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The eastern balkan had a mix of south slavic, east romance, and greek speakers in the 7th century when the bulgar tribes moved to the area. The bulgars adopted the most common religion in the area, eastern orthodox christianity, as well as a slavic language.

Does anyone here, or historians in general, have an idea why the bulgars chose slavic?

Could they have plausibly adopted a different language? An eastern variety of latin / east romance seems plausible to me. It would be more prestigious than their original turkic language or a slavic one, help with communicating with neighbouring peoples, and still differentiate the bulgars from the byzantine empire.

If they had romanized, and we ruthlessly slaughter butterflies for half a millenia, what sort of differences would we see in the area?

Would the bulgars influence the macedonians to speak romance, like OTL they spoke a language more similar to bulgarian than to other slavic languages? Would aromanian / vlach communities in the rest of the balkans be larger, or even assimilate surrounding slavs?

Would the bulgars speak a dialect of Romanian or a separate language entirely?

Would a future Romanian unification be more or less likely?

Combining the OTL modern nations of Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and the ukrainian bassarabia gives an area of around 400 000 square kms, and a population around 33 millions. Enough, I think to make a regional power provided it has a competent government and isn't surrounded by empires, which hasn't always been true for OTL Romania.
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