Romanization of Bulgarian
Encyclopedia
Romanization of Bulgarian is the practice of transliteration
of text in the Bulgarian language
from its conventional Cyrillic
orthography into the Latin alphabet
. Romanization can be used for various purposes, such as rendering of proper names and place names in foreign-language contexts, or for informal writing of Bulgarian in environments where Cyrillic is not easily available. Official use of romanization by Bulgarian authorities is found, for instance, in identity documents and in road signage. Several different standards of transliteration exist, one of which was chosen and made mandatory for common use by the Bulgarian authorities in a law of 2009.
а→a, б→b, в→v, г→g, д→d, е→e, з→z, и→i, к→k, л→l, м→m, н→n, о→o, п→p, р→r, с→s, т→t, ф→f. Differences exist with respect to the following:
was adopted by the Council of Orthography and Transcription of Geographical Names in Sofia in 1972 and subsequently by the UN in 1977. It is identical to that codified in the ISO norm ISO/R 9:1968. This system uses diacritic letters (<č, š, ž>) as well as and ). It was adopted in 1973 as the Bulgarian state standard BDS 1596:1973, which, while no longer used in practice, is formally still valid and yet to be replaced by a new standard conforming to the new Bulgarian practice and legislation.
The second system was a French
-oriented transliteration of personal and place names in the documents issued by the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior for travel abroad, used until 1999.
Systems based on a radically different principle, which avoids diacritics and is optimized for compatibility with English sound-letter correspondences, have come into official use in Bulgaria since the mid-1990s. These systems characteristically use rather than <č, š, ž>, and rather than . One such system was proposed in Danchev et al.'s English Dictionary of Bulgarian Names of 1989. A similar system (differing from the former in the treatment of ъ and у), called the "Streamlined System" by Ivanov (2003) and Gaidarska (1998), was adopted in 1995 for use in Bulgarian-related place names in Antarctica by the Antarctic Place-names Commission of Bulgaria. Another system along similar lines, differing from the Antarctic one only in the treatment of ц ( vs. ), was adopted by the Bulgarian authorities for use in identity documents in 1999; after an amendment in 2000, the official Bulgarian system became identical with that of the Antarctica Commission.
A modification of the system using a diacritic was proposed in the authoritative New Orthographic Dictionary of the Bulgarian Language in 2002, with ъ rendered as ă rather than a. However, that proposal was not adopted for official usage, and failed to become established in popular practice.
An exception rule was introduced by the Bulgarian authorities in 2006, mandating the transliteration of word-final -ия as -ia rather than -iya in given names and geographical names (such as Ilia, Maria and Bulgaria, Sofia, Trakia etc.). In 2009, a law passed by the Bulgarian parliament made this system mandatory for all official use and some types of private publications, expanding also the application of the ia-exception rule to all -ия in word-final position.
The new official Bulgarian system does not allow for unambiguous mapping back into Cyrillic, since unlike most other systems it does not distinguish between ъ and а (both rendered as a). It also does not distinguish between the digraph values of, and the value of the same Roman strings in rendering accidental clusters of separate Cyrillic letters and , as they occur in words like изход (izhod) or схема (shema). A variant of the Streamlined System allowing for unambiguous mapping back into Cyrillic was proposed by Ivanov, Skordev and Dobrev in 2010 to be used in cases when the retrieval of the original Cyrillic forms is essential. However, that would not work for the exception rule which renders e.g. both радиа and радия as radia, студиа and студия as studia etc.
Systems along similar lines to the new official Bulgarian system, though with differences regarding the letters х, ъ, ь, ю and я, have also been in use in the ALA-LC Romanization
scheme of the Library of Congress
, and the BGN/PCGN romanization
of the United States and British governments.
The ISO 9
standard, in its 1995 version, has introduced another romanization system that works with a consistent one-to-one reversible mapping, resorting to rare diacritic combinations such as <â,û,ŝ>.
The archaic Cyrillic letters ѣ and ѫ, which were part of the pre-1945 orthography of Bulgarian, are variously transcribed as ⟨⟩, as ⟨⟩, and as ⟨⟩, respectively, in the ALA/LC, BGN/PCGN and ISO 9 standards.
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
of text in the Bulgarian language
Bulgarian language
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
from its conventional Cyrillic
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
orthography into the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
. Romanization can be used for various purposes, such as rendering of proper names and place names in foreign-language contexts, or for informal writing of Bulgarian in environments where Cyrillic is not easily available. Official use of romanization by Bulgarian authorities is found, for instance, in identity documents and in road signage. Several different standards of transliteration exist, one of which was chosen and made mandatory for common use by the Bulgarian authorities in a law of 2009.
Features
The various romanization systems differ with respect to 12 out of the 30 letters of the modern Bulgarian alphabet. The remaining 18 have constant mappings in all romanization schemes:а→a, б→b, в→v, г→g, д→d, е→e, з→z, и→i, к→k, л→l, м→m, н→n, о→o, п→p, р→r, с→s, т→t, ф→f. Differences exist with respect to the following:
- letters involving the glide sound /j/, where some systems use Latin
and some Latin : й→j/y, ю→ju/yu, я→ja/ya; also ь→’/j/y. - letters denoting palatal/alveolar fricatives and affricates. Here, the choice is mostly between Latin letters with diacriticsDiacriticsdiacritics is a quarterly academic journal established in 1971 at Cornell University and published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Articles serve to review recent literature in the field of literary criticism, and have covered topics in gender studies, political theory, psychoanalysis, queer...
, as used in many Latin-based orthographies of other Slavic languages, and digraphDigraph (orthography)A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
combinations, as used in English: ж→ž/zh, ч→č/ch, ш→š/sh, щ→št/ŝ/sht. Also, Cyrillic x may be rendered as eitheror , and Cyrillic ц as either or . The rendering of щ as <št> or is specific to Bulgarian and differs from the conventions for the East Slavic languages East Slavic languagesThe East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of Slavic languages, currently spoken in Eastern Europe. It is the group with the largest numbers of speakers, far out-numbering the Western and Southern Slavic groups. Current East Slavic languages are Belarusian, Russian,...
, where it is rendered mostly as <šč> or. - the letter ъ, which in Bulgarian (unlike the Russian language, where it is known as the "hard sign") denotes a special schwaSchwaIn linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
-like vowel. This sound, which occurs in the first syllable of the country name Bulgaria (България), is variously rendered as <ă>, <ŭ>, <a> or <u>. Moreover, Cyrillic у, which is mostly rendered as Latin <u>, is sometimes rendered instead asto distinguish it from ъ.
Standards
Three different systems have been adopted officially by Bulgarian authorities at overlapping times. An older system in the tradition of common Slavic scientific transliterationScientific transliteration
Scientific transliteration, variously called academic, linguistic, or scholarly transliteration, is an international system for transliteration of text from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet...
was adopted by the Council of Orthography and Transcription of Geographical Names in Sofia in 1972 and subsequently by the UN in 1977. It is identical to that codified in the ISO norm ISO/R 9:1968. This system uses diacritic letters (<č, š, ž>) as well as
The second system was a French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
-oriented transliteration of personal and place names in the documents issued by the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior for travel abroad, used until 1999.
Systems based on a radically different principle, which avoids diacritics and is optimized for compatibility with English sound-letter correspondences, have come into official use in Bulgaria since the mid-1990s. These systems characteristically use
A modification of the system using a diacritic was proposed in the authoritative New Orthographic Dictionary of the Bulgarian Language in 2002, with ъ rendered as ă rather than a. However, that proposal was not adopted for official usage, and failed to become established in popular practice.
An exception rule was introduced by the Bulgarian authorities in 2006, mandating the transliteration of word-final -ия as -ia rather than -iya in given names and geographical names (such as Ilia, Maria and Bulgaria, Sofia, Trakia etc.). In 2009, a law passed by the Bulgarian parliament made this system mandatory for all official use and some types of private publications, expanding also the application of the ia-exception rule to all -ия in word-final position.
The new official Bulgarian system does not allow for unambiguous mapping back into Cyrillic, since unlike most other systems it does not distinguish between ъ and а (both rendered as a). It also does not distinguish between the digraph values of
Systems along similar lines to the new official Bulgarian system, though with differences regarding the letters х, ъ, ь, ю and я, have also been in use in the ALA-LC Romanization
ALA-LC Romanization
ALA-LC is a set of standards for romanization, or the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin alphabet. The initials stand for American Library Association - Library of Congress....
scheme of the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, and the BGN/PCGN romanization
BGN/PCGN romanization
BGN/PCGN romanization refers to the systems for romanization and Roman-script spelling conventions adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names and the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use .The systems have been approved by the BGN and the PCGN for...
of the United States and British governments.
The ISO 9
ISO 9
The international standard ISO 9 establishes a system for the transliteration into Latin characters of Cyrillic characters constituting the alphabets of many Slavic and some non-Slavic languages....
standard, in its 1995 version, has introduced another romanization system that works with a consistent one-to-one reversible mapping, resorting to rare diacritic combinations such as <â,û,ŝ>.
The archaic Cyrillic letters ѣ and ѫ, which were part of the pre-1945 orthography of Bulgarian, are variously transcribed as ⟨⟩, as ⟨⟩, and as ⟨⟩, respectively, in the ALA/LC, BGN/PCGN and ISO 9 standards.
Comparison table
| Cyrillic | ISO 9 ISO 9 The international standard ISO 9 establishes a system for the transliteration into Latin characters of Cyrillic characters constituting the alphabets of many Slavic and some non-Slavic languages.... (1995) |
Scientific Scientific transliteration Scientific transliteration, variously called academic, linguistic, or scholarly transliteration, is an international system for transliteration of text from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet... ISO 9 (1968) |
ALA/LC ALA-LC Romanization ALA-LC is a set of standards for romanization, or the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin alphabet. The initials stand for American Library Association - Library of Congress.... |
BGN/PCGN BGN/PCGN romanization BGN/PCGN romanization refers to the systems for romanization and Roman-script spelling conventions adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names and the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use .The systems have been approved by the BGN and the PCGN for... |
Danchev Andrey Danchev Andrey Danchev was a Bulgarian linguist, Anglicist and Americanist who worked for the Department of English and American Studies at Sofia University. Danchev was the author of a widely accepted system for the Bulgarian transcription of English names and, together with M. Holman, E. Dimova and M... |
Official (2006) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Identical letters | ||||||
| а | a | |||||
| б | b | |||||
| в | v | |||||
| г | g | |||||
| д | d | |||||
| е | e | |||||
| з | z | |||||
| и | i | |||||
| к | k | |||||
| л | l | |||||
| м | m | |||||
| н | n | |||||
| о | o | |||||
| п | p | |||||
| р | r | |||||
| с | s | |||||
| т | t | |||||
| ф | f | |||||
| Fricative/affricate letters | ||||||
| ж | ž | zh | ||||
| ч | č | ch | ||||
| ш | š | sh | ||||
| щ | ŝ | št | sht | |||
| ц | c | ts | ||||
| х | h | kh | h | |||
| Letters involving glide sound | ||||||
| й | j | ĭ | y | |||
| ю | û | ju | yu | |||
| я | â | ja | ya | |||
| ь | ′ | j | – | ’ | y | |
| Vowel letters | ||||||
| у | u | ou | u | |||
| ъ | ″ | ǎ | ŭ | ŭ | u | a |
| Archaic letters | ||||||
| ě | e, ya | |||||
| ǎ | ŭ | |||||
Romanization sample
Differences in the romanization of the letters "ч", "ж", "я" and "ъ" are underlined.| Bulgarian Cyrillic | United Nations | Official transliteration | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| Всички хора се раждат свободни и равни по достойнство и права. Tе са надарени с разум и съвест и следва да се отнасят помежду си в дух на братство. | Vsički hora se raždat svobodni i ravni po dostojnstvo i prava. Te sa nadareni s razum i sǎvest i sledva da se otnasjat pomeždu si v duh na bratstvo. | Vsichki hora se razhdat svobodni i ravni po dostoynstvo i prava. Te sa nadareni s razum i savest i sledva da se otnasyat pomezhdu si v duh na bratstvo. | All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. |
See also
- Romanisation of MacedonianRomanisation of MacedonianThe Romanization of Macedonian is the transliteration of text in the Macedonian language from the Macedonian Cyrillic alphabet into the Latin alphabet. Romanization can be used for various purposes, such as rendering of proper names in foreign contexts, or for informal writing of Macedonian in...
- Romanization of RussianRomanization of RussianRomanization of the Russian alphabet is the process of transliterating the Russian language from the Cyrillic alphabet into the Latin alphabet...
- Romanization of UkrainianRomanization of UkrainianThe romanization or Latinization of Ukrainian is the representation of the Ukrainian language using Latin letters. Ukrainian is natively written in its own Ukrainian alphabet, a variation of Cyrillic....
External links
- Lingua::Translit PerlPerlPerl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
module and online service covering a variety of writing systems. Transliteration according to several standards including ISO 9ISO 9The international standard ISO 9 establishes a system for the transliteration into Latin characters of Cyrillic characters constituting the alphabets of many Slavic and some non-Slavic languages....
, DIN 1460 and the "Streamlined System" for Bulgarian.