Languages

Bulgarian

buhl-GAR-skee

Also Known As български език

Citation Formats

General Reference

Language Atlas. "Bulgarian." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://language.interactiveatlas.org/languages/bulgarian.

APA Style

Language Atlas. (n.d.). Bulgarian. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://language.interactiveatlas.org/languages/bulgarian

BibTeX

@misc{languageatlas-bulgarian,
  author = {Language Atlas},
  title = {Bulgarian},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://language.interactiveatlas.org/languages/bulgarian},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Bulgarian is a South Slavic language and the official language of Bulgaria, notable within the Slavic family for having lost the noun case system most other Slavic languages retain, replacing it with prepositions and fixed word order, a development that parallels English losing case rather than most of Bulgarians closer relatives. Bulgaria is traditionally credited as the place Cyrillic script was first adopted and has been in continuous use since, developed by disciples of Saints Cyril and Methodius at the Preslav and Ohrid literary schools in the late ninth century.

Facts

ISO 639-3 Code

bg 1

Speaker Count

8,000,000 1

Status

Living 1

Region

Southeast Europe, primarily Bulgaria; native-speaker communities in Ukraine, North Macedonia, Albania, Greece, Turkey 2

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

English

This source names English directly: "order, a development that parallels English losing case rather than most of Bulgarians closer relatives."

Source The Cambridge Encyclopedia of LanguageDavid Crystal (editor)

Russian

This source names Bulgarian directly: "distinct in some letterforms from Bulgarian, reflecting reforms carried out under Peter the Great and again after the 1917 revolution."

Source The Cambridge Encyclopedia of LanguageDavid Crystal (editor)