Romanization of Bulgarian

Romanization of Bulgarian is the transliteration of text in the Bulgarian language from the Cyrillic alphabet into the Latin alphabet. This table lists several transliteration schemes:

The last two letters are found only in older texts, before 1945.

Romanization issues

The romanization of Bulgarian Cyrillic can be done using either of several systems, with none being by far the most dominant and recognizable, and each having disadvantages. Some complex Bulgarian names could be transliterated in up to ten waysFact|date=February 2007, whether using standardized systems or not. For example, the village of Gyueshevo could also be spelt as "Gjueševo" or even "Güeshevo" on road signs. The letters "ц" (that could be either "c", "ts" or "tz") and the schwa "ъ" (whether "a" or "u" or the more accurate diacritic "ă", "â" or "ŭ") are particularly troublesome.

In 2006, a governmental campaign by the Ministry of State Administration and Administrative Reform approved the Streamlined System to be made official for toponyms (in addition to personal names). A [http://transliteration.mdaar.government.bg/ 30,000-entry online database of placenames and personal names] was created to popularize the system and unify the transliteration of Bulgarian. The [http://www.mdaar.government.bg/comprehensible.php 2006 system] is the old [http://www.mvr.bg/Guide/transliteration.htm 2000 system] approved by the Government for transliterating both personal names and toponyms in the Bulgarian ID cards and passports, which had been originally introduced by L.L. Ivanov and first approved as the official 1995 system for the transliteration of Bulgarian toponyms in Antarctica.

The system, however, has certain flaws, the most obvious one being the use of "a" for both Cyrillic "a" (/a/) and "ъ" (IPA|/ɤ/) that could lead to confusion, and makes the original Cyrillic word difficult for non-native speakers to recognize. Another disadvantage can be seen in the use of "zh" and "sh" for "ж" and "ш". For example, a person with no or little knowledge of Bulgarian may not know that a transliterated "i"zh"od" is actually "изход" (that is, it has /zx/, and not IPA|/ʒ/) by only looking at the transliteration. The same applies for words that have "сх" (/sx/), such as "схема" ("sh"ema"; pronounced with /sx/ at the beginning, not IPA|/ʃ/).

The new-old system has found supporters among those who find the pronunciation of diacritics to be largely unknown in the English-speaking world and thus confusing. In addition to taking advantage from the role of English as a global language, the 1995 Bulgarian system avoids the inconvenience of using diacritics in the epoch of electronic communication. It is a fact that in the case of languages with Latin-based orthography employing diacritics, the mass practice of modern electronic communication (e-mail, instant messaging, short message service etc.) generally does not use the alphabets in question but uses their highly corrupted versions stripped of all diacritical marks.Fact|date=February 2007

On the other hand, there are those who feel that Bulgarian, as a South Slavic language, should employ a system that is close to or the same as the ones used by the other languages in the group. Latin scripts or transliteration systems for Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian and Macedonian (the most closely related language) employ a number of diacritical marks. However, recent developments in the romanization of Macedonian alphabet suggest that such commonality is more likely to emerge around the Streamlined System instead. Indeed, the Croatian-based romanization previously used in Republic of Macedonia’s identity documents has recently been replaced by a new diacritics-free romanization system that transliterates Cyrillic letters "ж", "ч" and "ш" in the same way as the Streamlined System does, while keeping the old usage of "c", "j" instead of Streamlined System’s "ts" and "y". [ Z. Georgievski, [http://www.globusmagazin.com.mk/?ItemID=E05814E53750B04B8D30FF5C8EB91A2E How to Romanize the Cyrillic Alphabet] , Globus Weekly # 70, August 19, 2008. (in Macedonian)] [ [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/macedonian.htm Omniglot: Macedonian language, alphabet and pronunciation] ]

Romanization sample

Differences in the romanization of the letters "ч", "ж", "я" and "ъ" are underlined.

See also

* ISO 9
* Romanisation of Macedonian
* Romanization of Russian
* Romanization of Ukrainian

References

* Cite web
url = http://transliteration.eki.ee/pdf/Bulgarian.pdf
title = Transliteration of Non-Roman Scripts
accessdate =
accessmonthday =
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author = Thomas T. Pedersen
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archivedate = A collection of writing systems and transliteration tables. [http://transliteration.eki.ee/ The site] includes PDF reference charts for many languages' transliteration systems.

* Cite web
url = http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/
title = Working Group on Romanization Systems
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author = Thomas T. Pedersen
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publisher = United Nations
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* Cite book
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coauthors = A. Danchev, M. Holman, E. Dimova, M. Savova
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title = An English Dictionary of Bulgarian Names: Spelling and Pronunciation
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year = 1989
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publisher = Nauka i Izkustvo Publishers, Sofia
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pages = pp. 288
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* The [http://apc.mfa.government.bg/topo.htm#lang_spell Official Bulgarian] transliteration scheme as originally proposed by L.L. Ivanov and introduced by the Antarctic Place-names Commission of Bulgaria on 2 March 1995, and subsequently officialized for wider usage by the Bulgarian Government Ordinances #61 of 2 April 1999, #10 of 11 February 2000, and #269 of 3 October 2006.

* The [http://www.mvr.bg/Guide/transliteration.htm Official Bulgarian] transliteration scheme published in the website of the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior.

* Cite web
url = http://members.lycos.co.uk/rre/Romanization.html
title = On the Romanization of Bulgarian and English.
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author = L.L. Ivanov
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year = 2003
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publisher = "Contrastive Linguistics", XXVIII, 2
pages = pp. 109-118
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* Origins of the 1995 Streamlined System: Unofficial use in a

* [http://tools.forret.com/romanize/bulgarian.php Bulgarian Romanization] : tool to convert Cyrillic to Latin alphabet with streamlined/ISO9 and scientific system

Notes