Balkan Gagauz, Balkan Turkish or Rumelian (Turkish: Rumeli Türkçesi), is a Turkic language spoken in European Turkey, in Dulovo and the Deliorman area in Bulgaria, the Prizren area in Kosovo, and the Kumanovo and Bitola areas of North Macedonia.[2] Dialects include Gajal, Gerlovo Turk, Karamanli, Kyzylbash, Surguch, Tozluk Turk, Yuruk (Konyar, Yoruk), Prizren Turk, and Macedonian Gagauz.[citation needed]
| Balkan Gagauz | |
|---|---|
| Rumelian Turkish | |
| Native to | Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo |
| Region | Balkan Peninsula |
Native speakers | 460,000 (2019)[1] |
Turkic
| |
| Latin script,[citation needed] Cyrillic alphabet[citation needed] | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | bgx |
| Glottolog | balk1254 |
| ELP | Balkan Gagauz Turkish |
Although it is mutually intelligible with both Gagauz[2] and Turkish to a considerable degree, it is usually classified as a separate language,[citation needed] due to foreign influences from neighboring languages spoken in the Balkans.
Balkan Gagauz Turkish was given international prominence through the Oscar-nominated 2019 film Honeyland, in which the protagonist is an ethnic Macedonian Turk and mostly speaks in the local dialect throughout the film.
Population
There were around 460,000 speakers of Balkan Gagauz Turkish in Turkey in 2019[1] and an estimated 4,000 in North Macedonia in 2018.[3]
