Linguistic Features
The vernacular of the Bulgarians of Banat can be classified as a Paulician dialect of the Eastern Bulgarian group. A typical feature is the "ы" (*y) vowel, which can either take an etymological place or replace "i". Other characteristic phonological features are the "ê" (wide "e") reflex of the Old Church Slavonic yat and the reduction of "o" into "u" and sometimes "e" into "i": puljé instead of pole ("field"), sélu instead of selo ("village"), ugništi instead of ognište ("fireplace"). Another feature is the palatalization of final consonants, which is typical for other Slavic languages but found only in nonstandard dialects in Bulgarian (Bulgarian den ("day") sounds like and is written as denj).
Lexically, the language has borrowed many words from languages such as German (drot from Draht, "wire"; gáng from Gang, "anteroom, corridor"), Hungarian (vilánj from villám, "electricity"; mozi, "cinema"), Croatian (stvár from stvar, "item, matter"; ráčun from račun, "account"), and Romanian (šedinca from şedinţă, "conference") due to the close contacts with the other peoples of the multiethnic Banat and the religious ties with other Roman Catholic peoples. Banat Bulgarian also has some older loanwords from Ottoman Turkish and Greek, which it shares with other Bulgarian dialects (e.g. hirgjén from Turkish ergen, "unmarried man, bachelor"; trandáfer from Greek τριαντάφυλλο triantafyllo, "rose"). Loanwords constitute around 20% of the Banat Bulgarian vocabulary. The names of some Banat Bulgarians are also influenced by Hungarian names, as the Hungarian (eastern) name order is sometimes used (family name followed by given name) and the female ending "-a" is often dropped from family names. Thus, Marija Velčova would become Velčov Marija.
In addition to loanwords, the lexicon of Banat Bulgarian has also acquired calques and neologisms, such as svetica ("icon", formerly used ikona and influenced by German Heiligenbild), zarno ("bullet", from the word meaning "grain"), oganbalváč ("volcano", literally "fire belcher"), and predhurta ("foreword").
The Banat Bulgarian language has its own alphabet largely based on the Croatian alphabet (Gaj's Latin Alphabet) and preserves many features that are archaic in the language spoken in Bulgaria. Banat Bulgarian was codified as early as 1866 and is used in literature and the media, which distinguishes it from other Bulgarian dialects.
Read more about this topic: Banat Bulgarian Language
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