Bulgaria is located in the continent of Europe; it has a total area of almost 110,000 km², which makes it the 105th largest nation in the world. Bulgaria shares land borders with the following five countries – Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, Romania and Serbia.

After gaining its sovereignty from Turkey, Bulgaria became an Independent State in 1878. The population of Bulgaria as at the year 2012 was just over 7 million people.

The Capital of Bulgaria?

The capital city of Bulgaria is Sofia, with a population of almost 1.2 million people. As well as being the capital, Sofia is the political centre of Bulgaria – it’s also home to the Ceremonial Head of State. The most populated cities of Bulgaria are as follows –

Sophia, with a population of 1.2 million;

Plovdiv, population 341,000;

Varna, population 313,000;

Burgas, population 196,000; and

Ruse, with a population of 156,000.

The Bulgarian Language

The official language of the Republic of Bulgaria is Bulgarian, with Bulgarian speakers constituting the dominant speech community of the country. Bulgarian is used in all electronic and print media and it’s the medium of instruction at all levels of education. All aspects of both social and official life are conducted in Bulgarian.

Bulgarian is a southern Slavic language, and it was the first Slavic language to be written. There are approximately 12 million speakers of Bulgarian, mainly in Bulgaria, but there are also Bulgarian speakers in Macedonia, the Ukraine, Turkey, Serbia, Romania, Greece, the United States, Canada, Germany, Australia and Spain.

The Bulgarian language was first written in the Glagolitic alphabet in the 9th century, after which time it was gradually replaced over the following centuries by an early version of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Following Bulgaria’s independence in 1878, a modern literary language was standardised - this was based on vernacular-spoken Bulgarian. During the Ottoman rule, many Turkish words were adopted into the Bulgarian language. Other words have been borrowed from Greek, Latin, French, Russian, German, Italian, and now from English.

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The Vocabulary of the Bulgarian Language

At least two-thirds of the modern Bulgarian lexicon are based on roots shared by other Slavic languages. The remainder of the words have been borrowed from other languages, mostly Latin and Greek, and to a lesser extent from Russian and French. Many of the loan words from Arabic, Turkish and Persian that entered the Bulgarian language during the Ottoman rule have since been replaced by borrowings from other languages - or their Slavic equivalents. It’s only in recent years that English has become the main source of borrowing.