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The Banat Bulgarians (Banatian: banatski balgari, endonym palćene and banátsći balgare) are a Bulgarian minority group living mostly in the Romanian part of the historical region of the Banat. They are Roman Catholic by confession and stem from groups of Paulicians and Roman Catholics from northern and northwestern Bulgaria (around Nikopol, Chiprovtsi, Svishtov). The Banat Bulgarians have been inhabiting the region since the 17th century and speak a distinctive codified form of the Eastern Bulgarian vernacular with German, Hungarian, Romanian and Serbo-Croatian lexical influences.
Population
According to one study, there are about 12,000 Bulgarians living in the Romanian and 3,000 in the Serbian Banat. The official Romanian censuses state that 6,500 people of Bulgarian origin inhabit the Romanian part of the region and the 2002 Serbia census recognized 1,658 Bulgarians in Vojvodina, the autonomous province covering the Serbian part of the region. Centres of the Banat Bulgarian population are Dudeştii Vechi (Stár Bišnov) and Vinga, as well as Sânnicolau Mare (Smikluš), Breştea (Bréšća) and the city of Timişoara (Timišvár) in Romania and Ivanovo in Serbia, but also villages like Belo Blato and to a lesser extent today Skorenovac, Konak and Jaša Tomić (Modoš).
The Banat Bulgarians in Romania are represented by the Bulgarian Union of the Banat - Romania, which issues the newspaper Náša glás and the magazine Literaturna miselj.
History
The resettlement of Bulgarian Paulicians in the Banat began after the unsuccessful Chiprovtsi Uprising against Ottoman rule in 1688 and series of Hungarian-Turkish and Austrian-Turkish wars. They crossed the Danube in a search for better life conditions outside the Ottoman Empire after long negotiations with Austrian rulers, which eventually led to giving them the right to settle in then-Austrian Transylvania and the Banat, where they founded the villages Star Beshenov or Stár Bišnov (1738), which, inhabited by 3,200 and known officially as Dudeştii Vechi, is the modern cultural centre of Banat Bulgarians, and Vinga (1741), located north and northwest of Timişoara.
The Banat Bulgarians originally inhabited only the parts of the region north of the Danube, but single groups moved south into Serbia in the middle of the 19th century.
After the liberation of Bulgaria in 1878 and the formation of the Principality of Bulgaria, many Bulgarians from the Banat decided to move back to Western Bulgaria, founding villages like Bardarski Geran and Voyvodovo. However, the severe consequences of World War I along with other factors forced some of them to once again migrate to the Banat.
Language
The vernacular of the Bulgarians of the Banat can be classified as belonging to the Eastern Bulgarian group. A typical feature is the "ы" (*y) vowel, which can either take an etymological place or replace "i". Other characteristic phonological features are the "ê" (wide "e") reflex of the Old Church Slavonic yat and the reduction of "o" into "u" and more seldom of "e" into "i": puljé instead of pole ("field"), selu instead of selo ("village"), ugništi instead of ognište ("fireplace"). Another Eastern Bulgarian sign is the palatalization of final consonants, which is typical for other Slavic languages, but found only in dialects in Bulgarian (Bulgarian Velikden ("Easter") sounds like and is written as Velikdenj).
Lexically, the language of the Banat Bulgarians has borrowed many words from languages such as German (such as drot from Draht, "wire"; gáng from Gang, "anteroom, corridor"), Hungarian (vilánj from villan, "electricity"; mozi, "cinema"), Serbo-Croatian (stvár from stvar, "item, matter"; ráčun from račun, "account") and Romanian (šedinca from şedinţă, "conference") due to the close contacts with the other peoples of the multiethnical Banat and the religious ties with other Roman Catholic peoples. Loanwords constitute 20% of the Banat Bulgarian vocabulary. A Hungarian influence can also be seen in the names of some Banat Bulgarians, as the Hungarian (eastern) name order is sometimes used (the family name coming first and the given one last) and the female ending "-a" is often dropped from family names. Thus, Marija Velčova would become Velčov Marija.
Besides loanwords, the lexis of Banat Bulgarian was also enriched by calques and neologisms such as sfetica ("icon", formerly used ikona and influenced by German Heiligenbild), zarno ("bullet", from the word meaning "grain"), oganbalváč ("volcano", literally "fire belcher") and predhurta ("foreword").
The Banat Bulgarian language uses a script of its own, largely based on the Croatian version of the Latin script, and preserves many features that are archaic in the language spoken in Bulgaria. The language was codified as early as 1866 and is used in literature and press, which distinguishes it from plain dialects.
Notable Banat Bulgarians
- Eusebius Fermendzhin (1845–1897), historian, high-ranking Franciscan cleric, theologian, polyglot, active member of the South Slavic Academy of Sciences
- Leopold Kosilkov (1850–1940), teacher and writer
- Jozu Rill, 19th-century teacher and internationally acclaimed textbook writer, codified the Banat Bulgarian orthography and grammar in 1866
- Carol Telbisz (1853–1914), long-time mayor of Timişoara (1885–1914)
See also
References
- Иванова, Ценка. Говорът и книжовноезиковата практика на българите-католици от сръбски Банат (in Bulgarian). LiterNet. Retrieved 2006-08-05.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - Стойков, Стойко (2002) . "Банатски говор". Българска диалектология (in Bulgarian) (4th edition ed.). Sofia: Проф. Марин Дринов. pp. pp. 195-197.
{{cite book}}:|edition=has extra text (help);|pages=has extra text (help) - "The Bulgarians". Festivalul Proetnica 2006. Retrieved 2007-01-12.
{{cite web}}: Text "Centrul Educational Interetnic pentru Tineret" ignored (help)
Further reading
- Нягулов, Благовест (1999). Банатските българи. Историята на една малцинствена общност във времето на националните държави (in Bulgarian). София: Парадигма.
- Милетич, Любомир (1987). Изследвания за българите в Седмиградско и Банат (in Bulgarian). Sofia.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Prof. Ivanciov Margareta (2006). Istorijata i tradicijite na balgarskotu malcinstvu ud Rumanija (PDF) (in Banat Bulgarian). Timişoara: Balgarsku Družstvu ud Banát — Rumanija, Editura Mirton.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
External links
- The website of Náša glás and Literaturna miselj, offers PDF versions of both publications, as well as information about the Banat Bulgarians. (in Banat Bulgarian)
- The Banat Bulgarians, featuring 1938 publications Template:Bg icon
- Banater Bulgarisch by Aleksandr D. Duličenko Template:De icon
- Map of areas in the Romanian Banat inhabited by Banat Bulgarians as of 2002 (in light brown) at the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania official website
- Sveta ud pukraj námu, a blog in Banat Bulgarian
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