Bulgarian language

                                                                (in English)

Bulgarian, български език, bălgarski ezik

Spoken natively in Bulgaria, Turkey, Serbia, Greece, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Albania, Kosovo, Republic of Macedonia and among emigrant communities worldwide.

Region - The Balkans.

Native speakers - 9.1 million  (1986).

Language family - Indo-European, Balto-Slavic, Slavic, South Slavic, Eastern South Slavic, Bulgarian.

Writing system – Cyrillic.

Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Southern branch of the Slavic language family.

Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language (collectively forming the East South Slavic languages), has several characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages: changes include the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite article (see Balkan language area) and the lack of a verb infinitive; but it retains and has further developed the Proto-Slavic verb system. Various evidential verb forms exist to express unwitnessed, retold, and doubtful action.

Estimates of the number of people around the world who speak Bulgarian fluently range from about 9 million to 12 million.

History

The development of the Bulgarian language may be divided into several periods.

Prehistoric period – occurred between the Slavonic migration to eastern Balkans and the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius to Great Moravia in the 860s.

Old Bulgarian (9th to 11th century, also referred to as Old Church Slavonic) – a literary norm of the early southern dialect of the Common Slavic language from which Bulgarian evolved. It was used by Saints Cyril and Methodius and their disciples to translate the Bible and other liturgical literature from Greek into Slavic.

Middle Bulgarian (12th to 15th century) – a literary norm that evolved from the earlier Old Bulgarian, after major innovations were accepted. It was a language of rich literary activity and the official administration language of the Second Bulgarian Empire.

Modern Bulgarian – dates from the 16th century onwards, undergoing general grammar and syntax changes in the 18th and 19th centuries. Present-day written Bulgarian language was standardized on the basis of the 19th-century Bulgarian vernacular. The historical development of the Bulgarian language can be described as a transition from a highly synthetic language (Old Bulgarian) to a typical analytic language (Modern Bulgarian) with Middle Bulgarian as a midpoint in this transition.

The Codex Zographensis is one of the oldest manuscripts in the Old Bulgarian language dated from the late 10th or early 11th century

Bulgarian was the first "Slavic" language attested in writing. As Slavic linguistic unity lasted into late antiquity, in the oldest manuscripts this language was initially referred to as языкъ словяньскъ, "the Slavic language". In the Middle Bulgarian period this name was gradually replaced by the name языкъ блъгарьскъ, the "Bulgarian language". In some cases, the name языкъ блъгарьскъ was used not only with regard to the contemporary Middle Bulgarian language of the copyist but also to the period of Old Bulgarian. A most notable example of anachronism is the Service of St. Cyril from Skopje (Скопски миней), a 13th-century Middle Bulgarian manuscript from northern Macedonia according to which St. Cyril preached with "Bulgarian" books among the Moravian Slavs. The first mention of the language as the "Bulgarian language" instead of the "Slavonic language" comes in the work of the Greek clergy of the Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrid in the 11th century, for example in the Greek hagiography of Saint Clement of Ohrid by Theophylact of Ohrid (late 11th century).

During the Middle Bulgarian period, the language underwent dramatic changes, losing the Slavonic case system, but preserving the rich verb system (while the development was exactly the opposite in other Slavic languages) and developing a definite article. Consequently, modern Bulgarian is about as far from Russian as Swedish is from German. It was influenced by its non-Slavic neighbors in the Balkan language area (mostly grammatically) and later also by Turkish, which was the official language of the Ottoman Empire, in the form of the Ottoman Turkish language, mostly lexically. As a national revival occurred towards the end of the period of Ottoman rule (mostly during the 19th century), a modern Bulgarian literary language gradually emerged which drew heavily on Church Slavonic/Old Bulgarian (and to some extent on literary Russian, which had preserved many lexical items from Church Slavonic) and later reduced the number of Turkish and other Balkanic loans. Today one difference between Bulgarian dialects in the country and literary spoken Bulgarian is the significant presence of Old Bulgarian words and even word forms in the latter. Russian loans are distinguished from Old Bulgarian ones on the basis of the presence of specifically Russian phonetic changes, as in оборот (turnover, rev), непонятен (incomprehensible), ядро (nucleus) and others. As usual in such cases, many other loans from French, English and the classical languages have subsequently entered the language as well.

Modern Bulgarian was based essentially on the Eastern dialects of the language, but its pronunciation is in many respects a compromise between East and West Bulgarian (see especially the phonetic sections below). Following the efforts of some figures of the National awakening of Bulgaria (the most notable among them being Neofit Rilski and Ivan Bogorov), there had been many attempts to codify a standard Bulgarian language; however, there was much argument surrounding the choice of norms. Between 1835–1878 more than 25 proposals were put forward and "linguistic chaos" ensued. Eventually the Eastern dialects prevailed and in 1899 the Ministry of Education officially codified a standard Bulgarian language based on the Drinov-Ivanchev orthography.

Dialects

The language is mainly split into two broad dialect areas, based on the different reflexes of the Common Slavic yat vowel (Ѣ). This split, which occurred at some point during the Middle Ages, led to the development of Bulgaria's:

Western dialects (informally called твърд говор/tvurd govor – "hard speech")

the former yat is pronounced "e" in all positions. e.g. млеко (mlekò) – milk, хлеб (hleb) – bread.

Eastern dialects (informally called мек говор/mek govor – "soft speech")

the former yat alternates between "ya" and "e": it is pronounced "ya" if it is under stress and the next syllable does not contain a front vowel (e or i) – e.g. мляко (mlyàko), хляб (hlyab), and "e" otherwise – e.g. млекар (mlekàr) – milkman, хлебар (hlebàr) – baker. This rule obtains in most Eastern dialects, although some have "ya", or a special "open e" sound, in all positions.

The literary language norm, which is generally based on the Eastern dialects, also has the Eastern alternating reflex of yat. However, it has not incorporated the general Eastern umlaut of all synchronic or even historic "ya" sounds into "e" before front vowels – e.g. поляна (polyana) vs полени (poleni) "meadow – meadows" or even жаба (zhaba) vs жеби (zhebi) "frog – frogs", even though it co-occurs with the yat alternation in almost all Eastern dialects that have it (except a few dialects along the yat border, e.g. in the Pleven region).

More examples of the yat umlaut in the literary language are:

mlyàko (milk) [n.] → mlekàr (milkman); mlèchen (milky), etc.

syàdam (sit) [vb.] → sedàlka (seat); sedàlishte (seat, e.g. of government), etc.

svyat (holy) [adj.] → svetètz (saint); svetìlishte (sanctuary), etc.

Until 1945, Bulgarian orthography did not reveal this alternation and used the original Old Slavic Cyrillic letter yat (Ѣ), which was commonly called двойно е (dvoyno e) at the time, to express the historical yat vowel or at least root vowels displaying the ya – e alternation. The letter was used in each occurrence of such a root, regardless of the actual pronunciation of the vowel: thus, both mlyako and mlekar were spelled with (Ѣ). Among other things, this was seen as a way to "reconcile" the Western and the Eastern dialects and maintain language unity at a time when much of Bulgaria's Western dialect area was controlled by Serbia and Greece, but there were still hopes and occasional attempts to recover it. With the 1945 orthographic reform, this letter was abolished and the present spelling was introduced, reflecting the alternation in pronunciation.

This had implications for some grammatical constructions:

The third person plural pronoun and its derivatives. Before 1945 the pronoun "they" was spelled тѣ (tě), and its derivatives took this as the root. After the orthographic change, the pronoun and its derivatives were given an equal share of soft and hard spellings:

"they" – те (te) → "them" – тях (tyah);

"their(s)" – tehen (masc.); tyahna (fem.); tyahno (neut.); tehni (plur.)

adjectives received the same treatment as тѢ:

"whole" – tsyal → "the whole...": tseliyat (masc.); tsyalata (fem.); tsyaloto (neut.); tselite (plur.)

Sometimes, with the changes, words began to be spelled as other words with different meanings, e.g.:

свѣт (svět) – "holy" became свят (svyat), spelt and pronounced the same as свят – "world".

тѣ (tě) – "they" became те (te),

In spite of the literary norm regarding the yat vowel, many people living in Western Bulgaria, including the capital Sofia, will fail to observe its rules. While the norm requires the realizations vidyal vs videli (he has seen; they have seen), some natives of Western Bulgaria will preserve their local dialect pronunciation with "e" for all instances of "yat" (e.g. videl, videli). Others, attempting to adhere to the norm, will actually use the "ya" sound even in cases where the standard language has "e" (e.g. vidyal, vidyali). The latter hypercorrection is called свръхякане (svrah-yakane ≈"over-softening").

Relationship to Macedonian

Until the period immediately following the Second World War, all Bulgarian and the majority of foreign linguists referred to the South Slavic dialect continuum spanning the area of modern Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia and parts of Northern Greece as a group of Bulgarian dialects. In contrast, Serbian sources tended to label them "south Serbian" dialects. Some local naming conventions included bolgarski, bugarski and so forth. The codifiers of the standard Bulgarian language, however, did not wish to make any allowances for a pluricentric "Bulgaro-Macedonian" compromise. After 1944 Communist Bulgaria and Communist Yugoslavia began a policy of making Macedonia into the connecting link for the establishment of new Balkan Federative Republic and stimulating here a development of distinct Slav Macedonian consciousness. With the proclamation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia as part of the Yugoslav federation, the new authorities also started measures that would overcome the pro-Bulgarian feeling among parts of its population and in 1945 a separate Macedonian language was codified. After 1958, when the pressure from Moscow decreased, Sofia reverted to the view that the Macedonian language did not exist as a separate language. Nowadays, some linguists still consider Macedonian dialects as Bulgarian. The current academic consensus (outside of Bulgaria) is that Macedonian is an autonomous language within the South Slavic dialect continuum.

Alphabet

In 886 AD, the Bulgarian Empire introduced the Glagolitic alphabet which was devised by the Saints Cyril and Methodius in the 850s. The Glagolitic alphabet was gradually superseded in later centuries by the Cyrillic script, developed around the Preslav Literary School, Bulgaria in the beginning of the 10th century.

Several Cyrillic alphabets with 28 to 44 letters were used in the beginning and the middle of the 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. The alphabet of Marin Drinov was used until the orthographic reform of 1945 when the letters yat (Ѣ, ѣ, called "double e"), and yus (Ѫ, ѫ, called "big yus" or "ъ кръстато") were removed from the alphabet, reducing the number of letters to 30.

With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on January 1, 2007, Cyrillic became the third official alphabet of the EU.

Most letters in the Bulgarian alphabet stand for just one specific sound. Three letters stand for the single expression of combinations of sounds, namely щ (sht), ю (yu), and я (ya). Two sounds do not correspond to separate letters, but are expressed as the combination of two letters, namely дж (/dʒ/) and дз (/dz/). The letter ь marks the softening (palatalization) of any consonant (besides ж, ч, and ш) before the letter о, while ю and я after consonants mark the palatalization of the preceding consonant in addition to representing the vowels /u/ and /a/. A letter that represents a voiced consonant can represent its voiceless counterpart and vice versa when adjacent to a voiceless or voiced consonant, respectively, or when a voiced consonant is syllable final, for example - вторник /ftornik/ - Tuesday, нож /nɔʃ/ - knife, сграда /zgradɐ/ - building, сватба /svadbɐ/ - wedding.

The names of most letters are simple representations of their phonetic values, with consonants being followed by /ɤ/ – thus the alphabet goes: /a/ – /bɤ/ – /vɤ/, etc. However, the name of the letter Й is "и-kratko" (short /i/), the name of Ъ is "er-golyam" (large Er), and the name of Ь is "er-malak" (small Er). People often refer to Ъ simply as /ɤ/.

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 does have exceptions. Two of the most cited examples are –

Verbs ending in –a are usually pronounced closer to an [ɤ] or [ə] sound, rather than a pure [a]. Thus лъ̀жа ("I lie") is ['ɫɤʒə], whereas лъжа̀ ("a lie") is [ɫɤ'ʒa].

Voiced consonants are pronounced unvoiced when at the end of a word or when preceding another consonant – e.g. vtori ("second") is pronounced "ftori", and grad ("city") is pronounced "grat".

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 (trottoir – sidewalk), тирбушон (tire-bouchon – corkscrew), партер (from par terre – ground floor)

German – e.g. бинт (Bind – bandage), багер (Bagger – digger), бормашина (Bohrmaschine – drill)

Notable is the transliteration of many English names through German, e.g. –

Washington → Вашингтон ("Vashington"), Scotland → Шотландия ("Shotlandiya")

In the years since the end of communism and the rise of technology, the tendency for borrowing has shifted mainly to English, where much computer-related terminology has entered and been inflected accordingly – again, in a wholly phonetic way. Examples include –

кликвам на файла (click-vam na file-a) – I click on the file

даунлоудваш го на десктопа (download-vash go na desktop-a) – you download it onto the desktop

чатим в нета (chat-im v net-a) – we chat on the net

The computer-related neologisms are often used interchangeably with traditional Bulgarian words, e.g. "download" and "upload" can be simply свалям and качвам ("svalyam" & "kachvam" – "to bring down" & "to put up").

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 –

Янките против още US войски в Афганистан

The Yanks oppose more US troops in Afghanistan

To avoid the awkward appearance of well-known English words into Cyrillic

Wikipedia: Ние не сме видели края на SOPA, PIPA и ACTA

Wikipedia: We have not seen the end of SOPA, PIPA and ACTA

Phonology

Vowels

Bulgarian's eight vowels may be grouped in three pairs according to their backness: front, central and back. Unstressed vowels tend to be shorter and weaker compared to their stressed counterparts, and the corresponding pairs of open and closed vowels approach each other with a tendency to merge, above all as low (open and open-mid) vowels are raised and shift towards the high (close and close-mid) ones. However, the coalescence is not always complete. The vowels are often distinguished in emphatic or deliberately distinct pronunciation, and reduction is strongest in colloquial speech. Besides that, some linguists distinguish two degrees of reduction, as they have found that a clearer distinction tends to be maintained in the syllable immediately preceding the stressed one. The complete merger of the pair /a/ – /ɤ/ is regarded as most common, while the status of /ɔ/ vs /u/ is less clear. A coalescence of /ɛ/ and /i/ is not allowed in formal speech and is regarded as a provincial (East Bulgarian) dialect feature; instead, unstressed /ɛ/ is both raised and centralized, approaching [ɤ]. The /ɤ/ vowel itself does not exist as a phoneme in other Slavic languages, though a similar reduced vowel transcribed as [ə] does occur.

Semivowels

The Bulgarian language possesses one semivowel: /j/, being equivalent to y in English like in yes. It is expressed graphically with the letter й, as in най /naj/ ("most"), тролей /troˈlɛj/ ("trolleybus"), except when it precedes /a/ or /u/, in which case the combination of two phonemes is expressed with a single letter, respectively я or ю: (e.g. ютия /jutˈija/ "(flat) iron").

Consonants

Bulgarian has a total of 36 consonant phonemes (see table below). Three additional phonemes can also be found ([xʲ], [d͡z], and [d͡zʲ]), but only in foreign proper names such as Хюстън /xʲustɤn/ ("Houston"), Дзержински /d͡zɛrʒinski/ ("Dzerzhinsky"), and Ядзя /jad͡zʲa/, the Polish name "Jadzia". They are, however, normally not considered part of the phonetic inventory of the Bulgarian language. The Bulgarian obstruent consonants are divided into 12 pairs voiced<>voiceless on the criteria of sonority. The only obstruent without a counterpart is the voiceless velar fricative /x/. The contrast 'voiced vs. voiceless' is neutralized in word-final position, where all obstruents are voiceless (as in most Slavic languages); this neutralization is, however, not reflected in the spelling.

Hard and palatalized consonants

The Bulgarian consonants б /b/, в /v/, г /ɡ/, д /d/, з /z/, к /k/, л /l//ɫ/, м /m/, н /n/, п /p/, р /r/, с /s/, т /t/, ф /f/, ц /t͡s/ can denote both a normal, "hard" pronunciation, as well as a "soft", palatalized one. The hard and the palatalized consonants are considered separate phonemes in Bulgarian. The consonants ж /ʒ/, ш /ʃ/, ч /t͡ʃ/ and дж /d͡ʒ/ do not have palatalized variants, which is probably connected with the fact that they have arisen historically through palatalization in Common Slavonic. These consonants may still be somewhat palatalized in some speakers' pronunciation, but as a rule this is not the case.

The softness of the palatalized consonants is always indicated in writing in Bulgarian. A consonant is palatalized if:

it is followed by я / ʲa/, ю / ʲu/, or ьо / ʲɔ/. (Note: ь occurs only before о in Bulgarian)

(When я and ю aren't preceded by a consonant, they signal that the vowels /a/ and /u/ are preceded by the semivowel /j/. For /jɔ/, Bulgarian uses "йо", as in Ню Йорк, "New York".)

Even though palatalized consonants are phonemes in Bulgarian, they may in some cases be positionally conditioned, hence redundant. In Eastern Bulgarian dialects, consonants are always allophonically palatalized before the vowels /i/ and /ɛ/. This is not the case in Standard Bulgarian, but that form of the language does have similar allophonic alternations. Thus, к /k/, г /ɡ/ and х /x/ tend to be palatalized before /i/ and /ɛ/, and the realization of the phoneme л /l/ varies along the same principles: one of its allophones, involving a raising of the back of the tongue and a lowering of its middle part (thus similar or, according to some scholars, identical to a velarized lateral), occurs in all positions, except before the vowels /i/ and /ɛ/, where a more "clear" version with a slight raising of the middle part of the tongue occurs. The latter pre-front realization is traditionally (and incorrectly) called "soft l", even though it is not palatalized (and thus isn’t identical to the /lʲ/ signalled by the letters ьо, я and ю). In some Western Bulgarian dialects, this allophonic variation does not exist.

Furthermore, in the speech of many young people the more common and arguably velarized allophone of /l/ is often realized as a labiovelar approximant [w]. This phenomenon, colloquially known as мързеливо "л" (lazy "l") in Bulgaria, was first registered in the 1970s and isn't connected to original dialects. Similar developments, termed L-vocalization, have occurred in many languages, including Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Brazilian Portuguese and certain dialects of English such as Cockney and AAVE.

Palatalization

During the palatalization of most hard consonants (the bilabial, labiodental and alveolar ones), the middle part of the tongue is lifted towards the palatum, resulting in the formation of a second articulatory centre whereby the specific palatal "clang" of the soft consonants is achieved. The articulation of alveolars /l/, /n/ and /r/, however, usually does not follow that rule; the palatal clang is achieved by moving the place of articulation further back towards the palatum so that /ʎ/, /ɲ/ and /rʲ/ are actually alveopalatal (postalvelolar) consonants. Soft /ɡ/ and /k/ (/ɡʲ/ and /kʲ/, respectively) are articulated not on the velum but on the palatum and are considered palatal consonants.

Word stress

Bulgarian word stress is dynamic. Stressed syllables are louder and longer than unstressed ones. Stress, like Russian and other East Slavic languages, is also lexical rather than fixed as in French, Latin or the West Slavic ones, i.e. it may fall on any syllable of a polysyllabic word and its position may vary in inflection and derivation, for example, мъж /mɤʃ/ ('man'), мъжът /mɤˈʒɤt/ ('the man'). Bulgarian stress is also distinctive: for example, въ̀лна /ˈvɤɫnɐ/ ('wool') and вълна̀ /vɤɫˈna/ ('wave') are only differentiated by stress. Stress usually isn't signified in written text, though it may be indicated in cases with minimal pairs (e.g. ѝ 'to her', vs. и, 'and'), or in order to signify the dialectal deviation from the standard pronunciation. In such cases, stress is signified by placing a grave accent on the vowel of the stressed syllable.

Grammar

The parts of speech in Bulgarian are divided in 10 different types, which are categorized in two broad classes: mutable and immutable. The difference is that mutable parts of speech vary grammatically, whereas the immutable ones do not change, regardless of their use. The five classes of mutables are: nouns, adjectives, numerals, pronouns and verbs. Syntactically, the first four of these form the group of the noun or the nominal group. The immutables are: adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, particles and interjections. Verbs and adverbs form the group of the verb or the verbal group.

Nominal morphology

Nouns and adjectives have the categories grammatical gender, number, case (only vocative) and definiteness in Bulgarian. Adjectives and adjectival pronouns agree with nouns in number and gender. Pronouns have gender and number and retain (as in nearly all Indo-European languages) a more significant part of the case system.

Nominal inflection

Gender

There are three grammatical genders in Bulgarian: masculine, feminine and neuter. The gender of the noun can largely be inferred from its ending: nouns ending in a consonant ("zero ending") are generally masculine (for example, град /ɡrat/ 'city', син /sin/ 'son', мъж /mɤʃ/ 'man'; those ending in –а/–я (-a/-ya) (жена /ʒɛˈna/ 'woman', дъщеря /dɐʃtɛrˈja/ 'daughter', улица /ˈulitsɐ/ 'street') are normally feminine; and nouns ending in –е, –о are almost always neuter (дете /dɛtɛ/ 'child', езеро /ˈɛzɛro/ 'lake'), as are those rare words (usually loanwords) that end in –и, –у, and –ю (цунами /tsoˈnami/ 'tsunami', табу /tɐˈbu/ 'taboo', меню /mɛˈnju/ 'menu'). Perhaps the most significant exception from the above are the relatively numerous nouns that end in a consonant and yet are feminine: these comprise, firstly, a large group of nouns with zero ending expressing quality, degree or an abstraction, including all nouns ending on –ост/–ест -{ost/est} (мъдрост /ˈmɤdrost/ 'wisdom', низост /ˈnizost/ 'vileness', прелест /ˈprɛlɛst/ 'loveliness', болест /ˈbɔlɛst/ 'sickness', любов /ljoˈbɔf/ 'love'), and secondly, a much smaller group of irregular nouns with zero ending which define tangible objects or concepts (кръв /krɤf/ 'blood', кост /kɔst/ 'bone', вечер /ˈvɛtʃɛr/ 'evening', нoщ /nɔʃt/ 'night'). There are also some commonly used words that end in a vowel and yet are masculine: баща 'father', дядо 'grandfather', чичо / вуйчо 'uncle', and others.

The plural forms of the nouns do not express their gender as clearly as the singular ones, but may also provide some clues to it: the ending –и (-i) is more likely to be used with a masculine or feminine noun (факти /ˈfakti/ 'facts', болести /ˈbɔlɛsti/ 'sicknesses'), while one in –а/–я belongs more often to a neuter noun (езера /ɛzɛˈra/ 'lakes'). Also, the plural ending –ове /-ɔvɛ/ occurs only in masculine nouns.

Number

Two numbers are distinguished in Bulgarian – singular and plural. A variety of plural suffixes is used, and the choice between them is partly determined by their ending in singular and partly influenced by gender; in addition, irregular declension and alternative plural forms are common. Words ending in –а/–я (which are usually feminine) generally have the plural ending –и, upon dropping of the singular ending. Of nouns ending in a consonant, the feminine ones also use –и, whereas the masculine ones usually have –и for polysyllables and –ове for monosyllables (however, exceptions are especially common in this group). Nouns ending in –о/–е (most of which are neuter) mostly use the suffixes –а, –я (both of which require the dropping of the singular endings) and –та.

With cardinal numbers and related words such as няколко ('several'), masculine nouns use a special count form in –а/–я, which stems from the Proto-Slavonic dual: два/три стола ('two/three chairs') versus тези столове ('these chairs'); cf. feminine две/три/тези книги ('two/three/these books') and neuter две/три/тези легла ('two/three/these beds'). However, a recently developed language norm requires that count forms should only be used with masculine nouns that do not denote persons. Thus, двама/трима ученици ('two/three students') is perceived as more correct than двама/трима ученика, while the distinction is retained in cases such as два/три молива ('two/three pencils') versus тези моливи ('these pencils').

Case

Cases exist only in the personal pronouns (as they do in many other modern Indo-European languages), with nominative, accusative, dative and vocative forms. Vestiges are present in the masculine personal interrogative pronoun кой ("who" as in formal English, "whom")) and in a number of phraseological units and sayings. The major exception are vocative forms, which are still in use for masculine (with the endings -e, -o and -ю) and feminine nouns (-[ь/й]o and -e) in the singular. However, there is a tendency to avoid them in many personal names, as the use of feminine name forms in -[ь/й]o and of the potential vocative forms of foreign names has come to be considered rude or rustic. Thus, Иване means 'hey, Ivan', while the corresponding feminine forms Елено ('hey, Elena'), Маргарито ('hey, Margarita') are today seen as rude or, at best, unceremonious, and declining foreign names as in *Джоне ('hey, John') or *Саймъне ('hey, Simon') could only be considered humorous. Interestingly, the prohibition on constructing vocative forms for foreign names does not apply to names from Classical Antiquity, with the source languages having the vocative case as well: cf Цезаре' ('Oh Caesar'), Перикле ('Oh Pericles'), Зевсе ('Oh Zeus'), etc.

Case remnants
Some key words do retain their cases, which today are no longer considered nominative, accusative and dative, but rather as being subject, direct object and indirect object parts of speech:

All personal pronouns – e.g. masculine singular:

той, /tɔj/ ('he') – него, /ˈnɛɡo/ ('him') – нему, /ˈnɛmo/ ('to him' [archaic]).

The masculine interrogative pronoun кой, /kɔj/ ('who') and all of its derivatives – these, however, are not declined for all masculine nouns, but only when they refer to men:

кой /kɔj/ ('who') – кого /koˈɡɔ/ ('whom') – кому /koˈmu/ ('to whom' [very rarely used]).

the words някой /njakoj/ ('someone') and никой /nikoj/ ('no one') follow the same pattern as кой;

всеки /vsɛki/ ('everyone') and друг /druk/ ('someone else') are similar (-иго; -иму), but extremely rare.

the relative clauses който /kɔjto/ ('who/that'), когото /koɡɔto/ ('whom/that') and комуто /komuto/ ('to whom/that') – again, only declined when referring to men – i.e.

човекът с когото говоря /tʃovɛkɤt, s koɡɔto ɡovorja/ ('the man that I'm talking to')

столът, на който седя /stɔɫɐt, na kɔjto sɛdjɐ/ ('the chair that I'm sitting on')

Definiteness (article)

In modern Bulgarian, definiteness is expressed by a definite article which is postfixed to the noun, much like in the Scandinavian languages or Romanian (indefinite: човек, 'person'; definite: човекът, "the person") or to the first nominal constituent of definite noun phrases (indefinite: добър човек, 'a good person'; definite: добрият човек, "the good person"). There are four singular definite articles. Again, the choice between them is largely determined by the noun's ending in the singular. Nouns that end in a consonant and are masculine use –ът/–ят, when they are grammatical subjects, and –а/–я elsewhere. Nouns that end in a consonant and are feminine, as well as nouns that end in –а/–я (most of which are feminine, too) use –та. Nouns that end in –е/–о use –то.

The plural definite article is –те for all nouns except for those, whose plural form ends in –а/–я; these get –тa instead. When postfixed to adjectives the definite articles are –ят/–я for masculine gender (again, with the longer form being reserved for grammatical subjects), –та for feminine gender, –то for neuter gender, and –те for plural.

Modern developments

In Bulgarian adjective-noun phrases, only the adjective takes a definite article ending –

chervenata masa – the red table

cherveniyat stol – the red chair

Many of the English loanwords which have been adopted into the language since the end of communism, however, do not readily lend themselves to taking adjectival endings. This has caused an unprecedented shift in the language whereby, in certain cases, the adjective remains uninflected while the noun following it takes the grammatical ending. Examples include –

internet potrebitelite – the internet users

web stranitsite – the web pages

This type of combination is sometimes favoured even when the possibility of a traditional phrase structure exists, e.g. –

btv novinite – "the btv news"

as opposed to novinite po btv ("the news on btv")

In this case, the brand name "btv" cannot be inflected and, being a brand, remains in Roman script within the sentence.

Adjective and numeral inflection

Both groups agree in gender and number with the noun they are appended to. They may also take the definite article as explained above.

Pronouns

Pronouns may vary in gender, number, definiteness and are the only parts of speech that have retained case inflexions. Three cases are exhibited by some groups of pronouns – nominative, accusative and dative. The distinguishable types of pronouns include the following: personal, relative, reflexive, interrogative, negative, indefinitive, summative and possessive.

Verbal morphology and grammar

The Bulgarian verb can take up to 3,000 distinct forms, as it varies in person, number, voice, aspect, mood, tense and even gender.

Finite verbal forms

Finite verbal forms are simple or compound and agree with subjects in person (first, second and third) and number (singular, plural) in Bulgarian. In addition to that, past compound forms using participles vary in gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and voice (active and passive) as well as aspect (perfective/aorist and imperfective).

Aspect

Bulgarian verbs express lexical aspect: perfective verbs signify the completion of the action of the verb and form past perfective (aorist) forms; imperfective ones are neutral with regard to it and form past imperfective forms. Most Bulgarian verbs can be grouped in perfective-imperfective pairs (imperfective<>perfective: идвам<>дойда "come", пристигам<>пристигна “arrive”). Perfective verbs can be usually formed from imperfective ones by suffixation or prefixation, but the resultant verb often deviates in meaning from the original. In the pair examples above, aspect is stem-specific and therefore there is no difference in meaning.

In Bulgarian, there is also grammatical aspect. Three grammatical aspects are distinguishable: neutral, perfect and pluperfect. The neutral aspect comprises the three simple tenses and the future tense. The pluperfect is manifest in tenses that use double or triple auxiliary "be" participles like the past pluperfect subjunctive. Perfect constructions use a single auxiliary "be".

Mood

The traditional interpretation is that in addition to the four moods (наклонения /naklonenija/) shared by most other European languages – indicative (изявително, /izʲavitelno/) imperative (повелително /povelitelno/), subjunctive (подчинително /podtʃinitelno/) and conditional (условно, /uslovno/) – in Bulgarian there is one more to describe a generalistic category of unwitnessed events – the inferential (преизказно /preˈizkazno/) mood.

Tense

There are three grammatically distinctive positions in time – present, past and future – which combine with aspect and mood to produce a number of formations. Normally, in grammar books these formations are viewed as separate tenses – i. e. "past imperfect" would mean that the verb is in past tense, in the imperfective aspect, and in the indicative mood (since no other mood is shown). There are more than 40 different tenses across Bulgarian's two aspects and five moods.

In the indicative mood, there are three simple tenses:

Present tense is a temporally unmarked simple form made up of the verbal stem and a complex suffix composed of the thematic vowel /e/, /i/ or /a/ and the person/number ending (пристигам, pristigam, "I arrive/I am arriving"); only imperfective verbs can stand in the present indicative tense independently;

Past imperfect is a simple verb form used to express an action

which is contemporaneous or subordinate to other past actions; it is made up of an imperfective or a perfective verbal stem and the person/number ending (пристигаx /pristiɡax/, пристигнеx /pristiɡnex/, 'I was arriving');

Past aorist is a simple form used to express a temporarily independent, specific past action; it is made up of a perfective or an imperfective verbal stem and the person/number ending (пристигнах, /pristiɡnax/, 'I arrived', четох, /tʃetox/, 'I read');

In the indicative there are also the following compound tenses:

Future tense is a compound form made of the particle ще /ʃte/ and present tense (ще уча /ʃte utʃa/, 'I will study'); negation is expressed by the construction няма да /ɲama da/ and present tense (няма да уча /ɲama da utʃa/, or the old-fashioned form не ще уча, /ne ʃte utʃa/ 'I will not study');

Past future tense is a compound form used to express an action which was to be completed in the past but was future as regards another past action; it is made up of the past imperfect of the verb ща /ʃta/ ('will'), the particle да /da/ ('to') and the present tense of the verb (e.g. щях да уча, /ʃtʲax da utʃa/, 'I was going to study');

Present perfect is a compound form used to express an action which was completed in the past but is relevant for or related to the present; it is made up of the present tense of the verb съм /sɤm/ ('be') and the past participle (e.g. съм учил /sɤm utʃil/, 'I have studied');

Past perfect is a compound form used to express an action which was completed in the past and is relative to another past action; it is made up of the past tense of the verb съм and the past participle (e.g. бях учил /bʲax utʃil/, 'I had studied');

Future perfect is a compound form used to express an action which is to take place in the future before another future action; it is made up of the future tense of the verb съм and the past participle (e.g. ще съм учил /ʃte sɤm utʃil/, 'I will have studied');

Past future perfect is a compound form used to express a past action which is future with respect to a past action which itself is prior to another past action; it is made up of the past imperfect of ща, the particle да the present tense of the verb съм and the past participle of the verb (e.g. щях да съм учил, /ʃtʲax da sɤm utʃil/, 'I would have studied').

The four perfect constructions above can vary in aspect depending on the aspect of

the main-verb participle; they are in fact pairs of imperfective and perfective aspects. Verbs in forms using past participles also vary in voice and gender.

There is only one simple tense in the imperative mood – the present – and there are simple forms only for the second person using the suffixes -и/-й (-i, -y/i) for singular and -ете/-йте (-ete, -yte) for plural; e.g., уча /utʃa/ ('to study'): учи /utʃi/, sg., учете /utʃete/, pl.; играя /iɡraja/ 'to play': играй /iɡraj/, играйте /iɡrajte/. There are compound imperative forms for all persons and numbers in the present compound imperative (да играе, da iɡrae/), the present perfect compound imperative (да е играл, /da e iɡral/) and the rarely used present pluperfect compound imperative (да е бил играл, /da e bil iɡral/).

The conditional mood consists of five compound tenses, most of which are not grammatically distinguishable. The present, future and past conditional use a special past form of the stem би- (bi – "be") and the past participle (бих учил, /bix utʃil/, 'I would study'). The past future conditional and the past future perfect conditional coincide in form with the respective indicative tenses.

The subjunctive mood is rarely documented as a separate verb form in Bulgarian, (being, morphologically, a sub-instance of the quasi-infinitive construction with the particle да and a normal finite verb form), but nevertheless it is used regularly. The most common form, often mistaken for the present tense, is the present subjunctive ([пo-добре] да отидa (po-dobre) da otida/, 'I had better go'). The difference between the present indicative and the present subjunctive tense is that the subjunctive can be formed by both perfective and imperfective verbs. It has completely replaced the infinitive and the supine from complex expressions (see below). It is also employed to express opinion about possible future events. The past perfect subjunctive ([пo-добре] да бях отишъл (po-dobre) da bʲax otiʃɤl/, 'I'd had better be gone') refers to possible events in the past, which did not take place, and the present pluperfect subjunctive (да съм бил отишъл /da sɤm bil otiʃɤl/), which may be used about both past and future events arousing feelings of incontinence, suspicion, etc. and has no perfect to English translation.

The inferential mood has five pure tenses. Two of them are simple – past aorist inferential and past imperfect inferential – and are formed by the past participles of perfective and imperfective verbs, respectively. There are also three compound tenses – past future inferential, past future perfect inferential and past perfect inferential. All these tenses' forms are gender-specific in the singular. There are also conditional and compound-imperative crossovers. The existence of inferential forms has been attributed to Turkic influences by most Bulgarian linguists. Morphologically, they are derived from the perfect.

Non-finite verbal forms

Bulgarian has the following participles:

Present active participle (сегашно деятелно причастие) is formed from imperfective stems with the addition of the suffixes –ащ/–ещ/–ящ (четящ, 'reading') and is used only attributively;

Present passive participle (сегашно страдателно причастие) is formed by the addition of the suffixes -им/аем/уем (четим, 'that can be read, readable');

Past active aorist participle (минало свършено деятелно причастие) is formed by the addition of the suffix –л– to perfective stems (чел, '[have] read');

Past active imperfect participle (минало несвършено деятелно причастие) is formed by the addition of the suffixes –ел/–ал/–ял to imperfective stems (четял, '[have been] reading');

Past passive aorist participle' (минало свършено страдателно причастие) is formed from aorist/perfective stems with the addition of the suffixes -н/–т (прочетен, 'read'; убит, 'killed'); it is used predicatively and attributively;

Past passive imperfect participle' (минало несвършено страдателно причастие) is formed from imperfective stems with the addition of the suffix –н (прочитан, '[been] read'); убивaн, '[been] being killed'); it is used predicatively and attributively;

Adverbial participle (деепричастие) is usually formed from imperfective present stems with the suffix –(е)йки (четейки, 'while reading'), relates an action contemporaneous with and subordinate to the main verb and is originally a Western Bulgarian form.

The participles are inflected by gender, number, and definiteness, and are coordinated with the subject when forming compound tenses (see tenses above). When used in attributive role the inflection attributes are coordinated with the noun that is being attributed.

Adverbs

The most productive way to form adverbs is to derive them from the neuter singular form of the corresponding adjective (бързо (fast), силно (hard), странно (strange), although adjectives ending in -ки use the masculine singular form, also in -ки, instead: юнашки (heroically), мъжки (bravely, like a man), майсторски (skilfully). The same pattern is used to form adverbs from the (adjective-like) ordinal numerals, e.g. първо (firstly), второ (secondly), трето (thirdly), and in some cases from (adjective-like) cardinal numerals, e.g. двойно (twice as/double), тройно (three times as), петорно (five times as).

The remaining adverbs are formed in ways that are no longer productive in the language. A small number are original (not derived from other words), for example: тук (here), там (there), вътре (inside), вън (outside), много (very/much) etc. The rest are mostly fossilized case forms, such as:

archaic locative forms of some adjectives, e.g. добре (well), зле (badly), твърде (too, rather), and nouns горе (up), утре (tomorrow), лете (in the summer);

archaic instrumental forms of some adjectives, e.g. тихом (quietly), скришом (furtively), слепешком (blindly), and nouns, e.g. денем (during the day), нощем (during the night), редом (one next to the other), духом (spiritually), цифром (in figures), словом (with words); or verbs: тичешком (while running), лежешком (while lying), стоешком (while standing).

archaic accusative forms of some nouns: днес (today), нощес (tonight), сутрин (in the morning), зиме/зимъс (in winter);

archaic genitive forms of some nouns: довечера (tonight), снощи (last night), вчера (yesterday);

homonymous and etymologically identical to the feminine singular form of the corresponding adjective used with the definite article: здравата (hard), слепешката (gropingly); the same pattern has been applied to some verbs, e.g. тичешката (while running), лежешката (while lying), стоешката (while standing).

derived from cardinal numerals by means of a non-productive suffix: веднъж (once), дваж (twice), триж (thrice);

Adverbs can sometimes be reduplicated to emphasize the qualitative or quantitative properties of actions, moods or relations as performed by the subject of the sentence: "бавно-бавно" ("rather slowly"), "едва-едва" ("with great difficulty"), "съвсем-съвсем" ("quite", "thoroughly").

Lexis

Most of the vocabulary of modern Bulgarian consists of derivations of some 2,000 words inherited from proto-Slavic through the mediation of Old and Middle Bulgarian.

Thus, the native lexical terms in Bulgarian account for 70% to 75% of the lexicon.

The remaining 25% to 30% are loanwords from a number of languages, as well as derivations of such words. The languages which have contributed most to Bulgarian are Russian, Turkish and French. Also Latin and Greek are the source of many words, used mostly in international terminology. Many of the numerous loanwords from Turkish (and, via Turkish, from Arabic and Persian) which were adopted into Bulgarian during the long period of Ottoman rule, have been replaced with native terms. In addition, both specialized (usually coming from the field of science) and commonplace English words (notably abstract, commodity/service-related or technical terms) have also penetrated Bulgarian since the second half of the 20th century, especially since 1989. A noteworthy portion of this English-derived terminology has attained some unique features in the process of its introduction to native speakers and this has resulted in peculiar derivations that slightly set the newly formed loanwords apart from the original words (mainly in pronunciation), although many loanwords are completely identical to the source words. A growing number of international neologisms are also being widely adopted.

Syntax

Bulgarian employs clitic doubling, mostly for emphatic purposes. For example, the following constructions are common in colloquial Bulgarian:

Аз (го) дадох подаръка на Мария.

(lit. "I gave it the present to Maria.")

Аз (ѝ го) дадох подаръка на Мария.

(lit. "I gave her it the present to Maria.")

The phenomenon is practically obligatory in the spoken language in the case of inversion signalling information structure (in writing, clitic doubling may be skipped in such instances, with a somewhat bookish effect):

Подаръка (ѝ) го дадох на Мария.

(lit. "The present [to her] it I-gave to Maria.")

На Мария ѝ (го) дадох подаръка.

(lit. "To Maria to her [it] I-gave the present.")

Sometimes, the doubling signals syntactic relations, thus:

Петър и Иван ги изядоха вълците.

(lit. "Petar and Ivan them ate the wolves.")

Transl.: "Petar and Ivan were eaten by the wolves".

This is contrasted with:

Петър и Иван изядоха вълците.

(lit. "Petar and Ivan ate the wolves")

Transl.: "Petar and Ivan ate the wolves".

In this case, clitic doubling can be a colloquial alternative of the more formal or bookish passive voice, which would be constructed as follows:

Петър и Иван бяха изядени от вълците.

(lit. "Petar and Ivan were eaten by the wolves.")

Clitic doubling is also fully obligatory, both in the spoken and in the written norm, in clauses including several special expressions that use the short accusative and dative pronouns, like играе ми се (I feel like playing), студено ми е (I am cold), боли ме ръката (my arm hurts):

На мен ми се спи, а на Иван му се играе.

(lit. "To me to me it-feels-like-sleeping, and to Ivan to him it-feels-like-playing")

Transl.: "I feel like sleeping, and Ivan feels like playing."

На нас ни е студено, а на вас ви е топло.

(lit. "To us to us it-is cold, and to you-plur. to you-plur. it-is warm"

Transl.: "We are cold, and you are warm."

Иван го боли гърлото, а мене ме боли главата.

(lit. Ivan him aches the throat, and me me aches the head)

Transl.: Ivan has sore throat, and I have a headache.

Except the above examples, clitic doubling is considered inappropriate in a formal context. Bulgarian grammars usually do not treat this phenomenon extensively.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_language