A report on Bulgarian language and Dialect continuum

The Codex Zographensis is one of the oldest manuscripts in the Old Bulgarian language, dated from the late 10th or early 11th century

Part of map 72 of the Atlas linguistique de la France, recording local forms meaning "today"

Local dialects of the West Germanic continuum are oriented towards either Standard Dutch or Standard German, depending on which side of the border they are spoken.

Map of the Bulgarian dialects within Bulgaria

Major dialect continua in Europe in the mid-20th century.

Extent of Bulgarian dialects according to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences shown encompassing the Eastern South Slavic dialects. Subregions are differentiated by pronunciation of man and tooth.

Areas of Eastern South Slavic languages.

Along with the closely related Macedonian language (collectively forming the East South Slavic languages), it is a member of the Balkan sprachbund and South Slavic dialect continuum of the Indo-European language family.

- Bulgarian language

During the time of the former Socialist Republic of Macedonia, a standard was developed from local varieties of Eastern South Slavic, within a continuum with Torlakian to the north and Bulgarian to the east.

- Dialect continuum

5 related topics with Alpha

Classification of Macedonian within the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family

Macedonian language

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Macedonian (македонски јазик, translit.

Krste Petkov Misirkov (pictured) was the first to outline the distinctiveness of the Macedonian language in his book Za makedonckite raboti (On the Macedonian Matters), published in 1903.

Macedonian police car, with the Macedonian word Полиција (Policija), for "police".

Macedonian developed out of the western dialects of the East South Slavic dialect continuum, whose earliest recorded form is Old Church Slavonic.

As it is part of a dialect continuum with other South Slavic languages, Macedonian has a high degree of mutual intelligibility with Bulgarian and varieties of Serbo-Croatian.

Pluricentric language

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Language with several interacting codified standard forms, often corresponding to different countries.

Some linguists and scholars, mostly from Bulgaria and Greece, but some also from other countries, consider Eastern South Slavic to be a pluricentric language with four standards: Bulgarian (based on the Rup, Balkan and Moesian ("Eastern Bulgarian") dialects), Macedonian (based on the Western and Central Macedonian dialects), Gorani (based on the Torlakian dialects), and Paulician (including Banat Bulgarian).

The Hindi languages are a large dialect continuum defined as a unit culturally.

The "Yat border" running approximately from Nikopol on the Danube to Thessaloniki on the Aegean Sea. This is the main isogloss separating the Eastern South Slavic dialects into Eastern and Western.

Eastern South Slavic

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Front cover of the first grammar book of the modern Bulgarian language published by Neofit Rilski in 1835. Rilski was born in Bansko, eastern most Ottoman Macedonia, a town lying exactly on the Yat-border. He tried to unify then Western and Eastern Bulgarian dialects.

The first complete edition of the Bible in modern Bulgarian, printed in Istanbul 1871. The decision to publish the Bible in the Eastern dialects was the historical factor based on which the Modern Bulgarian language departed from its Western and the Macedonian dialect to adopt the Eastern dialect. Behind this translation was the intellectual Petko Slaveykov from Tryavna, a town of the central Pre-Balkan.

Front cover of On the Macedonian Matters published in 1903 by Krste Misirkov, in which he laid down the principles of modern Macedonian. Misirkov was from the village of Postol in Ottoman Central Macedonia.

Decision about the proclamation of the Macedonian as an official language on 2 August 1944 by ASNOM.

Bulgarian:

They form the so-called Balkan Slavic linguistic area, which encompasses the southeastern part of the dialect continuum of South Slavic.

Statue of the first Czechoslovak president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (whose mother was Czech and father Slovak) with Czech flag on the left and Slovak flag on the right. There is a high level of mutual intelligibility between the closely related West Slavic languages Czech and Slovak (the Czech–Slovak languages).

Mutual intelligibility

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Relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort.

It exists in differing degrees among many related or geographically proximate languages of the world, often in the context of a dialect continuum.

Bulgarian: Macedonian (significantly)

Standard language

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Language variety that has undergone substantial codification of grammar and usage, although occasionally the term refers to the entirety of a language that includes a standardized form as one of its varieties.

Different national standards, derived from a continuum of dialects, might be treated as discrete languages (along with heteronomous vernacular dialects) even if there are mutually intelligible varieties among them, such as the North Germanic languages of Scandinavia (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish).

Likewise, in Yugoslavia (1945–1992), when the Socialist Republic of Macedonia (1963–1991) developed their national language from the dialect continuum demarcated by Serbia to the north and Bulgaria to the east, their Standard Macedonian was based upon vernaculars from the west of the republic, which were the dialects most linguistically different from standard Bulgarian, the previous linguistic norm used in that region of the Balkan peninsula.