At the dawn of Macedonia in the 20th century, language politics had a very important role to play. The Macedonian language was to be recognized, and a Macedonian standard was to be developed and disseminated in all spheres of life. This task was entrusted to those people who were politically active at the time, and were also specialists in the field of literature and linguistics. Language commissions led by social activists, writers and linguists, were appointed to work on the codification of the Macedonian alphabet. After fierce discussions, a Macedonian alphabet was established and the central Macedonian dialects were chosen as the basis for the standard language.

The language policy of the country played a great role here, especially with regards to the codification of the Macedonian alphabet, which – in accordance with the will of its authors – should have increased the difference between the Macedonian and the Bulgarian languages, and decrease the differences between the Macedonian and the Serbian languages. The Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet is closer to the Russian alphabet, but the Macedonian Cyrillic alphabet is under significant Serbian influence. The Bulgarian alphabet includes letters to represent, for example, the half voiced sounds – in the Old Slavic language; these sounds were reproduced and were represented with the corresponding letters: the front and back yer – were eliminated from the phonological system and the Macedonian alphabet. In the Orthography of 1945, the half voiced sound was granted a graphic representation in the form of an apostrophe. Љ, њ, џ were introduced in the Macedonian alphabet in accordance with the Serbian letters, as well as the Latin ј, after Vuk Karadžić.

After World War II, the Macedonian language was recognized as an official language of the newly formed Republic of Macedonia, as part of the Yugoslav Federation. Although the Macedonian language was recognized as an official language of the Republic, in practice, the role of a dominant language – higher ranking, from the perspective of prestige and functions – was performed by the Serbo-Croatian language. Some researchers, including H. Voss,55 are on the opinion that the Serbo-Croatian language influenced the Macedonian standard so strongly, that the larger part of the population in Greek Macedonia, stopped feeling their mother tongue, leading to a quick Hellenization of this population.