Very close? Don't be silly.Originally Posted by MikeM
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)