| Bulgarian | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Български език Bălgarski ezik |
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| Spoken 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
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| Writing system | Cyrillic | |||
| Official status | ||||
| Official language in | Bulgaria European Union Mount Athos |
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| Recognised minority language in | Serbia Romania (Banatian variant) Ukraine |
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| Regulated by | Institute for the Bulgarian language at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Институт за български език към Българската академия на науките (БАН)) | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-1 | bg | |||
| ISO 639-2 | bul | |||
| ISO 639-3 | bul | |||
| Linguasphere | 53-AAA-hb < 53-AAA-h | |||
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Bulgarian (български език, pronounced: [ˈbɤ̞ɫɡɐrski ɛˈzik]) is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.
Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite article (see Balkan linguistic union), the lack of a verb infinitive, and the retention and further development of 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[1] to 12 million.[2][3][4][5][6][7]
Contents |
The development of the Bulgarian language may be divided into several periods.
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 proto-Bulgar and its non-Slavic neighbors in the Balkan linguistic union (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),[8] 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.[9] Eventually the Eastern dialects prevailed[10] and in 1899 the Ministry of Education officially codified[9] a standard Bulgarian language based on the Drinov-Ivanchev orthography.[10].
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:
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).[12]
More examples of the yat umlaut in the literary language are:
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:
Sometimes, with the changes, words began to be spelled as other words with different meanings, e.g.:
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").
Most sources in and out of Bulgaria before the Second World War referred to the southern Slavonic dialect continuum covering the area of today's Republic of Macedonia as a group of Bulgarian dialects.[13][14][15][16][17][18] The local variants of the name of the language are balgàrtski, bolgàrtski, bulgàrtski,[19] bògartski, bogàrtski, bùgarski or bugàrski. However, the Bulgarian codifiers did not want to make any allowances for a pluricentric Bulgarian language, which might have included the Macedonian dialects.[20] After WWII, the question about the Bulgarian character of the language in the territory of the Republic of Macedonia was put aside in the name of Bulgarian-Yugoslavian friendship under the pressure of the Soviet Union. After 1958 when the pressure from Moscow decreased, Sofia turned back to the view that the Macedonian language did not exist as a separate language. Some modern linguists consider Macedonian dialects still as Bulgarian, but this view is politically controversial.[21][22][23]
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.
The following table gives the letters of the Bulgarian alphabet, along with the IPA values for the sound of each letter:
| Bulgarian alphabet | ISO 9 | Official transliteration | IPA* | Name of Letter | English equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| А а | A a | A a | /a/ or /ɐ/ | a | a as in "adorable" |
| Б б | B b | B b | /b/ | бъ | b as in "bug" |
| В в | V v | V v | /v/ | въ | v as in "vet" |
| Г г | G g | G g | /ɡ/ | гъ | g as in "god" |
| Д д | D d | D d | /d/ | дъ | d as in "dog" |
| Е е | E e | E e | /ɛ/ | е | e as in "best" |
| Ж ж | Ž ž | Zh zh | /ʒ/ | жъ | s as in "treasure" |
| З з | Z z | Z z | /z/ | зъ | z as in "zoo" |
| И и | I i | I i | /i/ | и | i as in "igloo" |
| Й й | J j | Y y | /j/ | и кратко | y as in "yes" or combined with <о> as йо, for a pronunciation like yo in "yoyo" |
| К к | K k | K k | /k/ | къ |
c as in "cat" |
| Л л | L l | L l | /l/ or /ɫ/ | лъ |
l as in "call" |
| М м | M m | M m | /m/ | мъ | m as in "man" |
| Н н | N n | N n | /n/ | нъ | n as in "normal" |
| О о | O o | O o | /ɔ/ or /o/ | о | o as in "order" |
| П п | P p | P p | /p/ | пъ | p as in "pet" |
| Р р | R r | R r | /r/ | ръ | r as in "restaurant" |
| С с | S s | S s | /s/ | съ | s as in "sound" |
| Т т | T t | T t | /t/ | тъ | t as in "top" |
| У у | U u | U u | /u/ or /o/ | y | оо as in "tool" |
| Ф ф | F f | F f | /f/ | фъ | f as in "food" |
| Х х | H h | H h | /x/ | хъ | ch as in Scottish "loch" |
| Ц ц | C c | Ts ts | /t͡s/ | цъ | ts as in "fits" |
| Ч ч | Č č | Ch ch | /t͡ʃ/ | чъ | ch as in "chip" |
| Ш ш | Š š | Sh sh | /ʃ/ | шъ | sh as in "shot" |
| Щ щ | Št št1 | Sht sht | /ʃt/ | щъ | sht as in "shtick" |
| Ъ ъ | Ă ă1 | A a | /ɤ/ or /ɐ/ | ер голям | u as in "turn" |
| Ь ь | J j1 | Y y | /j/ | ер малък | combined with <о> as ьо, for a pronunciation like yo in "yoyo"
less often with e as ьe, pronounced like ye in "yet" |
| Ю ю | Ju ju1 | Yu yu | /ju/ | ю | u as in "menu" |
| Я я | Ja ja1 | Ya ya | /ja/ | я | ya as in "yarn" |
* See Wikipedia:IPA for Bulgarian and Macedonian for details.
1 The romanizations of these characters differ from the current version, ISO 9:1995, as it was never officially adopted as a Bulgarian standard.
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 before /ɔ/. 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 the letters are simple representations of their phonetic values, with all consonants being followed by /ɤ/ – thus the alphabet goes: /a/ – /bɤ/ – /vɤ/, etc. Й is known as "и-kratko" (short /i/), Ъ as "er-golyam" (large Er), and Ь as "er-maluk" (small Er). When saying the alphabet fast, people often omit to say Й and Ь, and say Ъ simply as /ɤ/.
For the transliteration of Bulgarian into the Latin script (romanization), see Romanization of Bulgarian.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | и /i/ | у /u/, /o/ | |
| Mid | е /ɛ/ | ъ /ɤ/, /ɐ/[note 1] | о /ɔ/, /o/ |
| Low | а /a/, /ɐ/ |
Bulgarian's eight vowels may be grouped in three pairs according to their backness: front, central and back. All vowels are relatively lax, as in most other Slavic languages, and unlike the tense vowels, for example, in the Germanic languages. 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].[24] The /ɤ/ vowel itself does not exist as a phoneme in other Slavic languages, though a similar reduced vowel transcribed as [ə] does occur.
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 /trɔlɛj/ ("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 /jutija/ "(flat) iron").
Bulgarian has a total of 35 consonant phonemes (see table below). According to the criterion of sonority, the Bulgarian consonants may be divided into 12 pairs (voiced<>voiceless). The only consonant without a counterpart is the voiceless velar fricative /x/. The contrast 'voiced vs. voiceless' is neutralized in word-final position, where all obstruents are pronounced as voiceless (as in most Slavic languages); this neutralization is, however, not reflected in the spelling.
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/ aren't palatalized.[25][26]
Among some Eastern Bulgarian speakers, consonants are sometimes palatalized before the vowels /i/ and /ɛ/. This is not the case in Standard Bulgarian. 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 in a way identical to the velarized lateral,[25] 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. In some Western Bulgarian dialects, this allophonic variation does not exist. Some sources claim the existence of palatalized phonemes in Bulgarian.
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].[27] 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.
| Bilabial | Labio- Dental |
Dental | Alveolar | Post- Alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ||||||||||||
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | k | ɡ | ||||||||
| Affricate | t͡s | d͡z | t͡ʃ | d͡ʒ | ||||||||||
| Fricative | f | v | s | z | ʃ | ʒ | x | |||||||
| Approximant | j | |||||||||||||
| Trill | r | |||||||||||||
| Lateral | ɫ | l | ||||||||||||
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, в'ълна /ˈvɤɫnɐ/ ('wool') and вълн'а /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.[note 2]
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.
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.
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 /ʒɛ'na/ 'woman', дъщеря /dɐʃtɛr'ja/ 'daughter', улица /'ulitsɐ/ 'street') are normally feminine; and nouns ending in –е, –о are almost always neuter (дете /dɛtɛ/ 'child', езеро /'ɛzɛro/ 'lake'), as are those rare words (usually loanwords) that end in –и, –у, and –ю (цунами /tso'nami/ 'tsunami', табу /tɐ'bu/ 'taboo', меню /mɛ'nju/ '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 /'mɤdrost/ 'wisdom', низост /'nizost/ 'vileness', прелест /'prɛlɛst/ 'loveliness', болест /'bɔlɛst/ 'sickness', любов /ljo'bɔf/ '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 /'vɛtʃɛr/ '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 /'fakti/ 'facts', болести /'bɔlɛsti/ 'sicknesses'), while one in –а/–я belongs more often to a neuter noun (езера /ɛzɛ'ra/ 'lakes'). Also, the plural ending –ове /-ɔvɛ/ occurs only in masculine nouns.
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: двама/трима ученика ('two/three students') versus тези ученици ('these students'); cf. feminine две/три/тези жени ('two/three/these women') and neuter две/три/тези деца ('two/three/these children'). 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 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').
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") 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[28] 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[28] 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:
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.[29] 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.
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 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.
The Bulgarian verb can take up to 3,000[30] distinct forms, as it varies in person, number, voice, aspect, mood, tense and even gender.
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).
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".
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.
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:
In the indicative there are also the following compound tenses:
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.
Bulgarian has the following participles:
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.
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:
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").
Most of the word-stock 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 and Turkish, and to a lesser extent French. 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 substituted 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.
Bulgarian employs clitic doubling, mostly for emphatic purposes. For example, the following constructions are common in colloquial Bulgarian:
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):
Sometimes, the doubling signals syntactic relations, thus:
This is contrasted with:
In this case, clitic doubling can be a colloquial alternative of the more formal or bookish passive voice, which would be constructed as follows:
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):
Except the above examples, clitic doubling is considered inappropriate in a formal context. Bulgarian grammars usually do not treat this phenomenon extensively.
Questions in Bulgarian which do not use a question word (such as who? what? etc.) are formed with the particle ли after the verb; a subject is not necessary, as the verbal conjugation suggests who is performing the action:
While the particle ли generally goes after the verb, it can go after a noun or adjective if a contrast is needed:
A verb is not always necessary, e.g. when presenting a choice:
Rhetorical questions can be formed by adding ли to a question word, thus forming a "double interrogative" –
The same construction +не ('no') is an emphasised positive –
Съм
The verb съм /sɤm/[note 6] – 'to be' is also used as an auxiliary for forming the perfect, the passive and the conditional:
Two alternate forms of съм exist:
Ще
The impersonal verb щe (lit. 'it wants')[note 8] is used to for forming the (positive) future tense:
The negative future is formed with the invariable construction няма да /ɲama da/ (see няма below) [note 9] :
The past tense of this verb – щях /ʃtʲax/ is conjugated to form the past conditional ('would have' – again, with да, since it is irrealis):
Имам and нямам
The verbs имам /imam/ ('to have') and нямам /ɲamam/ ('to not have'):
Diminutive
Usually done by adding -че, -це or -(ч)ка. The gender of the word is thus changed, usually to the neuter:
Sometimes proper nouns and words referring to friends or family members can have a diminutive ending added to show affection. These constructions are all referred to as "na galeno" (lit. "caressing" form):
Such words can be used both from parent to child, and vice-versa, as can:
Personal names are shortened and made neuter:
There is an interesting trend (which is comparatively modern, although it might well have deeper, dormant roots) where the feminine ending "-ka" and the definite article suffix "-ta" ("the") are added to male names – note that this is affectionate and not at all insulting (in fact, the endings are not even really considered as being "feminine"):
The female equivalent would be to add the neuter ending "-to" to the diminutive form:
Augmentative
This is to present words to sound larger – usually by adding "-shte":
Some words only exist in an augmentative form – e.g.
In Bulgarian, there are several conjunctions all translating into English as "but", which are all used in distinct situations. They are но (no), ама (amà), а (a), ами (amì), and ала (alà) (and обаче (obache) – "however", identical in use to но).
While there is some overlapping between their uses, in many cases they are specific. For example, ami is used for a choice – ne tova, ami onova – "not this one, but that one" (comp. Spanish sino), while ama is often used to provide extra information or an opinion – kazah go, ama sgreshih – "I said it, but I was wrong". Meanwhile, a provides contrast between two situations, and in some sentences can even be translated as "although", "while" or even "and" – az rabotya, a toy blee – "I'm working, and he's daydreaming".
Very often, different words can be used to alter the emphasis of a sentence – e.g. while "pusha, no ne tryabva" and "pusha, a ne tryabva" both mean "I smoke, but I shouldn't", the first sounds more like a statement of fact ("...but I mustn't"), while the second feels more like a judgement ("...but I oughtn't"). Similarly, az ne iskam, ama toy iska and az ne iskam, a toy iska both mean "I don't want to, but he does", however the first emphasises the fact that he wants to, while the second emphaseses the wanting rather than the person.
Ala is interesting in that, while it feels archaic, it is often used in poetry and frequently in children's stories, since it has quite a moral/ominous feel to it.
Some common expressions use these words, and some can be used alone as interjections:
Vocative particles
Bulgarian has several abstract particles which are used to strengthen a statement. These have no precise translation in English.[note 11] The particles are strictly informal and can even be considered rude by some people and in some situations. They are mostly used at the end of questions or instructions.
Modal Particles
These are "tagged" on to the beginning or end of a sentence to express the mood of the speaker in relation to the situation. They are mostly interrogative or slightly imperative in nature. There is no change in the grammatical mood when these are used (although they may be expressed through different grammatical moods in other languages).
Intentional particles
These express intent or desire, perhaps even pleading. They can be seen as a sort of cohortative side to the language. (Since they can be used by themselves, they could even be considered as verbs in their own right.) They are also highly informal.
These particles can be combined with the vocative particles for greater effect, e.g. ya da vidya, be (let me see), or even exclusively in combinations with them, with no other elements, e.g. haide, de! (come on!); nedey, de! (I told you not to!).
Bulgarian has several pronouns of quality which have no direct parallels in English – kakuv (what sort of); takuv (this sort of); onakuv (that sort of – colloq.); nyakakuv (some sort of); nikakuv (no sort of); vsyakakuv (every sort of); and the relative pronoun kakuvto (the sort of...that...). The adjective ednakuv ("the same") derives from the same radical.[note 12]
Example phrases include:
An interesting phenomenon is that these can be strung along one after another in quite long constructions, e.g.,
| word | literal meaning | sentence | meaning of sentence as a whole |
|---|---|---|---|
| – | – | edna kola | a car |
| takava | this sort of | edna takava kola... | this car (that i'm trying to describe) |
| nikakva | no sort of | edna takava nikakva kola | this worthless car (that i'm trying to describe) |
| nyakakva | some sort of | edna takava nyakakva nikakva kola | this sort of worthless car (that I'm trying to describe) |
An extreme (colloquial) sentence, with almost no physical meaning in it whatsoever – yet which does have perfect meaning to the Bulgarian ear – would be :
—Note: the subject of the sentence is simply the pronoun "taya" (lit. "this one here"; colloq. "she").
Similar "meaningless" expressions are extremely common in spoken Bulgarian, especially when the speaker is finding it difficult to describe something.
| Bulgarian (Български) | Macedonian (Македонски) | Serbian (Српски/Srpski) | Russian (Русский) | Polish (Polski) | English |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| дърво | дрво | дрво/drvo | дерево | drzewo | tree |
| картоф/компир/барабой | компир | кромпир/krompir | картофель | ziemniak, kartofel | potato |
| котка | мачка | мачка/mačka | кошка | kot | cat |
| куче, пес | куче, пес | пас/pas | собака, пёс | pies | dog |
| къща, дом | куќа, дом | кућа, дом / kuća, dom | дом | dom | house, home |
| маса | маса | сто/sto | стол | stół | table (furniture) |
| мляко | млеко | млеко/mleko | молоко | mleko | milk |
| стол | стол | столица/stolica | стул | krzesło | chair |
| Bulgarian (Български) | Macedonian (Македонски) | Serbian (Српски/Srpski) | Russian (Русский) | Polish (Polski) | English |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| имам | имам | имам/imam | имею | mam | I have |
| искам, желая | сакам | желим, хоћу/želim, hoću | хочу, желаю | chcę | I want |
| правя,върша | правам, вршам | вршим/vršim | делаю | robię | I do |
| ходя, вървя | одам, врвам | ходам/hodam | хожу | chodzę | I walk |
| говоря, думам, приказвам, казвам | зборувам, говорам | говорим/govorim | говорю | mówię | I talk |
| намирам | наоѓам | налазим/nalazim | нахожу | znajduję | I find |
| ям | јадам, ручам | једем/jedem | ем | jem | I eat |
| пия | пијам | пијем/pijem | пью | piję | I drink |
(In the above two examples, the formal expression uses a plural verb but a singular pronoun, which allows speakers to distinguish the two grammatical forms.)
Also, some very frequent expressions have been borrowed from other languages. Most of them are somewhat informal.
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