ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Romanisation of Macedonian

Okay, so you know how some people speak different languages, right? And sometimes, when people want to write those languages using letters that we use in English, they have to figure out how to do it so it makes sense. That’s what romanisation is – it’s taking words from one language and writing them down using letters from another language.

So, when it comes to the romanisation of Macedonian, that means figuring out how to write down the sounds of the Macedonian language using the letters we use in English. It’s like a secret code that lets people who don’t speak Macedonian read and understand it.

Now, Macedonian has some sounds that don’t exist in English, and English has some sounds that don’t exist in Macedonian. For example, in Macedonian, there’s a letter called “љ” which is pronounced like the “ly” in “million”. But we don’t have a letter for that sound in English, so we have to figure out how to write it down using the letters we do have.

There are different ways to do this, and people have disagreed over the years about how to romanise Macedonian correctly. Some people have used different letters or combinations of letters to represent the same sounds, which can be confusing.

But, in general, the romanisation of Macedonian tries to match each sound in Macedonian with a similar sound in English. So, for example, the letter “ј” in Macedonian is pronounced like the “y” in “yes”, so we write it as “y”. The letter “ш” is pronounced like the “sh” in “shoe”, so we write it as “sh”.

Overall, the goal of romanisation is to make the Macedonian language easier to read and understand for people who don’t speak it. It’s like a bridge between different languages, and it helps us appreciate the different sounds and words that people use around the world.