The term Maleševo-Pirin or Maleshevo-Pirin or Pirin-Maleshevo dialect is used in South Slavic linguistics to refer to a group of related varieties that are spoken on both sides of the border of Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia. Some linguists treat them as dialects of the Bulgarian language,[1][2][3] while Victor Friedman views them as part of Macedonian.[4] According to some authors, they are linguistically transitional between the two national languages, Bulgarian and Macedonian and form part of the larger dialect continuum between them. The dialect group is named after the mountain ranges of Pirin in Bulgaria and Maleševo in Macedonia. When referring specifically to the dialects on the Bulgarian side, the term Petrich-Blagoevgrad dialect, after the two major towns in the area, is also used.[5][6]
Classification
Macedonian linguists tend to treat the whole group as part of Macedonian, classifying it as part of a southeastern group of Macedonian dialects, whereas from the perspective of Bulgarian linguistics, the varieties in Bulgaria and North Macedonia are classified as parts of the eastern subgroup of the Southwestern Bulgarian dialects.[5]
Indeed, during much of its history, the Eastern South Slavic dialect continuum, including the Maleshevo-Blagoevgrad-Petrich region, was simply referred to as "Bulgarian", and Slavic speakers in Macedonia referred to their own language as balgàrtzki, bùgarski or bugàrski; i.e. Bulgarian.[7][8] According to Dennis P. Hupchick:
Until a modern Macedonian literary language was mandated by the communist-led partisan movement from Macedonia in 1944, most outside observers and linguists agreed with the Bulgarians in considering the vernacular spoken by the Macedonian Slavs as a western dialect of Bulgarian.[7]
However, according to modern Western sociolinguists, the dispute is entirely irrelevant from a modern perspective, as it fails to take into consideration the ethnic and linguistic identity of the speakers. According to Trudgill, the question whether Bulgarian and Macedonian are distinct languages or dialects of a single language cannot be resolved on a purely linguistic basis, but should rather take into account sociolinguistic criteria, i.e., ethnic and linguistic identity.[9]Jouko Lindstedt also opines that the dividing line between Macedonian and Bulgarian should be defined by the linguistic identity of the speakers, i.e., by the state border:[10]
Macedonian dialectology... considers the dialects of south-western Bulgaria to be Macedonian, despite the lack of any widespread Macedonian national consciousness in that area. The standard map is provided by Vidoeski.(1998: 32) It would be futile to tell an ordinary citizen of the Macedonian capital, Skopje, that they do not realise that they are actually speaking Bulgarian. It would be equally pointless to tell citizens of the southwestern Bulgarian town of Blagoevgrad that they (or at least their compatriots in the surrounding countryside) do not ‘really’ speak Bulgarian, but Macedonian. In other words, regardless of the structural and linguistic arguments put forth by a majority of Bulgarian dialectologists, as well as by their Macedonian counterparts, they are ignoring one, essential fact – that the present linguistic identities of the speakers themselves in various regions do not always correspond to the prevailing nationalist discourses.
Macedonian map of the reflexes of Pra-Slavic *tʲ/kt and *dʲ in the wider Macedonian region. Bulgarian щ/жд (ʃt/ʒd) clearly predominate in Pirin Macedonia, the eastern part of Greek Macedonia and the easternmost part of the Republic of North Macedonia, whereas Macedonian ќ/ѓ (c/ɟ) is dominant in the rest of the geographical region.
The dialect is spoken in the towns of Delčevo, Pehčevo, Berovo and the surrounding villages in the east of the Republic of Macedonia, and in the regions of Blagoevgrad, Petrich and Sandanski in Bulgaria.[11]
The following is a table of distinctive phonological and grammatical features, comparing the values found in the Maleshevo and Blagoevgrad-Petrich dialects with Standard Bulgarian, Standard Macedonian and two neighbouring Western Bulgarian dialect areas. Some features in this table are also present in English.
Comparison of the Maleshevo dialect and the Blagoevgrad-Petrich dialect with Standard Bulgarian and Standard Macedonian
Parameter
Standard Macedonian
Maleshevo dialect
Blagoevgrad-Petrich dialect
Dupnitsa dialect (Western Bulgarian)
Samokov dialect (Western Bulgarian)
Standard Bulgarian (based on Eastern Bulgarian)
English
Proto-Slavic *tʲ/*dʲ / Old Church Slavonic щ/жд (ʃt/ʒd)
ќ/ѓ (c/ɟ) — леќа/меѓу
щ/жд (ʃt/ʒd) or шч/жџ (ʃtʃ/dʒ) — леща/между or лешча/межџу ќ/ѓ (c/ɟ) — леќа/меѓу in some areas
щ/жд (ʃt/ʒd) — леща/между
щ/жд (ʃt/ʒd) — леща/между
щ/жд (ʃt/ʒd) — леща/между шч (ʃtʃ) — лешча for *tʲ in some areas
had + past participle — (I) had read, (I) had written
Word stress
Fixed antepenultim. — ˈдобиток, ˈпере
Dynamic — доˈбиток, пеˈре
Dynamic — доˈбиток, пеˈре
Dynamic — доˈбиток, пеˈре
Dynamic — доˈбиток, пеˈре
Dynamic — доˈбитък, пеˈре
Dynamic — ˈcattle/ˈlivestock, (he/she/it) ˈwashes
As shown by the table, the Maleshevo and the Blagoevgrad-Petrich dialect show mixed Bulgarian and Macedonian phonological traits and mostly Bulgarian grammatical traits (several instead of one conjugation, single definite article, formation of past perfect tense with бeх, etc.), with the Maleshevo dialect ranging mostly towards Macedonian and the Blagoevgrad-Petrich dialect ranging mostly towards Bulgarian (cf. table). The transitional nature of the dialect is further demonstrated by the reflexes of the Proto-Slavic *tʲ/*dʲ: from the typically Bulgarian щ/жд (ʃt/ʒd) in the Blagoevgrad-Petrich dialect and the far East of the Maleshevo dialect, along the border with Bulgaria, through the transitional шч/жџ (ʃtʃ//dʒ/) in the central parts, and to the typically Macedonian ќ/ѓ (c/ɟ) in the western parts of the Maleshevo dialect[11]
use of the old consonant group caf- instead of the consonant group cv-: цев- цаф (cev, 'pipe')
use of /v/ at the beginning of the word as in Bulgarian instead of /j/ as in Macedonian: важе ('rope')[12]
Morphological characteristics
use of the preposition sos: – сос рака ('with the hand');
the clitic possessive forms follow the verb: му рече – рече му ('He told him');
use of the dative form with na: на нас ни рече ( na nas ni reche, 'He told us')
the form of the verb to be for third person plural is sa as in Bulgarian, instead of se as in Macedonian: тие се – тие/тия са ('those are'), они са ('they are')
use of the pronouns on, ona, ono, oni (он, она, оно, они) instead of toj, tja, to, te[12]
^ abHupchick, Dennis P. (1995). Conflict and Chaos in Eastern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 143. ISBN0312121164. The obviously plagiarized historical argument of the Macedonian nationalists for a separate Macedonian ethnicity could be supported only by linguistic reality, and that worked against them until the 1940s. Until a modern Macedonian literary language was mandated by the communist-led partisan movement from Macedonia in 1944, most outside observers and linguists agreed with the Bulgarians in considering the vernacular spoken by the Macedonian Slavs as a western dialect of Bulgarian
^Shklifov, Blagoy; Shklifova, Ekaterina (2003). Български деалектни текстове от Егейска Македония [Bulgarian dialect texts from Aegean Macedonia] (in Bulgarian). Sofia. pp. 28–36.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Chambers, Jack; Trudgill, Peter (1998). Dialectology (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 7. Similarly, Bulgarian politicians often argue that Macedonian is simply a dialect of Bulgarian – which is really a way of saying, of course, that they feel Macedonia ought to be part of Bulgaria. From a purely linguistic point of view, however, such arguments are not resolvable, since dialect continua admit of more-or-less but not either-or judgements.
^Tomasz Kamusella, Motoki Nomachi, Catherine Gibson as ed., The Palgrave Handbook of Slavic Languages, Identities and Borders, Springer, 2016; ISBN1137348399, p. 436.
1 Also considered a dialect of Bulgarian. 2 Considered to be a part of the transitional Torlak dialect and as a subdialect of Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbo-Croatian.
