Bulgarian language

Bulgarian
български език bălgarski ezik
Native to	Bulgaria, Turkey, Serbia, Greece, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Albania, Kosovo, Republic of Macedonia and among emigrant communities worldwide
Region	Southeastern Europe
Native speakers	7 million  (2011)
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 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 7 million people in 2011 who use Bulgarian as their main language.

Bulgarian is a part of the so-called Balkan "Sprachbund" or linguistic group, which also includes Greek, Macedonian, Romanian, Albanian and 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/

Related pages

• Streamlined System for the Romanization of Bulgarian