Paulician dialect

The Paulician dialect is a Bulgarian dialect of the Rhodopean group of the Rup dialects. The Paulician dialect is spoken by some 40,000 people, nearly all of them Catholic Bulgarians, in the region of Rakovski in southern Bulgaria and Svishtov in northern Bulgaria. The language of the Banat Bulgarians, late 17th century Bulgarian Catholic migrants to Banat, is phonologically and morphologically identical to the Paulician dialect. However, as a result of its three-century separation from Standart Bulgarian and its close interaction with German and Hungarian, Banat Bulgarian has adopted a number of loanwords not present in Standard Bulgarian and a Croatian-based Latin alphabet and is therefore now considered to be one of the three literary forms of Modern Bulgarian. The Paulician dialect is almost entirely surrounded by the Central Balkan dialect. It keeps many archaic characteristics and thus represents an older stage of development of the Rhodopean dialects.

Phonological and morphological characteristics

* Broad e (IPA|æ) for Old Church Slavonic yat in all positions and irrespective of the character of the following syllable : "бIPA|æл/бIPA|æли" vs. formal Bulgarian "бял/бели" (white). However, the broad e has started giving way to IPA|ɛ, as in the formal language
* Merger of Old Church Slavonic big yus Unicode |ѫ, little yus Unicode|ѧ, ь and ъ into ъ (IPA|ə) in a stressed syllable and into a slightly reduced a in an unstressed syllable: "къшта" (as in formal Bulgarian – house), "клIPA|ʲътва" vs. formal Bulgarian "клетва" (oath), "глIPA|ʲъдам" vs. formal Bulgarian "гледам" (I look)
* Reduction of stressed broad vowels IPA|/ɛ/ and IPA|/ɔ/ into their narrow counterparts IPA|/i/ and IPA|/u/, i.e. a development which is exactly opposite to the vowel reduction in the Balkan dialects: "тибе" vs. Standard Bulgarian "тебе" (you), "жина" vs. Standard Bulgarian "жена" (woman)
* Traces of Old Bulgarian ы IPA|(ɨ): "сын" vs. formal Bulgarian "син" (blue). This makes the Paulician dialect extremely archaic as IPA|(ɨ) is considered to be the original pronunciation of Old Church Slavonic ы
* Individual cases of transition of stressed IPA|i into IPA|(ɨ) or IPA|ə: "объчай" vs. Standard Bulgarian "обичай" (custom)
* Transition of unstressed IPA|i into IPA|ə: "шъроко" vs. Standard Bulgarian "широко" (wide)
* Much harder consonant system than the rest of the Rup dialects and even Standard Bulgarian: "молъ" vs. Standard Bulgarian "молIPA|ʲъ" (I ask)
* Transition of х (IPA|x) before a consonant and at the end of the word into the semivowel й (IPA|j): "тейно" vs. Standard Bulgarian "техно" (theirs)
* Single definite article: -ът, -та, -то, -те

For other phonological and morphological characteristics typical for all Rup or Rhodopean dialects, cf. Rup dialects.

ources

Стойков, Стойко: Българска диалектология, Акад. изд. "Проф. Марин Дринов", 2006 [http://www.promacedonia.org/jchorb/st/st_2_b_izt_3.htm#pavlikjanski]