Bulgarian alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet was originally developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th – 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School.

Although Bulgarian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, some letter shapes in Bulgaria were made to look more 'Latin' in the 20th century[4] (see the pictures on the right in the article), however they are rarely used today and most typefaces do not support them.

These letters are ч (ch), ш (sh), щ (sht), ю (yu), and я (ya).

Ѝ is not considered a separate letter but rather a special form of И. Bulgarian is usually described as having a phonemic orthography, meaning that words are spelt the way they are pronounced.

Examples include: The computer-related neologisms are often used interchangeably with traditional Bulgarian words, e.g. 'download' and 'upload' can be simply свалям and качвам (svalyam and kachvam – 'to bring down' and 'to put up').

This is done for several reasons, including – Brand names are also often not transcribed: WikiLeaks, YouTube, Skype – as opposed to Уикиликс, Ю-Тюб, Скайп.

Example sentences are given, all containing names of American IT companies: Yahoo, Microsoft, YouTube, PayPal, Facebook.

A modern form of the Bulgarian alphabet, derived from the cursive forms of the letters
Differences from other Cyrillic alphabets: alternate variants of lowercase Cyrillic letters: Б/б, Д/д, Г/г, И/и, П/п, Т/т, Ш/ш.
Default Belarusian/Russian/Ukrainian forms on the left.
Alternate Bulgarian (Western) upright forms in the middle.
Alternate Serbian/Macedonian (Southern) italic forms on the right.

See also:
The early-20th-century Bulgarian typeface (top) is that of modern Russian. The contemporary Bulgarian typeface (bottom) is more distinctive.
Cyrillic Script Monument at the Bulgarian base in Antarctica