Bulgarian and Russian

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Emily Tall wrote:

> 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)

Here are a few of the more obvious differences. I'm sure others can
extend the list.

Phonetics and phonology:
∙ Russian has a complex system of palatalized vs. nonpalatalized
  consonants, Bulgarian has none;
∙ Bulgarian has far fewer complex consonant clusters, especially
  initially;
∙ Bulgarian's sixth vowel (after aeiou) is more central than
  Russian's, close to a stressable schwa (compare the Romanian
  a-breve), and is written with what the Russians call the "hard
  sign." Russian "y" often corresponds to Bulgarian "i," sometimes
  to "hard sign."

Nouns and adjectives:
∙ Russian has six cases, plus vestiges of a vocative, but
  Bulgarian has essentially none (vestiges of a vocative, plus
  pronominal distinctions as in English);
∙ Bulgarian has postpositive articles (knigata "the book"),
  Russian has none.

Verbs:
∙ Bulgarian has a much more complicated verbal system, retaining
  many tenses such as the aorist that Russian has lost. Some of
  these are compound tenses resembling our perfect tenses;
∙ Bulgarian has retained the present tense of the verb "to be,"
  Russian has almost entirely eliminated it.

Syntax:
∙ Bulgarian uses the preposition "na" for virtually any
  grammatical relationship (I'm exaggerating for effect),
  including "of" where Russian would use genitive, "to," "on,"
  etc.
∙ Russian has much more flexible word order.

Vocabulary:
∙ Russian has borrowed high-style words from Church Slavic (a
  member of the South Slavic branch close to the parent of
  Bulgarian), so it has many doublets such as SS glava "head
  (of an organization); chapter" vs. ES golova "head (of a
  physical body)." Bulgarian lacks the East Slavic forms, but
  has borrowed heavily from its neighbors (Turkish, Greek,
  etc.), whereas Russian has not.

--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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