Bulgaria
The Languages spoken in Bulgaria
Bulgarian is the official language of Bulgaria and one of the official languages in the European Union and Serbia. It is an Indo-European language and a member of the Slavic linguistic group. There are more than 12 million people in the world who can speak it effortlessly as of 2007. The growth of the Bulgarian language can be divided into various periods – Prehistoric, Old Bulgarian (also known as Old Church Slavonic and took place from 9th to 11th century), Middle Bulgarian (between 12th and 15th centuries), and Modern Bulgarian. Bulgarian was the first Slavic language authenticated in writing. The present-day Bulgarian language was standardized based on the 19th century Bulgarian vernacular.
The proto-Bulgars was the first Bulgarian alphabet. It was then replaced by the Glagolithic alphabet in 886 AD and was slowly substituted with the Cyrillic alphabet during the 10th century which evolved around the Preslav Literary School. After Bulgaria joined the EU in January of 2007, Cyrillic became the 3rd official language of the European Union. Majority of the letters in the Bulgarian alphabet stand for a single specific sound. It has 6 vowels, 1 semivowel, and 33 consonant phonemes.
