Ana Kocheva, Ivan Kochev
Papers of BAS Humanities and Social Sciences
Vol. 4, 2017, No 2
ON THE (RE)CODIFICATIONS OF STANDARD BULGARIAN IN VARDAR AND AEGEAN MACEDONIA
Аna Kocheva, Ivan Kochev
Abstract. The Bulgarian literary language has a record number of writing-regional codifications. While other Balkan languages are found in two states each (Greek - in the main state of Greece and in Cyprus; Turkish - in the main state of Turkey and in Cyprus; Albanian - in the main state of Albania and in Kosovo; Romanian - in the main state of Romania and in Moldova; the situation of Serbo-Croatian in the former Yugoslavia is not fully clarified), the Bulgarian language because of Bulgaria’s failure to accomplish its national unification in the 20th century and due to forced emigration of the population after a few wars displays a record number of attempts at codification of regional written norms - six in total. Of these six codifications three were made on the basis of dialects and three - on the basis of the Bulgarian literary language (in the Aegean part of Greece, in the Republic of Macedonia and in Ukraine). In the latter cases, it is not actually a primary codification but a secondary one, a (re)codification of already established (dur- ing the National Revival era) and long-used Bulgarian literary language. All six of them however provide clear evidence of the pluricentrism of the Bulgarian language which is the result of the exceptionally complex historical destiny of the Bulgarian nation.
Keywords: writing-regional codifications, pluricentrism, Bulgarian literary lan- guage