Overseas
95-646: Shopi or Šopi ( South Slavic : Шопи) is a regional term, used by a group of people in the Balkans . The areas traditionally inhabited by the Shopi or Šopi is called Shopluk or Šopluk (Шоплук), a mesoregion . Most of the region is located in Western Bulgaria, with smaller parts in Eastern Serbia and Eastern North Macedonia , where the borders of the three countries meet. The majority of
190-473: A Western Bulgarian dialect , in which case it is referred to as a Transitional Bulgarian dialect . In Bulgarian common speech, the Torlakian dialects are traditionally referred to as У-говори ("U-dialects"), referencing their reflex of old Slavic *ǫ being /u/ (compared to standard Bulgarian, where it is /ɤ/, or its nearby dialects, where it is /a/). The Serbo-Croatian linguists maintain that Torlakian
285-559: A dialectal continuum stretching from today's southern Austria to southeast Bulgaria . On the level of dialectology , they are divided into Western South Slavic (Slovene and Serbo-Croatian dialects) and Eastern South Slavic (Bulgarian and Macedonian dialects); these represent separate migrations into the Balkans and were once separated by intervening Hungarian, Romanian, and Albanian populations; as these populations were assimilated, Eastern and Western South Slavic fused with Torlakian as
380-646: A genetic node in Slavic studies : defined by a set of phonological, morphological and lexical innovations (isoglosses) which separate it from the Western and Eastern Slavic groups. That view, however, has been challenged in recent decades (see below). Some innovations encompassing all South Slavic languages are shared with the Eastern Slavic group, but not the Western Slavic. These include: This
475-626: A liturgical language in Slavic Orthodox churches in the form of various local Church Slavonic traditions. The South Slavic languages constitute a dialect continuum . Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin constitute a single dialect within this continuum. The Slavic languages are part of the Balto-Slavic group , which belongs to the Indo-European language family. The South Slavic languages have been considered
570-620: A " Belogradchik - Tran " dialect of Bulgarian, and claim that it should be classified outside the Shtokavian area. Stoykov further argued that the Torlakian dialects have a grammar that is closer to Bulgarian and that this is indicative of them being originally Bulgarian. In Macedonian dialectology, the Torlakian ( Macedonian : Торлачки , romanized : Torlački ) varieties spoken in North Macedonia ( Kumanovo , Kratovo and Kriva Palanka dialect ) are classified as part of
665-427: A / ; three reflexes of Old Bulgarian's syllabic r ( ръ~рь ): syllabic r , ръ ( rɤ ) and ър ( ɤr ); and the whopping five reflexes of Old Bulgarian's syllabic l ( лъ~ль ): syllabic l , лъ ( ɫɤ ), ъл ( ɤɫ ), ъ ( / ɤ / ) and у ( / u / ). Even the clearly predominant щ~жд ( ʃt~ʒd ) reflex of Pra-Slavic *tʲ~*dʲ (as in standard Bulgarian) is challenged by the typically Torlak ч~дж ( t͡ʃ~d͡ʒ ) along
760-411: A Bulgarian village; Sofia , a big city populated by Bulgarians, Greeks, Turks, Jews and Ragusans ; Dragomanlii ( Dragoman ), a small, purely Bulgarian village; Dimitrovgrad , a Bulgarian village; Pirot , mostly Turkish with a minority of Bulgarians; Kuruçeşme ( Bela Palanka ), a purely Bulgarian village, and, finally, Nissa ( Niš ), where only few Christians lived, and most of them Serbs —"because this
855-428: A Serbian nationalist blueprint seeking to unify all South Slavs under Serbian rule. The Načertanije envisaged a " Piedmont "-like role for Serbia on the Balkans and the restoration of the medieval Serbian Empire by indoctrinating all surrounding Slavic peoples with pro-Serbian national ideology. As the plan basically suggested the assimilation of all South Slavs, it was kept secret until 1906. In 1867, Serbia launched
950-660: A compromise and middle ground between what he himself referred to as the "Northern Bulgarian" or Balkan dialect and the "Southern Bulgarian" or " Macedonian " dialect. According to the Czech Slavist Konstantin Jireček , the Shopi differed a lot from other Bulgarians in language and habits, and were generally regarded as a simple folk. He linked their name and origin to the Thracian tribe of Sapsei . The American Association for South Slavic Studies has noted that
1045-477: A majority of the Torlakian population did not have national consciousness in an ethnic sense. Therefore, both Serbs and Bulgarians considered local Slavs as part of their own people and the local population was also divided between sympathy for Bulgarians and Serbs. Other authors 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,
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#17327807864141140-518: A massive campaign to open Serbian schools across the Shopluk and Macedonia, with a special focus on Torlak-speaking areas. Serbia's main competitive advantage was that it offered subsidized teacher salaries, while the Exarchate financed its schools with the membership dues of its parishioners. While some towns like Pirot repeatedly thwarted Serbian attempts to establish schools, due to the proximity of
1235-474: A northeastern group of Macedonian dialects . Basic Torlakian vocabulary shares most of its Slavic roots with Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbian but also over time borrowed a number of words from Aromanian , Greek , Turkish , and Albanian in the Gora region of the Šar Mountains . It also preserved many words which in the "major" languages became archaisms or changed meaning. Like other features, vocabulary
1330-537: A state was created after the withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire . The Slavs indigenous to the region are called Krashovani and are a mixture of original settler Slavs and later settlers from the Timok Valley in eastern Serbia. Bulgarian and Macedonian are the only two modern Slavic languages that lost virtually the entire noun case system, with nearly all nouns now in the surviving nominative case. This
1425-559: A strictly linguistic sense, refer to entirely different things. The Torlakian dialects , along with the Northwestern Bulgarian dialects and the Northern Macedonian dialects share features of and are transitional between Western and Eastern South Slavic . They also generally shade more and more towards Serbian, Bulgarian and Macedonian the further west, east and south you go. On the other hand, "Shopski"
1520-481: A study at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference , where he divided the Shopluk into three groups: Serbs, mixed population, and a group closer to Bulgarians. However, given that his two earlier maps of 1909 and 1913 established the boundary between Bulgarians and Serbs along the state border, his claim has been regarded as little more than a political manoeuvre to justify Serbian territorial claims against Bulgaria. Then, according to A. Belitch and T. Georgevitch, again in 1919,
1615-647: A subgroup of the Bulgarian ethnos. As with every ethnographic group, the Bulgarian Academy notes, the Shopi in Bulgaria consider themselves the true and most pure of the Bulgarians, just as the mountaineers around Turnovo claim their land as true Bulgaria from time immemorial, etc. In the 19th century, the Shopluk area was one of the centres of Bulgarian National Revival . As such, the enture region
1710-596: A television programme is usually in Cyrillic, but advertisements are usually in Latin. The division is partly based on religion – Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Macedonia (which use Cyrillic) are Orthodox countries, whereas Croatia and Slovenia (which use Latin) are Catholic . The Bosnian language , used by the Muslim Bosniaks , also uses Latin, but in the past used Bosnian Cyrillic . The Glagolitic alphabet
1805-495: A transitional dialect. On the other hand, the breakup of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires , followed by formation of nation-states in the 19th and 20th centuries, led to the development and codification of standard languages . Standard Slovene, Bulgarian, and Macedonian are based on distinct dialects. The Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian standard variants of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian are based on
1900-631: Is i or sometimes e (rarely as (i)je ), or mixed ( Ekavian–Ikavian ). Many dialects of Chakavian preserved significant number of Dalmatian words, but also have many loanwords from Venetian , Italian , Greek and other Mediterranean languages. Example: Ča je, je, tako je vavik bilo, ča će bit, će bit, a nekako će već bit! This dialect is spoken primarily in the federal state of Burgenland in Austria and nearby areas in Vienna, Slovakia , and Hungary by descendants of Croats who migrated there during
1995-536: Is a Balkanized Western South Slavic dialect together with the South Slavic varieties spoken in northern parts of North Macedonia and in Western Bulgaria (Vuković 2021). Other researchers tend to classify it as Eastern South Slavic . Motoki Nomachi maintains that the Torlakian dialects are foreign to standard Serbian in many cases. According to the historian Ivo Banac during the Middle Ages , Torlak and
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#17327807864142090-539: Is considered transitional between the Western and Eastern groups of South Slavic languages. Torlakian is thought to fit together with Bulgarian and Macedonian into the Balkan sprachbund , an area of linguistic convergence caused by long-term contact rather than genetic relation. Because of this some researchers tend to classify it as Southeast Slavic . Each of these primary and secondary dialectal units breaks down into subdialects and accentological isoglosses by region. In
2185-483: Is illustrated in the following table: Several isoglosses have been identified which are thought to represent exclusive common innovations in the South Slavic language group. They are prevalently phonological in character, whereas morphological and syntactical isoglosses are much fewer in number. Sussex & Cubberly (2006 :43–44) list the following phonological isoglosses: Most of these are not exclusive in character, however, and are shared with some languages of
2280-591: Is inconsistent across subdialects, for example, a Krashovan does not necessarily understand a Goranac . The varieties spoken in the Slavic countries have been heavily influenced by the standardized national languages, particularly when a new word or concept was introduced. The only exception is a form of Torlakian spoken in Romania , which escaped the influence of a standardized language which has existed in Serbia since
2375-734: Is just an alternative (and rather incorrect) designation for the Western Bulgarian dialects , and though they are part of the South Slavic dialectal continuum , they are not transitional to any language. Instead, Western Bulgarian dialects are divided into Southwestern , spoken in Central Western and Southwestern Bulgaria, except for the region around Sofia; Northwestern , spoken in Northwestern Bulgaria and around Sofia and Outer Northwestern , spoken along
2470-441: Is part of the broader Balkan sprachbund . According to UNESCO 's list of endangered languages, Torlakian is vulnerable distinct language. Torlakian is not standardized, and its subdialects vary significantly in some features. Yugoslav linguists traditionally classified it as an old Shtokavian dialect or as a fourth dialect of Serbo-Croatian along with Shtokavian , Chakavian , and Kajkavian . Bulgarian scholars classify it as
2565-418: Is partly true of the Torlakian dialect. In the northwest, the instrumental case merges with the accusative case , and the locative and genitive cases merge with the nominative case . Further south, all inflections disappear and syntactic meaning is determined solely by prepositions . Macedonian, Torlakian and a number of Serbian and Bulgarian dialects, unlike all other Slavic languages, technically lack
2660-530: Is the Manuscript from Temska Monastery from 1762, in which its author, the Monk Kiril Zhivkovich from Pirot , considered his language " simple Bulgarian ". According to one theory, the name Torlak derived from the South Slavic word tor (" sheepfold "), possibly referring to the fact that Torlaks in the past were mainly shepherds by occupation. Some Bulgarian scientists describe
2755-612: Is the case with eastern towns such as Pehčevo. In fact, the Macedonian language is based in Prilep , Pelagonia and words such as thousand and urgent are iljada and itno in standard Macedonian but hiljada and hitno in Serbian (also, Macedonian oro , ubav vs. Bulgarian horo , hubav (folk dance, beautiful)). This is actually a part of an isogloss , a dividing line separating Prilep from Pehčevo in
2850-549: Is the traditional main occupation, with cattle breeding coming second. The traditional Shop house that has a fireplace in the centre has only survived in some more remote villages, being displaced by the Middle Bulgarian type. The villages in the plains are larger, while those in the higher areas are somewhat straggling and have traditionally been inhabited by single families ( zadruga ). The unusually large share of placenames ending in -ovci, -enci and -jane evidence for
2945-399: Is where Bulgaria ends and Serbia begins". Another German, Wolf Andreas von Steinach, on his way home from Constantinople in 1583, placed the boundary between Bulgarian and Serbs just west of Niš . The same thing was done in the 1621 journal of yet another traveller, French diplomat Louis Deshayes , Baron de Courmemin , who emphasised that the boundary had been shown to him "by locals". In
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3040-544: The historical distribution of Bulgarian dialects, i.e., where Bulgarian dialects are or have historically been spoken . Isoglosses are based on 19th and early 20th century records rather than on current data, and Transdanubian settler dialects in Banat and Bessarabia are therefore excluded. With the establishment of the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the codification of a separate Macedonian language in
3135-542: The Balkans . These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches ( West and East ) by a belt of German , Hungarian and Romanian speakers. The first South Slavic language to be written (also the first attested Slavic language) was the variety of the Eastern South Slavic spoken in Thessaloniki , now called Old Church Slavonic , in the ninth century. It is retained as
3230-591: The Bessarabian Bulgarians in Ukraine ), share a number of characteristics that set them apart from other Slavic languages : Bulgarian and Macedonian share some of their unusual characteristics with other languages in the Balkans, notably Greek and Albanian (see Balkan sprachbund ). Torlakian dialects are spoken in southeastern Serbia , northern North Macedonia , western Bulgaria , southeastern Kosovo , and pockets of western Romania ; it
3325-496: The Eastern Herzegovinian dialect were part of Eastern South Slavic , but since the 12th century, especially the Shtokavian dialects, including Eastern Herzegovinian, began to diverge from the other neighboring South Slavic dialects. Some of the phenomena that distinguish western and eastern subgroups of the South Slavic languages can be explained by two separate migratory waves of different Slavic tribal groups of
3420-613: The Great Powers and by waiving its claims to the Sanjak of Novi Pazar in favour of Austria-Hungary, it managed to gain not only Niš and Leskovac, but also Vranje and even the staunchly Bulgarian Pirot. In this connection, Felix Kanitz noted that back in 1872 the inhabitants of the city would have never imagined that they would be free of the Turks so soon only to end up under foreign rule again. Having their Bulgarian schools closed and
3515-1024: The Nišava from Niš to Dimitrovgrad. With the launch of the Tanzimat reforms and the tentative opening of the Ottoman Empire to Europe in 1839, the Balkans attracted a large number of European ethnographers, linguists, and geographers, who wanted to study the population of European Turkey. A total of eleven primary ethnic maps of the Balkans were produced between 1842 and 1877: by Slovak philologist Pavel Jozef Šafárik in 1842, Ami Boué in 1847, French ethnographer Guillaume Lejean in 1861, English travel writers Georgina Muir Mackenzie and Paulina Irby in 1867, Russian ethnographer Mikhail Mirkovich in 1867, Czech folklorist Karel Jaromír Erben in 1868, German cartographer August Heinrich Petermann in 1869, renowned German geographer Heinrich Kiepert in 1876, British mapmaker Edward Stanford , French railway engineer Bianconi and Austrian diplomat Karl Sax, all three in 1877. With
3610-560: The Prizren–Timok dialect . Bulgarian researchers such as Benyo Tsonev , Gavril Zanetov and the Macedono-Bulgarian researcher Krste Misirkov classified Torlakian ( Bulgarian : Торлашки , romanized : Torlashki ) as dialect of the Bulgarian language. They noted the manner of the articles, the loss of most of the cases, etc. Today Bulgarian linguists ( Stoyko Stoykov , Rangel Bozhkov) also classify Torlakian as
3705-647: The Sofia Valley . The boundaries that are most commonly used overlap with the Bulgarian folklore and ethnographic regions and incorporate Central Western Bulgaria and the Bulgarian-populated areas in Serbia . It is only rarely that the Shopluk is meant to include Northwestern Bulgaria, which is the widest definition (and the one used here). According to Institute for Balkan Studies, the Shopluk
3800-525: The Sublime Porte , in 1665; German diplomat Gerard Cornelius Von Don Driesch, sent on a mission to Constantinople on the orders of Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor , in 1723; Armenian geographer Hugas Injejian in 1789, etc. etc. Several maps at the end of the 1700s also place the border between Serbia and Bulgaria around Niš , sometimes west and sometimes east of it. When traveling across Bulgaria in 1841, French scholar Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui described
3895-494: The same dialect ( Shtokavian ). Thus, in most cases national and ethnic borders do not coincide with dialectal boundaries. Note : Due to the differing political status of languages/dialects and different historical contexts, the classifications are arbitrary to some degree. The dialects that form the eastern group of South Slavic, spoken mostly in Bulgaria and Macedonia and adjacent areas in neighbouring countries (such as
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3990-399: The "end of Bulgaria" at the city of Nissa ( Niš ), a city "inhabited by Turks and Bulgarians". Stephan Gerlach , a German Protestant theologian travelling back to Central Europe from Constantinople in 1578, described the following Bulgarian towns and villages along the way: "Vedreno" ( Vetren ); "Ihtimon" ( Ihtiman ), with mixed population of Turks and Bulgarians; Kazidzham ( Kazichene ),
4085-471: The "main city of all of Bulgaria". A decade or so later, Italian military specialist in Austrian service Luigi Ferdinando Marsili described Dragoman , Kalotina and Dimitrovgrad as "Bulgarian villages". Other travellers who put the ethnographic boundary between Serbs and Bulgarians at Niš include German George Christoff Von Neitzschitz, in 1631; Austrian diplomat Paul Taffner, as part of an embassy to
4180-475: The 1590s, Austrian apothecary Hans Seidel wrote about hundreds of chopped-off heads of Bulgarian villagers rolling along the road from Sofia to Niš . In 1664, Englishman John Burberry was baffled by several Bulgarian women in Bela Palanka who threw pieces of butter with salt in front of his company (probably wishing them a safe journey). In 1673, another Austrian traveller, Hans Hönze, described Pirot as
4275-513: The 16th century. This dialect (or family of dialects) differs from standard Croatian, since it has been heavily influenced by German and Hungarian. It has properties of all three major dialectal groups in Croatia, since the migrants did not all come from the same area, but the linguistic standard is based on the Chakavian dialect. Kajkavian is mostly spoken in northern and northwest Croatia near
4370-472: The 1940s, the bipartite division of the Shopluk has become tripartite. Thus, there are now Shopi who identify as Bulgarians, Serbs and Macedonians and who speak dialects identified as Bulgarian, Serbian and Macedonian, yet still maintain a regional or ethnographic identity as Shopi. And as modern sociolinguistics places an equally big, if not bigger, emphasis on self-identification and other social factors as on purely linguistic criteria, groups of people speaking
4465-458: The 19th century, around Vidin, it was not unusual for a woman in her mid 20s and 30s to have a man of 15–16 years. The Shopi — especially those from near Sofia — have the widespread (and arguably unjustified) reputation of stubborn and selfish people. They were considered conservative and resistant to change. There are many proverbs and anecdotes about them, more than about all other regional groups in Bulgaria. A distinguished writer from
4560-481: The 19th century, they were often called Bulgarian , but their classification was contested between Serbian and Bulgarian writers. Previously, the designation "Torlakian" was not applied to the dialects of Niš and the neighbouring areas to the east and south. The Torlakian dialects, together with Bulgarian and Macedonian , display many properties of the Balkan linguistic area , a set of structural convergence features shared also with other, non-Slavic, languages of
4655-515: The Balkans such as Albanian , Romanian and Aromanian . In terms of areal linguistics, they have therefore been described as part of a prototypical "Balkan Slavic" area, as opposed to other parts of Serbo-Croatian , which are only peripherally involved in the convergence area. Most notable Serbian linguists (like Pavle Ivić and Asim Peco ) classify Torlakian ( Serbo-Croatian : Torlački / Торлачки , pronounced [tɔ̌rlaːt͡ʃkiː] ) as an Old-Shtokavian dialect, referring to it as
4750-652: The Bulgarian bishop expelled, a large portion of the Bulgarians in Pirot left the town and settled in Sofia, Dimitrovgrad, Vidin, etc. This success encouraged Serbian scholars to further expand their claims beyond the Torlaks and to claim even the Šopi (also known as Šopovi ) as a subgroup of the Serbian ethnos, portraying them as closer to the Serbs than to the Bulgarians. For example, Serbian ethnographer Jovan Cvijić , presented
4845-549: The Eastern and Western Slavic language groups (in particular, Central Slovakian dialects). On that basis, Matasović (2008) argues that South Slavic exists strictly as a geographical grouping, not forming a true genetic clade ; in other words, there was never a proto-South Slavic language or a period in which all South Slavic dialects exhibited an exclusive set of extensive phonological, morphological or lexical changes (isoglosses) peculiar to them. Furthermore, Matasović argues, there
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#17327807864144940-521: The Grandmothers of Poduene and Bistritsa villages. A famous Bulgarian dish, popular throughout the Balkans and Central Europe is the Shopska salad , named after the ethnographic group. The salad was created by state tourist agency " Balkantourist " in 1955, as part of an effort to popularize a unique Bulgarian tourist brand. Thus, it has no connection with either the Shopi or the Shopluk. In
5035-526: The Hungarian and Slovene borders—chiefly around the towns of Zagreb , Varaždin, Čakovec, Koprivnica, Petrinja, Delnice and so on. Its reflex of yat is primarily /e/ , rarely diphthongal ije ). This differs from that of the Ekavian accent; many Kajkavian dialects distinguish a closed e —nearly ae (from yat )—and an open e (from the original e ). It lacks several palatals (ć, lj, nj, dž) found in
5130-472: The Kyustendil region are in black and they are called Chernodreshkovci — Blackcoats. Some Shope women wear a special kind of sukman called a litak, which is black, generally is worn without an apron, and is heavily decorated around the neck and bottom of the skirt in gold, often with great quantities of gold-colored sequins. Embroidery is well developed as an art and is very conservative. Agriculture
5225-530: The Republic of North Macedonia at the southern extreme, and reaching central Serbia ( Šumadija ) at a northern extreme. In Šumadija, local folk songs may still use the traditional form of I want being oću (оћу) compared with hoću (хоћу) as spoken in Standard Serbian. Some versions of Torlakian have retained the syllabic /l/ , which, like /r/ , can serve the nucleus of a syllable. In most of
5320-508: The Serbian People . The border between Serbs and Bulgarians did not change much in cartographer Constant Desjardins' 1853 map of the distribution of the Serbian language, either. And in 1852, Serbian philologist and language reformer Vuk Karadžić gave the shortest and most precise definition of Torlaks by saying that they speak neither pure Serbian nor pure Bulgarian. However, all of this changed with Ilija Garašanin 's Načertanije ,
5415-451: The Shop dialect in particular, as well as for other western dialects in general. Some examples are: The Shopi have a very original and characteristic folklore. The traditional male costume of the Shopi is white, while the female costumes are diverse. White male costumes are spread at the western Shopluk. The hats they wear are also white and tall (called gugla). Traditionally Shopi costume from
5510-517: The Shopi (those in Bulgaria, as well in the Bulgarian territories annexed by Serbia in 1919 ) identify as Bulgarians , those in the pre-1919 territory of Serbia—as Serbs and those in North Macedonia—as ethnic Macedonians. The boundaries of the Shopluk in Bulgaria are a matter of debate, with the narrowest definition confining them only to the immediate surroundings of the City of Sofia , i.e.,
5605-561: The Shopi are recognized as a distinct sub-group in Bulgaria. The rural inhabitants near Sofia have popularly been claimed by a number of different authors to be descendants of the Pechenegs . The Oxford historian C. A. Macartney studied the Shopi during the 1920s and reported that they were despised by the other inhabitants of Bulgaria for their stupidity and bestiality, and dreaded for their savagery. It is, however, unclear to what extent Macartney's own personal, clearly negative, opinion of
5700-413: The Shopi seeps into this description. Prior to 1878, there was practically no European etnographer, researcher or traveller to identify not only the Shopi, but also the Torlaks , in any other way than as Bulgarians. As early as 1502, a Dalmatian traveller by the name of Felix Petančić identified a number of places in the region, including Vakarel , Sofia and Pirot as inhabited by Bulgarians and marked
5795-463: The Shopi were a mixed Serbo-Bulgarian people in Western Bulgaria of Serbian origin. This Serbian ethnographical group, according to them, inhabited a region east of the border as far as the line Bregovo - Kula - Belogradchik - Iskrets , thence towards Radomir and to the east of Kyustendil ; to the east of that limit the Serbian population, blended with the Bulgarian element, reached the Iskar banks and
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#17327807864145890-899: The Shopluk in the Bulgarian Church struggle (the first rebellion against a Greek bishop took place in Vratsa in 1828), the entire Shopluk as well as the Pomoravie were included in the territory of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870 and in the Bulgarian autonomous vilayets proposed at the 1876–77 Constantinople Conference . Until the mid-1800s, Serbs themselves did not consider either Shopi or Torlaks to be Serbs. Serbian writer and prime minister Dimitrije Davidović did not include any Torlak or Shop-speaking areas in his maps of "Territories inhabited by Servians" published in 1821 and 1848, nor mentioned them in his 1848 History of
5985-539: The Shtokavian dialect, and has some loanwords from the nearby Slovene dialects and German (chiefly in towns). Example: Kak je, tak je; tak je navek bilo, kak bu tak bu, a bu vre nekak kak bu! Slovene is mainly spoken in Slovenia . Spoken Slovene has numerous dialects, but there is no consensus on how many; estimates range from 7 to 50. The lowest estimate refers to the language's seven commonly recognized dialect groups, without subdividing any of them. Some of
6080-475: The Shtokavian dialects, the syllabic /l/ eventually became /u/ or /o/ . In standard Bulgarian, it is preceded by the vowel represented by ъ ( [ ɤ ] ) to separate consonant clusters. Naturally, the /l/ becomes velarized in most such positions, giving [ ɫ ] . In some dialects, most notably the Leskovac dialect, the word-final -l has instead shifted into the vocal cluster -(i)ja; for example
6175-512: The Torlaks as a distinct ethnographic group. Another theory is that it is derived from Ottoman Turkish torlak ("unbearded youth"), possibly referring to some portion of the youth among them not developing dense facial hair. 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 Ottoman rule,
6270-642: The Western dialects in the following ways: Apart from these three main areas there are several smaller, significant differences: Languages to the west of Serbia use the Latin script , whereas those to the east and south use Cyrillic . Serbian officially uses the Cyrillic script, though commonly Latin and Cyrillic are used equally. Most newspapers are written in Cyrillic and most magazines are in Latin; books written by Serbian authors are written in Cyrillic, whereas books translated from foreign authors are usually in Latin, other than languages that already use Cyrillic, most notably Russian. On television, writing as part of
6365-412: The border and their many refugees in Serbia, both Niš and Leskovac buckled to the Serbian propaganda in a matter of years. By the early 1870s, the Niš eparchy was part of the Bulgarian Exarchate in name only; all Bulgarian schools had closed, and the population had adopted a Serbian identity. At the Congress of Berlin , the Serbian diplomacy managed to skillfully navigate the conflicting objectives of
6460-483: The border with Serbia and by the Bulgarian minority in the Western Outlands in Serbia. It is only the latter group that is transitional to Torlak and therefore Serbian, which is why it is sometimes referred to as "Transitional dialects". The Torlak dialects spoken by Serbs are also classified by Bulgarian linguists as part of the Transitional Bulgarian dialect, although Serbian linguists deny this. The speech that tends to be closely associated with that term and to match
6555-572: The border with Serbia, by шч~жџ ( ʃtʃ~dʒ ) in eastern North Macedonia and even by the typically Macedonian ќ~ѓ ( c~ɟ ) around Kriva Palanka and Kratovo . The few unifying characterics of the dialects are that they belong to the " et " (western) group of Bulgarian dialects and that they are extremely analytical (i.e., are part of Balkan Slavic ). Even though the range presented here does include several dialects which Serbian dialectology refers to as Torlakian and that both terms are often used interchangeably in Serbian, Torlakian and Shopski, in
6650-415: The districts of Bosilegrad and Dimitrovgrad , which were ceded to Serbia after World War I, where the border follows the old Serbo-Bulgarian border before 1919. Similarly, Bulgarian linguistics no longer claims the Serbian Torlakian dialects as Bulgarian. While they were indeed included in the Atlas of Bulgarian Dialects and the adjoining map, both the atlas and the map explicitly state that they present
6745-411: The early 20th century, the name "Shopi" comes from the staff that local people, mostly pastoralists, used as their main tool. Even today in Bulgaria one of the names of a nice wooden stick is "sopa". In Bulgaria, the Shopi started gaining visibility as a "group" in the course of the 19th-century waves of migration of poor workers from the Shopluk villages to Sofia. Bulgarian scholars classify Shopi as
6840-503: The ethnic (and dialectal) picture of some areas—especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also in central Croatia and Serbia (Vojvodina in particular). In some areas, it is unclear whether location or ethnicity is the dominant factor in the dialect of the speaker. Because of this the speech patterns of some communities and regions are in a state of flux, and it is difficult to determine which dialects will die out entirely. Further research over
6935-518: The exception of Bianconi and Stanford's maps that portrayed all of Thrace , Macedonia and southern Albania as ethnically Greek and are generally described as having a pro-Greek bias, all other nine maps establish the Serbo-Bulgarian ethnic boundary along the Timok , then just north of Niš and finally along the Šar Mountains , thus defining the entire Shopluk as Bulgarian. Of interest is also
7030-586: The four volumes of the Atlas of Bulgarian Dialects although other examples are used. It describes linguistic features and references them, where relevant, with the respective features in standard Bulgarian, Serbian and Macedonian. The /x/-sound is often omitted. Despite being particularly associated with Shopski, this is actually characteristic of most rural Bulgarian dialects. Example: Shopski леб (leb), одиа (odia) vs standard Bulgarian хляб (hljab), ходиха (hodiha) (bread, they went) There are plenty of typical words for
7125-775: The future South Slavs via two routes: the west and east of the Carpathian Mountains. Speakers of the dialectal group are primarily ethnic Serbs , Bulgarians , and Macedonians . There are also smaller ethnic communities of Croats (the Krashovani ) in Romania and Slavic Muslims (the Gorani ) in southern Kosovo. The Torlakian dialects are intermediate between the Eastern and Western branches of South Slavic dialect continuum , and have been variously described, in whole or in parts, as belonging to either group. In
7220-418: The line which linked it to Ihtiman . In their most extreme form, Serbian claims extended all the way to the yat boundary. According to it, all Ekavian-speaking Bulgarians were nothing but Serbs. At present, no Serbian or international linguist supports the claims of Cvijić and Belić , and the border between Serbian and Bulgarian is unanimously defined as the state border between the two countries, except for
7315-421: The local population identifies in different ways, e.g., as граовци (graovci) around Pernik and Breznik , знеполци (znepolci) around Tran , торлаци (Torlaks) on the northern and southern side of the Balkan mountain , etc. Nor are the dialects spoken by this population particularly close to each other: in the Shopluk, there are no fewer than three reflexes of the big yus ( ѫ ): / ɤ / , / u / and /
7410-670: The next few decades will be necessary to determine the changes made in the dialectical distribution of this language group. The eastern Herzegovinian dialect is the basis of the Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian standard variants of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian. Chakavian is spoken in the western, central, and southern parts of Croatia—mainly in Istria , the Kvarner Gulf, Dalmatia and inland Croatia (Gacka and Pokupje, for example). The Chakavian reflex of proto-Slavic yat
7505-563: The past (and currently, in isolated areas), it was not uncommon for individual villages to have their own words and phrases. However, during the 20th century the local dialects have been influenced by Štokavian standards through mass media and public education and much "local speech" has been lost (primarily in areas with larger populations). With the breakup of Yugoslavia , a rise in national awareness has caused individuals to modify their speech according to newly established standard-language guidelines. The wars have caused large migrations, changing
7600-401: The phonemes [ x ] , [ ɦ ] or [ h ] . In other Slavic languages, [ x ] or [ ɦ ] (the latter from Proto-Slavic *g in "H-Slavic languages") is common. The appearance of the letter h in the alphabet is reserved mostly for loanwords and toponyms within the Republic of North Macedonia but outside of the standard language region. In Macedonian, this
7695-670: The population of the Sanjak of Niš and the Sanjak of Sofia as Bulgarian. The author further designated the population of Niš as Bulgarian and the Niš rebellion (1841) as a Bulgarian uprising. During his travels across European Turkey, French geologist Ami Boué also placed the boundary between Serbs and Bulgarians just north of Niš and identified the towns of Niš , Pirot , Leskovac , Bela Palanka , Dimitrovgrad , Dupnitsa , Blagoevgrad , Radomir , Sofia and Etropole as Bulgarian. He also mentioned that there are 200 Bulgarian villages around Pirot and some 60,000 to 80,000 Bulgarians living along
7790-451: The pre-1919 territory of Serbia—as Serbs and those in North Macedonia—as ethnic Macedonians. At the 2011 census in Serbia , they were registered as a separate ethnicity and 142 people declared themselves as belonging to this ethnicity. It has to be noted that only a minority of the people, whose dialects are referenced here, self-identify as "Shopi". This is particularly true for northwestern Bulgaria, but even in areas close to Sofia ,
7885-563: The preservation of the zadruga until even after the 19th century. In terms of music, the Shopi have a complex folklore with the heroic epic and humor playing an important part. The Shopi are also known for playing particularly fast and intense versions of Bulgarian dances . The gadulka ; the kaval and the gaida are popular instruments; and two-part singing is common. Minor second intervals are common in Shop music and are not considered dissonant. Two very popular and well-known fоlklore groups are Poduenski Babi and Bistrishki Babi —
7980-515: The region is Elin Pelin who actually wrote some comic short stories and poems in the dialect, and also portrayed life in the Shopluk in much of his literary work. Shopski Cove in Antarctica is named after the Shop region. South Slavic languages The South Slavic languages are one of three branches of the Slavic languages . There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in
8075-519: The retroactive study of Bulgaria's population in the 1860s by Russian philologist and dialectologist Afanasiy Selischev, which concluded that the valleys extending from Niš through Pirot and Sofia to the Gate of Trajan near Ihtiman , i.e., the central Shopluk featured the largest concentration of Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire. In recognition of this and as a result of the active participation of
8170-515: The same or similar dialects can still speak different languages—which is the case along much of the shared borders of the three countries. Most of the area traditionally inhabited by the Shopi is within Bulgaria , while the western borderlines are split between Serbia and the Republic of North Macedonia . The majority of the Shopi (those in Bulgaria, as well in the Bulgarian territories annexed by Serbia in 1919 ) identify as Bulgarians , those in
8265-486: The seven groups are more heterogeneous than others, and the higher estimates reflect the varying criteria that have been used to differentiate dialects and subdialects. Slovenian dialects can be so different from each other that a speaker of one dialect may have a very difficult time understanding a speaker of another, particularly if their dialects belong to different groups. Some dialects spoken in southern Slovenia transition into Chakavian or Kajkavian Serbo-Croatian , while
8360-477: The standard literary Bulgarian language with some elements of Shopski, which remains a majority dialect in Sofia's villages and throughout western Bulgaria, for example the big towns and cities of: (Sofia and Pleven - transitional speech with literary Bulgarian language), Pernik , Kyustendil, Vratsa , Vidin , Montana , Dupnitsa , Samokov , Lom , Botevgrad . The exposition below is based on Stoyko Stoykov 's Bulgarian dialectology (2002, first ed. 1962), and
8455-483: The stereotypical idea of "Shopski" speech are the South-Western Bulgarian dialects which are spoken from Rila mountain and the villages around Sofia to Danube towns such as Vidin . People from Eastern Bulgaria also refer to those who live in Sofia as Shopi, but as a result of migration from the whole of Bulgaria, Shopski is no longer a majority dialect in Sofia. Instead, most Sofia residents speak
8550-506: The transition from eastern dialects to Kajkavian is general, with cases of essentially the same linguistic variety spoken on both sides of the border (this is particularly true for the upper course of the Kupa and Sutla rivers). The table below compares grammatical and phonological innovations. The similarity of Kajkavian and Slovene is apparent. In broad terms, the Eastern dialects of South Slavic (Bulgarian and Macedonian) differ most from
8645-476: The word пекал became пекја ( to bake ). Word-medially however the syllabic /l/ remains unaltered. In all Torlakian dialects: In some Torlakian dialects: Literature written in Torlakian is rather sparse as the dialect has never been an official state language. During the Ottoman rule literacy in the region was limited to Eastern Orthodox clergy, who chiefly used Old Church Slavonic in writing. The first known literary document influenced by Torlakian dialects
8740-535: Was also used in the Middle Ages (most notably in Bulgaria, Macedonia and Croatia), but gradually disappeared. Torlaks Torlakian , or Torlak , is a group of Transitional South Slavic dialects of southeastern Serbia , Kosovo , northeastern North Macedonia , and northwestern Bulgaria . Torlakian, together with Bulgarian and Macedonian , falls into the Balkan Slavic linguistic area , which
8835-492: Was made part of the Bulgarian Exarchate upon its establishment in 1870. In 1875, during the tug-of-war regarding the basis of codificatin of modern Bulgarian , scholar Yosif Kovachev from Štip in Eastern Macedonia proposed that the "Middle Bulgarian" or "Shop dialect" of Kyustendil (in southwestern Bulgaria) and Pijanec (in eastern North Macedonia) be used as a basis for the Bulgarian literary language as
8930-400: Was never a period of cultural or political unity in which Proto-South-Slavic could have existed during which Common South Slavic innovations could have occurred. Several South-Slavic-only lexical and morphological patterns which have been proposed have been postulated to represent common Slavic archaisms , or are shared with some Slovakian or Ukrainian dialects. The South Slavic dialects form
9025-430: Was the mountainous area on the borders of Serbia , Bulgaria and North Macedonia , of which boundaries are quite vague, in Serbia the term Šop has always denoted highlanders . Shopluk was used by Bulgarians to refer to the borderlands of Bulgaria, the inhabitants were called Shopi . In Bulgaria, the Shopi designation is currently attributed to villagers around Sofia . According to some Shopluk studies dating back to
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