , p. 436. which goes through geographical Macedonia along the Velingrad – Petrich – Thessaloniki line.Енциклопедия „Пирински край“, том II. Благоевград, Редакция „Енциклопедия“, 1999. . с. 459.
There are two dialects in Bulgaria that are considered Macedonian (transitional to Bulgarian) by Friedman and other linguists in North Macedonia as Božidar Vidoeski and Blaže Koneski: the Maleševo-Pirin (widely spoken in most of Blagoevgrad Province in Bulgaria and Delčevo region in the North Macedonia) and the Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop dialects. Bulgarian linguists consider these dialects to be Bulgarian. In the context of Bulgarian dialectology, the Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop dialects are situated East of the Yat boundary and thus are considered to belong to the Eastern Bulgarian dialects.
Albanian Macedonia In Albania, the Macedonophone population lives in the eastern regions of the country, with the largest number of speakers found in the region of Korçë. It is the primary language in the Pustec district and other populations can be found in Mala Prespa and Golo Brdo.
Macedonian is taught and spoken among the Macedonian minority in Albania. It is taught as a school subject in some primary schools is used for some official purposes. There is one Macedonian radio station and news-journal in circulation.
Post-Yugoslav countries In post-Yugoslav countries, speakers of Macedonian do not form regions with compact communities. An exception to this is the ethnic group of Gorani people, members of which populate the South-West region of Kosovo and the bordering region of Albania. The Gora dialects are defined by Macedonian linguists, among whom Božidar Vidoeski, as part of the Macedonian dialectical system. In Serbia and Croatia, however, these dialects, linguists such as Dalibor Brozović and Pavle Ivić, consider these dialects part of the Serbo-Croatian language while Bulgarian linguists include the Goran dialects in the Western Bulgarian dialectal area. The Gorani people however do not have an ethnic and linguistic self-identity, and during the 2011 census in Kosovo, they either listed their language as Goranski (also known as Našinski), as well as Serbian and Bosnian. In the region of Gora in Kosovo, there were 10.265 Gorani people. In Serbia, the number of Gorani people included 7.767 according to the 2011 census. The Government of Kosovo began to teach Macedonian after it acquired Macedonian-language textbooks and grammar books for the Gorani population.Focus News (4 July 2003) Kosovo Government Acquires Macedonian language and grammar books for Gorani Minority Schools.