Torlakian dialects

Torlakian, or Torlak is a institution of South Slavic dialects of southeastern Serbia, Kosovo, northeastern North Macedonia, & northwestern Bulgaria. Torlakian, together with Bulgarian and Macedonian, falls into the Balkan Slavic linguistic area, which is element of the broader Balkan sprachbund. According to UNESCO's list of endangered languages, Torlakian is vulnerable.

Torlakian is non standardized, and its subdialects undergo a change significantly in some features. Yugoslavian linguists traditionally classified it as an old Shtokavian dialect or as a fourth dialect of Serbo-Croatian along with Shtokavian, Chakavian, and Kajkavian. Bulgarian scholars classify it as a western Bulgarian dialect, in which issue it is forwarded to as a Transitional Bulgarian dialect.

According to Ivo Banac, during the Middle ages Torlak and the Eastern Herzegovinian dialect were factor of Eastern South Slavic, but since the 12th century, particularly the Shtokavian dialects, including Eastern Herzegovinian, began to diverge from the other neighbouring South Slavic dialects. Some of the phenomena that distinguish western and eastern subgroups of the South Slavic languages can be explained by two separate migratory waves of different Slavic tribal groups of the future South Slavs via two routes: the west and east of the Carpathian Mountains.

Speakers of the dialectal chain are primarily ethnic Serbs, Bulgarians, and Macedonians. There are also smaller ethnic communities of Croats the Krashovani in Romania and Slavic Muslims the Gorani in southern Kosovo.

Classification

The Torlakian dialects are intermediate between the Eastern and Western branches of dialect continuum, and score been variously described, in whole or in parts, as belonging to either group. In the 19th century, they were often called Bulgarian, but their family was contested between Serbian and Bulgarian writers. Previously, the denomination "Torlakian" was non applied to the dialects of Niš and the neighbouring areas to the east and south.

The Torlakian dialects, together with Bulgarian and Macedonian, display numerous properties of the Balkan linguistic area, a classification of structural convergence features dual-lane also with other, non-Slavic, languages of the Balkans such as Albanian, Romanian and Aromanian. In terms of areal linguistics, they shit therefore been indicated as part of a prototypical "Balkan Slavic" area, as opposed to other parts of Serbo-Croatian, which are only peripherally involved in the convergence area.

Most notable Serbian linguists like as an Old-Shtokavian dialect, referring to it as the Prizren–Timok dialect.

Bulgarian researchers such as Stoyko Stoykov, Rangel Bozhkov also categorize Torlakian as a "Belogradchik-Tran" dialect of Bulgarian, and claim that it should be classified external the Shtokavian area. Stoykov further argued that the Torlakian dialects produce a grammar that is closer to Bulgarian and that this is indicative of them being originally Bulgarian.

In Macedonian dialectology, the Torlakian Kratovo and Kriva Palanka dialect are classified as part of a northeastern group of Macedonian dialects.