Македонски · Beginner 1(a)
Learn to type in Macedonian
Home row anchors
Settle both hands on the home row: A S D F for the left, J K L ; for the right.
Physical key labels appear above. Македонски layout labels appear below. These three rows produce 23 of the 25 characters the practice words here use; the rest are reached with a modifier or a dead key.
Learning to type in Macedonian
Macedonian is written in the Cyrillic script. The Macedonian Cyrillic layout maps 31 characters across the keys you already have, so every motion transfers and every letter moves.
Everyone learning Macedonian passes through the same stage: typing by translation. You know the Cyrillic letter you want, you think of the Latin key it lives on, and then you press it — three steps where fluent typing has one. The middle step is what practice removes, and it goes faster if you refuse to look at the keyboard while it is going.
A frequency count of the bank explains why early progress feels fast and later progress does not. The top ten characters cover about 70% of everything these Macedonian words contain; past that you are learning characters that turn up once in a paragraph, which takes as long to automate and pays back far less often.
The speed test and the games draw on one bank of 73 common Macedonian words — 25 distinct characters in all, averaging 4.2 written units per word. The lessons come at it from the other end. Nothing is generated on the fly and nothing is padded: each drill is a fixed sequence of the keys that stage has introduced, in an order that starts at the two index fingers and works outwards to the keys you reach for least.
The hard part of Macedonian is not the hands, it is the map. Most people find the motions transfer immediately and the recall does not: you know the key you want and cannot say where it is. That gap closes with repetition, and closes faster if you resist looking.
- Writing system
- Cyrillic
- Keyboard layout
- Macedonian Cyrillic
- Direction
- left to right
- Mapped characters
- 31
- Practice words
- 73
- Distinct characters
- 25
- Average word
- 4.2 units
Characters you will press most in these Macedonian words
- о39
- а37
- е33
- т21
- и16
- к14
- р14
- с14
- в13
- н13
- д12
- м12
Counted across the 73 practice words — the characters worth getting right first.
мирните раце го наоѓаат основниот ред без гледањеTwo letters no other Cyrillic alphabet has
Macedonian Cyrillic includes ѓ and ќ, which appear in no other Cyrillic alphabet, and ѕ, which spells a dz sound and is written like a Latin s. Together they are what most immediately distinguishes Macedonian text from Serbian or Bulgarian.
The alphabet was standardised in 1945 and is closely modelled on Serbian Cyrillic, sharing љ, њ and џ with it. The layout is correspondingly close to the Serbian one.
Macedonian is the only Slavic language to have a definite article, and it attaches to the end of the noun in three forms depending on proximity — a Balkan feature shared with Albanian and Romanian rather than with its Slavic relatives.
Questions about typing in Macedonian
Do I need a Macedonian keyboard?
No, and this is the part people most often get wrong. A Macedonian keyboard is a software setting: add the Macedonian Cyrillic layout in your operating system's keyboard settings and the keys under your fingers begin producing Cyrillic characters. Keycaps with Cyrillic letters printed on them are a convenience for people who look down, and if you are learning to touch type you are learning not to.
Which Macedonian keyboard layout do these lessons use?
Macedonian Cyrillic, with 31 characters mapped across the standard key positions. The 73 practice words between them use 25 of those 31, so 6 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the physical key and the character it produces together, so you are never reading a layout diagram in one window while typing in another.
What will I actually be typing in Macedonian?
Sequences of the keys each stage has introduced — single letters first, then pairs, then short chunks — in Cyrillic as the Macedonian Cyrillic layout produces it, rather than transliterated into Latin letters. The point of the course is the position of a key rather than the vocabulary. The 73 common Macedonian words in the practice bank are what the speed test samples and what the games pull from, once the positions stop needing thought.
Is Macedonian hard to type?
Harder to start, not harder to reach. Every motion you already have transfers; what does not is the map, and 31 key positions have to be relearned. With a fairly compact inventory of 25 characters across the practice bank, most people are past the worst of it inside two weeks of short daily sessions.
Can I skip ahead to a later stage?
Yes, nothing is locked. It is usually a mistake, though, because each stage assumes the keys before it have stopped needing thought — and a stage practised on top of a shaky one tends to embed the shakiness rather than fix it.
Why does a drill need three clean passes?
Because one correct attempt proves you can do it and three prove you can repeat it, which is the thing that eventually becomes automatic. Attempts with mistakes in them do not count towards the three — not as a punishment, but because practising an error is how an error becomes a habit. Three is the default rather than a rule: Settings will take it down to one or up to ten.
Do I need to know Macedonian to use these lessons?
No. The material here is typing practice rather than a language course — you can work through it without understanding a word, and plenty of people do exactly that when they need to type a script for work. If you do speak Macedonian, you will simply predict what is coming sooner, and prediction is most of what typing speed is.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
No, and it is free either way. Every lesson, drill, test and game works signed out, with your progress kept in this browser. An account adds three things only: your progress and settings follow you to another device, your streak survives clearing your browser data, and you can appear on the leaderboards under a name you choose.
Also in Macedonian: the speed test and typing games.
Other languages written in Cyrillic: Mongolian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- Typing Cyrillic: one script, eight keyboardsWhy the standard Russian layout ignores the letters on your keycaps, when a phonetic layout is defensible, and how far the eight Cyrillic layouts differ.
- The bottom rowZ X C V B N M sit below home and are the least practised keys on the board. Which finger takes which, and why C and B cause trouble.
- What counts as a good typing speedGood depends on what you type and how accurately. A guide to the bands, why accuracy beats speed, and what employers actually ask for.