Ask A Bulgarian

[gay_Aleks]

I take your point. Obviously a majority of the unskilled workers have to graft very hard for a living and often pick up the kind of work us lazy Brits aren't interested in. I'm more than happy for EU migrants to exercise their right to work in the UK and I'm certainly not knocking them.

That's great. Now, if only more of your compatriots embraced this idea..

An interesting idea. I guess a long period of communist rule didn't help matters much either.

I can only really talk about my experiences in one little corner of Bulgaria. Although I enjoyed my time there I never really felt as ease. There just seems to be a tension about that particular place. A lot of that might be down to my own insecurities and paranoias but I have travelled fairly widely and never really experienced that anywhere else.

I've never been to Pirin; in all due fairness, I'm not really a guy who goes around the country to visit it much. I am more stuck up in my hometown, so I can't really tell.

That is one reason I would like to go back and see more of the country and see it in a different season. I could tell by the way every building was heated like a sauna that the Bulgarians of Macedonia are not keen on the cold. I honestly felt like I was melting when I wasn't outside.

I would like to do a road trip and visit Viliko Tarnovo and Plovdiv as well as go back to the Pirin mountains in the spring/summer. What places of interest would you recommend Tolni?

Well, winters, especially in the mountains are always harsh here, so it's good to be heated.

As for road trip, I can give you only general directions, really. For Veliko Turnovo, you must visit Tsarevets and Trapezica. By the way, chances are, once you enter Tsarevets, one or two "historical re-creators" will try to tempt you to put on an armour and get on a horse. I'll just say that it's fun, but it's not exactly how Bulgarian were armoured, at all.
Plovdiv is old. If you like Rome, you'll love Plovdiv. There's a Roman theatre, which occasionally still does some concerts, an Odeon, and even a preserved Roman mansion.
The Pirin mountains in spring/summer will be hitchhiking. I'd guess the best way to enjoy it will be if you climb mt. Vihren, the highest point of Pirin. The view is beautiful.

 

[Takhisis]

Tolne, is there any recommendable Bulgarian music? In any genre, as long as it doesn't involve MLP, please.

 

[gay_Aleks]

That's strange question. Unless you know Bulgarian by a chance, I can't give you any real recommendations.

 

[Takhisis]

Fire away! I hope our previous disagreements on the spelling of the word 'Zajebi' are not an obstacle.

 

[gay_Aleks]

No, but it'd be useless to try listening to something you can't even remotely understand, and I do not hate anyone enough to recommend any Bulgarian bands singing English songs.

 

[Takhisis]

If you checked the Music threads, you'd see that there's simply no time to learn all the languages that songs I've listened to in the past year were sung in.

tl;dr: Shut up and take my money!

 

[gay_Aleks]

Well, sigh. I guess I'll start with Agate. They have some pretty cool songs, plus they're metal.


Link to video.

In glorious low quality. Or, alternatively, it's so awesome it dulls your ears.

 

[Takhisis]

Seriously, why have you been hiding glorious metal music from me? New world is opened to Takhisis. Poster goes to wiki-walk the remainder of this night.

 

[gay_Aleks]

While I do believe that guitar riffs are an universal language and they totally should be, the song is not that influencing until you actually know what they're singing about.

 

[Takhisis]

As Lord Vader once said, leave that to me.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Well, he died in the Death Star, and mainly because he was talking around with his son who he sliced his hand just an episode ago.

Doesn't seem very stable person, you see.

 

[Takhisis]

Now, might I take your attention, and tell you about a post where you made a promise about the history of the Bulgarian language?

 

[gay_Aleks]

Yes, yes I have. This will be a long ride, and most of you will hate me by the, say, second or third paragraph.

Before I actually start, here's a foreword: This relatively true and factual post will begin from 855, as then is when the Slavic alphabet is written. Anything before that is speculation, and to this day, what language the Slavic tribes and the pre-Bulgarians spoke remains unknown, or as I call it "Damned if I know" section. This also will be most likely with a very un-historical tone. Do not use this post as a historical reference. It's purely informative.

Chances are also that this might devolve into a general history lesson about Bulgarian history. Or, into an autobiography of Cyril and Methodius.

You have been warned.


Aanyway. Let's get this on.

In the 850s, khan (soon to be titled knyaz, but that'll come later) Boris I had a problem. He was losing against Byzantium. As you might know, the Byzantines weren't very nice to people who were attacking them, especially if these peoples are unconverted and spent the last 200 years beating back any attempts of Byzantium to reconquer their territories.

In order to preserve his khanate unconquered and his peoples - enslaved by the Orthodox fellows down the border, he had to convert. However, what good if he converts, only to be assimilated by the Greeks or the Latins?

A language had to be created.

This is where the two brothers, Kyril and Methodius step in. They were living in Thessaloniki, or Solun, or Therma for those of you who cannot assimilate information unless it contains at least one reference to antiquity in a sentence. Two sons of a Drungary named Leo. They were rather bright for their time, but how bright is not quite clear, as later authors, especially in Medieval Bulgaria have perhaps exaggerated their abilities. That does not matter.

After receiving great education in some of the most elite schools Byzantium had to offer, they were sent to missions to various places; Kyril, with his knowledge of Arabic and Hebrew, was sent to the Middle East; both of them were sent to Khazaria to prevent Judaism from spreading.

In 862, however, in Constantinople arrived a plea from distant Moravia, to be christened in Orthodoxy (as they didn't exactly enjoy the Franks and their Catholicism). The emperor then decided that Kyril and Methodius would be perfect for that goal, and they were dispatched.

There, they translated the Bible into Glagolic, which is the first written Slavic language. It should be noted however that Glagolic isn't the actual Slavic language. It was solely a building frame. While it was often used in churches, common Slavic language for everyone was created only at the end of the IXth century by his apostles.

Well, that would be for the creation of Bulgarian. Next post would be about the literature and the Golden Age that was briefly sprung, and the resulting events.

 

[Borachio]

Bulgarian is a made-up language? This is a joke, right?

 

[Domen]

Glagolic is an alphabet rather than a language. The language was known as Old Church Slavonic.

It was based on Slavic dialects spoken by those Slavic tribes which lived near Thessaloniki.

A language had to be created. This is where the two brothers, Kyril and Methodius step in.

They did not "create" any language - they made an alphabet based on Slavic dialects spoken near Thessaloniki.

We can say that they standardized or codified the language (made it literary), but we cannot say that they "created" it.

855, as then is when the Slavic alphabet is written.

But not much later also first Slavic texts written in Latin alphabet emerged.

The Freising Manuscripts (from the 900s) is the oldest known text in Old Slovene language:


Link to video.

BTW, the video is titled "Old Slavonic" - suggesting that it is still Common Slavic language - but this is a mistake.

It is already a clearly differentiated Old Slovene, distinct from other Slavic languages, for example Old Church Slavonic.

what language the Slavic tribes and the pre-Bulgarians spoke remains unknown

They spoke Late Common Slavic, which then evolved into Old Bulgarian.

Slavic languages started to differentiate together with Slavic expansion in the late 400s and the early 500s.

 

[Takhisis]

I doubt that the pre-Bulgarians, not being Slavs (probably descended from amalgamated remnants of Huns and other peoples from beyond the Urals) spoke any Slavic tongue at the time.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Bulgarian is a made-up language? This is a joke, right?

Well, not essentially. It's basically the most common Slavic dialects with letters, plus added Greek influence.

 

[Takhisis]

What do you think of the Makedonians? They speak Bulgarian but pronounce ч as ц for some reason, like the Serbs do.

 

[gay_Aleks]

They had a bit too many Latins living nearby and a bit too many nationalists trying to make their language "unique" in the 19th century.

 

[Takhisis]

What's the take on the 1940s-50s idea of unifying all South Slavs into one Yugoslavia? What did Bulgaria's politicians think back then? From what little I've read, the main obstacle was Czar Ioseph's objections.