Torlakian

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Torlakian (Serbian: Торлачки говор or Torlački govor) is the name used for the Slavic dialects spoken in southern and eastern Serbia, northeast Republic of Macedonia (Kratovo-Kumanovo), northwest Bulgaria (Vidin-Bregovo) and also further afield in the Caraş-Severin County in Romania. Some linguists classified it as the fourth dialect of Serbo-Croatian language (with Shtokavian, Chakavian and Kaykavian) and today as the second Serbian language macro-dialect (with Shtokavian). In Bulgaria, these dialects are considered as western Bulgarian dialects, there is also a tendency to refer to these dialects as Shop (Shopski) in Bulgaria. The Shop dialect is the second of two transitional dialects separating the eastern and western branches of South Slavic languages. More correctly, the two dialect regions are adjacent to one another however they be called in different parts. Torlakian is not standardized, and its subdialects significantly vary in some features.

Geographical distribution of the Torlakian dialect in former Yugoslav republics: (Bulgaria and the Western Outlands excluded here but Torlakian is spoken across the border)

[edit] Classification

Most of Croatian (like Milan Rešetar and Dalibor Brozović) and Serbian linguists (like Pavle Ivić, Asim Peco) classify Torlakian as an Shtokavian dialect, referring to it as "Prizren-Timok dialect"^[1].

Some linguists in Bulgaria (Stoyko Stoykov, Rangel Bozhkov) classify Torlakian as a "Belogradchik-Trn" dialects of Bulgarian language and also claim that Torlakian should be classified outside of shtokavian area. But Ivić argues that some Bulgarian dialects rather have some similarities to Serbian than vice versa.^[2] He says, that Serbian vernaculars including those of Prizren-Timok dialect have typical West-Southslavic elements, not East-Southslavic as Bulgarian and Macedonian:

• the two Proto-Slavic semivowels (ъ, ь) gave only one phoneme in Serbian and Slovenian
• ǫ gave labials u and o in S.-C. and Slovenian, it gave unlabilaized ъ in Bulgarian, a in Macedonian)
• vь- gave u in West, v- in East
• Proto-Slavic *tj gave č/ć in west, št in East
• *čr gave cr in West, but was preserved in East
• Epenthetic l is preserved only in west (S.-C. zemlja, Bulgarian zemja)
• Distinction between Proto-Slavic /ɲ/ and /n/ is lost in East (S.-C. njega, Bulgarian nego).
• Consonants in final position preserve their leniency (S.-C. grad, Bulgarian/Macedonian grat)
• *vs stays preserved without metathesis in East (S.-C. sve, Bulgarian vse)
• Genitive njega in West, and old genitive on O in East (nego)
• Nominative Plural of nomina on -a is on -e in West, -i in East
• Ja 'I, ego' in West, jas in East
• Mi 'we' in West, nie in East
• Distinction between the plural of masculine, feminine and neutrum adjectives is preserved only in West (S.C. beli, bele, bela), not in East (beli for masc., fem. and neutr.)
• First person singular of verbs is in West -m, and old reflex of *ǫ in East
• sufixes *-itjь (-ić) and *-atja (-ača) are common in West, not known in East

...

[edit] Notes on speech

A form of Torlakian is spoken in Romania, where indigenous Slavs known as Krašovani (Krashovans), a mixture of original settler Slavs and later settlers from Timočka Krajina (eastern Serbia) have escaped the influence of a standardized language which has existed in Serbia ever since a state was created following the defeat of the Ottomans. In each other region - the Slavic countries - the speech of the locals will still be largely influenced by the standard language, particularly when a new word or concept is introduced.

[edit] Features

Some of the features of Torlakian clearly show how Macedonian yields to Bulgarian, and they both in turn blend into Serbian language, respectively in the north-west and the west.

[edit] Vocabulary

Basic Torlakian vocabulary shares most of Slavic roots with Serbian, Bulgarian and Macedonian, but it also contains a number of borrowed words from Aromanian, Greek, Turkish, and Albanian in the Gora region of the Šar mountain instilled during the course of time. Also, it preserved many words which in the "major" languages became archaisms or shifted meaning. Like other features, vocabulary is inconsistent across subdialects, i.e. a Krashovan need not necessarily understand a Goranac.

[edit] Cases lacking inflections

Macedonian and Bulgarian are on record as being the only two modern Slavic languages to have lost virtually the entire noun case system, with nearly all nouns spoken in the surviving nominative case. That is the case with Torlakian dialect as well; in the north-west, the instrumental merges into the genitive. The locative and the genitive in turn merge into the nominative; further South, all inflections disappear, and the meaning is determined solely by prepositions.

[edit] Lack of phoneme /h/

A unique feature of Macedonian language, Torlakian and a number of Serbian and Bulgarian dialects compared with all other Slavic languages is that, technically, there is no /h/. The appearance of the letter h in the alphabet is reserved mostly for loanwords, and toponyms within Macedonia but outside of the standard language region. In Macedonian, this is the case with eastern towns such as Pehčevo. In fact, the Macedonian language is based in Prilep, Pelagonia and words such as thousand and urgent are iljada and itno in standard Macedonian but hiljada and hitno in Serbian. This is actually a part of an isogloss, a dividing line separating Prilep from Pehčevo in Macedonia at the southern extreme, and reaching central Serbia, (Šumadija) at a northern extreme. In Šumadija, local folk songs may still use the traditional form of I want being oću compared with hoću as spoken in Vojvodina.

[edit] Syllabic /l/

Torlakian has preserved much of the ancient syllabic /l/ which, like /r/, can serve the nucleus of a syllable. This is still the case in the Czech and Slovak language. In standard Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian, the syllabic /l/ eventually became /u/ or /o/. In Bulgarian, it became preceded by the vowel represented by ъ (/ɤ/ or /ə/), to separate consonant clusters. Not all Torlak subdialects preserved syllabic /l/ to the full extent, but it is reflected either as full syllabic or in various combinations with [ə], [u], [ɔ] or [a]. Naturally, the /l/ becomes velarized in most such positions, giving /ɫ/.^[3]

[edit] Cultural marginalization and ethnic affiliation

The regional names once used by many people in the Torlakian-speaking region was Torlaci (Torlaks) and Šopi (Shops). However, except for mutual understanding, Torlakian speakers seldom had other common ethnic or national consciousness, apart from being Slavs and, mostly, Christians. The borders in the region were frequently shifting before the Ottoman conquest among Byzantine, Serbian and Bulgarian rulers. With Ottoman influence ever weakening, the increase of nationalist sentiment in the Balkans in late 19th and early 20th century, and the redrawing of national boundaries after Balkan wars and World War II, the traditional Torlakian-speaking region had been split. As a result, Torlakian has become a minority in three countries at once.

Today, there is no state-sanctioned education in Torlakian language or culture, and the usage of both the language and the regional name Torlaci is gradually vanishing. Torlakian is now seen in Serbia—and to a degree in Macedonia and Bulgaria—as an uneducated and provincial dialect of the dominant language. Also, among the traditional speakers of Torlakian are the non-Serb Slavs of Kosovo such as the Muslim Gorani and Catholic Janjevci, whose ethnic affiliations are appropriated by neighboring nations.

[edit] Literature

Literature written in Torlakian is rather sparse, as the dialect has never been an official state language, and for the most part of the history literacy in the region was limited to Eastern Orthodox clergy, which chiefly used Old Church Slavonic in writing.

One of the earliest literary monuments influenced by Torlakian dialects is Manuscript from Temska from 1762 in which its author Kiril Zhivkovich from Pirot considered his language "Simple Bulgarian".

Serbian writer Bora Stanković used a lot of Torlakian dialect in his novels, which describe the life of people in Southern Serbia in early 20th century. Comedian writer Stevan Sremac, although born in Vojvodina, spent a portion of his life in southern Serbia, and his novels Zona Zamfirova and Ivkova slava depict the mentality and language of its inhabitants.

The recent screening of the film Zona Zamfirova by director Zdravko Šotra attracted huge popularity in Serbia and Montenegro. However, many spectators, especially from northern Serbia, commented that "the film was good but it really needs subtitles".

[edit] References

[edit] General references

• Dijalekti istočne i južne Srbije, Aleksandar Belić, Srpski dijalektološki zbornik, 1, 1905.
• Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe, Glanville Price, Blackwell Publishing, p. 423.
• Language and Conflict: A Neglected Relationship, Dan Smith, Paul A Chilton - Language Arts & Disciplines, 1998, Page 59
• South Slavic and Balkan Linguistics, A. Barentsen, Rodopi, 1982
• Hrvatska dijalektologija 1, Josip Lisac, Golden marketing – Tehnička knjiga, Zagreb, 2003.
• The Slavonic Languages, Bernard Comrie, Greville G Corbett - Foreign Language Study, 2002, pp 382-384.

[edit] Footnotes

1. ^ Pavle Ivić, Dijalektološka karta štokavskog narečja
2. ^ Ivić Pavle, Dijalektologija srpskohtrvatskog jezika, 2001, 25 (also published in German)
3. ^ Josip Lisac, Osnovne značajke torlačkoga narječja

[edit] See also

• Balkan linguistic union
• Shtokavian dialect
• Torlaks
• Gorani
• Krashovani