Bulgarian and Russian

[Emily Tall]

Dear colleagues:
    I'd like to ask for some help. I have a Bulgarian student who wants
to be in my 4th semester Russian class. I want to keep him out on the
grounds that his abilities are far superior to that of my students,
especially since Bulgarian is close to Russian.
    He argues that Bulgarian is very different from Russian, etc., that
his Russian friends can't understand him when he speaks Bulgarian, that
a lot of words in Bulgarian are from non-Slavic languages.
    I may have to rebut his arguments in case we meet with the Dean.
And, out of curiosity, would some nice Slavic linguist out there
enlighten me as to the similarities between Bulgarian and Russian. I was
under the impression that Bulgarian was the most similar to Russian of
the Slavic languages (aside from Belorussian and Ukrainian). I know, of
course, about the alphabet, and I would think the grammar is pretty
similar.
    You can reply off-list to me at mllemily at acsu.buffalo.edu  but maybe
the topic is of interest to the whole list.
    Thanks! Emily Tall  (SUNY/Buffalo)

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