The Kozje-Bizeljsko dialect (kozjansko-bizeljsko narečje), also known as the Brežice-Kozje dialect (brežiško-kozjansko narečje) or the Bizeljsko-Sotla dialect (bizeljsko-obsoteljsko narečje) is a Slovene dialect in the Styrian dialect group

Styrian dialect group

The Styrian dialect group is a group of closely related dialects of Slovene. The Lower Carniolan dialects are spoken in central and eastern Slovenian Styria and in the Lower Sava Valley and Central Sava Valley....

. It extends north of the Sava River at Brežice

Brežice

Brežice is a city and municipality in eastern Slovenia in the Lower Sava Valley, near the Croatian border. The area was traditionally divided between Lower Styria and Lower Carniola...

, ranging from Jurklošter

Jurklošter

Jurklošter is a settlement in the Municipality of Laško in eastern Slovenia. The area was traditionally part of the Lower Styria region. It is now included with the rest of the municipality into the Savinja statistical region....

 to Podčetrtek

Podcetrtek

Podčetrtek is a settlement and a municipality in eastern Slovenia. It was first mentioned as a settlement in the early 11th century as Lonsperch and later as Lontsperch, Landsprech, Landsperg, Landsberg and eventually Windisch Landsberg. Its Slovene name is a reference to Thursday , which was the...

 in the north, encompassing the settlements of Kozje

Kozje

Kozje is a small town and a municipality in eastern Slovenia. The settlement of Kozje lies in the centre of the municipality, from Celje, from Ljubljana and from Rogaška Slatina. It is the main settlement of the Kozjansko area. The area was part of the traditional region of Lower Styria. The...

 and Bizeljsko

Bizeljsko

Bizeljsko is a settlement in the Municipality of Brežice in eastern Slovenia, close to the border with Croatia. It lies on the right bank of the Sotla River and in terms of its territory is the largest settlement in the Municipality of Brežice. The area was traditionally part of Styria...

, and to the Sotla River in the east. It is the southernmost dialect in the Styrian dialect group.

Phonological and morphological characteristics

The Kozje-Bizeljsko dialect has transitional features to the Lower Carniolan dialects

Lower Carniolan dialect group

The Lower Carniolan dialect group is a group of closely related dialects of Slovene. The Lower Carniolan dialects are spoken in most of Lower Carniola and in the eastern half of Inner Carniola....

 such as an originally preserved semivowel with a positionally conditioned a reflex of the long semivowel, and retention of pitch accent

Pitch accent

Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...

. The former acute accent is bimoraic

Mora (linguistics)

Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...

, the circumflex is monomoraic

Mora (linguistics)

Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...

, and original quantitative distinctions between vowels have largely been replaced by qualitative differences. It is characterized by the phonemic developments a > , u > ü, unaccented u, ə, and yat

Yat

Yat or Jat is the thirty-second letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet. Its name in Old Church Slavonic is jěd’ or iad’ . In the common scientific Latin transliteration for old Slavic languages, the letter is represented by e with caron: .The yat represented a Common Slavic long vowel...

> i, and lowering of high vowels before r.