Bulgaria is home to one of Europe’s most ancient civilizations, as well as some of its most beautiful natural landmarks. The country’s national symbols include the flag, the Coat of Arms and the National anthem. The national language is bulgarian, which is characterized by a large number of loanwords from other languages, especially Latin and Greek. It also contains many words of Turkic origin, most of which entered the Bulgarian vocabulary via Romanian and Aromanian during the period of the Ottoman Empire.
The phonology of bulgarian is similar to the phonologies of other South Slavic languages. It is characterised by a relatively large degree of allophonic palatalization (especially /e/ and /o/) and by a significant vowel reduction, which leads to a loss of contrasts in the middle of the syllable. It also lacks the palatal approximation found in serbo-croatian, and possesses a remarkably complex system of evidential marking, which distinguishes between witnessed and several kinds of non-witnessed information.
Bulgarian, like most Slavic languages, has a four-mood verb system – indicative, imperative, subjunctive and conditional. However, in practice, most Bulgarian linguists usually exclude the subjunctive and conditional from the list of moods, treating them as grammatical morphosyntactic constructs rather than as separate moods.
The adjective system in bulgarian is quite complex and includes a number of formations which are not present in other Slavic languages, most notably the perfective. In some cases, the perfective forms of some nouns are identical to their imperfective and transitive counterparts. There are also a number of other grammatical constructions, which vary depending on the particular tense and aspect.
In the case of verbs, there are two grammatical positions in time – the aorist and the perfective – which combine with aspect and mood to produce a number of formations. This results in a total of more than 40 tenses in the Bulgarian language, as opposed to the three or four tenses found in most other Slavic languages.
Although the majority of Bulgarians are Orthodox Christians, it is a secular society in which religious expressions are freely expressed. The main symbols of the state are the national flag and the Coat of Arms, which depicts a rampant golden lion. The flag symbolises strength and power. The coat of arms demonstrates the unity of the people and the nation, through all the wars, revolutions and upheavals of the past.
During their travels, tourists should keep in mind that bribery is still a problem in the country and that they should avoid leaving their belongings unattended. They should also be aware of the high risk of heat stroke in summer, especially in Sofia and beach areas, and take precautions to prevent sunburn.
In informal conversations, Bulgarians use a variety of expressive particles to emphasise certain aspects of the message and to add nuance. For example, kazhi mi, be means “tell me”, kaza li is ironic and derisive, while taka li sarbov