In [this comment thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/10ud8rj/comment/j7bkhwu/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), someone who implicitly purports to be Bulgarian insists that the way the parent post depicts the Bulgarian lowercase forms of Cyrillic letters as incorrect (specifically that they’re using the **Russian** typography), and further claims that Bulgarian script is cursive by default. However, all the searching that I’ve done gives the impression that neither of those claims is true; cursive is not the default way of writing in the language, at least for the three letters depicted, Bulgarian script conforms with Russian/Eastern script. Yet the guy is insistent that those sources, including the Wikipedia article on the [Bulgarian alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_alphabet), are wrong.

Can an actual Bulgarian please set the record straight, and possibly explain how to reconcile the facts with this (supposedly) Bulgarian user’s claims? Is there regional variation of some sort?

12 comments

  1. https://cyrillic.bgweb.bg/en/

    Current usage of Russian-style letters is mostly for historical reasons:

    > In Bulgaria, the old version of Cyrillic was used until reforms were made at the start of last century and bigger changes took place after 1945 under Soviet influence. Today, with the development of technology and for various other reasons including a lack of awareness of the subject, Russian Cyrillic tends to be widely used in Bulgarian print and online texts.

    Current Bulgarian script improves readability over the Russian script — arguably, and possibly also measurably — but any Bulgarian will be able to read both without any appreciable difference in the comfort of reading.

  2. What the guy is talking about is the so called Bulgarian Cyrillic, which basically a 1950s version of the Cyrillic, invented by Bulgarian designers. It is supposed to be aesthetically nicer and easier to read, compared to the Russian fonts. It is recommended for use by the Bulgarian government and is a sort of sign of a good taste in some circles. I personally prefer it, too.

    However, I won’t say it is “the only way” to write Cyrillic in Bulgaria. People use whatever fonts are available on their device and the Russian ones are still very common.

    You can learn more here — [https://cyrillic.bgweb.bg/en/](https://cyrillic.bgweb.bg/en/)

  3. Those are just different fonts, one got standardised by the russians but I wouldn’t call it less bulgarian because of it

  4. When the printing press was brought to Russia, they used the same upper and lower case letters, despite that Cyrillic is not written like that. And this became the default look for Cyrillic fonts, even in Bulgaria. But in the mid 20th century some Bulgarians created their own fonts that were more similar to handwritten in terms of how the upper and lower case letters were different. For example the Bulgarian Cyrillic “и” looks like “u”, “д” like “g”, “т” is “m” “г” is a reversed “s” and so on.

  7. The issue is in the font and if I’m not mistaken they had an initiative to change it to Bulgarian style in the EU since originally they used the Russian font after Bulgaria joined. Here is a nice table with the differences, pay attention to the lower case letters.

    [https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D1%8A%D0%BB%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D0%BA%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0#/media/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Bulgarian_cyrillic_(bg).svg](https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D1%8A%D0%BB%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D0%BA%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0#/media/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Bulgarian_cyrillic_(bg).svg)

  8. I am not bulgarian (my wife is) but I am a designer with a background in typography and I have looked into this.

    There are effectively two different distinct types of cyrillic fonts used in bulgaria (in newspapers, product packaging, official communications etc.). One is the “russian cyrillic” type, where the lowercase letters look pretty much like the uppercase ones, only smaller. The other one is the “bulgarian cyrillic”, where the lower case letters look completely different, e.g. the “T” looks more like an “m”.

    I wouldn’t make a statement about “wrong” or “right” there, definitely both kinds of types are being used.

    My wife would refer to the “bulgarian cyrillic” fonts as “handwritten”, even when those letters are printed/computer-generated, because the style of the lowercase letters is inspired by how bulgarians would write those letters by hand (cursive).

    For foreigners like me, the “russian style” cyrillic is a lot easier to read. In fact, it was designed to be easier to read, since the russian cyrillic fonts were intended for increasing literacy across the huge sowiet union (as it then was), while the bulgarian cyrillic is more geared towards historical accuracy.

  9. Ignore the “Bulgarian Cyrillic” people. It’s just typography. Both ways are perfectly correct. You are not “supposed” to use only one specific typography. It’s not canonical or official.

  10. Such a thing like “Bulgarian cursive” indeed exists, but it’s not mandatory. Russian typography for Bulgarian language is acceptable and is NOT incorrect.

  11. He’s right. There’s a difference between the 2 alphabets. For letters such as Л. In Bulgarian Cyrillic the letter looks like an upsidedown V but in russian Cyrillic it looks like a П more. There’s several in both alphabets that differ and also some letters they have are missing in our alphabet

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