What language is spoken in Bulgaria?
Languages of Bulgaria
The official language of Bulgaria is Bulgarian. According to the 2001 census, 84.5% of the country's population speak Bulgarian natively.[1]
History of the Bulgarian language
Old Bulgarian is characterized by a number of phonetic, morphological, syntactic, and lexical traits (some of which are shared with other Slavic languages and some, such as the reflexes of *tj ([t']) and *dj ([d']), are typical only for Bulgarian):
In the period between 12th and 15th centuries the structure of the language changed quite radically. Few of these changes can still be observed in contemporary written records, thanks to the tendency towards archaicism driven by a desire to preserve the purity of the Cyrilo-Methodian tradition. The language underwent some morphological changes as well: starting from the time of the Second Bulgarian Empire a confusion of case endings is to be observed along with the increasing use of prepositions in syntax. This linguistic tendency resulted in the gradual loss of the complex Slavic case system, rendering Bulgarian and Macedonian significantly more analytic than their relatives. Scholars dispute whether this has anything to do with phonetic changes, such as the confusion of the nasals, or whether it is purely due to the influence of grammar developments across the Balkans.
Also dating from the High Middle Ages is the use of the prefixes по- and най- to indicate comparative and superlative degrees of the adjective.