A Holiday and the Bulgarian Language

May 24th is a big national holiday. It is known as the “Day of Bulgarian Culture” or “Cyrilic Alphabet Day.” Every year Saints Cyril and Methodius are honored. They invented the Cyrilic alphabet around 863 AD. The whole country partakes in festivals and parades celebrating the alphabet. Today there are approximately 9 million people who speak Bulgarian (and 40 more American Peace Corps volunteers fervently learning). Bulgarian is part of the South Slavic family of languages (not the Romance Language family like Spanish, French, etc.). It has been influenced by Turkish and Russian. English has had a newer influence in recent history (especially 20^th Century terminology – computer, weekend, etc.)

In 2007 Bulgaria joined the European Union and had the honor of introducing the 3^rd official writing system to the EU alongside the Roman and Greek alphabets.

One aspect of Bulgarian that is easy (Ha!) is that generally words are written just as they are pronounced – silent letters are rare. In English there are many hidden letters – for instance Patricia would be Patrisha in Bulgarian. Or reading would be reding; phonetic is fonetik; feel is fel; – no silent letters. Generally there is only one sound per letter – C only sounds like s – if the sound is like a K then the letter is a K. Just a few examples to give you an idea.

One thing I found out this week is that my Dell computer came with a number of keyboard capabilities including a Bulgarian “phonetic” keyboard. That means if I want to type a Bulgarian word like “Patricia” (Patrisha), “Chauffer” (shofer) or “Stop” I simply choose the Bulgarian keyboard option and type how the words sound in Bulgarian „Патриша“ „Шофъор“ „Стоп“ .

O.K. so on your end it probably sounds confusing but on this end I’m very excited because I already know the QWERTY keyboard in English and can use that to type words in Bulgarian with only needing to learn a few new letters instead of a whole new keyboard set-up. And it’s an example of how the Bulgarian spelling is a bit easier because it is phonetic.

The same principle applies to reading – I can sound out almost any Bulgarian word letter-by-letter even though I have no idea what the word means!

So thanks to St. Cyril and St. Methodicus for that. I’m not ready to thank them for their ideas on grammar yet!

Here are a few words that sound very similar in English and Bulgarian:

Action - ЕкшЪн, Author - Абтор

Baggage - Багаж, Biography - Биограпия,

Canyon - Канъон, Card - Карта,

Champion - Шампион, Cosmos - Космос,

Date - Дата, Diagram - Диаграма,

Diplomacy - Дипломация, Farm - Ферма,

Professor - Професор, Project - Проект,

Race - Раса, Restaurant - Ресторант,

Season - Сезон, Social - Социален,

Stomach - Стомах,

Tradition – Традиция, Zoo - Зоопарк.

I was given a list of 300 such words and all the letters after F and before P were missing. So this is another plus for learning words! I’ve had a few funny times of trying really hard to understand what someone is telling me before I realize a word sounds a lot like and English one.

For the holiday - Z has her home and garden in tip-top shape. From what I can tell, she's expecting 15 - 20 family and friends to visit tomorrow for the holiday. She's been working really hard and everything looks beautiful.