Originally posted by Liberator of Makedonija
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Although an argument can be made in support of a simplified phonetic alphabet for the west-central dialects of Macedonian on which the literary standard is based, I am of the opinion that Koneski (and Misirkov before him) should not have neglected some of the older letters from our traditional alphabet. Letters like ъ may have been almost obsolete in the abovementioned dialects but there was no aesthetic harm in retaining them and they would have been only marginally tedious for those learning to read and write. Correct or otherwise, an inadvertent consequence of the unfortunate exclusion of such letters was the perceived disregard for Macedonian literature written in other dialects, both post and prior. Moreover, setting the Misirkov precedent aside, the introduction of the abovementioned ‘new’ letters by Koneski would have been unnecessary had older letters like ь been retained. It was also bound to be divisive – and this should have been foreseen.
That is not to excuse the actions of certain people that were part of the so-called language committee at the end of WWII but were too fickle to stay the course and continue arguing on behalf of orthographic reforms from within, but the departure from our traditional alphabet partially disconnected us (however superficially) from our past and gave some morons who slither among “scholarly” circles in Bulgaria an easy excuse to falsely claim that which is not theirs. The tenacious stupidity and misguided appropriation by the latter are other factors that should have been foreseen given all that had happened up until that point.
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