A report on Bulgarian language and Bulgarians

The Thracians, one of the three primary ancestral groups of modern Bulgarians, appeared on the Balkan Peninsula some time before the 12th century BC. The Thracians excelled in metallurgy and gave the Greeks the Orphean and Dionysian cults, but remained tribal and stateless.

Bulgarian is the only language with official status and native for % of the population.

Other Orthodox Christian communities in Serbia include Montenegrins, Romanians, Vlachs, Macedonians and Bulgarians.

Recognised minority languages are: Hungarian, Bosnian, Slovak, Croatian, Albanian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Rusyn, and Macedonian.

Amongst others, the population consisted of Muslims, Bulgarian and Greek speaking Orthodox Christians, Armenians, Georgians, Catholic Ragusans, Jews (Romaniote, Ashkenazi and Sephardi), and Romani people.

The first census carried out in February 1878 by the Russian Army recorded a population of 11,694 inhabitants including 6,560 Bulgarians, 3,538 Jews, 839 Turks and 737 Romani.

Throughout the Middle Ages and Ottoman rule up until the early 20th century the Slavic-speaking population majority in the region of Macedonia were more commonly referred to (both by themselves and outsiders) as Bulgarians.

The closest relative of Macedonian is Bulgarian, followed by Serbo-Croatian.

The Second Bulgarian Empire (Middle Bulgarian: Ц(а)рьство бл(ъ)гарское; Modern Bulgarian: Второ българско царство, Vtorо Balgarskо Tsarstvo) was a medieval Bulgarian state that existed between 1185 and 1396.

The term Old Bulgarian (старобългарски, Altbulgarisch) is the only designation used by Bulgarian-language writers.

Exiled students of the two apostles, mainly Bulgarians (including Clement of Ohrid and Saint Naum), then brought the Glagolitic alphabet to the First Bulgarian Empire.

However, differences soon emerged between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria concerning the national character of the Macedonian Slavs – whereas Bulgarians considered them to be an offshoot of the Bulgarians, Yugoslavia regarded them as an independent nation which had nothing to do whatsoever with the Bulgarians.

The Slavic dialects spoken across Northern Greece belong to the eastern group of South Slavic, comprising Bulgarian and Macedonian, and share all the characteristics that set this group apart from other Slavic languages: existence of a definite article, lack of cases, lack of a verb infinitive, comparative forms of adjectives formed with the prefix по-, future tense formed by the present form of the verb preceded by ще/ќе, and existence of a renarrative mood.

The Bessarabian Bulgarians (бесарабски българи, besarabski bǎlgari, bulgari basarabeni, Болгари Бессарабії, bolháry bessarabiyi) are a Bulgarian minority group of the historical region of Bessarabia, inhabiting parts of present-day Ukraine (Odessa Oblast) and Moldova.

53,178 or 80.99% of ethnic Bulgarians declared Bulgarian language as native (69.23% in urban areas, and 90.55% in rural ones), 2,766 or 4.21% of them declared Romanian language as native (4.91% in urban areas, and 3.64% in rural ones), 9,134 or 13.91% of them declared Russian language as native (25.08% in urban areas, and 4.83% in rural ones), and 584 or 0.89% of them declared another language as native (0.78% in urban areas, and 0.98% in rural ones).

Bulgarian Americans (Американски българи) are Americans of Bulgarian descent.

To Chicago and Back, (Bulgarian:"До Чикаго и назад") by the eminent Bulgarian author Aleko Konstantinov; first published in 1894 mostly concerns attendance at a trade fair, not emigration per se.

Their precise origin has been interpreted differently by Bulgarian, Greek and Turkish historians, but it is generally considered they are descendants of native Eastern Orthodox Bulgarians, and Paulicians who also previously converted to Orthodoxy and Catholic faith, who converted to Islam during the Ottoman rule of the Balkans.

Within Macedonian academia, their language has been regarded as Macedonian, while within Bulgarian academia, their dialect is considered as part of the Bulgarian language.