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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 Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...
and the
Republic of North Macedonia North Macedonia, officially the Republic of North Macedonia, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe. It shares land borders with Greece to the south, Albania to the west, Bulgaria to the east, Kosovo to the northwest and Serbia to the n ...
. Some linguists treat them as dialects of the
Bulgarian language Bulgarian (; , ) is an Eastern South Slavic, Eastern South Slavic language spoken in Southeast Europe, primarily in Bulgaria. It is the language of the Bulgarians. Along with the closely related Macedonian language (collectively forming the ...
, while Victor Friedman views them as part of Macedonian. According to some authors, they are linguistically transitional between the two national languages, Bulgarian and Macedonian and form part of the larger
dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...
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.


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. 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. 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.''
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.
Jouko Lindstedt Jouko Lindstedt (born 15 July 1955) is a Finnish linguist and a professor at the University of Helsinki. Lindstedt is a member of the Academy of Esperanto and was nominated as the Esperantist of the Year in 2000 (with Hans Bakker and Mauro La ...
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:Tomasz Kamusella, Motoki Nomachi, Catherine Gibson as ed., The Palgrave Handbook of Slavic Languages, Identities and Borders, Springer, 2016; , p. 436.
''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.''
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 Blagoevgrad ( ) is List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, а town in Southwestern Bulgaria, the administrative centre of Blagoevgrad Municipality and of Blagoevgrad Province. With a population of almost inhabitants, it is the economic and cultura ...
,
Petrich Petrich ( ) is a town in Blagoevgrad Province in southwestern Bulgaria, located in Sandanski–Petrich Valley at the foot of the Belasica Mountains in the Strumeshnitsa Valley. According to the 2021 census, the town has 26,778 inhabitants. ...
and
Sandanski Sandanski ( ; , formerly known as Sveti Vrach, , until 1947) is a town and a recreation center in southwestern Bulgaria, part of Blagoevgrad Province. Named after the Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary Yane Sandanski, it is situated in Sanda ...
in Bulgaria. The Blagoevgrad-Petric dialect is also closely related to the neighbouring Kyustendil and Samokov dialects, and especially to the Dupnitsa dialect, whereas the Maleshevo dialect is closely related especially with the Strumica dialect.The sociolinguistics of literary Macedonian, VICTOR A. FRIEDMAN, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARY


Linguistic properties

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. 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 /: from the typically Bulgarian щ/жд (/) in the Blagoevgrad-Petrich dialect and the far East of the Maleshevo dialect, along the border with Bulgaria, through the transitional шч/жџ (/) in the central parts, and to the typically Macedonian ќ/ѓ (/) in the western parts of the Maleshevo dialect


Other phonological characteristics

* shortening of words * use of the old consonant group ''caf-'' instead of the consonant group ''cv-'': цев- цаф (''cev'', 'pipe') * use of at the beginning of the word as in Bulgarian instead of as in Macedonian: важе ('rope')


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''


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Malesevo-Pirin dialect Dialects of the Bulgarian language Dialects of the Macedonian language Blagoevgrad Province Pehčevo Municipality Delčevo Municipality Berovo Municipality