Thread: Russian x Bulgarian

What are the likeness between these languages? And what are the differences? Can a russian understand a Bulgarian like a German can understand a Dutch or a Brazilian can understand a Spanish?

Not that I have any clue on the subject, but I heared there is a significant difference. They don't have any new letters or such, but read this bulgarian text:

Европейският парламент, чиято легитимност се основава на всеобщо пряко гласуване на всеки пет години, придобива все по-голямо влияние и правомощия чрез редица договори. Тези договори и най-вече Договорът от Маастрихт от 1992 г. и Амстердамският договор от 1997 г., превръщат Европейския парламент от асамблея с чисто съвещателен характер в законодателен парламент, който упражнява правомощия, сходни с тези на националните парламенти.

Some words are easily recognized... but it isn't very straight forward, is it?

Here is the translation:

The European Parliament, which derives its legitimacy from direct universal suffrage and is elected every five years, has steadily acquired greater influence and power through a series of treaties. These treaties, particularly the 1992 Maastricht Treaty and the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, have transformed the European Parliament from a purely consultative assembly into a legislative parliament, exercising powers similar to those of the national parliaments

In my opinion these two languages are very close. There are some differences in grammar, but I used to have almost no trouble reading technical literature in Bulgarian. I think I could read fiction as well if I spent let's say a month on learning a little more of the grammar and some vocabulary. I have a Bulgarian dicitionary somewhere, which lists so called false friends of a translator, i.e. the words that have the same spelling in both languages but completely different meaning... Having said all that, understanding spoken Bulgarian is a different topic altogether. I can't understand a word Although to tell you the truth I heard it spoken only on a few occasions...

You can compare some stuff here.

http://www.travlang.com/languages/

Originally Posted by MikeM

In my opinion these two languages are very close. There are some differences in grammar, but I used to have almost no trouble reading technical literature in Bulgarian. I think I could read fiction as well if I spent let's say a month on learning a little more of the grammar and some vocabulary. I have a Bulgarian dicitionary somewhere, which lists so called false friends of a translator, i.e. the words that have the same spelling in both languages but completely different meaning... Having said all that, understanding spoken Bulgarian is a different topic altogether. I can't understand a word Although to tell you the truth I heard it spoken only on a few occasions...

Very close? Don't be silly.

Russian and Belorussian, yes very close.
Russian and Bulgarian... not really.

Well, Old Church Slavonic which is what Russian evolved from, was the language of (what was then) Bulgaria.

They are both Slavic, so there is going to be similarity.

But there are major differences. For exmaple, Bulgarian has articles which decline. Nouns don't decline (I think).

Bulgarian belongs to the Southern Slavic languages:

Eastern Slavic:
Russian
Ukrainian
Belorussian

Western Slavic:
Polish
Czech
Slovak
Upper Sorbian
Lower Sorbian
Casubian
Polabian

Southern Slavic:
Croatian
Serbian
FYR Macedonian (Bulgarian)
Bulgarian
Slovene
Bosnian (Serbian)

My 2 cents. Being a Russian native speaker one can read Bulgarian and understand approx. 75-80% of words which is enough for understanding a main idea of a text. But no way a Russian native speaker can understand spoken Bulgarian without learning the language.

Bulgarian, like English, has a very complex system of verbal tense, unlike Russian. Nouns and adjectives are very similar because of the Slavic ancestry.

For example, if you take a sentence like
John saw him do it.
You get several Bulgarian possibilities for "saw"
1) I absolutely vouch for this statement
2) John told me he did, but I'm not sure.
3) John told me he did, but I doubt it.
all these expressed in the verb. That's about all I remember about my Bulgarian verbs (I actually did study Bulgarian at the University of Chicago!)

Originally Posted by Vesh

My 2 cents. Being a Russian native speaker one can read Bulgarian and understand approx. 75-80% of words which is enough for understanding a main idea of a text. But no way a Russian native speaker can understand spoken Bulgarian without learning the language.

I second it.

I asked because I have a friend going to Bulgaria next year and since he has no chance finding any Bulgarian teacher around here he asked me to teach him Russian.

Since his knowledge in both languages is null I think it will be helpful to him to learn at least the cyrillic alphabet and some basic sentences.

As for the pronounce: is it equal to Russian's?

How difficult would Polish and Czech be for somebody who already speaks Russian? I'm fairly sure that they aren't mutually intelegible with Russian, but how much work would be needed to speak one?

[fixed dumb typo]

Here's a sentence in Polish:

Forum jest instytucją prywatną i niezależną, z kt

Originally Posted by Souljacker

As for the pronounce: is it equal to Russian's?

Well for the most part.

Ъ in Bulgarian is an ultra short vowel, or schwa, like the final a in Banana.
Bulgarian is Български. As far as I know, there is no reduction of vowels (e.g. O) as there is in Russian.

Bulgarian has less soft consonants. E is hard, as is И i think.

Originally Posted by Darobat

How difficult would Polish and Czech be for somebody who already speaks Russian? I'm fairly sure that they aren't mutually intelegible with English, but how much work would be needed to speak one?

Please tell me you didn't think Polish and Czech could be mutually intellible with English. That sort of stupidity should encure the death penalty.

[quote=chaika]Here's a sentence in Polish:

Forum jest instytucją prywatną i niezależną, z kt

Originally Posted by TATY

Originally Posted by Darobat

How difficult would Polish and Czech be for somebody who already speaks Russian? I'm fairly sure that they aren't mutually intelegible with English, but how much work would be needed to speak one?

Please tell me you didn't think Polish and Czech could be mutually intellible with English. That sort of stupidity should encure the death penalty.

Well that was a dumb typo. Let me change English to Russian right now.

[quote=chaika]niezależną
wsp

"працуя" более-менее понятно (благодаря тем же соседям) -- "работая". А вот что такое "вспол"?

"Вспул" = "пол" (в смысле, половина).

Well, here's my 7 cents worth. (Seven cents, not two, because I'll probably type on and on without any particular point in mind.)

I have been back and forth between Russian and Bulgarian. I have a Bulgarian wife, who is not motivated to teach me her language. I know a few words, but not very many. Because of the severe lack of resources for an American to learn Bulgarian, I gave up and decided to try Russian instead. My opinion is that they are "similar" languages, with "almost" the same alphabet, and many words that are the same. Or at least almost the same. Some of the differences that I have found are as follows. Some of these have already been mentioned, but here's my thoughts:

1) Russian has a letter (and a sound) not found in Bulgarian. "ы". And, as somebody said, the "ъ" is quite different.

2) Bulgarian does not seem to have the vowel reduction found in Russian. Perhaps they are shortened very slightly, but not to the extent in Russian.

3) The "ь", or "soft sign" in Russian seems to be absent in Bulgarian.

4) Bulgarian does use the present tense of the verb "to be", where Russian does not.

5) As somebody mentioned, the nouns in Bulgarian are not deflected (or whatever that word is) to indicate their place in the sentence. But they do have definate articles, in the form of suffixes on the ends of the nouns.

In conclusion (FINALLY!), Bulgairan and Russian are "similar", but indeed completely different languages.


Disclaimer: I suck at both Russian and Bulgarian, I'm just telling you what I know. Please correct me if I'm wrong about something. Now, wasn't that completely useless to you all?

I'll add a couple of cents onto Platinum's post to make an even dime

My girlfriend is Bulgarian, and like Platinum, I have elected to stick with Russian (I was learning Russian before I met her) because there just aren't enough resources here to learn Bulgarian.

For the most part, she can understand about 90% of spoken Russian, but she can't (won't) speak it because she isn't sure of the word differences between the two languages. If I ask her what a Russian word means, she will tell me without thinking, but she can't do it in the oposite direction (usually)

Also, like someone else said, the verbs are relatively similar, but with different endings. For instance,

Ya znayu = Az znam
Ya govoryu = Az govorya

Overall, I think the best comparison would be a person that speaks Portuguese listening to someone speaking Spanish. They can understand, but wouldn't be able to speak it very well.

-Fantom