Torlakian Dialect - Ethnography

Ethnography

According to one theory, the name Torlak derived from the South Slavic word "tor" ("sheepfold" in English), referring to the fact that Torlaks in the past were mainly shepherds by occupation. Some scientists describe the Torlaks as a distinct ethnographic group. The Torlaks are also sometimes classified as part of the Shopi population and vice versa. In the 19th century, there was no exact border between Torlak and Shopi settlements. According to some authors during the Ottoman rule, the majority of native the Torlakian Slavic population did not have national consciousness in ethnic sense.

Therefore, both Serbs and Bulgarians considered local Slavs as part of their own people, while the local population was also divided between sympathy for Bulgarians and Serbs. Other authors from the epoch take a different view and maintain that the inhabitants of the Torlakian area had begun to develop predominantly Bulgarian national consciousness. With Ottoman influence ever weakening, the increase of nationalist sentiment in the Balkans in late 19th and early 20th century, and the redrawing of national boundaries after the Treaty of Berlin (1878), the Balkan wars and World War I, the borders in the Torlakian-speaking region changed several times between Serbia and Bulgaria, and later Republic of Macedonia.