The Transitional Bulgarian dialects are a group of Bulgarian dialects

Bulgarian dialects

Bulgarian dialects are the regional spoken varieties of the Bulgarian language, a South Slavic language. Bulgarian dialectology dates to the 1830s and the pioneering work of Neofit Rilski, Bolgarska gramatika...

, which are located west of the yat

Yat

Yat or Jat is the thirty-second letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet. Its name in Old Church Slavonic is jěd’ or iad’ . In the common scientific Latin transliteration for old Slavic languages, the letter is represented by e with caron: .The yat represented a Common Slavic long vowel...

 boundary and are part of the Western Bulgarian dialects. On Bulgarian territory, the Transitional dialects occupy a narrow strip of land along the Bulgarian border with Serbia

Serbia

Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

, including the regions of Tran

Tran, Bulgaria

Tran |thorn]]") is a small town in Pernik Province, western Bulgaria. It is 27 kilometres away from the town of Breznik and 15 km from the border with Serbia....

, Breznik

Breznik

Breznik is a town in western Bulgaria, 50 km away from Sofia. It is located in Pernik Province and is close to the towns of Bankya and Pernik. It has 4,500 inhabitants. Villages in the municipality include Dushintsi....

, Godech

Godech

Godech is a small town located in the Sofia Province, of Bulgaria. The town is founded in a valley on the far west of Stara Planina, where the Nishava River passes. The settllment is about 20 km east of the Serbian border and has its highest peak Kom to the north. Godech is officially a...

 and Belogradchik

Belogradchik

Belogradchik is a town in Vidin Province, Northwestern Bulgaria, the administrative centre of the homonymous Belogradchik Municipality. The town, whose name literally means "small white town," is situated in the foothills of the Balkan Mountains just east of the Serbian border and about 50 km...

. They also cross the border to include the dialects or subdialect

Subdialect

Subdialect - is a subdivision of dialect. Subdialects can be divided further, ultimately down to idiolects.Normally subdialects of one dialect are quite close to each other, differing mainly in pronunciation and certain local words....

s of the Bulgarian minority in the Western Outlands (the regions of Tsaribrod and Bosilegrad

Bosilegrad

Bosilegrad is a town and municipality in Pčinja District of Serbia. The municipality comprises an area of 571 km². According to 2011 census, it has total population of 7,979 inhabitants, while the town has 2,530.-1991 census:...

), Bulgarian territories transferred to Serbia

Serbia

Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

 by the Treaty of Neuilly

Treaty of Neuilly

The Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine, dealing with Bulgaria for its role as one of the Central Powers in World War I, was signed on 27 November 1919 at Neuilly-sur-Seine, France....

 as punishment for Bulgarian participation in World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 on the side of the Central Powers

Central Powers

The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...

. The Transitional dialects are part of the Torlak dialectal group also spoken in southeastern Serbia and Republic of Macedonia

Republic of Macedonia

Macedonia , officially the Republic of Macedonia , is a country located in the central Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. It is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, from which it declared independence in 1991...

 and are part of the gradual transition from Bulgarian

Bulgarian language

Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...

 to Serbian

Serbian language

Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....

. The Bulgarian Transitional dialects and the Serbian Prizren-Timok dialects are loosely characterised by mixed, predominantly Serbian phonology and predominantly Bulgarian morphology.

Phonological characteristics

• Old Bulgarian (yat) is always pronounced as ɛ vs. formal Bulgarian я/е (ʲa/ɛ) – бел/бели
• ч/дж (t͡ʃ/d͡ʒ) for Proto-Slavic *tʲ/*dʲ (as in Serbian) - леча, меджу (lentils, between). Partial manifestation of reflex ʒd for Proto-Slavic *dʲ (as in Bulgarian) in words like чужд (foreign). The future tense particle is че
• у for Old Bulgarian (yus) (as in Serbian): мука vs. Standard Bulgarian мъка (sorrow)
• ə for Old Bulgarian ь and ъ in all positions (as in Bulgarian): сън (sleep)
• Complete loss of consonant х (x) in all positions (preserved in both Bulgarian and Serbian): мъ vs. Standard Bulgarian мъх (moss)
• Preservation of final l (as in Bulgarian): бил (was)
• Articulation of voiced consonants at the end of the word (as in Serbian) in some areas/subdialects (Tran, Breznik) and devoicing (as in Bulgarian) in others (Bosilegrad, Tsaribrod, Godech, Belogradchik)
• Lack of phonetic pitch (as in Bulgarian)
• Lack of phonetic length (as in Bulgarian)
• Frequent stress on the final syllable in polysyllabilic words (as in Bulgarian, not possible in standard Serbian): жен'а (woman)
• Complete loss of consonant f. It does not exist even in new words where it is usually replaced by v: венер vs. Standard Bulgarian фенер (lantern)

Grammatical and morphological characteristics

• Definiteness realised with post-positive articles (as in Bulgarian). The definite articles are usually -ът, -та, -то, -те as in Standard Bulgarian
• Break-up of the Old Bulgarian case system (as in Bulgarian). Apart from the nominal forms, there is an agglomerative form only for masculine animate names and feminine names
• Loss of the infinitive (as in Bulgarian)
• Full retention of the aorist and the imperfect (as in Bulgarian)
• Doubling of objects with an additional object pronoun (as in Bulgarian)
• Ending -e for plural of feminine nouns and adjectives (as in Serbian): жене (women)
• The plural endings of adjectives vary from three (for each gender, as in Serbian), to two (one for masculine and neuter and one for feminine) and one (as in Bulgarian), depending on dialect/subdialect
• Ending -мо for 1st person pl. present time (as in Serbian): носимо (we carry)
• Ending -ше for 3rd person pl. past tense (vs. -ха in Bulgarian and -аху in Serbian): плетоше vs. Standard Bulgarian плетоха (they knitted)

For the phonological and morphological characteristics of the individual dialects included in the dialectal group, cf. individual articles.

Sources

• Sprachatlas Ostserbiens und Westbulgariens, Andrej N. Sobolev. Vol. I-III. Biblion Verlag, Marburg, 1998.
• Стойков, Стойко: Българска диалектология, Акад. изд. "Проф. Марин Дринов", 2006 http://www.promacedonia.org/jchorb/st/st_2_b_izt_1.htm
• Sussex, Roland and Cubberley, Paul: The Slavic Languages, Cambridge, 2006