Balkan languages and what makes them unique

When you think of languages of the same linguistic family, the first thing that comes to mind in terms of similarities is vocabulary, i.e. the same or similar words. In fact, the feature, which is most resilient to change in languages, is not its vocabulary, but its syntax. If we want to determine the geographical location of a certain tongue, we can confidently consider its structural characteristics.

Sprachbund

This is the case with languages from the Balkan sprachbund (language area), who are members of several different language families (Slavic, Albanian, Hellenic, Romance, Turkic), but share common grammar systems. E.g. all of them tend to become more analytic.

Bulgarian

Let us have a look at Bulgarian: a Slavic language in terms of its vocabulary, but it does not have any grammar cases, possesses an extensive tense system, articles, and other analytic features. Virtually all other Slavic languages rely on anything between 4 and 7 cases, a handful of verb tenses and no articles. This is a classic example of how the linguistic region has influenced a language.

Turkish

Due to the long period of Ottoman domination over the Balkans, the minor languages were to a certain extent influenced by Turkish. Many speakers today can catch dozens of Turkish words.

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Renarrative mood

My favorite common feature of the Balkan languages is the so-called “renarrative mood" which makes a distinction between past actions which the speaker witnessed personally and which he did not but heard about. I call it "gossip verb tense".

Vocabulary

Another interesting point is the common borrowed vocabulary, i.e. quite often a foreign word, borrowed by one Balkan language, turns out to be borrowed by all or most languages in the area.

It is certainly an exciting journey to go take, the study of regional languages, especially those in the Balkan area due to their diversity.