[Reltih]

Wikipedia about the Macedonian "language":

Bulgarian and Macedonian are very closely related. However, there are also certain differences between the two languages. Roughly 15% of the whole vocabulary of both languages is different, although most words usually exist in the other language with a different or slightly modified meaning. 65% of the words are only differently accented, and 20% are identical. Lexical differences are owing to a great extent to loanwords borrowed by Bulgarian from Russian and by Macedonian from Serbian in the middle and the end of the 20th century.

Generally, there is little trouble for a Bulgarian speaker to understand a Macedonian speaker, and vice versa.

Although it was the first country to recognise the independence of the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria has refused to recognise the existence of a separate Macedonian nation and a separate Macedonian language. It is argued that the language of the Macedonian Slavs was regarded (both by the speakers themselves and by linguists) as a Bulgarian dialect before the 1940s and that Macedonian linguists resort to falsifications of history and documents in order to further the opinion that there was a consciousness of a separate Macedonian language before that time.

The publication in the Republic of Macedonia of the folk song collections Bulgarian Folk Songs by the Miladinov Brothers and Songs of the Macedonian Bulgarians by Serbian archaelogist Verkovic under the "politically correct" titles Collection and Macedonian Folk Songs are some of the examples quoted by the Bulgarians.

The Miladinov Brothers , Dimitar Miladinov (1810-1862) and Konstantin Miladinov (1830-1862), were Bulgarian poets and folklorists, authors of the most important collection of Bulgarian folk songs in the 19th century, Bulgarian Folk Songs (1861). The collection was written in the vernacular of Struga (present-day Republic of Macedonia) and includes a total of 665 songs and 23,559 verses.

Although the Miladinov Brothers always called the language in which they wrote Bulgarian, since the establishment of the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia they have been regarded by Macedonian linguists as Slav Macedonian awakeners fighting for the development of the Macedonian language. Bulgarian Folk Songs has been re-issued in the Republic of Macedonia under an edited name, Collection, the references to Macedonia in the foreword as of to "Western Bulgaria" have been erased and other references to Bulgaria and Bulgarian language have been edited and replaced with Macedonia and Macedonian language.

In the 1980s, the original edition of the book was subjected to systematic acts of vandalism in Western libraries, often carried by Yugoslav expatriates and usually resulting in the tearing of the front cover. For this reason, the book may be borrowed only as a photocopy nowadays.








Text of the front cover

"Bulgarian Folk Songs collected by the Miladinov Brothers Dimitar and Konstantin and published by Konstantin in Zagreb at the printing house of A. Jakic, 1861"