Bulgarian

Bulgarian belongs to the South Slavic group of the Slavic Branch of the Indo-European language family and is spoken in Bulgaria by close to 8 million people. It is also spoken in Canada, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Turkey, Ukraine, and the US. Ethnologue estimates that the total number of speakers of Bulgarian worldwide is close to 9 million people.

The history of the Bulgarian language spans several periods:

•   The prehistoric period occurred between the Slavic 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 called Old Church Slavonic) was the language used by St. Cyril, St. Methodius and their disciples to translate the Bible and other liturgical literature from Greek. Old Bulgarian was the first Slavic language attested in writing.
•   Middle Bulgarian (12th to 15th century) was the period when Bulgarian underwent dramatic changes, losing the Old Slavonic case system and developing a definite article.
•   Modern Bulgarian dates from the 16th century onwards.

Bulgarian is the official language of the Republic of Bulgaria. Speakers of Bulgarian constitute the dominant speech community of the country. All aspects of official and social life are conducted in Bulgarian. Bulgarian is the medium of instruction at all levels of education and is used in all electronic and print media.

Dialects
Contemporary Standard Bulgarian is the official variant of the language. The Palityan dialect is functionally intelligible with Standard Bulgarian.

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