h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've recently come across some old music, stated as being "traditional Macedonian". Is this a similar language, ornot a language at all and just a regional designation?

Any help would be appreciated, I'd love to translate the lyrics though I've only the song to go on, no written words.

I think Makedonia is a place rather than a language. It is partly in Greece and partly in a new state which was part of Yugoslavia until recently. I believe the Makedonians speak Greek, rather than a separate language.

Macedonia is officially known - in sporting circles at any rate - as 'The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia', usually shortened to 'FYR Macedonia'.

Interestingly, in Italian, 'macedonia' means 'fruit salad'. The Italians don't seem to find this particularly hilarious. I, on the other hand, do.

Oh, I forgot... all of the above means I would guess that they speak Serbo-Croat there.

You can see Macedonian written down on

http://www.bbc.co.uk/macedonian/

as it's one of the languages in which the Beeb publishes the news. It does looks a lot like Serbo-Croat (ie written in the Cyrillic alphabet but with a letter j for the soft vowels).

Thanks for the link, gallers.

Only problem is I've only got it in an audio medium; the best I could do is annotate a best guess phoenetic transcript, then try to find someone who could translate from that transcript. Not a task I'd with on anyone

Macedonian is a langauge (from the country of Macedonia or FYR of Macedonia). There is also an area of Greece called Macedonia but this is NOT the same place. There are some similarities between the two languages as there are also between Russian and Macedonian and Polish too...for instance the word Dobra in Macedonian means "good" and the word Den means "day" whereas is Czech the word for hello/good day is I believe dobry den (excuse my spelling). The pronounciations are also similar as are the numbers they use, however; Macedonians like Russians use the cyrillic alphabet which is different to Czech which uses the Latin alphabet like us and also like Polish. Hope this helps.

Fortunately in Republic of Macedonia we speak Macedonian language it's neither Serbo-croatian nor Greek.

What sort of a language is it, then? Is it Slavic, Indo-European, or what?