According to 1999 research by Nyagulov, the people consider themselves to be partly of Bulgarian ethnos, but not on an individual level, only as a community, which is characterized by Catholic faith, specific literature and language practice as well as elements of traditional material heritage and spiritual culture.

[5] The origin of the Bulgarian Roman Catholic community is related to the Paulicianism, a medieval Christian movement from Armenia and Syria whose members between 8th and 10th century arrived in the region of Thrace, then controlled by Byzantine Empire.

[7] They had religious freedom until the 11th century, when the majority were converted to the official Christian state faith by Alexios I Komnenos.

[5][7] It is believed that the Banat Bulgarian community was formed from two groups in different regions; one from missionary activities of the Roman Catholic Church in the 17th century among merchants and artisans from Chiprovtsi, not only of Paulician origin as included "Saxon" miners among others,[8][9] and other from Paulician peasants of villages from Svishtov and Nikopol municipalities.

Around 300 families of the surviving Catholics fled north of the Danube to Oltenia, initially settling in Craiova, Râmnicu Vâlcea, and other cities, where their existing rights were confirmed by Wallachian Prince Constantin Brâncoveanu.

[12] Some moved to south-western Transylvania, founding colonies in Vinţu de Jos (1700) and Deva (1714) and receiving privileges such as civil rights and tax exemption.

This attracted another wave of migration of Bulgarian Catholics, about 300 families from the formerly Paulician villages of central northern Bulgaria.

[19] The existing Bulgarian population, especially from Stár Bišnov,[16] quickly spread throughout the region from the late 18th to the second quarter of the 19th century.

Such colonies include those in Modoš (1779), Konak and Stari Lec (1820), Belo Blato (1825), Bréšća, Dénta, and Banatski Dvor (1842), Telepa (1846), Skorenovac (1866), and Ivanovo (1866-1868).

[25] The Kingdom of Yugoslavia denied the existence of any Bulgarian minority, whether in the Vardar Banovina, the Western Outlands, or the Banat.

[28] In the 1930s, the Banat Bulgarians in Romania entered a period of cultural revival led by figures such as Ivan Fermendžin, Anton Lebanov, and Karol Telbis (Telbizov).

Bulgaria and Yugoslavia improved their relations in the 1930s, leading to indirect recognition of the Banat Bulgarian minority by the Yugoslav government.

Their religious life was partly determined by the clashes between the dominant Eastern Orthodoxy and the minority Catholicism, and cultural conflicts with other Roman Catholic communities which they lived with in several villages, such as the Banat Swabians and the Bulgarian Paulicians from Ilfov.

Bulgarians were often deprived of property and land, subjected to anti-Bulgarian propaganda, and their villages had to shelter Romanian and Aromanian refugees from Northern Transylvania and Southern Dobruja.

[42] In late 1942, the German authorities allowed Bulgarian minority classes to be created in the Serbian schools in Ivanovo, Skorenovac, Konak, Belo Blato, and Jaša Tomić.

[43] However, the sudden change in the war and German withdrawal from the Banat forced education in Bulgarian to be discontinued after the 1943–44 school year.

Others followed in Breștea, Colonia Bulgară, and Denta, but these were briefly closed or united with the Romanian schools after 1952, and Bulgarian remained an optional subject.

[2] Other characteristic phonological features are the "ê" (wide "e") reflex of the Old Church Slavonic yat and the reduction of "o" into "u" and sometimes "e" into "i": puljé instead of pole ("field"), sélu instead of selo ("village"), ugništi instead of ognište ("fireplace").

[50] Lexically, the language has borrowed many words from languages such as German (such as drot from Draht, "wire"; gáng from Gang, "anteroom, corridor"), Hungarian (vilánj from villany, "electricity"; mozi, "cinema"), Serbo-Croatian (stvár from stvar, "item, matter"; ráčun from račun, "account"), and Romanian (šedinca from ședință, "conference")[51] due to the close contacts with the other peoples of the multiethnical Banat and the religious ties with other Roman Catholic peoples.

[54] Besides loanwords, the lexis of Banat Bulgarian has also acquired calques and neologisms, such as svetica ("icon", formerly used ikona and influenced by German Heiligenbild), zarno ("bullet", from the word meaning "grain"), oganbalváč ("volcano", literally "fire belcher"), and predhurta ("foreword").

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.

Today, the Bulgarian Union of the Banat – Romania issues the biweekly newspaper Náša glás and the monthly magazine Literaturna miselj.

[60] The regional television station TVR Timișoara airs a monthly programme in the Banat Bulgarian language.

[3] The earliest and most important centers of the Banat Bulgarian population are the villages of Dudeştii Vechi (Stár Bišnov) and Vinga, both today in Romania,[68] but notable communities also exist in Romania in Breştea (Bréšća), Colonia Bulgară (Telepa) and Denta (Dénta),[10] and the cities of Timișoara (Timišvár) and Sânnicolau Mare (Smikluš), as well as in Serbia in the villages of Ivanovo, Belo Blato, Konak (Kanak), Jaša Tomić (Modoš), Skorenovac (Gjurgevo), as well cities of Pančevo, Zrenjanin, Vršac and Kovin.

[70] In Banat, the people mainly intermarried within the group, and only since the 1940s began intensive marriages with other nationalities, because of which many got assimilated, especially according to confessional factor (among Slovaks and Hungarians, while few among Croats, Serbs and so on).