Bulgarian language

Bulgarian
български bǎlgarski
Native to	Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, Kosovo, Republic of Macedonia and among emigrant communities worldwide
Region	Southeastern Europe
Native speakers	9 million (2005–2012)
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic South Slavic Eastern South Slavic Bulgarian
Dialects	Bulgarian dialects
Writing system	Cyrillic (Bulgarian alphabet) Bulgarian Braille Latin (Banat Bulgarian Alphabet) (Banat Bulgarian dialect)
Official status
Official language in	Bulgaria  European Union
Recognised minority language in	Czech Republic  Hungary  Romania  Serbia  Slovakia  Ukraine
Regulated by	Institute for the Bulgarian language at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Институт за български език при Българската академия на науките (БАН))
Language codes
ISO 639-1	bg
ISO 639-2
ISO 639-3
Glottolog	bulg1262
Linguasphere	53-AAA-hb < 53-AAA-h
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Bulgarian ⁱ/bʌlˈɡɛəriən/, /bʊlˈ-/ (Bulgarian: български bǎlgarski, pronounced [ˈbɤɫɡɐrski]) is an Indo-European language, a member of the Southern branch of the Slavic language family. It is the language of the Bulgarians.

Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language (collectively forming the East South Slavic languages), has several characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages: changes include the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite article (see Balkan language area), and the lack of a verb infinitive, but it retains and has further developed the Proto-Slavic verb system. Various evidential verb forms exist to express unwitnessed, retold, and doubtful action.