Indo-European · ISO 639-3 bul · bg
Bulgarian Language български
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language spoken by about 9.0 million people in 6 countries. It is an official language of Bulgaria. It is written in the Cyrillic and Latin scripts.
Where Bulgarian is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Bulgarian
Language family
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Balto-Slavic
- Slavic
- South Slavic
- Eastern South Slavic
- Macedo-Bulgarian
- Bulgarian
Writing system
Cyrillic and Latin scripts
Related languages
About the Bulgarian language
Bulgarian (български) is spoken by about 9.0 million people, which makes it the 136th most spoken language in the world — just behind Bambara (9.0 million) and ahead of Serbian (9.0 million). It belongs to the Indo-European language family and, more precisely, to the Macedo-Bulgarian group within the Balto-Slavic branch.
Where is Bulgarian spoken?
Bulgarian is used in 6 countries. The largest communities live in Bulgaria (6.8 million), Türkiye (353,301), Moldova (338,355), Ukraine (174,742) and Greece (28,244). More than half of the population speaks it in Bulgaria — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Share of the population that speaks Bulgarian: Bulgaria 100% (6.8 million), Türkiye 0.4% (353,301), Moldova 9.4% (338,355), Ukraine 0.5% (174,742), Greece 0.3% (28,244) and Romania <0.1% (6,714).
Bulgarian is an official language in 1 country: Bulgaria.
Writing system and status
Bulgarian is written in the Cyrillic and Latin scripts. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Macedonian, Slovenian, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Czech and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 bg, ISO 639-3 bul.
Frequently asked questions about Bulgarian
How many people speak Bulgarian?
Where is Bulgarian spoken?
In which countries is Bulgarian an official language?
What language family does Bulgarian belong to?
What is Bulgarian called in Bulgarian?
Is Bulgarian an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.