Spoken Macedonian

The spoken varieties of the Macedonian language comprise a group of... which differ from the standard language. Spoken Macedonian is a colloquial, spoken variant of the literary language or of a speaker's dialect. This register is typical of the speech of the Macedonian diaspora, especially of the descendants of those who went abroad prior to the codification of the standard language in the 1940s.

Educated speakers will usually use, or aim to use, the formal standard in public settings and in most forms of written text. Probably the best exemplars of this type of speech, though not always the case, are actors, teachers and writers. A high degree of social prestige and respect is assigned to those who correctly use the standard language in the appropriate situations. In rare examples, some speakers will use the formal code exclusively in everyday conversational speech.

While acquisition of the formal code constitutes a significant part of elementary education, during which children are taught the relationship between their local dialect and the target code, the formal literary language. Most educated speakers switch to the colloquial register of the standard language, spoken Macedonian, when communicating in less formal circumstances, but tend to aim for more formal usage in circumstances where educated speakers are present or as a sort of "interdialect" in the case where the company is not exclusively local.