Victor A. Friedman (born 18 October, 1949, Chicago, USA) is an American linguist. He is currently Andrew W. Carnegie Professor in the humanities at the University of Chicago. He holds a joint appointment in linguistics and Slavic languages and literatures with an associated appointment in anthropology. He has published numerous articles in English, Macedonian and Albanian.

Victor A. Friedman received his B.A. in Russian language and literature at Reed College in 1970. Friedman's PhD was in Slavic languages and literatures in General linguistics at the University of Chicago in 1975. His dissertation, "The Grammatical categories of the Macedonian Indicative", was the first publication about the modern Macedonian language in the USA and won the Mark Perry Galler prize for best dissertation.

From 1975 until 1993 Friedman lectured at the University of North Carolina. In 1993 he was appointed to a professorship at the University of Chicago. He has held visiting positions at Cornell University, the University of Skopje, the Central European University in Budapest, Kyoto University, the University of Helsinki, the University of Pristina, the National University of Malaysia and Latrobe University. His expertise extends over all languages of the Balkans and the Caucasus, including Albanian, Aromanian, Azeri, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Greek, Judezmo, Lak, Macedonian, Romani, Romanian, Russian, Tadjik and Turkish. His research has been multidisciplinary and has involved extensive fieldwork in the Balkans.