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If you’re looking to study the Balkan Sprachbund, a set of unrelated languages that share fascinating similarities with one another due to prolonged multilingualism under the Ottoman Empire, then you need to head for the Republic of Macedonia, which retains a rich linguistic and cultural diversity that has almost died out in the rest of the Balkans. My research brought me here. But everything else is what’s making it memorable.

Macedonia is a jagged, frustrating, pristine, decrepit, pragmatic, fantastical, brain-bendingly beautiful place. It exists in the borderlands between several sovereignties and spheres of influence, but it is distinct and independent. It often feels clumsily cobbled together, but its history is ancient, complex, and sometimes startling in its continuity. Nothing goes smoothly, but the jolts and bumps remind me I’m along for a ride. Macedonia is polysemic. And polysemy is where I feel most at home.

Jotten’ in the Balkans
Što i kade
Gëzuar
Što sega kučki
From D to MK