From a sociolinguistic point of view the paper designates the “transitional dialect space” between the Lower Carniolan, Upper Carniolan and Styrian dialect groups, now defined as a) the Zagorje-
Trbovlje area to the west and b) the speech or sub-dialect of Laško to the east. From three border points – Izlake, Svibno, Turje – are analysed the direction, movement and transformation of old isoglosses and isomorphs, and prosodic transformations in the original Lower Carniolan phono-morphological (and lexical) composition. Newer innovations (following interlingual interference) have strongly affected the original lexical composition of both dialect units. These were brought about by the invasion of foreign mining terminology (officially and colloquially adapted) during the flourishing of mining in the Sava region in the mid-19th century (the mines at Zagorje, Trbovlje, Hrastnik and Brezno, as well as Govce and Huda jama near Laško). This triggered a number of lexical and semantic shifts, thus noticeably changing the speech of the whole area.
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