Skopska Crna Gora dialect

The location of the Skopska Crna Gora dialect among the others Macedonian dialects

	Nasreddin Hodja fooled by Children for His Donkey Excerpt from a tale told by a man from Brodec, modern Čučer-Sandevo Municipality.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

The Skopska Crna Gora dialect (Macedonian: Скопскоцрногорски дијалект, Skopskocrnogorski dijalekt) is a member of the western subgroup of the northern group of dialects of the Macedonian language. The dialect is spoken on small territory northern of Skopje on the mountain Skopska Crna Gora. The name of the dialect is derived from the name of the mountain because there is no larger city in that territory. The Skopska Crna Gora dialect is spoken in the villages Kučevište, Čučer-Sandevo, Mirkovci and other smaller villages. Since this dialect is in the same group with the Lower Polog dialect, they share many similarities on morphological and phonological level.

Phonological characteristics

• use of A instead of E: трева / treva > трава / trava (grass), орев / orev > орав / orav (nut);
• retained use of ъ Big Yer: лаже / laže > лъже / lăže (lie);
• use of U instead of the Old Church Slavonic letter ON: пат / pat > пут / put (road), внук / vnuk > унук / unuk (nephew).

The phonological characteristics are nearer standard Serbian than Macedonian.

Morphological characteristics

• use of the letter V between vowels: тоа / toa > това / tova (that)
• palatal J before the letter E at the beginning of a word: јазик / jazik> језик / jezik (tongue), јаже > јуже (rope);
• the consonant group MN is replaced with the consonant group ML: многу / mnogu > млогу / mlogu (too much);
• use of the preposition U instead of the preposition VO: во град/ vo grad > у град / u grad (in city)

Typical words

There are many words which are typical of the Skopska Crna Gora dialect.^[1]

• равно / ravno instead of рамно / ramno (flat)
• овоа / ovoa instead of ова / ova (this)
• плевна / plevna instead of племна / plemna

References

Dialects of Macedonian
Western	Central Prilep-Bitola Kičevo-Poreče Skopje-Veles Western and northwestern Upper Polog Debar Drimkol-Golo Brdo Galičnik Reka Vevčani-Radožda Struga Ohrid Upper Prespa Lower Prespa
Northern	Eastern Kumanovo2 Kratovo2 Kriva Palanka2 Ovče Pole Western Skopska Crna Gora Lower Polog Gora2
Southeastern	Eastern Štip - Kočani Strumica Tikveš-Mariovo Maleševo-Pirin1 Southeastern Solun-Voden1 Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop1 Nestram-Kostenar Kostur Korča
1 Also considered a dialect of Bulgarian. 2 Considered to be a part of the transitional Torlak dialect and as a subdialect of Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbo-Croatian.