Bulgaria versus Poland is a series of articles created to compare these nations. They are created from the Polish point of view. The author who created this article is on a two-month exchange in Bulgaria under the European Solidarity Corps program.

Cyrillic vs Latin alphabet

(By Добромир Костадинов - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55946853)

In Bulgaria, the Cyrillic alphabet is used. It consists of 30 different characters (33 characters in Russian), corresponding to the respective heads. It also differs slightly in writing, as can be seen in the figure on the right.

One of the pupils of Cyril and Methodius is considered to be the creator of Cyrillic, with the names of Kliment Ohridsky or Konstantin Preslawski being most often cited here. The first traces of the use of Cyrillic originate from eastern Bulgaria. The oldest dated Cyrillic monument is considered to be the Dobruzan inscription of Tsar Peter, dating back to 943. During the tenth to the twelfth century, the Cyrillic spread from Bulgaria to Serbia and Kievan Rus.

The Cyrillic alphabet used today for writing various languages is a partially reformed and modernised alphabet compared to the original version and is called 'grażdanka' (ros. abbreviation for grażdanskij szrift, i.e. civic, secular writing). The Cyrillic alphabet was reformed in Russia at the beginning of the 18th century by Peter the Great. The draft of the reform with personal remarks of the Tsar comes from 1709. Initially, the reformed letter was used only in the Tsar's office to record official state documents, later its use was extended to other spheres of writing, first Russian and then South Slavic. The original version of Cyrillic remained the Orthodox Church, using liturgical books written in this alphabet in the Orthodox Slavonic language.

In Serbia, it reformed its writing in the first half of the 19th century. Vuk Karadžić. He removed, among other things, the ъ, ь characters written at the end of words, introduced the characters љ, њ, џ for soft l', soft n', and for j jota, and unified the spelling of jota, introducing the Latin j character in place of the hitherto variously written letters.

In Russia, after the February Revolution, another draft of the writing reform was prepared, approved by the Academy of Sciences on July 5, 1917. The reform aimed to simplify spelling and spelling. The changes consisted in the unification of the notation of the sounds "je" and "i", abandonment of hard writing at the end of words ending in a consonant, and deletion of the Jaci alphabet (ѣ). The reform became effective in 1918, already under Bolshevik rule. The reform did not accept some of the Russian emigration and the clergy, many emigration publications were printed according to the old rules.

The reform of the Bulgarian alphabet was made on the Russian model in 1944.

Cyrillic was accepted by the majority of languages from the territory of the former USSR (the exceptions were: Estonian, Georgian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Armenian), as well as in Serbo-Croatian (Serbian variant), Bulgarian, Macedonian and Mongolian (only in Mongolia).

After the break-up of the USSR, several of its former republics are moving away from the Cyrillic alphabets to the Latin alphabet: Azerbaijan, Moldova (except Transnistria), Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.

In 2017, President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced that by 2025, Kazakhstan would resign from the Cyrillic alphabet and switch to the Latin alphabet." ^[3]

Poland uses the Latin alphabet, which was adopted with the adoption of Christianity in 966 by Mieszko I, the first documented ruler of Poland. Many Latin-based writing systems use the so-called "two-character" (and even "three-characters", etc.), i.e. groups of Latin characters denoting a single sound (voice), and it appears in Polish. There are also few additional characters have been entered, which are marked in red in the figure on the right. In Polish, however, there are also a few letters that do not exist in the basic Latin alphabet. These letters are marked in grey, including q, v and x. In history, attempts have been made to add letters to the Polish language, which were supposed to replace two letter sounds, by one letter. However, these attempts were often created artificially, several of them were accepted, as can be seen in the figure on the right (letters marked in red). There were many attempts (by Russian, or Russophiles) also made to use Cyrillic to write down Polish words. However, the attempts by the Russians to force 'grażdanka' into the Polish language has been failed. For 123 years, when Poland was directly subordinate to Russia and the other 2 invaders (Prussia and Austro-Hungary), each of them tried to change the Polish language and forced to use their languages (German, Russian) instead Polish. This can be seen very well even today, wherein the west of Poland many words of German origin are used (I come from this part of Poland myself), while in the east many words of Russian origin are used.

For example:

Polish	German	English

Jo	Ja	Yes/OK
Szlauch	Schlauch	Garden hose
Hajcować	Heizen	Heating

How did they manage to get along in Polish without the Cyrillic with their Slavic sounds?

Polish	Bulgarian	English	Tips, how to speak it correctly

Ą	он (жетон)	on (Beyonce)	like in French "on"
Ę	эл	ew	ow/ el/ ew (try to combine them)
Ć ~ Ci	Чи (Чин)	ch (china)	hard and fast ~ soft and slow
Ń ~ Ni	ци (Нигерия)	ni (onion)	hard and fast ~ soft and slow
Ł	ла (лабиринт)	w (water)	it's the same like "w"
Ś ~ Si	ши (шише)	shi (shit)	hard and fast ~ soft and slow
Ź ~ Zi	жи (живея)	zh (Woźniak)	hard and fast ~ soft and slow
Cz	Ч (чаша)	ch (Czech Republic)	it's the same like "Ch"= China
Sz	ш (шум)	sh (shore)	try to say it hard
Rz = Ż	ж (жаба)	zh (measure)	like French /j/,
Ch = H	X (хляб)	h (help)	hard, like dutch or german
Dz	ДЗ	j (John)	another word for you "Joy"
Dż	дъж (дъжд)	g (Germany)	like Gillette (but with English pronunciation)
Dź ~ Dzi	джи (джип)	jee (Jeep)	It's similar to Dz, but say it soft with /ee/
Ó = U	ъ (събота)	oo (moon)	Ó and U is the same pronounce as /oo/

Bulgarian and Polish basic words

After this little introduction in the pronunciation, we can now deal with the details. Let us start by saying hello. I have separated the two characters by hyphens to make them easier to read. If you do not know how to do this, or what a character is, you have a table above for this. Good luck!

Добър ден! [Dobree Den] - Dzień dobry [Jeen dobree]- Good Morning

Interestingly enough, if we switch words with each other in Bulgarian, we will get an almost Polish hello!

Ден добър! [Den Dobree]

There are, of course, more similarities. I will give you some of them:

Довиждане! [Dowi-sh-dane] - Do widzenia [Do vi-joe-nia] - Good bye

Добър вечер! [Dobree veczer] - Dobry wieczór [Dobree wie-ch-ur]- Good night

платен [platen] - płatny [platny] - payable

Безплатен [bezplaten] - bezpłatny [bezplatny]- free

отворено [otvoreno] - otwarte [otwarte]- open

затворено [zatvoreno] - zamknięte [zamk-ni-ente]- closed

безплатен вход [bezplaten w-h-od] bezpłatne wejście [bezplatne wej-si-ci-e]- free entrance

Здрасрти / Здравей! [Zdrasti/Zdravei] - Cześć! [Ch-e-si-c'] - Hello!

Чао! [Ciao] - Cześć [Ch-e-si-c'] - Ciao/Bye!

да [da] - tak - yes

не [ne] - nie - no

Благодаря/ Mерси [Blagodarja/Mersi]- Dziękuję [Jee-ewkuj-ew]- Thanks

Моля [Molja] - Proszę bardzo [Proshew barjoe] - Here you go

There are two words for sorry in the Bulgarian language:

Съжалявам. [sy-zh-aljawam] - Przepraszam/Przykro mi. [P-sh-epra-sh-am] - Sorry (for example you say that when you make something wrong)
Извинете [izwinete] - Przepraszam! [P-sh-epra-sh-am] -Sorry [When you hook a stranger up to ask for directions]

The longest words

The longest word in Bulgarian unofficially is "Непротивоконституционствувателствувайте!", and it's mean "Do not act against the Constitution!" The word has 39 letters!

The longest word in Polish is: "konstantynopolitańczykowianeczkówna " and it's mean the unmarried daughter of an inhabitant of Constantinople; the word is considered a joke rather than a real existing and used the word.

Additionally, the Bulgarian language doesn't have grammatical cases. The Polish language has 7 of them! What are these grammatical cases? Each individual case corresponds to one variety of noun. However, this variety depends on the context of the whole sentence, so these cases seem incomprehensible to people in Western Europe as well as to Bulgarians. Additionally, grammar, whether Bulgarian or Polish, is filled with many exceptions. If you would like to delve into this subject, I recommend that you first learn the language without going into all these rules and speaking incorrectly, because Poles are able to understand a person who does not use cases and does not know all the grammatical exceptions, so you have nothing to worry about!

Interslavic language

Do you not have the desire to learn all Slavic languages, including Bulgarian and Polish? I have a simple solution for this, and that is to learn the Interslavic language, a language that every Slavic can understand, no matter where you go! It is easier to learn than Polish and more universal. It is a young language, constantly being improved.

By Ratego, Apiya (original uploader as well) - File:Slovianski flag.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17142350

The language is so interesting that, when I tried to read the text myself, I understood an astonishing amount of it, completely without learning it beforehand. This is precisely the main task of this language, so that Slavs, without knowing it, can understand it. If you are a Slav, you should try to read it:

In the Latin alphabet:

Medžuslovjansky jest jezyk, ktory Slovjani raznyh narodnostij koristajut, da by komunikovali jedin s drugym. To jest možno, ibo slovjanske jezyky sut shodna i srodna grupa. Znanje jednogo jezyka obyčno jest dostatočno, da by imělo se priblizno razuměnje o čem jest tekst na kojem-nebud drugom slovjanskom jezyku. Hvala stolětjam blizkogo susědstva Slovjani dobro znajut, kako dogovoriti se s drugymi Slovjanami s pomočju prostyh, improvizovanyh narěčij.

In the Cyrillic alphabet:

Меджусловјанскы јест језык, кторы Словјани разных народностиј користајут, да бы комуниковали једин с другым. То јест можно, ибо словјанске језыкы сут сходна и сродна група. Знанје једного језыка обычно јест достаточно, да бы имєло се приблизно разумєнје о чем јест текст на којем-небуд другом словјанском језыку. Хвала столєтјам близкого сусєдства Словјани добро знајут, како договорити се с другыми Словјанами с помочју простых, импровизованых нарєчиј.

English translation:

Interslavic is a language used by Slavs of different nationalities for communication among themselves. This is made possible by the fact that the Slavic languages are a relatively coherent family: knowing one of them is usually sufficient to get a rough idea of what a text in any other Slavic language is about. Throughout the centuries, Slavs have learned to talk to their neighbours by means of simple, improvised language forms.

If you want more information about this very interesting language you have to visit this site:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interslavic_language

On this website, there is everything you need to learn this language. I assure you, as a Pole, it is a language that other words understand, and I think that other words understand. It is an ideal language for travelling around Slavic nations on holiday. In addition, learning Cyrillic can make it much easier to read the language, as if this alphabet is typically Slavic.

I leave you with this language, without developing this subject too much for you to check for yourself. The authors of this language want it not to be too much Russian, but to consist of as many Slavic languages as possible, so that no nation feels harmed. This is a joint initiative of many linguists from many Slavic nations and they very much want this language to spread, because it really works! Meanwhile, have a nice day with Interslavonic!

The articles "Bulgaria versus Poland" are created by Kacper as part of his personal project. He is a participant of the ESCAPE: European Solidarity Corps Active Participation and Education project co-funded by the Bulgarian National Agency of Erasmus+ Program Human Resource Development Center.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_alphabet

https://lingvo.info/en/lingvopedia/polish

https://lingvo.info/en/lingvopedia/bulgarian

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