Reforms of Bulgarian orthography

Until the 19th century, Bulgarian was predominantly a spoken language, with no standardized written form of the vernacular dialects.

The early Cyrillic alphabet from the 9th century, developed in the First Bulgarian Empire, contained 44 letters for 44 sounds.

However, informally, most would instead write with Russian rules (adapted to suit Bulgarian), such as о and е for etymological ъ and ь or і for /i/ before vowels (for example, "Болгарія" instead of modern "България").

However, by the 1870's, the two schools were falling out of fashion, being seen as too conservative by keeping archaic letters like ы and і, both pronounced as /i/.

Many people, such as Lyuben Karavelov, would write in their own personal orthographies, with changes depending on the author's preference.

It was defined by the following characteristics: Drinov's spelling system would play an important role after the liberation of Bulgaria, and many of its innovations can be seen in the modern language today.

The then-Minister of Enlightenment, Georgi Zhivkov, would appoint a commission to solve the problem of the orthography.

In 1923, under the prime ministership of Aleksandar Stamboliyski, Stoyan Omarchevski would form another commission on reforming the Bulgarian spelling.

The new communist government, the Fatherland Front ("Отечествен фронт"), would create a new spelling, less radical than the one of Omarchevski.