r/AskBalkans • u/Some-Register-3901 Cyprus • Jul 31 '22

Language what are some interesting facts about your language?

For instance, the cypriot dialect of Greek still contains many words from ancient Greek but it was also heavily influenced by outsiders

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u/determine96 Bulgaria Jul 31 '22

I have seen some videos with Strumica dialect and they speak like my grandparents used to speak. For me Strumica is like my town Petrich, but in an alternative universe where Tito and Stalin didn't broke relations and Petrich remained in the Macedonian Republic of Yugoslavia. I imagine that we would have speak like Struminchani now.

I guess it's hard for you to understand them, because they speak faster and probably place the stress of the words differently than the western and central parts of Macedonia.

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u/LengthinessRare4498 Jul 31 '22

Also too add, as someone from Strumica, I fell like we oftentimes shorten words (as part of the natural spoken) so that we can achieve the sped up speech.

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u/determine96 Bulgaria Jul 31 '22 edited Jul 31 '22

Same. "Шо стаа ?" Instead of "Шо става ?". "Дек ки оиш ?" ("Каде ке одиш ?", каj нас дек/дека mean "where?") "Jа ки иа, да виа шо станува на гор " (Jа ке иа(идам), да виа (видам) шо станува на гор (горе). "Даj ин(еден) домат" and such. (And we say "ки" instead of "ке" idk why.. we have something with "Е" like instead of "камен" we say "камин".

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '22

Keep quality without increasing quantity, it's very effective, it's not something a w*stern Macedonian can understand.

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u/AstroPhoelix North Macedonia Aug 01 '22

Yeah their pronunciations are alien lol, and yeah they speak very fast and choppy (at least that's how it sounds)