Strengthening of vernacular in the church literature until the early XIX century.
The influence of the Serbian variant of the Old Slavonic language was increasing in Macedonia as of the XIV century. The reason was the fact that the Macedonian territories were joined to the Serbian state of that period. That influence mainly referred to the orthography. Besides, written records of that time reveal an increased presence of the traces of the contemporary Macedonian live speeches in the Old Slavonic foundations of the written language.
During the Turkish subjugation, the position of the Macedonian people was very hard, thus also the conditions for the literary activities. Therefore, the literacy was decreasing. Its language was further estranged from the Old Slavonic basis, since in the live native speech numerous distinguishing changes had already accumulated. In addition to the church service books, where more consideration was given to the Old Slavonic written tradition, there was an increasing number of such texts that were either intended for the broader circle of readers or were texts for practical usage.
In the XVI century there were already books printed in Serbia or Venice. In the XVII century large quantities of ecclesiastic books printed in Russia in Russian-Slavonic language already emerged in the territory.
- Listed below are some of the records written during the Turkish enslavery:
- Vault chrysobull of the Zograf Monastery and Kaliman's chrysobull. Both date from the beginning of the XVI century and were strongly influenced by native language. Their contents denote that they were written in order to prove the authority of Mount Athos's Zograf Monastery over certain localities.
- Slepce "pismovnik", a mid-XVI century record.Slep~enskiot pismovnik, spomenik od sredinata na 16 vek.
- Tikves Collected Works from the XVI - XVII centuries. It comprises various biographies and letters.
- Translation of the Damascene Sermons (XVI century). The translator was Bishop of Prilep, Gregorius. It is rich in contemporary native words and forms. It was quite spreaded in Macedonia through numerous transcriptions and new translations as long as the XIX century, both because of its diversified contents and its understandable language.
- Tetovo Manuscript - XVIII or the beginning of the XIX century. It was written in native language - Tetovo speech, with modest traces of the ecclesiastic language. Its contents are Damascene.
- Fourlingual by Giorgi Pulevski, a dictionary in four languages, printed in Belgrade in 1873. It was written in four languages: Serbian -Albanian, Albanian - Arnautian, Turkish, and Greek.
- Dictionary of Three Languages by Giorgi Pulevski. The dictionary consists of questions and answers given in three languages: Macedonian, Albanian, and Turkish. It was printed in Belgrade in 1875.
