Languages are formed over a long period of time and over a broad space, and unlike nation states, which have a specific time of establishment and clearly defined sovereignty, languages are complex, adaptable, and are established over hundreds of years, long before the nation states. They know not of borders, said the President of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts Ljupco Kocarev in his latest editorial, published in Nova Makedonija.

The column shoots back at the demands from Bulgaria, which wants Macedonia to declare the Macedonian language as a newly minted invention, codified in 1944 – as if that is the year the language was created from the Bulgarian language. Kocarev warns that Bulgaria will want the dialects of the Macedonian language spoken in Albania, for example, to be declared as dialects of the Bulgarian language.