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.
''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
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 dialectOther 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