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| Bulgarian (Български, Bulgarski) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Bulgaria and surrounding areas |
| Region: | The Balkans |
| Total speakers: | 9 million |
| Ranking: | 88 |
| Genetic classification: | Indo-European |
| 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 GreekThe word Greek has a number of meanings relating to Greece, including: Architecture of Ancient Greece Art in Ancient Greece Greek alphabet Greek colonies Cuisine of Greece Ethnic Greek Greco-Turkish relations Greece Hellenes History of Greece History of M ones, are of the opinion that Macedonian is only a regional form of Bulgarian (see Macedonian language).
Bulgarian is the official languageAs with any complex, emergent concept, language is somewhat resistant to definition; however, most would agree that language is a system of communication or reasoning using representation along with metaphor and some manner of logical grammar. Many langua of the Republic of Bulgaria. It is also spoken in Canada, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Moldova, Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United States, with an estimated total of 9 million native speakers.
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.
The old Bulgarian language is the oldest Slav language attested in written text. In the old written records this language is initially referred to as ѩӡыкъ словѣньскъ (языкъ словяньскъ), and consequently ѩӡыкъ блъгарьскъ (языкъ блъгарьскъ).
The language is referred to in various ways by its different researchers. Jernej Kopitar and Franc Miklošic call it "Old Slovenian language", as in the oldest written records they sought features of the Slav dialect of Panonia. A. H. Vostokov calls it "Slav-Bulgarian language". J. Dobrovsky in "Institutiones linguae slavicae dialecti veteris" (Vindobonae, 1822) (Study of the old dialect of the Slav language) finds this language an old Serbian dialect. But as early as the mid-19th century, A. Schleicher, M. Hatala and L. Geitler notice that the linguistic features of the first Slav literary works are the same as those of the Bulgarian language. They introduce the term Old Bulgarian language (German Altbulgarisch), fully adopted in Bulgaria. In contemporary linguistics other frequently used terms are Old Slav and Old Church Slavonic, which refer to the language of these same texts.
Naturally, some scholars hold the opinion that the scientific study of the language should only have as its subject the texts of the so-called "canon", i.e., the language of the works associated with St. Constantine/ Cyril and St. Methodius and their work, rather than the language of the Bulgarian literary and cultural circles. But this is a one-sided understanding of the nature and extent of the first Slav language attested in writing. There are no documents surviving to modern times written by the brothers themselves, so we derive this "canon" from records written at least 50 or 60 years later. During this period, certain changes occurred in both the written and the spoken language. Therefore the language of Cyril and Methodius may be reconstructed roughly from the copies of their works, but the authenticity of the reconstruction is not supported by any documentary evidence, and that applies also to the earlier proto-Slav language. That is reason enough not to designate the language of the first Slav written records "the language of Cyril and Methodius". As for the terms "Old Slav" and "Old Church Slavonic", they do not account for the actual nature and ethnic basis of the language. The large amount of research devoted to it has undeniably proven the Bulgarian ethnic base of the oldest manuscripts that have survived to this day. Proof can be found in phonetics (in the reflexes of the proto-Slav *tj, *gtǐ, *ktǐ, *dj, and in the open articulation of the ѣть vowel), the lexicon (in certain loans from the colloquial Greek language of the time, with which only the Bulgarian Slavs were in direct contact...words such as сѫбота [Saturday] from σαμβατο, and not σαββατον), and in the syntax:
1. Use of the dative possessive case in personal pronouns and nouns: рѫка ти; отъпоуштенье грѣхомъ; 2. Descriptive future tense using the verb хотѣти; 3. Use of the comparative form мьнии (smaller) to mean younger.
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