Languages of North Macedonia
Languages, writing systems and language context
Macedonian, written in Cyrillic, is official throughout North Macedonia. The Constitution also gives official status to any language spoken by at least 20 percent of the population; the 2021 census places Albanian above that threshold.
Language Overview
Read the Characters
Macedonian · 31 characters
How to Read the Language Landscape
Frequently Asked Questions
What languages are used in North Macedonia?
Macedonian, written in Cyrillic, is official throughout North Macedonia. The Constitution also gives official status to any language spoken by at least 20 percent of the population; the 2021 census places Albanian above that threshold.
What writing systems are used in North Macedonia?
The represented writing system is Cyrillic, Latin and the primary direction shown is left to right.
Sources & methodology
View sources used for this page
Official parliamentary constitutional source. Amendment V establishes Macedonian nationwide and gives official status to any other language spoken by at least 20 percent of the population.
Official census source showing Albanian above the constitutional 20 percent threshold.
Localized country display-name reference. CLDR names are customary UI/display names, not claims about a state’s full constitutional long-form name.
Reference for the writing-system/script families represented in the character component.
Reference for left-to-right and right-to-left script direction and bidirectional text behavior.
Reference for Unicode character names used as small readout labels under selected character samples; these labels are not presented as a complete transliteration standard.