A "distinctive language"? I was curious about this and looked it up in linguistics references. There is more difference between Cypriot Greek and mainland Greek than there is between "Macedonian" and Bulgarian. Before Tito set up this synthetic state the language was known as "Western Bulgarian dialect", a linguistic term coined by Slav linguists.
Now we have to consider the one third of the population who are ethnic Albanians how they feel about being called "Macedonian". Anyone asked them?