New Dictionary of One Archaic Bulgarian Dialect. [Rev.] Slavka Keremedchieva, Lilyana Vasileva. The Dictionary of one archaic Rhodope dialect ― the Ropka dialect. Sofia: Publishing house on BAN “Prof. Marin Drinov”, 2022. 284 p. ISBN 978-619-245-250-6

Abstract

The review is devoted to the analysis of the new lexicographic work of the Bulgarian dialectologists of the Prof. L. Andreichin Institute of the Bulgarian Language. BAN, ―a dictionary of one archaic dialect of the Ropka region in the Western Rhodope Mountains. The book is a logical continuation of S. Keremedchieva’s 1993 monograph, which describes the grammar of this dialect. The dictionary significantly complements the understanding of it, which makes it the first comprehensive study of the Rhodope dialect at several linguistic levels: phonological, morphological and lexical. Due to its basic linguistic features, this dialect became a link between the Thracian and central Rhodope dialects, whose speakers, due to a number of geopolitical reasons and events, found themselves outside the borders of modern Bulgaria, in Greece and Turkey. The local Bulgarian population was mostly Islamized in the XVII century, and after the Liberation of Bulgaria in 1879–1882 and 1912, part of the families of Bulgarian Muslims from the villages of Pavelsko, Orekhovo and Studenets were resettled to Asia Minor, Turkey. According to one of the etymological versions of the origin of the name of the village Pavelsko, the fact of the existence here in the past of adherents of the Pavlikian heresy, whose center was the village of Pavelsko, is likely. This hypothesis is supported by numerous linguistic links between the Ropkа dialect and the Pavlikian dialect in Bulgaria. The Ropka dialect has accumulated features of a certain stage in the development of the Bulgarian language, preserving a number of its archaic features, including vocabulary and morphology. Despite the modern intensive changes taking place in everyday life, culture and language, the inhabitants of the Ropka region have preserved their ancestral memory and customs, songs and legends, melodious Rhodope dialect with its ancient features and inimitable architectonics. Rich authentic dialect material is a serious lexical database and a source for scientific research in various fields, including ethnolinguistics.