The Annotations Language of the Macedonian Songs from the Institute of Ethnography SASA Folklore Digital Database

Folkloristics 10/1 (2025): 135-145
Author: Elka Jačeva-Ulčar
Text:

The article provides a linguistic analysis of the folk songs included in the Folklore Collection Digital Database of the Institute of Ethnography SASA (FCIE Digital Database). All the songs share the obvious fact that people who recorded them knew neither the Macedonian language nor Macedonian orthography and alphabet, and it has to be kept in mind that the songs in the collection were recorded in 1949, four years after the official codification of the Macedonian language (1945). Fieldwork records were written in Serbian alphabet, with frequent orthographic errors and with clear indications revealing that the listener/recorder was not a Macedonian speaker and his/her mother tongue was Serbian. Deviations from the standard Macedonian language present in the songs from the FCIE have been categorized in several groups for the sake of better visibility: 1. Orthographic and phonetic-phonological deviations from the Macedonian standard; 2. Morpho-syntactic deviations; 3. Lexical deviations; and 4. Miscellaneous, i.e., deviations which could not be categorized in any of the previous groups.

Keywords: oral poetry transmission, Macedonian language, Serbian language, Digital Database of the SASA IE Folklore Collection.