Studying Macedonian isn’t easy, but I’m making progress. Most weeks, we have four days of classes, usually about four hours a day. Our classes meet online via Zoom, which is less than ideal, but it’s working fairly well.
One major challenge is the alphabet. Macedonian uses a Cyrillic alphabet, so the letter forms are like Russian letters. I was hoping that a new alphabet would be an advantage since I wouldn’t have preconceived notions about what sounds go with what letters. But many of the letters look similar enough to our letters to cause confusion.
For example one Macedonian word is spelled “ново.” It’s pronounced like “novo” and means “new,” so you see it in a lot of advertising, but of course it looks like the English word “hobo.” Mentioning this caused a lot of amusement for some Macedonians, who had never thought of that before I pointed it out because when they saw the word, they associated it with its intended meaning, not with guys who jump on freight trains.
Then there are letters that are different from English letters, but that look similar enough to mess with our heads. For example, “Ш” (which sounds like “sh”) looks enough like “W” to mess with my mind. And “г” (which sounds like “g”) looks enough like “r” to confuse me.
Also, there are plenty of times when I have señor moments. This comes up whenever my knowledge of Spanish interferes with Macedonian learning, usually because Spanish words pop up in my head. But it also comes up with the alphabet when I see “j” and pronounce it like the English “h” instead of like the English “y.”
I mentioned to the teacher that it would be helpful if I could watch something like a Macedonian equivalent to “Sesame Street” to learn the alphabet. And it turns out there is something like that, except that it’s more focused on the alphabet. (“Sesame Street” deals with a whole mess of early childhood education subjects, such as shapes, numbers, concepts like over and under, etc., in addition to the alphabet.) The program is called “Бушава азбука,” (“Busava azbuka”), which translates as “Shaggy Alphabet.” Each of the 31 episodes of this 1990s program focuses on one letter of the Macedonian alphabet. For example, here is the episode on the letter Ф (F). I’ve found it helpful, although I don’t have the vocabulary yet to understand most of it. I’m sure it’s really useful for kids who know most of the words spoken in it and who can learn new words from context clues.
Another challenge is that I’m living in an Albanian-speaking area while studying Macedonian. This means I don’t have much exposure to the language I’m studying outside of class.
Lack of exposure to the language is even a problem for trainees studying Macedonian who live in Macedonian-speaking areas. Due to COVID-19 precautions, nobody is living in the same household as a host family now. We’re living nearby resource families (in my case, in an apartment above them). So we’re not engaged in daily conversation around the dinner table.
Yet another challenge is that so many people here speak English well. At one point, I went to a shopping mall in Skopje on a quest to buy a pair of shoelaces, which is a remarkably difficult thing to buy here. (For some reason, grocery stores sell shoe polish, shoe insoles and even shoehorns, but not shoelaces.) Another trainee and I went into various shoe stores in the mall and as soon as we started talking with foreign accents, the employees immediately switched to English. It turned out that none of the shoe stores had shoelaces for sale, though I did eventually find some in Vero, a giant general-merchandise superstore.
You might wonder why I’m not studying Albanian now because I’m in an Albanian-speaking area. The language coordinator said I could study both languages at once if I chose, but she recommended that I just study Macedonian for now and study Albanian after I’m sworn in at the end of training on Dec. 7. I figured she’s the expert, so I followed her advice.
This makes sense because my counterparts (the people I’ll be working most closely with after training) are fluent in English, as are the sons in my resource family. This makes less of a sense of urgency to learn the local language quickly. Several other trainees in Albanian-speaking areas are in the dual language program, meaning they’re taking Macedonian classes and Albanian classes in the same week.