Page:Notes on the Grammar of the Bulgarian language Elias Riggs 1844.pdf/11



ON THE GRAMMAR OF THE BULGARIAN LANGUAGE.

§ 1. The Bulgarian (like the Russian, Servian, Bohemian, Polish etc.) is a dialect of the ancient Slavic. It is spoken throughout the region lying south of the Danube as far as Mt. Haemus, and even beyond it, and from Widdin to the Black Sea. In the large cities, however, Turkish also is spoken.

Its literature is very slender, consisting almost entirely of a few elementary books printed in Bucharest, Belgrade, Buda, Cracow, Constantinople and Smyrna. At the latter place the New Testament was printed in 1840, and in April of the present year (1844) the first number of the monthly magazine entitled Любословие (Phylology) was issued from the same press.

§ 2. The Alphabet consists of 40 letters exclusive of the obsolete ѕ, as follows.