The Bulgarian language is a member of the Slavic language family. The Bulgarian language is also a member of the larger Indo-European family of languages.
The development of the Bulgarian language began in the 9th century and is divided into three periods: old, middle, and modern. The Old Bulgarian Period lasted from the 9th century through the 11th century, and it was during that time that the Bulgarians were the first among all Slavs to adopt Christianity and the Cyrillic alphabet. The invention of the Cyrillic alphabet is attributed traditionally to Sts. Cyril and Methodius. For most of the middle ages Old Bulgarian was the language of the ecclesiastical literature and of official and diplomatic documents of the Eastern Orthodox Slavs.
The Middle Bulgarian Period lasted from the 12th century through the 14th century.
The Modern Bulgarian Period started in the 15th century, but the modern literary language, which is quite different from Old Bulgarian, formed only during the 19th century.
Even though the Bulgarian language is closely related to all other Slavic languages, through the course of the centuries it has developed many specific traits and characteristics that clearly distinguish it among the other members of the Slavic family. The Bulgarian language is a member of the Slavic language family. Today the Slavic languages are spoken by more than 250 million people in eastern and central Europe, in most of the Balkan Peninsula, and in northern Asia. The modern Slavic languages are divided into three branches: East Slavic: Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian; South Slavic: eastern group-Bulgarian; western group-Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian; West Slavic: Czech, Slovak, Polish and High and Low Sorbian.
The Bulgarian language is also a member of the larger Indo-European family of languages, which includes the Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian), the Germanic languages (German, English, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Danish), and others, such as Greek, Albanian, Armenian, Sanskrit, Persian and so on.
Some modern Slavic languages (such as Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, and Polish) are written in the Latin alphabet, and their speakers are predominantly Roman Catholic. Other Slavic languages, among them the Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarussian languages, use variations of the Cyrillic alphabet. (The Serbo-Croatian language is called Serbian when written by Serbs in the Cyrillic alphabet and Croatian when written by Croats in the Latin alphabet. The Serbs are predominantly Eastern Orthodox and the Croats are mostly Roman Catholic.)
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 to the end of the word: Masculine nouns: -a/-ът or -я/-ят [spelling rule, both can be read strong (-т pronounced) or weak (without -т), NB: -а/-я here stands for -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/adj and all (!) nouns on -а: -та e.g. жената (the woman), котката (the cat), бащата (the father), децата (the children)
Neuter nouns/adj: -то e.g. детето (the child), котето (the kitten), слънцето (the sun) Plural nouns/adj: -те e.g. мъжете (the men), жените (the women), бащите (the fathers) In complex adjective(s)+noun phrases the first adjective gets 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 (without the personal ones) 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 exists, their functions are 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. Definite article is suffixed to each 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 on a consonant are masculine
words ending on ‘-а’ are feminine (exceptions: баща)
words ending on ‘-ст’ and some words ending on ‘-т’ are feminine
words ending on ‘-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.
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/Forms Masculine Feminine Neuter
Singular, no definite article човек жена момче
Singular, with definite article човекът жената момчето
Plural, no definite article човеци жени момчета
Plural, with definite article човеците жените момчетата
Countable plural човека NA NA
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 cent., borrowed many words from Greek and Turkish during the period of Turkish domination; more recently it has borrowed words from Russian, French, and German. |
