“Order generated without design can far exceed the limits of human planning.”

— Friedrich Hayek, “The Fatal Conceit”

One of the greatest contributions of Hayek to the wider discourse has been his popularization of the spontaneous order conceptual model. Spontaneous order is what you get when people are free to act, trade, and adapt without some central authority calling the shots. It is how functional systems emerge from the ground up through individual choices, not top-down commands. 

Markets and languages are among the most typical examples of spontaneous order. Markets arise from human exchanges, shaped by the mechanisms of supply and demand. Similarly, languages are not deliberately or rationally constructed but instead evolve organically over time, adopting useful linguistic practices while discarding less effective ones. And just as markets have seen many central planners tinkering with their spontaneous order, many countries have seen a rise of officially codified languages, which are often the result of governments selecting certain dialects as the standard language.

Codification of official languages

The process of codifying official languages has played a significant role in nation-building and the establishment of nation-states. Logically, uniting people within a defined territory under a common political authority often requires a shared language as a unifying element. Codification means more than just setting down grammar rules; it is the moment a language becomes official, standardized, and tied to national identity. 

While codification is essential to the construction of national identity, it often comes at the expense of cultural diversity, regional dialects, and minority languages. A notable example is the French language, whose standardization led to the marginalization and decline of many regional languages and dialects throughout France. In more extreme cases, official languages have been imposed on minority populations through coercive or violent means. For instance, Macedonian and other minority languages in northern Greece faced systemic repression and the forced imposition of the Greek language. The choice of an official language isn’t just about preserving culture or celebrating literature. It is a political power move—one that often cements the dominance of a single ethnic group at the expense of others.

Codification of the Macedonian language

The codification of the Macedonian language marked a key step in the Macedonian people’s bid for autonomy within the tightly controlled framework of the Yugoslav Federation. Following the end of the Second World War, the Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia was held in 1944, and one of its most significant proclamations was the recognition of the Macedonian language as the official language of the Macedonian Socialist Republic. Blaže Koneski emerged as the leading figure in the codification process. 

While a significant step for Macedonian nation-building, codification had destructive effects on the language and dialects spoken by ordinary people in Macedonia. Many of the regional dialects (particularly the eastern ones) were closely related to Bulgarian, which—like Macedonian—is a South Slavic language and its closest linguistic relative. However, the official Yugoslav communist policy was explicitly anti-Bulgarian, and any linguistic similarity between Macedonian and Bulgarian became politically controversial. As a result, the codification process intentionally excluded numerous Bulgarian elements, even though these features were organically present in the dialects spoken throughout Macedonia.

Ljubčo Georgievski, a former Prime Minister of Macedonia and a revisionist historian, argues that the codification of the Macedonian language—and the role of Blaže Koneski in that process—was essentially destructive to the authenticity of the language and its dialects as they existed before codification. 

Georgievski sees two big problems with how the language was reshaped. First, swapping out the traditional, etymological spelling system for a phonemic one broke with the language’s roots and, in his view, cut it off from its historical depth. Second, trimming down the vocabulary didn’t just simplify things—it thinned out the language’s expressive power. The result was a standardized version of Macedonian that felt less connected to how people spoke across the region.

Controversies with the codification of the Macedonian language

How words are spelt is also a part of the puzzle at hand. Some writing systems stick to the roots, literally preserving the historical layers of a word in its spelling. This is called etymological orthography. Others take a simpler route: spell it how it sounds. That’s phonemic orthography, and it follows the neat rule, “Write as you speak, speak as you write.”

According to Georgievski, phonemic orthography is the most primitive form of writing, and he argues that Macedonian, before it was standardised, leaned more toward the etymological style, a system he believes carries greater linguistic value.

So why the shift? Georgievski points to politics. In Yugoslavia, Serbian, a language with a strictly phonemic spelling system, was the official standard, and its influence was strong. Bulgarian, on the other hand, Macedonian’s closest relative, still uses an etymological system. To him, the move toward phonemic spelling wasn’t just about making things easier to read; it was part of a larger effort to set Macedonian apart from its historical and regional linguistic roots.

The second controversial point is the reduction of the Macedonian language’s vocabulary, which was also a political decision. Many words commonly used in the Macedonian dialects were excluded from the codified version simply because they were also present in the Bulgarian language. Anti-Bulgarian sentiment and propaganda strongly influenced the codification process. As a result, the official Macedonian language today is considered one of the poorest in terms of vocabulary, containing approximately 100,000 lexical units, whereas most languages have more than 200,000.

While Blaže Koneski is widely recognized as the dominant figure, he wasn’t the only one shaping the process. Venko Markovski, another key contributor, was more aware of some of these underlying problems. His involvement suggests that not everyone in the project was blind to the political and linguistic compromises being made.

Markovski is often regarded as a more valuable figure in terms of literary contribution, educational influence, and personal integrity, compared to Koneski. Despite this, his proposals during the codification process were rejected by the communist authorities, and his role was deliberately marginalized. His principal “offense” was advocating for the inclusion of the letter „Ъ“ in the Macedonian alphabet, arguing that it was widely used across various local dialects. However, because this letter was also present in the Bulgarian alphabet, his suggestion was politically unacceptable to the Yugoslav communist leadership. As a result, not only was his proposal dismissed, but Markovski was later persecuted and ultimately fled to Bulgaria, where he lived for the remainder of his life.

Despite being one of the most influential figures in the development of the Macedonian language, Markovski was effectively erased from the official narrative through a political decision.

Can some of the damage be undone? 

The codification of the Macedonian language serves as a perfect example of destructive government interference in spontaneous order. What could still be done to salvage some of the beauty of the language?  A simple and practical approach could be decodification—not by banning the standardised language, but by recognising the legitimacy of regional dialects and, in some cases, the letters used in them. In practice, this would mean allowing the use of local dialects in culture, education, the arts, and other areas of public life, without fear of marginalisation or censorship. 

The story at hand shows how individuals can persevere in the face of the top-down mandates. Even though an official language has been imposed, it is rarely spoken in everyday life. Most of us continue to speak our local dialects and take pride in them. Spontaneous order thrives in unofficial settings!