Езикът на българските общности извън България / The Language of Bulgarian Communities abroad
Authors: Keremidchieva Slavka 
Published: April 2021

The papers published in this issue of Balgarski ezik are unified by the idea of
presenting the peculiarities of the language varieties spoken by Bulgarian communities that live outside the state borders of present-day Bulgaria. In these new
studies, one can trace the influence of the scientific ideas, theoretical views and
remarkable teaching activity of an eminent Bulgarian scholar, Prof. Ivan Kochev, to
whose 85th anniversary this issue is dedicated. He was the first of a generation of
scholars succeeding the classics of Bulgarian linguistics such as Lyubomir Miletich,
Stefan Mladenov and Benyo Tsonev to turn the study of the Bulgarian language
throughout its historical territory, both within and outside the contemporary borders
of Bulgaria, into his “symbol of faith”. In addition, some of the articles discuss the
current state of the language spoken by the Bulgarian diaspora.
The first two papers present recent lexical and phonetic data from the dialects of
two Bulgarian villages in the Prizren Region that provide further evidence on the
geographical position of the western boundary of the Bulgarian language continuum. The material has been collected by the authors of the articles in recent years
as a result of personal field research.
Luchia Antonova-Vasileva’s study On the Distinction of Dialects of Closely
Related Languages at the Lexical Level explores the dialectal differences between
Bulgarian and Serbian on the basis of lexical data from a recently studied Bulgarian
dialect spoken in the Republic of Kosovo. Revealing the dialect-specific, common
Bulgarian and common Slavic tiers of the vocabulary of the dialect of the village of
Rahovets in the Prizren Region, the author undoubtedly proves its Bulgarian nature.
In her paper The Reflexes of the Proto-Slavic Combinations *tj, *dj, *kt’ and
Palatalisation Changes in the Plosives т, д, к and г in the Phonetic System of the
Dialect of the Village of Rechane, Prizren Region – New Data, Iliyana Garavalova
adduces authentic, although not very abundant, dialect material which corroborates
the existence of one of the most typical diagnostic phonetic features of the
Bulgarian language – the reflexes шт, жд – in the dialect of the Prizren village of
Rechane.
Georgi Mitrinov studies The Bulgarian Immigrants’ Dialect of the Village of
Musabeyli, Edirne Region in comparison with the Rhodope dialect of the village of
Vievo, Smolyan Region, where the inhabitants of Musabeyli hail from. The author
discusses the linguistic data in light of historical, geographical and demographic information about the village over a period spanning more than 100 years and continuing into the present day.
Based on material from the dialect of the residents of seven villages in the Tsaribrod Region collected by the author himself, Kiril Parvanov analyses the dialect’s
most significant archaic features in the domain of morphology. Pointing out the
symmetrical bilingualism observed in the dialect of the population of the Western
Outlands, he provides linguistic data that clearly prove its Bulgarian character. An
intriguing addition to the analysis are several recipes revealing unknown folk medicine practices and experience.
Daniela Andrei’s paper The Bulgarian Ethnic Minorities in Oltenia, Romania.
The Language of the Inhabitants of Sviniţa as an Ethnographic Group within the
Bulgarian People is a contribution to the study of the language and culture of Bulgarian minorities in Romania. The author discusses archaic and recent phonetic features of the ancient dialect of the village of Sviniţa in Mehedinţi County, which shares common features with the dialect of the village of Novo Selo, Vidin Region.
She goes on to make an overview of the rich bibliography on this topic, concluding
that the language and culture of the Bulgarian minority in Oltenia merit further research.
Ana Kocheva adds new details To the Characterisation of the Mixed Language
of Second-Generation Viennese Bulgarians. As noted by the author, the language of
Viennese Bulgarians preserves major features of the Bulgarian language, but bilingualism of a subordinate type is also observed. The variability between Bulgarian
and German typical for the first generation of Bulgarian emigrants is gradually
being replaced through the natural stabilisation of the German elements.
Katerina Usheva traces the interesting Historical Development of the Old Bulgarian Etymological Vowel А (Я) in the Dialects of the Southern Part of the Э Isoglottal Zone (the regions of Razlog, Sandanski, Petrich, Gotse Delchev, Drama,
Serres and Thessaloniki) and emphasises on the archaic nature of the umlaut in the
Razlog and Thessaloniki Regions.
Simeon Stefanov studies A Peculiarity in the Description of the Local Traditional Clothes Made by the Administration of the Shumen Region in 1888 (On Material from Archive 427 l. 68a-80a). The author analyses the lexis and style of hitherto unexplored documents from the late-19th century which provide data on the
way different social and ethnic groups dressed in post-Liberation Bulgaria.
The featured articles by established and younger scholars are a contribution to
the study of the language of Bulgarian communities abroad that undoubtedly show
that even today, whether spoken in or outside the boundaries of the Bulgarian language continuum, these language varieties preserve the most important characterristics of Bulgarian.