Latest revision as of 22:05, 20 August 2014

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Source: wikipedia.org.

Basic Info

Country Name

Official Name: The Republic of Bulgaria

What the People are Called

Bulgarians

Ethnic Groups

Bulgarians are the main ethnic group and comprise 84.8 per cent of the population. Turkish and Roma minorities comprise 8.8 and 4.9 per cent, respectively; some 40 smaller minorities comprise 0.7 per cent, and 0.8 per cent do not self-identify with an ethnic group.[242] All ethnic groups speak Bulgarian, either as a first or as a second language

U.S. Embassy

16 Kozyak Street Sofia 1408 Bulgaria Tel: (359 2) 937-5100 Fax: (359 (2) 937-5122 Email: iv_sofia@state.gov Internet: http://bulgaria.usembassy.gov

Canadian Embassy

7, Pozitano street, block no. 3, first floor, office no. 4 Postal code 1301 1000 Sofia, Bulgaria Tel: + 359-2-969-9710 Fax: + 359-2-981-6081 E-mail: general@canada-bg.org

Currency

Bulgarian Lev

Time Zone

Summer (DST)

Phone/Internet Information

Calling code +359 Internet TLD .bg

Major Languages Spoken

Bulgarian (български език, pronounced [ˈbɤ̞ɫɡɐrski ɛˈzik]) is an Indo-European language, a member of the Southern branch of the Slavic language family.

Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language (collectively forming the East South Slavic languages), has several characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages: changes include the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite article (see Balkan language area), and the lack of a verb infinitive, but it retains and has further developed the Proto-Slavic verb system. Various evidential verb forms exist to express unwitnessed, retold, and doubtful action.

Based on the 2011 census, Ethnologue estimates that Bulgarian is spoken as a native language by 6.8 million

Alphabet

Bulgarian Alphabet.
Source: omniglot.com.

Bulgarian is a Southern Slavic language with about 12 million speakers mainly in Bulgaria, but also in Ukraine, Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, Greece, Romania, Canada, USA, Australia, Germany and Spain. Bulgarian is mutually intelligible with Macedonian, and fairly closely related to Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Slovenian.

Bulgarian was the first Slavic language to be written: it start to appear in writing during the 9th century in the Glagolitic alphabet, which was gradually replaced by an early version of the Cyrillic alphabet over the following centuries.

At the end of the 18th century the Russian version of Cyrillic or the "civil script" of Peter the Great (1672-1725) was adapated to write Bulgarian as a result of the influence of printed books from Russia. During the 19th century a number of versions of this alphabet containing between 28 and 44 letters were used. In the 1870s a version of the alphabet with 32 letters proposed by Marin Drinov became widely used. This version remained in use until the orthographic reform of 1945 when the letters yat (Ѣ ѣ), and yus (Ѫ ѫ) were removed from the alphabet.

A modern literary language based on vernacular spoken Bulgarian was standardised after Bulgaria became independent in 1878. Many Turkish words were adopted into Bulgarian during the long period of Ottoman rule. Words have also been borrowed from Latin, Greek, Russian, French, Italian, German and increasingly from English.

Major holidays

January 1 New Year's Day

January 2 Day after New Year's Day

March 3 Liberation Day

Moveable Good Friday

Moveable Easter

Moveable Easter Monday

May 1 Labour Day

May 6 St. George's Day

May 24 Bulgarian Education and Culture, and Slavonic Literature Day

September 6 Unification Day

September 22 Independence Day

November 1 Revival Leaders' Day

December 24 Christmas Eve

December 25 Christmas Day

December 26 Second Day of Christmas

Source: Wikipedia Source: Bulgarian Holidays Source: Bulgarian Alphabet Source: Wikipedia Bulgarian Language

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