85-684: Kovachevitsa ( Bulgarian : Ковачевица ; also transliterated Kovačevica ) is a village in Garmen Municipality , in Blagoevgrad Province , Bulgaria . The village is situated in the Dabrash part of the Rhodope Mountains in the steep valley of the Kanina river, 9 kilometers north of Garmen , 71 kilometers southeast of Blagoevgrad and 119 kilometers southeast of Sofia . The village
170-554: A dialectal continuum stretching from today's southern Austria to southeast Bulgaria . On the level of dialectology , they are divided into Western South Slavic (Slovene and Serbo-Croatian dialects) and Eastern South Slavic (Bulgarian and Macedonian dialects); these represent separate migrations into the Balkans and were once separated by intervening Hungarian, Romanian, and Albanian populations; as these populations were assimilated, Eastern and Western South Slavic fused with Torlakian as
255-440: A bell-tower was built in 1900. The church has been designated as a national cultural monument. The first school was founded in 1820 and run by priests. In 1854, a secular school was founded. The school moved to a new two-story house in 1888. Nowadays the school is no longer operating because the lack of children; the building is preserved as a museum. The architecture of the houses is original and unique. Most of them were built in
340-532: 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 –та 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
425-515: A dialect continuum, and there is no well-defined boundary where one language ends and the other begins. Within the limits of the Republic of North Macedonia a strong separate Macedonian identity has emerged since the Second World War, even though there still are a small number of citizens who identify their language as Bulgarian. Beyond the borders of North Macedonia, the situation is more fluid, and
510-725: A geographical grouping, not forming a true genetic clade ; in other words, there was never a proto-South Slavic language or a period in which all South Slavic dialects exhibited an exclusive set of extensive phonological, morphological or lexical changes (isoglosses) peculiar to them. Furthermore, Matasović argues, there was never a period of cultural or political unity in which Proto-South-Slavic could have existed during which Common South Slavic innovations could have occurred. Several South-Slavic-only lexical and morphological patterns which have been proposed have been postulated to represent common Slavic archaisms , or are shared with some Slovakian or Ukrainian dialects. The South Slavic dialects form
595-502: A middle ground between the macrodialects. It allows palatalizaton only before central and back vowels and only partial reduction of / a / and / ɔ / . Reduction of / ɛ / , consonant palatalisation before front vowels and depalatalization of palatalized consonants before central and back vowels is strongly discouraged and labelled as provincial. Bulgarian has six vowel phonemes, but at least eight distinct phones can be distinguished when reduced allophones are taken into consideration. There
680-446: 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', нощ /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
765-484: A number of phraseological units and sayings. The major exception are vocative forms, which are still in use for masculine (with the endings -е, -о and -ю) and feminine nouns (-[ь/й]о and -е) in the singular. 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: човек ът , "
850-670: A set of phonological, morphological and lexical innovations (isoglosses) which separate it from the Western and Eastern Slavic groups. That view, however, has been challenged in recent decades (see below). Some innovations encompassing all South Slavic languages are shared with the Eastern Slavic group, but not the Western Slavic. These include: This is illustrated in the following table: Several isoglosses have been identified which are thought to represent exclusive common innovations in
935-524: 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')
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#17328846090181020-580: A television programme is usually in Cyrillic, but advertisements are usually in Latin. The division is partly based on religion – Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Macedonia (which use Cyrillic) are Orthodox countries, whereas Croatia and Slovenia (which use Latin) are Catholic . The Bosnian language , used by the Muslim Bosniaks , also uses Latin, but in the past used Bosnian Cyrillic . The Glagolitic alphabet
1105-490: A transitional dialect. On the other hand, the breakup of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires , followed by formation of nation-states in the 19th and 20th centuries, led to the development and codification of standard languages . Standard Slovene, Bulgarian, and Macedonian are based on distinct dialects. The Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian standard variants of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian are based on
1190-622: Is i or sometimes e (rarely as (i)je ), or mixed ( Ekavian–Ikavian ). Many dialects of Chakavian preserved significant number of Dalmatian words, but also have many loanwords from Venetian , Italian , Greek and other Mediterranean languages. Example: Ča je, je, tako je vavik bilo, ča će bit, će bit, a nekako će već bit! This dialect is spoken primarily in the federal state of Burgenland in Austria and nearby areas in Vienna, Slovakia , and Hungary by descendants of Croats who migrated there during
1275-621: Is " Ye lena Yankovich" ( Йелена Янкович ). 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, North 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 bolgárski , bugárski and so forth. The codifiers of
1360-621: Is also a significant Bulgarian diaspora abroad. One of the main historically established communities are the Bessarabian Bulgarians , whose settlement in the Bessarabia region of nowadays Moldova and Ukraine dates mostly to the early 19th century. There were 134,000 Bulgarian speakers in Ukraine at the 2001 census, 41,800 in Moldova as of the 2014 census (of which 15,300 were habitual users of
1445-800: Is an Eastern South Slavic language spoken in Southeast Europe , primarily in Bulgaria . It is the language of the Bulgarians . Along with the closely related Macedonian language (collectively forming the East South Slavic languages ), it is a member of the Balkan sprachbund and South Slavic dialect continuum of the Indo-European language family . The two languages have several characteristics that set them apart from all other Slavic languages , including
1530-488: Is based on a general consensus reached by all major Bulgarian linguists in the 1930s and 1940s. In turn, the 39-consonant model was launched in the beginning of the 1950s under the influence of the ideas of Russian linguist Nikolai Trubetzkoy . Despite frequent objections, the support of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences has ensured Trubetzkoy's model virtual monopoly in state-issued phonologies and grammars since
1615-433: Is common in all modern Slavic languages (e.g. Czech medv ě d /ˈmɛdvjɛt/ "bear", Polish p ię ć /pʲɛ̃tɕ/ "five", Serbo-Croatian je len /jělen/ "deer", Ukrainian нема є /nemájɛ/ "there is not ...", Macedonian пишува ње /piʃuvaɲʲɛ/ "writing", etc.), as well as some Western Bulgarian dialectal forms – e.g. ора̀н’е /oˈraɲʲɛ/ (standard Bulgarian: оране /oˈranɛ/ , "ploughing"), however it
1700-487: Is considered transitional between the Western and Eastern groups of South Slavic languages. Torlakian is thought to fit together with Bulgarian and Macedonian into the Balkan sprachbund , an area of linguistic convergence caused by long-term contact rather than genetic relation. Because of this some researchers tend to classify it as Southeast Slavic . Each of these primary and secondary dialectal units breaks down into subdialects and accentological isoglosses by region. In
1785-405: Is currently no consensus on the number of Bulgarian consonants, with one school of thought advocating for the existence of only 22 consonant phonemes and another one claiming that there are not fewer than 39 consonant phonemes. The main bone of contention is how to treat palatalized consonants : as separate phonemes or as allophones of their respective plain counterparts. The 22-consonant model
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#17328846090181870-800: Is mainly split into two broad dialect areas, based on the different reflexes of the Proto-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
1955-471: Is not represented in standard Bulgarian speech or writing. Even where /jɛ/ occurs in other Slavic words, in Standard Bulgarian it is usually transcribed and pronounced as pure /ɛ/ – e.g. Boris Yeltsin is "Eltsin" ( Борис Елцин ), Yekaterinburg is "Ekaterinburg" ( Екатеринбург ) and Sarajevo is "Saraevo" ( Сараево ), although – because of the stress and the beginning of the word – Jelena Janković
2040-478: Is one more to describe a general category of unwitnessed events – the inferential (преизказно /prɛˈiskɐzno/ ) mood. However, most contemporary Bulgarian linguists usually exclude the subjunctive mood and the inferential mood from the list of Bulgarian moods (thus placing the number of Bulgarian moods at a total of 3: indicative, imperative and conditional) and do not consider them to be moods but view them as verbial morphosyntactic constructs or separate gramemes of
2125-401: 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 and some other pronouns (as they do in many other modern Indo-European languages ), with nominative , accusative , dative and vocative forms. Vestiges are present in
2210-418: 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
2295-629: Is the Service of Saint 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 Archbishopric of Ohrid in the 11th century, for example in
2380-399: 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
2465-537: 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. The damaskin texts mark the transition from Middle Bulgarian to New Bulgarian, which was standardized in the 19th century. As a national revival occurred toward the end of the period of Ottoman rule (mostly during
2550-463: The Bessarabian Bulgarians in Ukraine ), share a number of characteristics that set them apart from other Slavic languages : Bulgarian and Macedonian share some of their unusual characteristics with other languages in the Balkans, notably Greek and Albanian (see Balkan sprachbund ). Torlakian dialects are spoken in southeastern Serbia , northern North Macedonia , western Bulgaria , southeastern Kosovo , and pockets of western Romania ; it
2635-679: 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 late 9th century. Several Cyrillic alphabets with 28 to 44 letters were used in the beginning and the middle of
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2720-558: The Greek hagiography of 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. It was influenced by its non-Slavic neighbors in
2805-779: The accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union , following the Latin and Greek scripts . Bulgarian possesses a phonology similar to that of the rest of the South Slavic languages, notably lacking Serbo-Croatian's phonemic vowel length and tones and alveo-palatal affricates. There is a general dichotomy between Eastern and Western dialects, with Eastern ones featuring consonant palatalization before front vowels ( / ɛ / and / i / ) and substantial vowel reduction of
2890-445: The person") or to the first nominal constituent of definite noun phrases (indefinite: добър човек , 'a good person'; definite: добри ят 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
2975-439: The same dialect ( Shtokavian ). Thus, in most cases national and ethnic borders do not coincide with dialectal boundaries. Note : Due to the differing political status of languages/dialects and different historical contexts, the classifications are arbitrary to some degree. The dialects that form the eastern group of South Slavic, spoken mostly in Bulgaria and Macedonia and adjacent areas in neighbouring countries (such as
3060-623: The " Big Excursion " of 1989. The language is also represented among the diaspora in Western Europe and North America, which has been steadily growing since the 1990s. Countries with significant numbers of speakers include Germany , Spain , Italy , the United Kingdom (38,500 speakers in England and Wales as of 2011), France , the United States , and Canada (19,100 in 2011). The language
3145-503: The 16th century. This dialect (or family of dialects) differs from standard Croatian, since it has been heavily influenced by German and Hungarian. It has properties of all three major dialectal groups in Croatia, since the migrants did not all come from the same area, but the linguistic standard is based on the Chakavian dialect. Kajkavian is mostly spoken in northern and northwest Croatia near
3230-601: The 1960s. However, its reception abroad has been lukewarm, with a number of authors either calling the model into question or outright rejecting it. Thus, the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association only lists 22 consonants in Bulgarian's consonant inventory . The parts of speech in Bulgarian are divided in ten types, which are categorized in two broad classes: mutable and immutable. The difference
3315-460: 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 (uppercase Ѣ, lowercase ѣ) and yus (uppercase Ѫ, lowercase ѫ) were removed from its alphabet, reducing the number of letters to 30. With
3400-461: The 19th century), a modern Bulgarian literary language gradually emerged that 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 Balkan 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
3485-516: The Hungarian and Slovene borders—chiefly around the towns of Zagreb , Varaždin, Čakovec, Koprivnica, Petrinja, Delnice and so on. Its reflex of yat is primarily /e/ , rarely diphthongal ije ). This differs from that of the Ekavian accent; many Kajkavian dialects distinguish a closed e —nearly ae (from yat )—and an open e (from the original e ). It lacks several palatals (ć, lj, nj, dž) found in
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3570-587: The Shtokavian dialect, and has some loanwords from the nearby Slovene dialects and German (chiefly in towns). Example: Kak je, tak je; tak je navek bilo, kak bu tak bu, a bu vre nekak kak bu! Slovene is mainly spoken in Slovenia . Spoken Slovene has numerous dialects, but there is no consensus on how many; estimates range from 7 to 50. The lowest estimate refers to the language's seven commonly recognized dialect groups, without subdividing any of them. Some of
3655-507: The South Slavic language group. They are prevalently phonological in character, whereas morphological and syntactical isoglosses are much fewer in number. Sussex & Cubberly (2006 :43–44) list the following phonological isoglosses: Most of these are not exclusive in character, however, and are shared with some languages of the Eastern and Western Slavic language groups (in particular, Central Slovakian dialects). On that basis, Matasović (2008) argues that South Slavic exists strictly as
3740-642: The Western dialects in the following ways: Apart from these three main areas there are several smaller, significant differences: Languages to the west of Serbia use the Latin script , whereas those to the east and south use Cyrillic . Serbian officially uses the Cyrillic script, though commonly Latin and Cyrillic are used equally. Most newspapers are written in Cyrillic and most magazines are in Latin; books written by Serbian authors are written in Cyrillic, whereas books translated from foreign authors are usually in Latin, other than languages that already use Cyrillic, most notably Russian. On television, writing as part of
3825-509: The area - as well as the Natural reserve "Temnata gora" and many other places in Garmen Municipality . 41°41′N 23°50′E / 41.683°N 23.833°E / 41.683; 23.833 Bulgarian language Rup Moesian Bulgarian ( / b ʌ l ˈ ɡ ɛər i ə n / , / b ʊ l ˈ -/ bu(u)l- GAIR -ee-ən ; български език , bŭlgarski ezik , pronounced [ˈbɤɫɡɐrski] )
3910-412: 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
3995-549: The eastern dialects prevailed, and in 1899 the Bulgarian Ministry of Education officially codified a standard Bulgarian language based on the Drinov-Ivanchev orthography. Bulgarian is the official language of Bulgaria , where it is used in all spheres of public life. As of 2011, it is spoken as a first language by about 6 million people in the country, or about four out of every five Bulgarian citizens. There
4080-439: The elimination of case declension , the development of a suffixed definite article , and the lack of a verb infinitive . They retain and have further developed the Proto-Slavic verb system (albeit analytically). One such major development is the innovation of evidential verb forms to encode for the source of information: witnessed, inferred, or reported. It is the official language of Bulgaria , and since 2007 has been among
4165-499: The ethnic (and dialectal) picture of some areas—especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also in central Croatia and Serbia (Vojvodina in particular). In some areas, it is unclear whether location or ethnicity is the dominant factor in the dialect of the speaker. Because of this the speech patterns of some communities and regions are in a state of flux, and it is difficult to determine which dialects will die out entirely. Further research over
4250-535: The form of various local Church Slavonic traditions. The South Slavic languages constitute a dialect continuum . Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin constitute a single dialect within this continuum. The Slavic languages are part of the Balto-Slavic group , which belongs to the Indo-European language family. The South Slavic languages have been considered a genetic node in Slavic studies : defined by
4335-539: 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
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#17328846090184420-434: 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 ml ya ko and ml e kar 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
4505-706: The language), and presumably a significant proportion of the 13,200 ethnic Bulgarians residing in neighbouring Transnistria in 2016. Another community abroad are the Banat Bulgarians , who migrated in the 17th century to the Banat region now split between Romania, Serbia and Hungary. They speak the Banat Bulgarian dialect , which has had its own written standard and a historically important literary tradition. There are Bulgarian speakers in neighbouring countries as well. The regional dialects of Bulgarian and Macedonian form
4590-571: 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 (most notably 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 and 1878 more than 25 proposals were put forward and "linguistic chaos" ensued. Eventually
4675-409: 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. 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
4760-473: 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
4845-470: The low vowels / ɛ / , / ɔ / and / a / in unstressed position, sometimes leading to neutralisation between / ɛ / and / i / , / ɔ / and / u / , and / a / and / ɤ / . Both patterns have partial parallels in Russian, leading to partially similar sounds. In turn, the Western dialects generally do not have any allophonic palatalization and exhibit minor, if any, vowel reduction. Standard Bulgarian keeps
4930-399: 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
5015-409: The middle of the 20th century the population has decreased very quickly. Most of the inhabitants went to bigger towns and cities. Many of the houses were abandoned and began to fall apart. After the village was re-found by Bulgarian cinematography and the new status of the village as a National reserve, many houses were rehabilitated and even new houses were built, but in the same architectural style. Now
5100-477: 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 /ljuˈbɔf/ 'love'), and secondly,
5185-557: The newspaper Makedoniya : "Such an artificial assembly of written language is something impossible, unattainable and never heard of." After 1944 the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia began a policy of making Macedonia into the connecting link for the establishment of a new Balkan Federative Republic and stimulating here a development of distinct Macedonian consciousness. With
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#17328846090185270-655: The next few decades will be necessary to determine the changes made in the dialectical distribution of this language group. The eastern Herzegovinian dialect is the basis of the Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian standard variants of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian. Chakavian is spoken in the western, central, and southern parts of Croatia—mainly in Istria , the Kvarner Gulf, Dalmatia and inland Croatia (Gacka and Pokupje, for example). The Chakavian reflex of proto-Slavic yat
5355-447: 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- ya -ing"). Bulgarian is the only Slavic language whose literary standard does not naturally contain the iotated e /jɛ/ (or its variant, e after a palatalized consonant /ʲɛ/ , except in non-Slavic foreign-loaned words). This sound combination
5440-659: 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 /dɛˈtɛ/ 'child', езеро /ˈɛzɛro/ 'lake'), as are those rare words (usually loanwords) that end in –и, –у, and –ю ( цунами /tsuˈnami/ ' tsunami ', табу /tɐˈbu/ 'taboo', меню /mɛˈnju/ 'menu'). Perhaps
5525-994: The noun they are appended to. They may also take the definite article as explained above. Pronouns may vary in gender, number, and definiteness, and are the only parts of speech that have retained case inflections. 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. A Bulgarian verb has many distinct forms, as it varies in person, number, voice, aspect, mood, tense and in some cases gender. Finite verbal forms are simple or compound and agree with subjects in person (first, second and third) and number (singular, plural). 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
5610-466: The official languages of the European Union . It is also spoken by the Bulgarian historical communities in North Macedonia , Ukraine , Moldova , Serbia , Romania , Hungary , Albania and Greece . One can divide the development of the Bulgarian language into several periods. Bulgarian was the first Slavic language attested in writing. As Slavic linguistic unity lasted into late antiquity,
5695-466: The oldest manuscripts initially referred to this language as ѧзꙑкъ словѣньскъ, "the Slavic language". In the Middle Bulgarian period this name was gradually replaced by the name ѧзꙑкъ блъгарьскъ, the "Bulgarian language". In some cases, this name 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
5780-575: The other two Slavic branches ( West and East ) by a belt of German , Hungarian and Romanian speakers. The first South Slavic language to be written (also the first attested Slavic language) was the variety of the Eastern South Slavic spoken in Thessaloniki , now called Old Church Slavonic , in the ninth century. It is retained as a liturgical language in Slavic Orthodox churches in
5865-563: The past (and currently, in isolated areas), it was not uncommon for individual villages to have their own words and phrases. However, during the 20th century the local dialects have been influenced by Štokavian standards through mass media and public education and much "local speech" has been lost (primarily in areas with larger populations). With the breakup of Yugoslavia , a rise in national awareness has caused individuals to modify their speech according to newly established standard-language guidelines. The wars have caused large migrations, changing
5950-429: The past pluperfect subjunctive. Perfect constructions use a single auxiliary "be". The traditional interpretation is that in addition to the four moods (наклонения /nəkloˈnɛnijɐ/ ) shared by most other European languages – indicative (изявително, /izʲəˈvitɛɫno/ ) imperative (повелително /poveˈlitelno/ ), subjunctive ( подчинително /pottʃiˈnitɛɫno/ ) and conditional (условно, /oˈsɫɔvno/ ) – in Bulgarian there
6035-591: The pockets of speakers of the related regional dialects in Albania and in Greece variously identify their language as Macedonian or as Bulgarian. In Serbia , there were 13,300 speakers as of 2011, mainly concentrated in the so-called Western Outlands along the border with Bulgaria. Bulgarian is also spoken in Turkey: natively by Pomaks , and as a second language by many Bulgarian Turks who emigrated from Bulgaria, mostly during
6120-685: 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, Bulgarian and Greek linguists, as well as some linguists from other countries, still consider
6205-466: 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
6290-435: The second half of the 19th century, but there are also new houses, built in the same style. The village was designated an "Architectural and Historical Reserve of National Importance" in 1977. Many Bulgarian movies have been filmed there. The population at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th centuries was 17 persons. In 1873 the population was 630. In 1905, there were 1740 inhabitants, most of them Bulgarian. Since
6375-486: The seven groups are more heterogeneous than others, and the higher estimates reflect the varying criteria that have been used to differentiate dialects and subdialects. Slovenian dialects can be so different from each other that a speaker of one dialect may have a very difficult time understanding a speaker of another, particularly if their dialects belong to different groups. Some dialects spoken in southern Slovenia transition into Chakavian or Kajkavian Serbo-Croatian , while
6460-520: 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 /ovɛ/ occurs only in masculine nouns. Two numbers are distinguished in Bulgarian– singular and plural . A variety of plural suffixes
6545-428: The standard Bulgarian language, however, did not wish to make any allowances for a pluricentric "Bulgaro-Macedonian" compromise. In 1870 Marin Drinov , who played a decisive role in the standardization of the Bulgarian language, rejected the proposal of Parteniy Zografski and Kuzman Shapkarev for a mixed eastern and western Bulgarian/Macedonian foundation of the standard Bulgarian language, stating in his article in
6630-502: The transition from eastern dialects to Kajkavian is general, with cases of essentially the same linguistic variety spoken on both sides of the border (this is particularly true for the upper course of the Kupa and Sutla rivers). The table below compares grammatical and phonological innovations. The similarity of Kajkavian and Slovene is apparent. In broad terms, the Eastern dialects of South Slavic (Bulgarian and Macedonian) differ most from
6715-484: The various Macedonian dialects as part of the broader Bulgarian pluricentric dialectal continuum . Outside Bulgaria and Greece, Macedonian is generally considered an autonomous language within the South Slavic dialect continuum. Sociolinguists agree that the question whether Macedonian is a dialect of Bulgarian or a language is a political one and cannot be resolved on a purely linguistic basis, because dialect continua do not allow for either/or judgements. In 886 AD,
6800-535: The verb class. The possible existence of a few other moods has been discussed in the literature. Most Bulgarian school grammars teach the traditional view of 4 Bulgarian moods (as described above, but excluding the subjunctive and including the inferential). 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
6885-488: 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. South Slavic languages The South Slavic languages are one of three branches of the Slavic languages . There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans . These are separated geographically from speakers of
6970-510: The village has only about 30 constant inhabitants, but actually a lot more live there in the Summer and during the vacations and holidays. There are many guest-houses and restaurants in the traditional style. The village itself is not the only place of interest. There are many natural sites in the Rhodopes and in the valley of the Kanina river. Tourists can visit Leshten – another historical village in
7055-457: 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: 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
7140-430: 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
7225-455: Was founded by refugees from different villages, who tried to escape the Ottoman assimilation in the 17th century. The isolated location and the fresh water supply were the most important factors in this process. The village has never had Ottoman administration, therefore it preserved the Bulgarian traditions. St. Nicholas' church ( Bulgarian : Свети Никола , Sveti Nikola ) was built in 1847 and
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