Bulgarian alphabet
The Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet is used to write the Bulgarian language.
The Cyrillic alphabet was originally developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th – 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School.
It has been used in Bulgaria continuously since then, superseding the previously used Glagolitic alphabet, which was also invented and used there before the Cyrillic script overtook its use as a written script for the Bulgarian language. The Cyrillic alphabet was used in the then much bigger territory of Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Northern Greece, Romania and Moldova, officially from 893. It was also transferred from Bulgaria and adopted by the East Slavic languages in Kievan Rus' and evolved into the Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian alphabets and the alphabets of many other Slavic languages. Later, some Slavs modified it and added/excluded letters from it to better suit the needs of their own language varieties.
History
In the 9th century, the Bulgarian Empire introduced the Glagolitic alphabet, devised by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius. The Glagolitic alphabet was gradually superseded in later centuries by the Cyrillic script, developed around the Preslav Literary School, Bulgaria at the end of the 9th century.Several Cyrillic alphabets with 28 to 44 letters were used in the early and middle 19th century during the efforts on the codification of Modern Bulgarian until an alphabet with 32 letters, proposed by Marin Drinov, gained prominence in the 1870s: it was used until the orthographic reform of 1945, when the letters yat and yus were removed from its alphabet, reducing the number of letters to 30. Yat was also known as "double e", and yus was also known as "big nasal sign", crossed yer, and "wide yer".
Although Bulgarian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, some letter shapes in Bulgaria were made to look more 'Latin' in the 20th century, however they are rarely used today and most typefaces do not support them.
With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, the Cyrillic script became the third official script of the European Union, following the Latin and Greek scripts.
List
Detailed table
The following table gives the letters of the Bulgarian alphabet, along with the IPA values for the sound of each letter. The listed transliteration in the Official transliteration column is official in Bulgaria and is listed in the Official orthographic dictionary. For other transliteration standards see Romanization of Bulgarian.| Bulgarian alphabet | ISO 9 | Official transliteration | IPA | Name of letter | English equivalent |
| italic=unset | A a | A a | , or | а | a as in "part" |
| italic=unset | B b | B b | or | бъ | b as in "bug" |
| italic=unset | V v | V v | or | въ | v as in "vet" |
| italic=unset | G g | G g | or | гъ | g as in "good" |
| italic=unset | D d | D d | or | дъ | d as in "dog" |
| italic=unset | E e | E e | е | e as in "best" | |
| italic=unset | Ž ž | Zh zh | or | жъ | s as in "treasure" |
| italic=unset | Z z | Z z | or | зъ | z as in "zoo" |
| italic=unset | I i | I i | и | i as in "machine" | |
| italic=unset | J j | Y y | и кратко | y as in "yes" or "yoyo" | |
| italic=unset | K k | K k | or | къ | k as in "kick" |
| italic=unset | L l | L l | before е and и, before ю, я and ь, elsewhere | лъ | l as in "call" or "lend" |
| italic=unset | M m | M m | мъ | m as in "man" | |
| italic=unset | N n | N n | нъ | n as in "normal" | |
| italic=unset | O o | O o | , | о | o as in "order" |
| italic=unset | P p | P p | or | пъ | p as in "pet" |
| italic=unset | R r | R r | ръ | trilled r as in Spanish "perro" | |
| italic=unset | S s | S s | or | съ | s as in "sound" |
| italic=unset | T t | T t | or | тъ | t as in "stick" |
| italic=unset | U u | U u | , or | у | оо as in "boot" |
| italic=unset | F f | F f | or | фъ | f as in "food" |
| italic=unset | H h | H h | хъ | ch as in Scottish English loch | |
| italic=unset | C c | Ts ts | цъ | ts as in "fits" | |
| italic=unset | Č č | Ch ch | чъ | ch as in "chip" | |
| italic=unset | Š š | Sh sh | or | шъ | sh as in "shot" |
| italic=unset | Št št | Sht sht | щъ | sht as in "shtick" | |
| italic=unset | Ǎ ǎ | A a | , or | ер голям | u as in "turn" |
| italic=unset | Y y | or not pronounced | ер малък | soft sign: y as in "canyon" | |
| italic=unset | Ju ju | Yu yu | ,, or | ю | you as in "youth" |
| italic=unset | Ja ja | Ya ya | ,, or | я | ya as in "yarn" |
Most letters in the Bulgarian alphabet stand for just one specific sound. Five letters stand for sounds written in English with two or more letters. These letters are ч, ш, щ, ю, and я. Two additional sounds are written with two letters: these are дж and дз. The letter ь marks the softening of any consonant before the letter о, while ю and я after consonants mark the palatalization of the preceding consonant in addition to representing the vowels and.
The names of most letters are simple representations of their phonetic values, with consonants being followed by – thus the alphabet goes: – –, etc. However, the name of the letter Й is "i-kratko", the name of Ъ is "er-golyam", and the name of Ь is "er-malak". People often refer to Ъ simply as.
The Bulgarian alphabet features:
- The Bulgarian names for the consonants are,, etc. instead of,, etc.
- Е represents and is called "е".
- The sounds and are represented by дж and дз respectively.
- Short I represents.
- Щ represents and is called "щъ" .
- Ъ represents the vowel, and is called "ер голям" . In spelling however, Ъ is referred to as where its official label "ер голям" may cause some confusion. The vowel Ъ is sometimes approximated to the sound found in many languages for easier comprehension of its Bulgarian pronunciation for foreigners, but it is actually a back vowel, not a central vowel.
- Ь is used on rare occasions, such as in the words 'каньон', 'шофьор', etc. It is called "ер малък".
Writing
Bulgarian is usually described as having a phonemic orthography, meaning that words are spelt the way they are pronounced. This is largely true, but there are exceptions. Three of the most cited examples are:- The sounds and, which appear only in unstressed syllables, are written with two different letters each – "а" or "ъ", and "о" or "у" respectively.
- The vowel in stressed verb endings -а, -ат, -я and -ят and the stressed short definite articles -a and -я is pronounced. Thus чета is pronounced, and мъжа is pronounced.
- Voiced consonants are pronounced unvoiced when at the end of a word or when preceding an unvoiced consonant – e.g. втори is pronounced, and град is pronounced. Similarly, unvoiced consonants are pronounced voiced when preceding a voiced consonant – e.g. сграда is.
Modern developments
Since the time of Bulgaria's liberation in the late 19th century, the Bulgarian language has taken on a large number of words from Western European languages. All of these are transcribed phonetically into Cyrillic, e.g.:- French – e.g. тротоар, тирбушон, партер
- German – e.g. бинт, багер, бормашина
- Washington → Вашингтон, Scotland → Шотландия
- кликвам на файла -vam na file – I click on the file
- даунлоудваш го на десктопа – you download it onto the desktop
- чатим в нета – we chat on the net
Use of Roman script in Bulgarian
The insertion of English words directly into a Cyrillic Bulgarian sentence, while frowned upon, has been increasingly used in the media. This is done for several reasons, including –- To shorten what would otherwise be a longer word or phrase –
- To avoid the need to transcribe to Cyrillic or translate to Bulgarian well known abbreviations:
The 2012 Official Orthographic Dictionary of the Bulgarian Language by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences permits widely known proper names to remain in their original alphabet. Example sentences are given, all containing names of American IT companies: Yahoo, Microsoft, YouTube, PayPal, Facebook.