History of The Macedonian Language - Ottoman Era

Ottoman Era

In the 14th century, the Ottoman Turks conquered most of the Balkans. While the written language remained static as a result of Turkish domination, the spoken dialects moved further apart. Only very slight traces of texts written in the Macedonian language survive from the 16th and 17th centuries.

The first printed work that included written specimens of the Macedonian language was a multilingual "conversational manual", that was printed during the Ottoman era. It was published in 1793 and contained texts written by a priest in the dialect of the Ohrid region. In the Ottoman Empire, religion was the primary means of social differentiation, with Muslims forming the ruling class and non-Muslims the subordinate classes.

The Eastern Orthodox Church, to which the majority of Christian Slavs are members, was and is still headed by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Patriarchate embarked on a policy of Hellenisation. In the view of the Orthodox Church, the Orthodox Christian Slavs were Greek, and so should speak Greek. During the renaissance of South Slavic nationalism in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Bulgarians of Macedonia and Bulgaria fought against this policy. This fight culminated in the formation of the Bulgarian Exarchate, an autonomous religious authority for Bulgarians, in 1870.

The East Bulgarians intended for the standard language of the Orthodox Slavs to be Bulgarian based on the eastern variety spoken in Thraco-Moesian, the Macedonian Bulgarians rejected this in favour of a standard Bulgarian language, but significantly influenced by the more western dialects of Macedonia.