Thedialects of Macedonian are classified as part of Bulgarian in the older literature.[2][3][4][5][6][7] Presently, Bulgarian linguistics continue to treat it as such.[8][9][10]Since the second half of the 20th century, foreign authors have mostly adopted the convention of treating these in terms of a separateMacedonian language, following the codification of Macedonian as the literary standard language ofYugoslav Macedonia.[11] However, some contemporary linguists still consider Macedonian as a dialect of Bulgarian.[12][13][14] Macedonian authors in turn tend to treat all dialects spoken in the geographical region of Macedonia as Macedonian, including those spoken inBulgarian Macedonia.[15] Together with their closest lexical and grammatical relative they comprise the Eastern South Slavic branch. The present article treats all these dialects together, because of their close structural similarity and the fact that many important dialect boundaries intersect both territories.
TheBulgarian ethnos absorbed diverse Slavic tribes and not a particular language. The mainisogloss separating the Bulgarian dialects intoEastern andWestern is theyat border, marking the different mutations of theOld Bulgarianyat form (ѣ, *ě), pronounced as either/ʲa/ or/ɛ/ to the east (byal, but pluralbeli inBalkan dialects, "white") and strictly as /ɛ/ to the west of it (bel, pluralbeli) throughoutformer Yugoslavia.[8][16] Isoglosses shape three groups. Besides the Eastern and Western dialects, theRup group of dialects is distinct, which comprises theRhodopes and everything southwards from Thessaloniki to Istanbul, although it is an Eastern dialect. The official language derives most often from the northeastern group of dialects nominally based onVeliko Tarnovo dialect. Many Western South Slavic lexical, morphological and phonological isoglosses are present in all Western Bulgarian dialects and rarer inRup dialects, which peak inTorlakian. Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbian dialects share characteristics far beyond theTorlakian area and beyond the contested territories of the medieval Bulgarian and Serbian states, which are west ofSofia. So, these political entities are not responsible for the transitional features, but they are basically rooted in other type of evolution, likely in a makeup in the contact area of the two sources of Eastern and Western South Slavic tribes. The makeup of the transitional area shows a mix of Eastern and Western South Slavic characteristics found in western Bulgaria, which contact happened in the Balkans assuming the exact location of this area. All isoglosses commonly share gradual borders deep inside the country, but the northeast always do not, which likely means that the contact zone mixed after the settling of theSlavs in theBalkans. In one instance botha andъ for nasalyus are part ofElin Pelin dialect. Probably one of the words that remain the same on one of the largest areas in Bulgaria is that for nightnosht, which is at best rare in otherSlavic languages, in which along with theTorlaks in Bulgarianoch means night.
In eastern Bulgarian dialects in contrast with the other South Slavic languages, standard Ukrainian and Czech, the unstressed vowele bypalatalization turns intoi orie.[citation needed] The Bulgarian pronouns in third persontoy, te are documented insome Ukrainian dialects.[citation needed]
Bulgarian dialects can be divided into the following dialectal groups and individual dialects:[17]
^Кочев (Kochev), Иван (Ivan) (2001).Български диалектен атлас (Bulgarian dialect atlas) (in Bulgarian). София: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.ISBN954-90344-1-0.OCLC48368312.
^Mazon, Andre.Contes Slaves de la Macédoine Sud-Occidentale: Etude linguistique; textes et traduction; Notes de Folklore, Paris 1923, p. 4.
^Max VasmerDie Slaven in Griechenland. Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1941. Kap. VI: Allgemeines und sprachliche Stellung der Slaven Griechenlands.
^Шклифов, Благой. Речник на костурския говор, Българска диалектология, София 1977, с. кн. VIII, с. 201–205.
^Friedman, Victor (2001). "Macedonian". In Garry, Jane; Rubino, Carl (eds.).Facts about the World's Languages: an Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past and Present. New York: Holt. pp. 435–439.
Иванов (Ivanov), Йордан (Yordan) (1972).Български диалектен атлас: Български говори от Егейска Македония (Bulgarian dialect atlas: Bulgarian dialects in Aegean Macedonia) (in Bulgarian). София: Акад. изд. "Проф. Марин Дринов".OCLC7321826.
Кочев (Kochev), Иван (Ivan) (2001).Български диалектен атлас (Bulgarian dialect atlas) (in Bulgarian). София: BAN, KK "Trud".ISBN954-90344-1-0.OCLC48368312.
