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I confess to publishing the entire article without any sources or references. I spoke from knowledge; it is difficult to find things sometimes. I did do a quick search on Alltheweb.com and Yahoo.com but found little of much use. I will endevour to seek refernces which I will later add. In the meantime, if anyone knows anything I don't, I hope that they add it; or if I am wrong about something, change it freely, I will not re-alter it without discussing it here first. My knowledge is based on material which I have read in books, not on websites, and much of it was learnt when I spent a good few years travelling backward and forward to Eastern Europe in the late 80's and early 90's. I have otherwise maintained strong links with people from Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia and I still visit these countries frequently on business. Celtmist 3-11-05

• No question of Torlak culture, and it has changed now into the same languages as Macedonia, Bulgaria and Serbia. My grandfather was from Preševo in todays southern Serbia, his wife, my grandmother was from Kumanovo in present day Macedonia. This was in first kingdom of Yugoslavia in late 1920s. He was travelling each day into Kumanovo by horseback when he met her and then after world war 2, a Macedonian state was established ruling Kumanovo inside Macedonia. Even before that, my grandfather always told me that people in both towns called themselves Torlaci and had naturally more common place with each other than had with different places more distant in Macedonia and further away in Serbia (but Serbian nationality was forced on them right from when Serbia was created in some time near 1830). I was born in Leskovac and I still speak a Torlakian form of the language, in Leskovac we don't use the definite article but my grandfather did use one because in Preševo, they did have it. But I still speak standard Serbian if I have to go to Belgrade or Novi Sad, that is the diglossia. Jordovan november 3, 2005

• What a poor excuse to speak a bad language. It is clear that the people from southern Serbia are not educated, none of them can speak properly, that is why we look down on them from the north. In my Vojvodina, the language is pure, so are the people, and so is our whole custom and way of life. In Vranje they go to Serbia state school and should know better than to speak Serbian language without padeža (cases). To think that this is a dialect going back hundreds of years is ridiculous. Everyone knows Old Slavonic language had cases. Arvatov 4.11.2005 1130 CET