The Paulician dialect (Bulgarian: Павликянски говор, romanized: Pavlikyanski govor) is a Bulgarian dialect of the Rhodopean group of the Rup dialects. The Paulician dialect is spoken by some 40,000 people, nearly all of them Catholic Bulgarians, in the region of Rakovski in southern Bulgaria and Svishtov in northern Bulgaria, as well as regions in Romania. The language of the Banat Bulgarians, late 17th century Bulgarian Catholic migrants to Banat, is phonologically and morphologically identical to the Paulician dialect (Banat Bulgarian dialect). The dialect's name derives from the Paulicians, believed to be the ancestors of the Catholic Banat Bulgarians.[1]
However, as a result of its three-century separation from Standard Bulgarian and its close interaction with German and Hungarian, Banat Bulgarian has adopted a number of loanwords not present in Standard Bulgarian and a Croatian-based Latin alphabet and is therefore now considered to be one of the three literary forms of Modern Bulgarian. The Paulician dialect is almost entirely surrounded by the Central Balkan dialect. It keeps many archaic characteristics and thus represents an older stage of development of the Rhodopean dialects. Other ex-Paulicians - the "Lovech Pomaks" in northern Bulgaria speak the Galata dialect, which covers the regiolects of the villages: Galata, Gradeshnitsa, Bulgarski Izvor, Kirchevo (Pomashka Leshnitsa), Dobrevtsi, and Rumyantsevo (Blasnichevo).[2] In the past, this dialect had covered areas of the Pleven, Lukovit, Byala Slatina, and Teteven regions.[3]