Bulgarian language

Bulgarian
Bulgarian
български
Native to	Bulgaria, Turkey, Serbia, Greece, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia and among emigrant communities worldwide
Region	Southeastern Europe
Native speakers	9 million (2005–2012)
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic South Slavic Eastern South Slavic Bulgarian; ; ; ; ;
Writing system	Cyrillic (Bulgarian alphabet); Bulgarian Braille
Official status
Official language in	Bulgaria; European Union; Mount Athos
Recognised minority language in	Serbia; Romania (Banatian variant); Ukraine
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

Bulgarian (български език, [ˈbɤ̞lɡarski ɛˈzik]) is an Indo-European language. It is spoken mainly in Bulgaria and parts of North Macedonia, Serbia, Ukraine and Moldova. The Bulgarian language is similar to the Macedonian and the Serbian languages, which are part of the South Slavic branch of Slavic languages. There are nearly 9 million people in 2011 who use Bulgarian as their main language.^[4]

Bulgarian is a part of the so-called Balkan "Sprachbund" or linguistic group, which also includes Greek, Macedonian, Romanian, Albanian, and the Torlakian dialect of the Serbian language. This does not mean the languages are necessarily related, but that they share certain loanwords and grammatical characteristics due to frequent contact over the years.

Alphabet

А а /a/	Б б /b/	В в /v/	Г г /g/	Д д /d/	Е е /ɛ/	Ж ж /ʒ/	З з /z/	И и /i/	Й й /j/
К к /k/	Л л /l/	М м /m/	Н н /n/	О о /ɔ/	П п /p/	Р р /r/	С с /s/	Т т /t/	У у /u/
Ф ф /f/	Х х /x/	Ц ц /ʦ/	Ч ч /tʃ/	Ш ш /ʃ/	Щ щ /ʃt/	Ъ ъ /ɤ̞/, /ə/	Ь ь /◌ʲ/	Ю ю /ju/	Я я /ja/

Bulgarian Language Media

The Codex Zographensis is one of the oldest manuscripts in the Old Bulgarian language, dated from the late 10th or early 11th century
Early Cyrillic alphabet
Map of the Bulgarian dialects within Bulgaria
Extent of Bulgarian dialects according to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences shown encompassing the Eastern South Slavic dialects. Subregions are differentiated by pronunciation of man and tooth.
Areas of Eastern South Slavic languages.
A modern form of the Bulgarian alphabet, derived from the cursive forms of the letters