The

official language An official language is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as, "the language or one of the languages that is accepted by a country's government, is taught in schools, used in the courts of law, etc." Depending on the decree, establishmen ...

Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...

is Bulgarian, which is spoken natively by 85% of the country's population. Other major languages are Turkish (9.1%), and Romani (4.2%) (the two main varieties being Balkan Romani and Vlax Romani). There are smaller numbers of speakers of Armenian, Aromanian, Romanian, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz and Balkan Gagauz, Macedonian and English. Bulgarian Sign Language has an estimated 37,000 signers. Bulgaria ethnic map

2011 Census

At the 2011 Census, the optional question about native language was answered by respondents, or just over 90% of the total population. The majority of the 9.8% who did not answer this question were among the young.

2001 Census

The 2001 census defines an ethnic group as a "community of people, related to each other by origin and language, and close to each other by mode of life and culture"; and one's mother tongue as "the language a person speaks best and usually uses for communication in the family (household)".

Bulgarian

Bulgarian is the country's only official language. It is spoken by the vast majority of the Bulgarian population and used at all levels of society. It is a

Slavic language The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Ear ...

, and its closest relative is Macedonian. Bulgarian is written with

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

, which is also used by Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Serbian and Macedonian.

Minority languages

Turkish The Turks constitute the largest minority group in the country. The Turks in Bulgaria are descendants of Turkic settlers who came from

Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

across the narrows of the

Dardanelles The Dardanelles ( ; ; ), also known as the Strait of Gallipoli (after the Gallipoli peninsula) and in classical antiquity as the Hellespont ( ; ), is a narrow, natural strait and internationally significant waterway in northwestern Turkey th ...

and the

Bosporus The Bosporus or Bosphorus Strait ( ; , colloquially ) is a natural strait and an internationally significant waterway located in Istanbul, Turkey. The Bosporus connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and forms one of the continental bo ...

following the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, as well as Bulgarian converts to Islam who became Turkified during the centuries of Ottoman rule. Roma The Romani constitute the second largest minority group in the country. The Romani in Bulgaria are descendants of Romani nomadic migrants who came from

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

across the narrows of the

and the

, in the late 13th centuryTomova, ''Ethnic Dimensions of poverty in Bulgaria'', p. 15 and following the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, and also during the five centuries of Ottoman rule.Marushiakova et al., ''Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire: a contribution to the history of the Balkans'', p. 26 Other
Other minority languages spoken are Russian, Ukrainian, Armenian, Tatar, Greek, Romanian and Aromanian (the latter two often collectively referred to as "Vlach" in Bulgaria).

Foreign languages

According to a Eurobarometer survey conducted in 2024, English was the most commonly known foreign language in Bulgaria (29% claimed workable knowledge of it), followed by Russian (14%), and German (5%). This is a decrease of 9 points for Russian since the previous survey in 2012. This is because many of the people who learned Russian at school are from an older generation and some are now deceased or as time has elapsed, have forgotten how to speak the language. When asked which two languages, other than their mother tongue, would be the most useful for children to learn in their future, an overwhelming majority of respondents said English (81%), with German coming second (20%), and Russian and Spanish jointly third (7% each).

References

External links

Linguistic situation in Bulgaria
{{Minority languages of Europe