Table Of ContentROUTLEDGE
MACEDONIAN-ENGLISH
DICTIONARY
'I know of no comparable rival to this dictionary.'
Dr H. Leeming, University ofLondon
' ... clearly fills the need for a good Macedonian-English dictionary.'
Professor Victor A. Friedman, University ofChicago
The Macedonian-English Dictionary is the essential aid to all work involving the two
languages.
The Dictionary is the most ambitious attempt to date to record English equivalents for
the vocabulary of modern Macedonian. It covers the vocabulary met with in a wide variety
of settings and literary forms, from modern urban life to traditional folk poetry.
Features include:
• clear, accurate examples of usage
• all necessary grammatical information for Macedonian headwords
• details of stress, where it departs from the regular pattern
• a broad range of idiomatic expressions and proverbs
The work is based on the lexical corpus of the renowned Reenik na makendonskiot jazik.
Prepared by scholars at the Australian National University in Canberra, working in
collaboration with the compilers of the original Reenik, the content has been brought up
to date by the addition of many recent words and new senses which have arisen for older
words. The Dictionary was initiated by the late Professor Reginald de Bray, a leading
Slavist at the Australian National University.
Peter Hill is Professor of Slavonic Studies at the University of Hamburg and sometime
Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. Suncica Mircevska is a
research assistant on the Macedonian Dictionary Project. Kevin Windle is Senior
Lecturer in Russian at the Australian National University.
ROUTLEDGE
MACEDONIAN-ENGLISH
DICTIONARY
Compiled by Reginald de Bray, Todor Dimitrovski, Blagoja Korubin
and Trajko Stamatoski
Edited and prepared for publication by Peter Hill, SunCica Mircevska
and Kevin Windle, at the Australian National University
~l Routledge
~~ Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1998 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 1998 Australian National University
Typeset in Times by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library ofCongress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Macedonian-English dictionary I edited and prepared for publication
by Peter Hill, Suncica Mircevska and Kevin Windle; compiled
by Reginald de Bray ... [eta!.].
p. em.
At head of title: Australian National University.
"Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge" - CIP
t.p. verso.
Includes bibliographical references.
I. Macedonian language-Dictionaries-English. I. Hill, Peter M., 1945
II. Mircevska, SunCica, 1956- . III. Windle, Kevin, 1947
IV. De Bray, R. G. A. (Reginald George Arthur)
V. Australian National University.
PG 1175.E5M33 1998
491.8'19321-dc21 97-23301
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality
of this reprint but points out that some
imperfections in the original may be apparent
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-16046-9 (hbk)
PREFACE
HISTORY OF THE PROJECT
This dictionary has been many years in the making and some account of the origins of
the project and its history is called for.
The present Macedonian-English Dictionary was conceived in the early 1980s as an
English version of the pioneering Pe'IHHK Ha MaKe,n;oHCKHOT ja3HK (Dictionary of the
Macedonian Language), which first appeared in the 1960s. Work on the latter began in
1951, under the general editorship of the well-known linguist Blaze Koneski. Todor
Dimitrovski, B1agoja Korubin and Trajko Stamatoski devoted many years to the compil
ation of this first dictionary of the modern Macedonian language, working in adverse
conditions and with no precedent to guide them. The first volume (A-N) appeared in
1961. It was followed by Volume Two (0-P) in 1965, the disastrous Skopje earthquake of
1963 having intervened and caused disruptions to most areas of life, and Volume Three
(R-Sh) in 1966.
Despite its title, Reenik is in fact a bilingual dictionary, in which the main purpose was
not to provide definitions in Macedonian (though these frequently appeared), but equiva
lents in Serbo-Croat (Latin script). The reality of this was recognized when Volume Two
(0-P) was published in 1965, now bearing the sub-title 'co cprrcKoxpBaTCKH ToJIKyBalha'
(with glosses in Serbo-Croat). The third and last volume, which was published in 1966,
retained the sub-title.
There was, however, another marked difference between the first volume and its
successors. In the two later volumes, besides the Serbo-Croat equivalent, definitions in
Macedonian were given for far more headwords than was the case in the first. Thus,
although the revised title indicated a form of bilingual dictionary, it was possible for the
monolingual Macedonian to use it, or large parts of it, to establish the meaning of a
word without recourse to a second language.
In addition to this, while the first volume gave few examples of usage, the later two
were generous in their provision of examples, some of them drawn from Macedonian
literature, as is common practice in authoritative monolingual dictionaries, and from
folk poetry.
Preface vi
A later edition of the Reenik (1986) combined the three volumes in one (over
1700 pages long), without, however, making textual changes to regularize the above
inconsistencies, which also survived into the 1994 edition.
When in 1983 Professor Reginald de Bray, in collaboration with the original compilers,
embarked upon the task of creating an English version of the original Recnik na make
donskiot jazik, he aimed at a complete and literal translation of the latter, reasoning that,
since this was the best dictionary available of the Macedonian language and by far the
fullest, anything less would fail to do it justice. Accordingly he set out to transcribe
faithfully the full contents of the three volumes. Where Macedonian definitions
appeared, as they did with reasonable consistency from the beginning of Volume Two,
these were retained in the original Macedonian and supplied with an English translation,
in addition to an English equivalent (replacing that in Serbo-Croat). Thus a relatively
straightforward entry such as 'cTaBop' (rat) said '(BH,IJ, roneM rnyrneu;- a kind of large
mouse) rat'. The great majority of the examples, often two or three lines of text each,
were rendered in English. This practice was laid down at the beginning of the translation
project and continued for several years, during which he was assisted by SunCica
Mircevska (from 1986) and Peter Hill (from 1991).
It was Professor de Bray's intention, however, to subject the manuscript to rigorous
editing, once the initial translation was complete, mainly with a view to improving the
English glosses but also in order to ensure a higher degree of consistency and accuracy.
Sadly, Professor de Bray died in May 1993, leaving the project unfinished, and it fell to
SunCica Mircevska and Peter Hill, now joined by Kevin Windle, to see the work through
to the end. After some debate, it was decided that, in the interests of internal consistency
and conformity with accepted lexicographical practice, extensive revisions could not be
avoided. Since by then the typescript ran to some four thousand A4 pages, the task of
revising it (in practice, rewriting the bulk of it) was comparable in scale to that of
drafting the first translation. The definitions in Macedonian and English were deleted,
except in rare cases where no equivalent could be found, and here only an English
explanation was left. In the course of this work, the English equivalents were scrutinized
and often modified. The examples were carefully examined to ensure that they clearly
illustrated typical usage and the longer examples were radically pruned so as to meet the
practical needs of the user. At the same time the structure of the entries was reviewed and
the classification of senses by numbers thoroughly revised in order to bring it into
line with that in o.ther bilingual dictionaries. Most of the longer entries (those over two
lines long) were, in fact, rewritten in the attempt to attain the clarity which Professor de
Bray would himself have sought.
The Recnik in its original form is a living reflection of the period in which it was
compiled, the early years of Tito's Yugoslavia, the days when fascism had been recently
defeated and the future of Yugoslav-style socialism seemed assured. In this period no
area of cultural life could escape political intrusions, and linguistics and lexicography
were no exception, as can be seen in the profusion of ideological examples about the
onward march of socialism and the death throes of capitalist society. Tendentious defi
nitions abound and the quaint and dated flavour of many examples stands out all the
vii Preface
more starkly in literal English translation, as found in the typescript, e.g. under
npeTCTOH: 'a long road awaits you, comrades, in the immediate future'; or y'IHTen
(teacher): 'Tito is our leader and teacher'. Many other examples, while carrying no
ideological burden whatsoever, were uninformative as guides to usage in either language;
thus CBHH'Ie (piglet), illustrated by 'cH KYIIHBMe CBHH'Ie' (we bought a piglet). The editors
of the final English-language text felt it necessary to replace the 'ideologically correct'
examples with neutral and more usable phrases, and to delete many others which served
little obvious purpose.
These factors apart, the dictionary was clearly in need of updating as the language had
undergone much change since the original compilation in the 1950s and '60s. Here a
valuable contribution was made by the compilers of the original, who, working with
Professor de Bray, deleted many terms deemed too rare to merit inclusion, among them
many drawn from the dialects of Macedonian. The editors of the present version have
inserted a substantial number of neologisms which have entered the language in more
recent times, in addition to new senses for older terms, and some longer-established
terms which had escaped inclusion in Recnik. These were culled from a variety of
sources, including the press, radio broadcasts and some more recently published mono
lingual and bilingual dictionaries. (See 'Bibliography'.)
Much attention was also devoted to standardizing and amplifying the grammatical
information provided in the Dictionary. Reenik gave fairly full coverage of irregular
noun plurals, but on other grammatical matters, such as the less predictable aorist forms,
it was less informative than some English-speaking users might like. In the latter area,
modifications in this version have been extensive. Where Recnik provided scant detail on
such matters as the governance of Macedonian verbs, the editors of the Macedonian
English Dictionary have sought to provide as much information as possible regarding
transitivity and prepositional usage with particular verbs and to give English translations
and examples in which this is clear.
For all of these reasons the resulting work differs in many respects from Professor de
Bray's original design. Those who seek to compare it with Reenik will not fail to notice
this. They will recognize, however, that the practical considerations which must govern
the production of any dictionary militate against a literal and unadorned translation and
in favour of a version loosely based upon the lexical corpus laid down in the original
work. We in our tum, in revising the manuscript, have endeavoured to be faithful to the
spirit of Professor de Bray's intention rather than the letter.
KW
Australian National University
Canberra
1998
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The editors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided for the project over
many years by the Australian Research Council and by the Australian National
University in its later stages.
The task of editing was eased and its quality greatly enhanced by the efforts of
Margaret Travers, Senior Lecturer in Russian at the Australian National University, who
spent many hours checking the near-final text in its entirety. Her painstaking scrutiny led
to increased clarity in many entries and spared us many infelicities in the English text as
well as typographical errors in both languages. Responsibility for those errors that remain
must rest with KW
Many individuals at the Australian National University and beyond have lent us
valuable support, advice and encouragement. We are particularly grateful to the staff of
the Australian National Dictionary Centre, headed until1994 by Dr W S. (Bill) Ramson,
and since then by Dr Bruce Moore.
Our thanks for assistance of various kinds are also due to the following:
Ms Monica Berko, ANDC,
Prof. Richard Campbell, Dean, Faculty of Arts, later Pro-Vice-Chancellor, ANU,
Prof. Victor Friedman, University of Chicago,
Ms Harriet Michell, ANDC,
Dr Lawrence Saha, Dean, Faculty of Arts, ANU,
Mr Peter Scardoni, Business Manager, Faculty of Arts, ANU,
Prof. Roland Sussex, Centre for Language Teaching and Research, University of
Queensland
The late Ms Agnese de Bray, who passed away in December 1996, and her children
Helen and Serghei followed the progress of work with interest throughout. The editors are
grateful for their friendly support.
We also enjoyed welcome support and encouragement from Dr Ilija Casule, Prof.
Olga Miseska Tomic, Ms Elena Petroska, Prof. Zuzanna Topoliriska and Prof. Rina
Usikova.
ix Acknowledgements
KW is grateful to the ANU for teaching relief and support for travel to Macedonia in
1994, and to Dr Maksim Karanfilovski and the organizers of the Ohrid Seminar on
Macedonian Language and Literature. He would also like to express his gratitude to
Ludmilla, Rita and Adrian for their patience during the many weekends and long
evenings when the revision claimed his full attention.
KW
