The Republic of Bulgaria is a country in the southeast of Europe which has a population of 7.4 million people. Bulgarians are the primary ethnic group inhabiting the country, with the largest minority groups being the Turks and Roma people.
Bulgarian is the official language of Bulgaria and is spoken by the majority of the country’s population. The Bulgarian language is a member of the Slavic group of languages and is closely related to the Macedonian language. Both languages possess several features that set them apart from other Slavic languages, such as the suffixed definite article, lack of a verb infinitive, removal of case declension, etc. In its written form, Bulgarian utilizes the Cyrillic alphabet. The number of speakers of Bulgarian in the country is estimated at around 5.7 million. All aspects of official and social life are conducted in Bulgarian, which is the medium of instruction in educational institutions, as well as in electronic and printed media.
Contemporary Standard Bulgarian is the official variant of the Bulgarian language spoken in Bulgaria. There are two other dialects which are mutually intelligible with the Standard variant, and these include the Palityan dialect, and the Pomak dialect which is spoken in Greece and represents a transitional dialect between Bulgarian and Serbian.
Apart from Bulgarian, the country is also home to two main minority languages which, as aforementioned, include Turkish and Romani. The Turkish language is spoken by the Turks residing in Bulgaria, who arrived in the region from Anatolia during the 14th and early 15th centuries when the Ottomans conquered the Balkans. Native Bulgarians whose ancestors converted to Islam during this time also speak Turkish. The Turks form the largest minority ethnic group in Bulgaria today, making Turkish the most commonly spoken minority language in the country.
Romani is the second widely spoken minority language in Bulgaria, spoken by the Romani people in the country who descended from the Romani nomadic migrants. These migrants arrived in Bulgaria from Northern India through the Bosporus and Dardanelles at the end of the 13th century, and they continued to arrive during the five centuries of Ottoman rule over the region.
Some of the foreign languages spoken in Bulgaria include Russian, which is the most commonly spoken foreign language in the country spoken by 35% of the population, as well as English, Italian, Spanish and French. Russian is mostly spoken by the older generations who learned it at school during the 20th century. The younger population mainly learns English, which is the second most popular language in Bulgaria after Russian.
