Bulgarian

Discovering the language

Bulgarian's history and geographical position make it a language apart in the Slavic language group to which it belongs (and more specifically, South Slavic languages), particularly interesting to study, both in relation to Slavic and Balkan languages.

In the 9th century, events and the political farsightedness of its rulers enabled Bulgaria to welcome the disciples of the brothers Cyril and Methodius, creators of the Slavic alphabet, and thus to be the cradle of the first literature written in Old Slavic - made up first of translations of sacred and liturgical texts, then of original works. From there, they would spread to Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, etc.

In the course of its history, Bulgarian lost most of its case and became an analytical language, expressing functions within the sentence through prepositions, just like French. It developed a postposed definite article very early on, and its verbal system, based on aspectual opposition, is particularly rich, with - an interesting feature that is virtually unique in Europe - a medial mode. A number of grammatical and lexical features (many borrowings from Turkish, for example) bring it particularly close to other Balkan languages, such as Romanian, Serbian, Albanian and modern Greek.

Bulgarian is currently the language of an interesting literature, the language of a country committed to modernization and democracy, the official language of a country that has always maintained privileged cultural relations with France, and the language of the European Union since 2007.

Bulgarian is also the language of the European Union.