A Dialectical Dictionary of Neret – Macedonian to English has over 5,800 headwords and the Appendix lists over 10,400 words. These words are sourced from the book Spomeni na Neret by Risto Katin. A Dialectical Dictionary of Neret and Spomeni na Neret are both simultaneously published by Pollitecon Publications, and both books are available for free at pollitecon.com.

The headwords and dictionary were assembled while I edited Spomeni na Neret as I thought a dictionary would assist the reader to better understand the book. While A Dialectical Dictionary of Neret – Macedonian to English is intended as a companion book to Spomeni na Neret, it is also a stand-alone book and, I hope, a useful dialectical contribution to the Macedonian language and linguistics.

Neret is an old Macedonian village in south-west geographic Macedonia and since the First Balkan War in 1912 it has been part of north-west Greece.

Risto Katin, the author of Spomeni na Neret, was born in the village in 1924, grew up there, and for a time was mayor of the village before he migrated to Australia. His Macedonian, his mother tongue, was excellent, as was his Greek, and later he was also fluent in English.

His book, Spomeni na Neret, shows that the Macedonian spoken in Neret is a rich dialect with several thousand words and variations of words that I could not find in many Macedonian printed dictionaries and online dictionaries and translators. This linguistic gold mine made me realize that I needed to write this dictionary to capture these words and variations and their meanings so that the book and the dialect would be accessible to readers.

I was fortunate that my parents and my relatives were all from Neret and so I had a head start in understanding the dialect. However, Katin's level of Macedonian was far superior to my own. When I began the editing process, my knowledge of Macedonian was mostly at village level – speaking the language in my childhood with my parents and relatives, plus new words I have learned from reading modern Macedonian. If I did not know a word I assumed there would be other Macedonians also in this position. To aid comprehension, this dictionary also contains some Macedonian words that are more difficult or rare.

For many reasons I considered Spomeni na Neret to be of such a high value that it deserved its own dictionary. However, compiling the dictionary was not an easy task and finding the meanings to the over 3,000 head words was a very time consuming task.

A full explanation of how the meanings in this dictionary were arrived at is given in the introduction to Spomeni na Neret. While I will not repeat that process here, I will reiterate my thanks to the key people involved in that process: the author's son, Tom Katis, the many members of the Facebook group Family and Friends of Neret/ Polipotamou, their parents, grandparents and other relatives of the author's era, and the Macedonian translator, Elizabeth Kolupacev Stewart.

These are the people I turned to when I could not find a word, word variation or suitable meaning in what I call the reference dictionaries. The reference dictionaries were:
- Routledge Macedonian-English Dictionary
- the online Digitalen Rechnik na Makedonskiot Jazik (Digital Dictionary of the Macedonian Language)
- the online Cooljugator: the Smart Verb Conjugator
– Chris Stefou's English-Macedonian Dictionary Based on the Lerin-Kostur Dialects as Spoken by Oshchimians
– Kosta Peev's Na Makedonskite Govori vo Jugoistochniot Egejski Del (Dictionary of Macedonian Dialects in the Southeast Aegean Part, Volumes 1 to 4 – A to P)
- Olga Misheska Tomic's (with others) English-Macedonian Dictionary.
– Zoze Murgoski's Macedonian English Dictionary and English Macedonian Dictionary
– the online Ofitsijalen Digitalen Rechnik na Makedonskiot Jazik.

A significant regret is that I did not have the time to complete the task by finding the meanings and dialectical words in the full list of Spomeni na Neret's over 11,000 unique words that are recorded in the Appendix. Any one who wishes to take up that task is welcome.

Meanwhile, if they wish to, lexicographers are welcome to use the words in this dictionary for their Macedonian to English and English to Macedonian dictionaries.

I hope that one day there will be many more Macedonian dialectical dictionaries and that these can be combined into a comprehensive dictionary of the Macedonian dialects and language.

Style Guide

Below is a brief outline of how the dictionary is structured to help make it easier to use.

The standard structure is the word then the meaning after the dash. For example:
ada – island
adi – islands
chelik – 1. steel. 2. a game played with sticks, the game of tipcat

Where the word is not in the reference dictionaries or the meaning in the reference dictionaries is unrelated to its meaning in Spomeni na Neret, I have added (*) to indicate that the word or that meaning are not in the reference dictionaries. For example:
alai (*) – although, however, because, also
armasame (*) – we get/ got engaged to be married

Where a word that is a definite article was not found in the reference dictionaries but its root word was, this is indicated by the asterisk (*) to show that the definite article was not found followed by the root word that was found. For example:
adite (*, adi) – the islands
aerodromite (*, aerodromi) – the aerodromes, the airports

Where there is a word in brackets after the main word but before the dash, this indicates the standard Macedonian word, the closest root word, or the closest variation of the word that I could find in the reference dictionaries. For example:
ishchistat (ischisti) – clean, clean out
ishchistime (ischisti) – we clean
ishushia (isushia) – dried, dried up
Anadolo (Anadol, Anadolija) – Anatolia

Note that in some instances the word in brackets may have a slightly different meaning or tense than the main word.

The lack of a word in brackets next to the head word does not indicate nor imply that the main word is in the reference dictionaries. While this is true in some cases, in many other cases it indicates that there may be no similar word, no root word, nor a word or variation that is close enough in meaning to be comparable or useful.

The dictionary has numerous words that are drawn from Greek and English. These are indicated with the source language in brackets. For example:
anakatosura (*) – (Greek) turmoil, mixture, jumble, mess
astinom (*) – (Greek) policeman
member (*) – (English) member
storeman (*) – (English) storeman

The dictionary has many words that are examples of linguistic transference – the bringing or combining of words into Macedonian from Greek and English. For example:
basovi (*) – (English – bus, Macedonian plural – ovi) buses
bukche (*) – (English buk – book, Macedonian che – small) small book, notebook
astinomo (*) – (Greek astinom – policeman, Macedonian o for ot – the) the policeman
dimiriata (*) – (Greek dimiria – squadron, Macedonian ta – the) the squadron

Pronunciation Guide

The Macedonian words are spelt in Latinitsa – the name for the spelling of Macedonian words in the Latin alphabet. Most letters in Latinitsa are pronounced as they are in English. The variations are:

a – as in appoint
ai – as in paid (note, standard Latinitsa spelling is aj)
c – ts as in sets
dj – j as in jam
dz – as in the ‘ds' sound
e - as in egg
ei – as in hey (note, standard Latinitsa spelling is ej)
i - as in ink
j – y as in yes
o - as in or (but shorter)
oi – as in boy (note, standard Latinitsa spelling is oj)
u – oo as in book
zh – as in treasure/ treazhure and pleasure/ pleazhure

Of particular interest is that the author mostly used the letter i as in ai, ei and oi to get the ay, ey, and oy sounds where standard Latinitsa would use aj, ej and oj.

The author's use of i instead of j goes to the heart of what I think is a key problem with standard Latinitsa. Latinitsa's use of the j letter for the y (as in yet) sound, firstly, is confusing to English readers and, secondly, is not formal Latin; it comes from the Cyrillic alphabet where the j is pronounced as a y sound.

I believe that Latinitsa should not use the Latin j letter for the y sound but instead use the Latin letter y for the y sound. Also, this would free the j to be used for the j sound instead of the clumsy dj. In other words, in my view, Latinitsa would be more true to Latin if the j was used as in jet and the y was used as in yet.

So where the author has used the letter i instead of j in this way, I have retained that useage. I think this adds an excellent option to Latinitsa and helps to free the j from its unLatin y sound.

For a small minority of words the author used the letter j instead of i to make the y sound and I have retained these also. Examples are taja, meaning ‘her', and sojo, meaning ‘the extended family'.

Latinitsa has a beautifully clean, simple and versatile phonetic system and the use of j as a y sound instead of as a j sound is a rare irregularity. I think that the use of y and i instead of j is a good solution to this confusing inconsistency.

The Appendix lists the over 10,300 unique words in Spomeni na Neret and was created because identifying and providing a meaning for every word and dialectical word is a huge task, was not feasible in a reasonable length of time, and would have delayed the public launch of Spomeni na Neret and A Dialectical Dictionary of Neret – Macedonian to English.

When looking up words in the dictionary, readers may find it useful to also refer to the Appendix to note any variations and related words that are not in the main dictionary. As well as being interesting, this can assist with understanding shades of meaning and with understanding linguistic transference.

First names of people have been excluded from the dictionary and Appendix as some of these may be confusing out of context. Family names have also been excluded but derivative words based on the family names have been retained.

Victor Bivell

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