The cultural dialect of the younger generation in Skopje

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to present the Macedonian cultural dialect of the younger generation in Skopje. The cultural dialect is understood here to be a colloquial Standard with regional variants. Some of the most interesting characteristics ofthe cultural dialect — which also serve to show the infernal development of the Macedonian language and possible directions for the language to develop — are presented: the lateral sounds and the accentual units; the gender and number of substantives; collective numerals; oblique forms of substantives; words that syntactically behave as adjectives but do not have the morphology of adjectives; pronominal forms; suffixation and prefixation ofthe verbs; tenses; the verbal Substantive and the verbal adverb; prepositions and borrowings. The characteristics of the language show that the norm was established very tolerantly, allowing variants that are now in the process of going out of use, and this process is clearly seen in the choices made in the colloquial Standard of the younger generation.