Bulgarian language: overview, features, history and distribution

Bulgarian dialects have been extensively researched and documented over the last hundred years. Traditionally, they are divided into two groups along the pronunciation of the Old Bulgarian letter 'jat' (also called the jat boundary): Eastern Bulgarian (pronunciation of 'jat' *ě as [ʲa] and e: bjal - beli) and Western Bulgarian (pronunciation of 'jat' as [ɛ]: bel - beli). Apart from this, some linguists define the Rupzian dialect as a third dialect group, which has its own parallels with Old Bulgarian, as well as with neighbouring Turkish and Greek dialects as features. The dialect groups are divided into the following dialects:

• West Bulgarian dialects:
• Northwest Bulgarian dialects
• Southwestern dialects
• Transitional dialects

• East Bulgarian dialects:
• Balkan Mouths
• Mystic dialects

• Rupzian dialects:
• Rhodope mouth species
• Ostrupz dialects: spoken on the one hand in the southern half of the Thracian Plain up to the Turkish border, on the other hand in the Strandscha Mountains
• West Rupian dialects (transitional dialect)

Various phonetic, accentological, morphological and lexical isoglosses connect the West Bulgarian dialects with the dialects spoken east of the Jat border from the Rhodope and Strandzha Mountains to the Black Sea. These dialects have several common characteristics, which is why some researchers define them as a third dialect group, Rupzian. Their characteristics include the reflex of the Uroslavic *ě as an open e, the Uroslavic д and ъ as an open *ô, and the so-called triple article. The forms for singular and plural in these dialects are partly derived from case forms for the dative. Another feature is the preservation of numerous lexical archaisms, which often have parallels to Old Bulgarian, but for which no equivalent can be found in the other Bulgarian dialects. Speakers of the Rhodope dialects are Christian Bulgarians on the one hand and Muslim Bulgarians (Pomaks) on the other. The difference in faith, dating back to the mid-17th century, has had little effect on the dialects, but it does affect in particular the vocabulary in the religious sphere and the Arabic-Turkish first names of the Muslims.

Before the First World War, the Rhodope and Rupz dialects extended beyond the present-day Bulgarian state border. Thus, the Thracian dialects were spread as far as the coast of the Aegean in connection mainly with Turkish and partly also with Greek dialects.

The transitional dialects have characteristics of two languages (Serbian and Bulgarian or Macedonian and Bulgarian) and are determined by the Bulgarian dialect continuum. The affiliation of these dialects, which continue on the other side of the border in Serbia and Macedonia, was disputed in the past among Serbian linguists and is disputed today among Macedonian and Bulgarian linguists. While some draw the Bulgarian language border far to the west as far as Niš, Prizren and Ohrid, others draw the language border to the east as far as Sofia and the entire Pirin Mountains (Macedonism). In Bulgaria, for this reason, Macedonian is sometimes classified as a dialect of Bulgarian. Since there is no sufficient linguistic criterion of distance for these dialects to the respective languages, only the criterion of national self-identification of the speakers and the standard language recognized by them can be used. According to this criterion, the dialects to the west of the present-day Bulgarian state border would have to be described as Serbian or Macedonian, and those to the east of the state border would have to be described as Bulgarian or assigned to Bulgarian as dialects.

The language most closely related to Bulgarian is Macedonian.

The vocabulary consists mainly of Slavic roots; loanwords originate mainly from Greek and Turkish. Since the 19th century, there have been repeated efforts to replace Turkish words with Slavicisms, which originate mainly from Russian. These efforts had an impact mainly on the written language; the colloquial language is still rich in Turkish elements, the majority of which (e.g. Диван/Diwan for sofa, Тефтер/Tefter for notebook; Пехливан/Pehlivan for wrestler) are of Arabic and Persian origin. In the technical field, many French and German words have been adopted (see below), as well as more recently Anglicisms.