The Language Index
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What is the Language Index?
Have you ever wondered why foreign languages are so different from your own? Or what sounds their speakers produce? Or how they say "the big book"? Then the Language Index is for you.
The mission of the Language Index is to capture the richness of the world's languages and to make it accessible to anyone interested in science and beyond.
General Information
Bulgarian is the official language of Bulgaria (ca. 9 million speakers). Its development may be divided into several historical periods.
The prehistoric period (essentially proto-Slavic) occurred between the Slavonic invasion of the eastern Balkans and the mission of St. Cyril and St. Methodius to Great Moravia in the 860s. Old Bulgarian (9th to 11th century, also referred to as Old Church Slavonic) was the language used to translate the Bible and other liturgical literature from Greek. Middle Bulgarian (12th to 15th century) 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 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.
Typological Details
Family Membership
- Indo-European
- Balto-Slavonic
- Slavonic
- Balto-Slavonic
Parameters
| Syntactic: | SVO, Prepositions, Adjective - Noun, Noun - Genitive, Genitive - Noun |
| Morphological: | Strongly Suffixing |
Speaker
| Name: | Dilyana T. |
| Age: | 28 |
| Community: | Sofia |
| Occupation: | Student |
| National Ancestry: | Bulgarian |
| Year Interviewed: | 2009 |
Play a welcome message spoken by Dilyana T.:
Morphology and Syntax
The examples below illustrate the fusional character of Bulgarian and its tendency towards an an SVO word order.
The Numbers
Numbering rules
- Digits from zero to nine are specific words, namely нула (nula) [0], едно (edno) [1], две (dve) [2], три (tri) [3], четири (chetiri) [4], пет (pet) [5], шест (shest) [6], седем (sedem) [7], осем (osem) [8], and девет (devet) [9]. The digits one and two have both a feminine and a masculine form: едно/един (edno/edin) [1], две/два (dve/dva) [2] (feminine/masculine).
- The tens are formed by adding the ten word (десет (deset)) at the end of the digits, with the exception of ten where the unit is implicit: десет (deset) [10], двадесет (dvadeset) [20], тридесет (trideset) [30], четиридесет (chetirideset) [40], петдесет (petdeset) [50], шестдесет (shestdeset) [60], седемдесет (sedemdeset) [70], осемдесет (osemdeset) [80], and деветдесет (devetdeset) [90].
- The numbers are constructed from the matching units in the masculine form, followed by the word for ten with no space from eleven to nineteen (eg. двадесет (dvadeset) [12] and not два десет (dva deset)), and with the и (i) (and) word and the ten from twenty-one to ninety-nine (eg. двадесет и пет (dvadeset i pet) [25]).
- The conjunction и (i) (and) is added between the second and the third member of each group of three digits.
- The hundreds, formed from the matching units, are: сто (sto) [100], двеста (dvesta) [200], триста (trista) [300], четиристотин (chetiristotin) [400], петстотин (petstotin) [500], шестстотин (sheststotin) [600], седемстотин (sedemstotin) [700], осемстотин (osemstotin) [800], and деветстотин (devetstotin) [900].
- Being gendered, one and two share the same gender as the following scale unit if any. For instance, the word for thousand (хиляда (hilyada)) is feminine, hence we say две хиляди (dve hilyadi) [2,000]. The same occurs with the millions (един милион (edin milion) [1,000,000] and два милиона (dva miliona) [2,000,000]) and the billions (един милиард (edin miliard) [1,000,000,000] and два милиарда (dva miliarda) [2,000,000,000]), both of them being masculine.
- The Bulgarian language follows the short scale system for naming big numbers: every new word greater than a million is 1,000 times bigger than the previous term. Thus, един милиард (edin miliard) is equivalent to 109 (one billion in the US).
Videos
Writing System
- Phonographic
- Alphabetic
- Cyrillic
- Alphabetic
Bulgarian adopted the Russian cyrillc alphabet alphabet at the end of the 18th century. During the 19th century a number of versions of this alphabet containing between 28 and 44 letters were used. In the 1870s a version of the alphabet with 32 letters became widely used. This version remained in use until the orthographic reform of 1945 when the letters yat (Ѣ ѣ), and yus (Ѫ ѫ) were removed from the alphabet.
Contributors
Developmental Aspects of this VLC Language Index Entry:
- Native Language Assistance:
- Dilyana Toneva (VLC Research Assistant)
- Auditory Judgements:
- Jürgen Handke (VLC Project Manager)
- Phonetic Transcription:
- Jürgen Handke (VLC Project Manager)
- Speaker: Dilyana Toneva, Sofia, Bulgaria
- recorded in May 2009 (VLC Studio)
- References:
- Of Languages and Numbers (http://www.languagesandnumbers.com)