The Tolmin dialect ( sl, tolminsko narečje, ''tolminščina'') is a Slovene dialect in the

Rovte dialect group The Rovte dialect group (''rovtarska narečna skupina'', ''rovtarščina'') is a group of closely related dialects of Slovene. The Rovte dialects are spoken in the mountainous areas of west-central Slovenia, on the border between the Slovenian L ...

. It is spoken in the watersheds of the Bača and lower Idrijca rivers, as well as the reaches of the Soča River in that area, bounded on the west by a line west of

Tolmin Tolmin (; it, Tolmino,trilingual name ''Tolmein, Tolmino, Tolmin'' inGemeindelexikon, der im Reichsrate Vertretenen Königreiche und Länder. Bearbeit auf Grund der Ergebnisse der Volkszählung vom 31. Dezember 1900. Herausgegeben von der K.K. ...

and

Most na Soči Most na Soči (; formerly ''Sveta Lucija'' or ''Sveta Lucija na Mostu'', german: Sankt Luzia) is a town in the Municipality of Tolmin in the Littoral region of Slovenia. It is located on a rocky crest above the confluence of Soča and Idrijca rive ...

. Other settlements in the dialect area include

Grahovo ob Bači Grahovo ob Bači (; it, Gracova Serravalle) is a village on the Bača River in the Municipality of Tolmin in the Littoral region of Slovenia. Name The name of the settlement was changed from ''Grahovo'' to ''Grahovo ob Bači'' (literally, 'Grah ...

.Toporišič, Jože. 1992. ''Enciklopedija slovenskega jezika''. Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, p. 329.

Phonological and morphological characteristics

The Tolmin dialect lacks

pitch accent A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ( ...

, except in

Čiginj Čiginj () is a settlement south of Volče in the Municipality of Tolmin in the Littoral region of Slovenia. Name The etymology of the name ''Čiginj'' is unclear. It is believed to be of Romance origin, and it may show a Romance reflex of Latin ...

, where this is partially retained. It has short vowels resulting from accentual retraction of the type ''nàga'' < ''nogà'' 'foot', vowel reduction as in the central Slovene dialects, ''b'' < ''v'' (known as ''betacizem'' in Slovene), and innovative Slovenian palatalization (e.g., ''ščìra'' < ''sekira'' 'axe'). Long ''i'' and ''u'' have shortened, restricting the long vowel inventory to ''ie'', ''uo'', and ''a''. The dialect has undergone complete

akanye Akanye or akanje ( be, аканне, russian: а́канье, ), literally "''a''-ing", is a sound change in Slavic languages in which the phonemes or are realized as more or less close to . It is a case of vowel reduction. The most familiar ...

and the lenition of ''g'' > �

References

Slovene dialects {{Slavic-lang-stub