LEARNING THE PALKEN LANGUAGE AS AN OFFICIAL DIALECT OF THE BANATIAN BULGARIANS

Abstract

Banat Bulgarians are a special descendant of the centuries-old tree of the Bulgarian ethnic group. Descendants of the displaced from Nikopol and Svishtov after the rout of the Chuprov’s uprising in 1688, they have lived in Banat for 281 years and have preserved their language, traditions and Bulgarian consciousness. Despite their affiliation to Catholicism, they continue to be referred to as “palkene” as a remembrance of their Pavlikian past. After Bulgaria's liberation from Turkish slavery, some of the Banat Bulgarians returned to their homeland, again seeking subsistence and a better life, and founded the villages of Dragomirovo, Gostilya, Bardarski Geran, Bregare and Asenovo. Banat Bulgarians use their own language, which they call "Palken". His writing is based on the Croatian Latin version, and preserves many ancient forms of the language spoken in Bulgaria. The main principle in the Bulgarian Palken spelling is phonetic, ie. it is written as it is pronounced. In lexical terms, there are many borrowing from the Banat Bulgarians from German, Hungarian and Serbian, which is due to the close contacts of Banat Bulgarians with other people in the multi-ethnic Banat. Despite the foreign influence, the dialect form and the use of Latin instead of Cyrillic, the Banat Bulgarians emphasize the Bulgarian character in their language. The Bulgarian Palken language is used in literature, the press, the church and the media with minor differences due to the different dialects. In the period 1860-1896 it was the main language of teaching in the Bulgarian school in Banat, from 1896 to 1918 it was replaced by Hungarian, and then – by Romanian or Serbian. In Bulgaria, the Palken language was functional in the late 18th and early 20th centuries. Today the Banat Bulgarians have turned their dialect in a second Bulgarian literary language, publishing a large number of textbooks, calendars, books, prayer books, newspapers and magazines, through which the few who know and use the Palken language seek to influence others in their community and save it from destruction and oblivion. Nowadays, this language continues to be alive and real in the culture and everyday life of Bulgarian families who have migrated from Bulgaria due to historical circumstances more than two hundred years ago in Serbian, Romanian and Hungarian Banat. This report examines the specifics of the graphical system of the Bulgarian Palken language by comparing them with the modern Bulgarian language.