Към въпроса за българското етническо малцинство в Олтения, Румъния. Езикът на свиничаните като етнографска група на българския народ
On the Bulgarian Ethnic Minorities in Oltenia, Romania. The Language of the Inhabitants of Svinița as an Etnographic Group within the Bulgarian People

Summary/Abstract: The inhabitants of the Sviniţa village in Mehedinţi County are Bulgarian natives who have preserved their ethnic identity and 15th-century dialect which shares common features with the one spoken in Novo Selo (Vidin). Bulgarian, Hungarian, Serbian and Romanian linguists have proved or, on the contrary, have put into question the Bulgarian origin of the population of Sviniţa, based on the study of its material and spiritual culture as reflected in local vocabulary, ethnonymy, onomastics, etc. This dialect represents both old and new grammatical features of Bulgarian, such as: the reduction of unstressed vowels: а:ъ (браздḁ), е:ъ (е) (бóлън); Bulgarian-specific reflexes ь:ъ, ър/ръ, ъл/лъ, (бърдо, бръв, вълна, ябълка) which are impossible to pronounce in Serbian; phonetic changes such as the elision of h (aiduk); the absence of the infinitive, etc. The presentation of this material is not intended to question the scientific value of previous works and earlier authors’ capacity to account for certain aspects of the history and language of the Bulgarian minorities in Oltenia, but rather aims at providing an overview of the abundant bibliography, mostly unknown to Romanian scholars, and at emphasising that the language and culture of this minority may still represent a viable subject for research.

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