Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
Marin Mladenov UDC 376.744(497.11=867):316:80 
Faculty of Philosophy 
Belgrade, Yugoslavia 
SOCIOLINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF BILINGUALISM AT THE SCHOOLS OF THE 
BULGARIAN ETHNIC GROUP IN THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF SERBIA* 
Linguistic Situation 
The area of Dimitrovgrad and Bosiljgrad and of a few villages in 
the commune of Pirot, Babusnica, Surdulica (southeastern part of 
SR Serbia; the territorial belt alongside the Yugoslav-Bulgarian 
frontier; about 50,000 inhabitants of Bulgarian ethnic 
background) - can be described as a typical diglossic—bilingual 
community. In other words, the local inhabitants of the Bulgarian 
nationality use the Bulgarian dialect of the western type 
("sopski" dialect, "trnski" dialect, “éstendilski" dialect) that 
is rather remote from the literary Bulgarian language, being a 
characteristic feature also of the western dialects within the 
confines of the People's Republic of Bulgaria. Even in the named 
zone there exist minor dialect differences between the dialect of 
Dimitrovgrad and of Bosiljgrad. For this area, the contemporary 
Bulgarian language, being the mother tongue of the inhabitants, 
holds the position of a microlanguage of a limited functionality 
(being linked to a small geographic zone and to certain fields of 
the social life - the elementary school, partially the secondary 
school, the mass media involving communication of the regional 
type, the cultural life, the literature in the Bulgarian language 
within the SFRY), while the contemporary literary Serbo-Croatian 
language, non-native to these inhabitants, holds the position of 
a macrolanguage with a broad functionality in all the fields, 
both in the local bilingual zone - administration, political 
life, secondary schooling, administration of justice, press, 
etc.), and more broadly, in SR Serbia and in Yugoslavia as a 
whole. This picture of the specific bilingual (Bulgarian-Serbian) 
zone is complicated also by the fact that it is in wide contact 
with the Serbo-Croatian language through a specific zone of the 
Serbo-Croatian language (Pirot, BabuSnica, Surdulica; the so- 
called old-Stokavian and the archaic dialects of the Serbo- 
Croatian language) the dialects of which (the Serbian according 
to the ethnos) are rather emote from the literary Serbo-Croatian 
language, and thus there arises an unusual situation in which 
ethnically different groups - speak a similar language both when 
the original dialect is involved and in the case of the 
(uncertain) Serbo-Croatian literary language acquired later. In 
this area, therefore, where the Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian 
languages keep contact, a “mixed language ("langue mixte") is 
frequently used, both in the interpersonal communication and 
often also (unfortunately) in the language of administration, 
public communications, and the like. (A classic instance: 
bilingualism in the denomination of the streets at Dimitrovgrad 
offers also the following example of the denomination of the main 
  
* Original: Serbo-Croatian 
165

Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
street that is said to be "bilingual" - Ulica Marsala Tita 
(Marshall Tito Street). A number of similar instances can be 
found in the language of the administration, certificates, 
extracts from birth registers, and the like, in the language of 
the firms in the town, public advertisements, prospectuses, and 
in other texts). 
School and Bilingualism 
Legalized bilingualism in the area of the Bulgarian ethnic group, 
that is, the language equality rights (affirmed under the 
Constitution of the SFRY and under that of SR Serbia, upheld in 
numerous important political documents) has been developing since 
the year 1944, thus under the conditions of the new socialist 
community of the nationalities and ethnic groups of Yugoslavia. 
(A "bilingualism" of a special kind existed also before the War, 
starting in the year 1920 when this area had been annexed to the 
Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In pre-war Yugoslavia 
the Bulgarian ethnic group did not have a status of an ethnic 
group - national minority; they had no schools in their mother 
tongue and they had no right to use their native language in the 
social and cultural life either). Post-war bilingualism in the 
schools of the Bulgarian ethnic group has been realized by 
employing various methods. In the first decade after the War, 
elementary and secondary schools practiced a strict teaching in 
the Bulgarian language, and the Serbo-Croatian language was 
taught as a “state language." Later on, in the 1960s it was 
transformed into a more or less symmetrical “bilingual teaching" 
where elementary schools preserved the primacy of the Bulgarian 
language, and secondary ones (on account of the preparation for 
university) maintained the primacy of the Serbo-Croatian 
language. Today, Bosiljgrad keeps this model, and Dimitrovgrad is 
predominantly oriented towards the Serbo-Croatian teaching 
language while maintaining, of course, the compulsory learning of 
the Bulgarian language and literature (for the pupils of the 
Bulgarian and non-Bulgarian origin) from the preschool 
institutions to the final grades of the secondary school. The 
goal has been always the same: to master both the languages as 
required by the life, and, on the other hand, also by the 
fundamental ideological-political principles of our community. 
The desired bilingualism is differently implemented in the area 
of the Bulgarian ethnic group, both in the field of schools and 
in those of the social, economic, political and cultural life. 
This "ideal bilingualism," at least in principle, is most 
completely implemented in the schools (inclusive of 
extracurricular activities, cultural manifestations, and the 
like), in the mass media using the Bulgarian language (the weekly 
information paper Bratstvo; the bi-weekly paper for children 
Drugarice; the quarterly literary magazine Most, the transmission 
in the Bulgarian language of Radio Nis, the transmission in the 
Bulgarian language (bi-weekly) of Television Belgrade), in drama 
societies, publishing and at formal (official) meetings and 
ceremonials (cultural and political ones). In all the other 
spheres of life (interpersonal communication within families, in 
the street, in pubs, shops, offices of public services, in the 
extracurricular communication between the pupils and teachers, 
and so on) - the dominant part is played by the local speech, 
166

Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
enriched by new words and phraseological units from the Serbo- 
Croatian or Bulgarian languages, depending upon the situational 
context and the topic of conversation. 
The results of the bilingual teaching at Dimitrovgrad and 
Bosiljgrad have not been scrutinized. The grading which starts 
from the pupil's marks obtained at school is satisfactory. There 
is an unofficial opinion (elementary and secondary school 
teachers, publishers and editors) that the grading criterion is 
considerably lower than that in the corresponding all-Serbian 
environments or than that in the PR Bulgaria, respectively. Also, 
the results of some competitions for university enrollment or for 
the choice of the translator from Serbo-Croatian to Bulgarian (on 
the radio, in journalism, public services) confirm this opinion. 
To obtain accurate indicators for the outline of the level of our 
bilingualism, we organized a small test in four sections of the 
elementary and secondary schools of Dimitrovgrad (5 September 
1985): the pupils were given three lexically and syntactically 
Simple sentences in the local dialect, with the task to edit, 
"translate" them into a) literary Bulgarian, b) literary Serbo- 
Croatian. The pupils reacted quickly and within 10 to 15 minutes 
produced the variants required (without using dictionaries, 
without consulting each other. The texts concerned were checked 
and the mistakes arranged in three categories: vocabulary, 
syntax, spelling. Statistically, the deviations from the literary 
standard (Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian) appear as follows: 
’ 
Vocabulary (%) Syntax($) Spelling(%) 
Bulgarian language 325 171 155 
Serbo-Croatian language 140 165 26 
There follows a clear conclusion that the basic errors committed 
by the users of the Bulgarian language are in vocabulary. 
Statistically, this means 3.25 mistakes per person but only 1.40 
in Serbo-Croatian. Linguistically, this is something unexpected 
(the mother tongue being involved), but the social context has 
made itself felt, i.e., the lack of a daily contact with the 
living Bulgarian language is obvious, while on the other hand, 
there is a daily contact with the Serbo-Croatian language 
(television, radio, films, sports, entertainment and magazines, 
comic strips, readings and other literary works, an increased 
number of the users of the Serbo-Croatian language in the town 
itself- border services, army personnel, railway employees, 
frequent visits of theatres, singers, sports groups, etc.). 
Perhaps, the psychological factor is at work here as well: the 
local word, i.e., “our word" is accepted easily also as a 
literary word of the Bulgarian language. Thus, the local word 
kavtor (in Serbo-Croatian it means peé, Stednjak, Sporet - oven, 
stove) remained in the tests of the majority of the participants, 
while in the Serbo-Croatian texts it was replaced by peé and 
Sporet, but they did not remember the Bulgarian (Slavic) word of 
the same root — peG¢ka. Similarly, the adverb kod%a (a Turkish 
word) was replaced in the Serbian variants by mnogo and puno 
167

  
. gradivo, Ljubi ana, March 1986, No.18 
Razprave in 
it was kept in the Bulgarian one. In other 
(very much), wher ee se sphere of vocabulary, the difference 
words, at least in n and dialects 15 greater, clearer than that 
between Serbo-Croatia 
à the literary Bulgarian language. (A 
between the for the teaching practice: it is necessary to 
practical lesson the teaching in the grammar handbooks and 
insist even more on this having already been the practice 
of the vocabulary: ication should b idered of readers, put the publication shou e considered of a 
or tendency so far, jan School Dictionary and a Serbo-Croatian- 
Bulgarian-Serbo-Croatia comprising at least ten thousand 
i School Dictionary, 
Se rceqinntly used words in both languages), 
5 x (here including also the morphological 
In the oy ie eee was almost identical (171 : 165%), 
Er not mean that we should be satisfied with it. Certain 
SE stier ton should be made here, too, concerning 
the errors made 
in either language. The errors made in the Serbo-Croatian 
language are more tolerable, i.e., 1m most cases they involve 
word order in the sentence, while the corresponding syntagmas are 
correct (there is involved the syntactical impact of the local 
and Bulgarian languages). In the Bulgarian language, the errors 
are more serious, i.e., committed just in constructing syntagmas. 
The greatest surprise (negative for the Bulgarian language) was 
found to be the spelling mistakes (150% in Bulgarian and only 26% 
in Serbo-Croatian). Thus, we could be quite satisfied with the 
spelling in Serbo-Croatian. It is natural that the phonetic 
Serbo-Croatian spelling suits better our pupils tested, for it is 
easier for them to write in the same way as they pronounce. The 
Bulgarian language has an etymological type of spelling, i.e., 
there are differences between the pronunciation and spelling. 
When these two types of spelling clash, of course, the losing 
party is the etymological one. However, the difference is great 
and unexpected. Future writers of grammars, readers and 
methodological instructions should pay more attention to it 
(There are lots of simple spelling mistakes, perhaps under the 
impact of Serbo-Croatian: thus, let us say, a number of the 
participants spell Bulgarian words in the Serbian way: cjala, 
noSt, etc. - i.e. they do not use the corresponding letters for 
St and ja. An example of a specific interference in the sphere of 
spelling! 
It would be useful to compare these or similar data furnished by 
future investigations with the data derived from other types of 
Slavic bilingualism in this country (Slovak, Czech, Ruthenian and 
Serbo-Croatian), and to make the corresponding conclusions the 
reform). 
Bilingualism and Interference 
Bilingualism in both the teaching and then in the social life 
(political life, press, radio, television, publishing), in 
addition to the realization of the desired communication and 
social integration, creates the conditions for interference on 
all the levels of the linguistic structure. In other words, the 
pupils, and later on the citizens, form specific variants of the 
Bulgarian or Serbo-Croatian languages, respectively, each with 
its specific elements (as to vocabulary, syntax, stress). The 
168

Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
small area inhabited by the Bulgarian ethnic group does not 
present an opportunity for a larger number of ideal bilinguals. 
This is, in the main, implemented in the sphere of education, in 
journalism, cultural activities, in translation and literary 
creations. The majority of the educated members of the Bulgarian 
ethnic group live and work in their homeland, where the Bulgarian 
language either ceases to be cultivated or is preserved in the 
consciousness as the "bad" Bulgarian language, while the Serbo- 
Croatian language is cultivated only to the extent required by 
the professional and social context. Thus, those living and 
working in the eastern part of Serbia will go on maintaining 
worse Serbo-Croatian (as the environment and profession do not 
require more), while those who work in the western part of Serbia 
or in Bosnia or Croatia will be forced to successfully build up 
their Serbo-Croatian, this being required by the new 
sociolinguistic context. It has been observed that those who 
ideally master the Serbo-Croatian language, preserve even better 
the literary Bulgarian language - learnt at school - because of 
the increased possibilities, in that case, of a better 
differentiation between the two literary languages. 
The language of the Yugoslav Bulgarians (literary language) 
displays the following deviations from the contemporary Bulgarian 
language: 
- an increased use of the perfect tense (under the impact of the 
Serbo-Croatian language), and thereby a diminished use of the 
aorist tense (a typical feature of the Bulgarian language); 
- a declining use of participal forms and of indirect speech; 
- a decrease in the use of neologisms and phraseology of a more 
recent date; 
- a decrease in the reduction of the unstressed vowels, and 
increased use of the suffix -me in the first person plural, 
present tense; 
— the creation of a new vocabulary for expressing the substance 
of the socio-political and economic system of the SFRY. 
In the Serbo-Croatian language of the Yugoslav Bulgarians, the 
following deviations from the contemporary Serbo-Croatian 
language have been observed; 
- expiratory stress is an expiratory one, lengths are rare; 
- a minimal use of the infinitive and somewhat strengthened use 
of the pronoun for each person; 
- vacillating use of the cases, a reduced use of the verb- 
modifying adverbs; 
- cultivation of the ekavian pronunciation and of the vocabulary 
of the eastern variant of the Serbo-Croatian language. 
169

Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
Biculturalism in the Function of Bilingualism 
In the area of the Bulgarian ethnic group (predominantly at 
Dimitrovgrad and Bosiljgrad), in addition to bilingualism, 
biculturalism is also being strengthened, being a peculiar 
symbiosis of the Yugoslav (or Serbian) and the Bulgarian 
cultures. This is mirrored in the school programmes (study of the 
Bulgarian literature, additional content in the art, music, 
history and geography lessons), in the cultural life, in the 
public information media, and in the publishing activities in the 
Bulgarian language. For instance, theatre societies cultivate the 
Yugoslav and Bulgarian repertoires, public performances (school 
ones and others) feature items of the Yugoslav and Bulgarian 
origin, and in the cultivation of cultural history there is an 
emphasis on the creators having contributed to the establishment 
of friendly relations between the Yugoslav peoples and cultures 
(for instance, Svetozar Markovié, etc.) In the vanguard of such a 
bicultural activity is the bilingually educated intelligensia 
(the post-war generation) in the fields of education, journalism, 
translation, and literary creation. It is to a considerable 
extent free from the traditional nationalistic predjudices and 
moves within a rather narrow space and interstate relations that 
have been in the recent decades often unfavourable and cool. 
The positive elements of the interstate bilculturalism, which 
have a positive impact on the maintenance of the equlibrium 
between the Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian languages, are follows: 
the traditional border meetings of the Yugoslavs and Bulgarians, 
mutual visits to the cultural ensembles in frontier towns, more 
frequent crossings of the border between Yugoslavia and Bulgarian 
(tourists, family meetings), schooling at the University of 
Sofia, common professional meetings of Bulgarian language 
teachers at Dimitrovgrad (Bosiljgrad), seminars for our teachers 
in Bulgaria (refresher courses in the mother tongue), etc. 
In the upholders of biculturalism are mostly competent 
bilinguals, and many among them also trilingual persons 
(knowledge of a world language: Russian, English, German, 
French), but we must not forget that only one stratum is 
involved, and that there are in the population at large (of the 
middle generation) also uncertain bilinguals, and that users of 
the local dialect are the most numerous. Thus, the tendency of 
those who are prominent in the cultural activity, the tendency of 
the creators of the official programmes is towards an ideal 
bilingualism - i.e., to such a communication system in which the 
Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian languages coexist - cannot exist in 
all the strata of society and be uniformly endorsed by all, and 
nor can it always yield the same favourable results. 
The efficiency of bilingual education and of biculturalism does 
not depend only upon well-conceived and progressively directed 
linguistic and cultural policies, but also upon a concrete socio- 
linguistic and cultural foundation of the population it has been 
designed for. 
This field requires a permanent monitoring and an accurate 
research, which has not existed so far; this sub-field of 
linguistics and culture has been neglected on account of the 
raising of the material culture of this area that in economic 
170

Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
terms mainly belongs to the insufficiently developed regions of 
this country. The maintenance of the equilibrium in the use of 
the Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian languages in the area of the 
Bulgarian ethnic group presents a manifold complicated task, for 
it should not be forgotten that (in our conditions) the Serbo- 
Croatian language is the prerequisite and the means of 
professional and social progress. On the other hand, the 
ideological motivation that the members of the Bulgarian ethnic 
group cultivate “their mother tongue” as an element “of their 
national individuality," has been rather weakened, in particular 
today when a substantial part of the people of this country 
declare themselves to be of the “Yugoslav nationality" (i.e. 
unaffilitated to the nationality). 
The motivation for learning the Bulgarian language as the mother 
tongue or as the language of the social environment (for the 
pupils of non-Bulgarian origin) must be built in a more concrete 
manner and must rely not only upon ideological bases, but above 
all upon the material, social, psychological and professional 
foundations. In this light, we should permanently analyze and 
consider the results of biculturalism, i.e., we should take into 
consideration not only the quantity of the activities performed 
in the Bulgarian language (school teaching, extracurricular 
activities, press, radio, television, literature written in the 
Bulgarian language in the SFRY, and the like), but also the 
quality, the form of the cultural-artistic communication and of 
the acquired school knowledge in the function of cultivating the 
accepted bilingualism and biculturalism. 
171