The Banat Bulgarians (Banat Bulgarian: palćene or banátsći balgare; common Bulgarian: банатски българи, banatski balgari) are a distinct Bulgarian minority group which settled in the 18th century in the region of the Banat, which was then ruled by the Habsburg and after World War I was divided between Romania, Serbia, and Hungary. Unlike most other Bulgarians, they are Roman Catholic by confession and stem from groups of Paulicians and Roman Catholics from modern northern and northwestern Bulgaria.

Banat Bulgarians speak a distinctive codified form of the Eastern Bulgarian vernacular with much lexical influence from the other languages of the Banat. Although strongly acculturated to the Central European region, they have preserved their Bulgarian identity. Since the Liberation of Bulgaria in 1878, many have returned to Bulgaria and founded separate villages there.

Banat Bulgarians have engaged in literary activity since they settled in the Banat. Their earliest preserved literary work is the historical record Historia Domus (Historia Parochiae Oppidi Ó-Bessenyö, in Diocesi Czanadiensi, Comitatu Torontalensi), written in Latin in the 1740s. The codification of the Banat Bulgarian vernacular in 1866 enabled the release of a number of school books and the translation of several important religious works in the mid-19th century. There was a literary revival in the 1930s, centred around the Banatsći balgarsći glasnić newspaper. Today, the Bulgarian Union of the Banat – Romania issues the biweekly newspaper Náša glás and the monthly magazine Literaturna miselj.

(From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banat_Bulgarians)