HOME  |  BULGARIA IN EU - LINGUISTIC ACCESSION?

When Bulgaria becomes the 26th member state of the EU the union will get not just a new member, but a new alphabet. Once Bulgaria becomes a full member of the EU, all important documents will have to be published in Bulgarian as well.

Bulgaria will be the second EU country, after Greece, to use a non-Latin alphabet and the first to use Cyrillic, which originated in the medieval Bulgarian Empire.

The EU now has 20 official languages. The forthcoming accession of Bulgaria and Romania and the introduction of Irish as an official language on 1 January 2007 will raise this number to 23, but Bulgaria is the only country not to use the Latin or Greek alphabets.

Bulgaria has embarked on several projects to facilitate its linguistic accession to the EU. The Bulgarian Ministry of State Administration and Administrative Reform has launched a project called "Comprehensible Bulgaria," part of which is the development of a computer system for the transliteration of Bulgarian names into Latin characters.

The software, developed by linguists at the Bulgarian Academy of Science, aims to create a unified transliteration system to end the use of previous systems with their ambiguities. The subtleties involved in creating a unified system that also allows for exceptions based on habit or practicalities is best illustrated by the name of the country. In principle, the country should be spelled "Balgariya," its capital "Sofiya." But it is evident that this would find few followers outside the country, which will therefore continue to be "Bulgaria" in the Latin script, with its capital "Sofia."

Bulgaria is also replacing road signs with new ones featuring both Cyrillic and Latin letters. This is of paramount importance for the further development of Bulgaria's top-priority industry - tourism. The current Cyrillic signs - gobbledygook for most foreign visitors - are seen as a major impediment to luring tourists off the main roads. Replacing them won't come cheap, however: in Sofia alone, about 1.5 million street and building signs will have to be changed, according to municipal officials.

The Bulgarian Culture Ministry has also announced plans to create a new Cyrillic font to be used as a standard in public administration, European institutions, and the country's media once Bulgaria enters the EU.

As part of the broader Bulgarian agenda to promote Cyrillic ahead of the country's entry into the EU, the national air carrier Bulgaria Air decorated its planes with letters from the Cyrillic alphabet and provided its foreign passengers with an amusing game introducing the letters.

Regardless of any technical difficulties and cultural challenges the Bulgarian language may encounter on its European road, the Cyrillic alphabet does not seem to be under threat.