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?