Pomaks can mean:
- Muslim Bulgarians, the descendants of Bulgarian Christians who converted to Islam under the Ottomans. Their name is usually traced to the words помъчен ("tortured") or помагач ("collaborator")." They speak Bulgarian as a mother tongue and are not to be confused with the country's ethnic Turks and other Muslims. Bulgaria does not consider Pomaks to be a separate ethnic group but a religious minority.
- Members of the Greek Muslim minority who speak Slavic dialects closely related to Bulgarian and number some 30,000 in the Greek region of western Thrace. Greece has tentatively promoted the development of a standard Pomak language distinct from Bulgarian via the publication of a Greek-Pomak dictionary. The Pomaks of Greece are not legally recognised as a separate minority but rather form part of the wider Muslim minority.
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomaks under GFDL
