Bulgarian language

Bulgarian (Български, Bulgarski)
Spoken in:	Bulgaria and surrounding areas
Region:	The Balkans
Total speakers:	9 Million
Ranking:	88
Genetic classification:	Indo-European Slavic South Eastern Bulgarian
Official status
Official language of:	Bulgaria
Regulated by:	?
Language codes
ISO 639-1	bg
ISO 639-2	bul
SIL	BLG

Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the South branch of the Slavic languages, along with Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, and Slovenian. The Bulgarian language is closely related to the Macedonian language. Some linguists, however, including all Bulgarian and Greek ones, are of the opinion that Macedonian is only a regional form of Bulgarian (see Macedonian language).

Distribution

Bulgarian is the official language of the Republic of Bulgaria. It is also spoken in Canada, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United States, with an estimated total of 9 million native speakers.

History

The Bulgarian language can be divided into several historical periods. The prehistoric period (essentially Proto-Slavic) occurred between the Slavonic invasion of the eastern Balkans and the mission to Moravia in the 9th century. Old Bulgarian (9th to 11th century) was reflected in Old Church Slavonic manuscripts. It is also referred to as the Bulgarian redaction/version of Old Church Slavonic. Middle Bulgarian (12th to 15th centuries) was a language of rich literary activity and major innovations. Modern Bulgarian dates from the 16th century onwards. The present-day written language was standardized in the 19th century. Some words and structures remain from the language of the Bulgars, the Central Asian people who moved into present-day Bulgaria and eventually adopted the local Slavic language. Their old Bulgar language was otherwise unrelated to Bulgarian.

General characteristics

Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic innovations that sets it apart from other Slavic languages, such as the elimination of noun declension, the development of a suffixed definite article (possibly inherited from the Bulgar language), the lack of verb infinitive, and the retention and further development of the Proto-Slavic verb system. There are various verb forms to express non-witnessed, retold, and doubtful action.

Alphabet

Bulgaria adopted the Glagolitic alphabet in the 880s after its prohibition in Great Moravia by the East Frankish bishop of Nitra in 885. The Glagolitic alphabet was invented by Saint Cyril, a Byzantine missionary commissioned by the Byzantine emperor to translate the New Testament into Old Church Slavonic.

The Glagolitic alphabet has around 40 letters, depending on variant. Of the original 38 Glagolitic letters, 24 are derived from graphemes of the medieval cursive Greek small alphabet, and they have been given an ornamental design. It is presumed that the letters Sha, Shta and Tsi were derived from the Hebrew alphabet (Shin and Tsadi)—the phonemes that these letters represent did not exist in Greek, but are quite common for all Slavic languages. The remaining original characters are of unknown oriental origin. Some of them are presumed to stem from the Hebrew and Samaritan scripts, which Cyril got to know during his journey to the Khazars in Cherson (ancient Chersonesus, or modern-day Kherson).

The Glagolitic alphabet was gradually superceded in the 9th century by the Cyrillic alphabet, whose creation is usually attributed to Saint Climent, the Bulgarian archbishop of Ohrid. The Cyrillic alphabet, like the Roman, stems from the Greek alphabet; additional characters, however, were devised to represent Slavic sounds that had no Greek equivalents.

From Bulgaria, the Cyrillic alphabet spread to the other Slavic states, most notably to Serbia and Russia. The Cyrillic alphabet, in various editions, is used currently in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Serbian, Macedonian and Bulgarian, as well as in most of the languages spoken in the former Soviet Union. The alphabet is, however, not used in the other Slavic languages, which are written in modified Roman alphabets.

The original Cyrillic alphabet (44 letters for 44 sounds) remained in use until the 1870s. The radical changes in Bulgarian phonetics from the time of Old Bulgarian to 19th century's Modern Bulgarian necessitated a reduction in the number of the letters to 32. This modified alphabet was used until the orthographic reform of 1945. The alphabet used after 1945 contained the same letters as the previous one with the exception of the Cyrillic letters yat (File:Yat.jpg, called "double e"), and yus (File:Yus.jpg). Thus the modern Bulgarian alphabet has 30 letters.

Phonology

Capital	Small	SAMPA
А	а	/a/
Б	б	/b/
В	в	/v/
Г	г	/g/
Д	д	/d/
Е	е	/e/
Ж	ж	/Z/
З	з	/z/
И	и	/i/
Й	й	/j/
К	к	/k/
Л	л	/l/
М	м	/m/
Н	н	/n/
О	о	/o/
П	п	/p/
Р	р	/r/
С	с	/s/
Т	т	/t/
У	у	/u/
Ф	ф	/f/
Х	х	/x/
Ц	ц	/ts/
Ч	ч	/tS/
Ш	ш	/S/
Щ	щ	/St/
Ъ	ъ	/@/
-	ь	¹
Ю	ю	/ju/
Я	я	/ja/

¹ softens sounds before 'o'

Most letters in the Bulgarian alphabet stand for one specific sound and that sound only. Three letters stand for the single expression of combinations of sounds, namely щ (sht), ю (yu), and я (ya). Two sounds do not have separate letters assigned to them and are expressed by the combination of two letters, namely дж (like j in Jack) and дз (dz). The letter ь is not pronounced, but it softens any preceding consonant before the letter o.

Grammar

Articles

Bulgarian is the only Slavonic language with a definite article. It is attached as an enclitic to the end of the word:

Masculine nouns: -а/-ът or -я/-ят (spelling rule, both may be read strong [pronouncing the -т] or weak [without -т]. NB: the -а/-я in this grammatical suffix is pronounced -ъ/-йъ)

e.g., мъжът (the man), котаракът (the tomcat), учителят (the teacher)

Masculine adjectives: -ия/-ият (same spelling rule as masculine nouns)

e.g., новият (the new [one]), глупавият (the stupid [one])

Feminine nouns/adjectives and all (!) nouns in -а: -та

e.g., жената (the woman), котката (the cat), бащата (the father), децата (the children)

Neuter nouns/adjectives: -то

e.g., детето (the child), котето (the kitten), слънцето (the sun)

Plural nouns/adjectives: -те

e.g., мъжете (the men), жените (the women), бащите (the fathers)

In complex adjective(s)+noun phrases, the first adjective takes the article, e.g.:

малкото умно дете (the small clever child)
смелата млада жена (the brave young woman)
приятният любезен мъж (the nice polite men)
новите смешни обувки (the new funny shoes)

Adjectives used with a definite article do not require a noun or a help word to be functional in the sentence:

e.g., English the new one is Bulgarian 'новият'.

Most pronouns (other than the personal pronouns) are declined like adjectives:

e.g., моят/моята/моето/моите (*the my [one], masc./fem./neut./plural), няколкото (*the a few). This is used to form relative pronouns: къде (where?) => където (in which).

No obligatory indefinite articles exist, this function being performed by the words един/една/едно/едни (one, masc./fem./neut./plural) and някакъв/някаква/някакво/някакви (some, masc./fem./neut./plural). Some noun phrases sound weird without one of those words, some don't.

Nouns

Bulgarian nouns have three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), much like Russian and German. There are no case declensions. The definite article is suffixed to the word, as in the Nordic languages. It is easier to guess the gender of an unknown Bulgarian word than of a German one.

words ending in a consonant are masculine
words ending in ‘-а’ are feminine (exceptions: баща)
words ending in ‘-ст’ and some words ending in ‘-т’ are feminine
words ending in ‘-е’ and ‘-о’ are neuter

Plural:

Masculine count nouns (човек, телефон) have two plural forms—regular plural and a special countable plural to be used after a numeral and the adverbs колко (how many), няколко (a few, several), толкова (so/this/that many). All other nouns have only one plural form.

It is said, however, that when a noun is a person, it must not be used with a countable form.

The plural is formed by adding different suffixes or by changing the final vowel of the word. The definite article is suffixed after the plural suffix.

Gender/Form: ... Masculine | Feminine | Neuter
Singular, no definite article: ... бик | жена | момче
Singular, with definite article: ... бикът | жената | момчето
Plural, no definite article: ... бикове | жени | момчета
Plural, with definite article: ... биковете | жените | момчетата
Countable plural: ... бика | [...] | [...]

Lexicon

After the Bulgarians achieved independence in 1878, a modern literary language based on the vernacular came into its own. Modern Bulgarian, which is generally said to date from the 16th century, borrowed many words from Greek and Turkish during the period of Turkish domination; more recently it has borrowed words from Russian, French and German.

Common Bulgarian Expressions

Здравей (zdravei) — hello
Здрасти (zdrasti) — hello (informal)
Добро утро (dobro utro) — good morning
Добър ден (dober den) — good day
Добър вечер (dober vecher) — good evening
Лека нощ (leka nosht) — good night
Довиждане (dovijdane) — good bye
Как си (kak si) — how are you?
Добре съм (dobre sum) — I'm fine
Всичко най-хубаво (vsichko nai-hubavo) — all the best
Поздрави (pozdravi) — regards
Благодаря (blagodaria) — thank you

External links