This article discusses the phonological system of Standard Bulgarian. Most scholars agree that contemporary Bulgarian has 45 phonemes but different authors place the real number of Bulgarian phonemes between 42 and 47, depending on whether one includes or excludes phonemes which appear primarily only in borrowed foreign words.
Vowels[]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | и /i/ | у /u/, [o] | |
| Mid | е /ɛ/ | ъ /ɤ/, [ɐ][1] | о /ɔ/, [o] |
| Low | а /a/, [ɐ] |
Consonants[]
Bulgarian has a total of 35 consonant phonemes (see table below). Three additional phonemes can also be found ([xʲ], [d͡z], and [d͡zʲ]), but only in foreign proper names such as Хюстън /xʲustɤn/ ('Houston'), Дзержински /d͡zɛrʒinski/ ('Dzerzhinsky'), and Ядзя /jad͡zʲa/, ('Jadzia'). They are, however, normally not considered part of the phonetic inventory of the Bulgarian language. The Bulgarian obstruent consonants are divided into 12 pairs of voiced and voiceless consonants. The only obstruent without a counterpart is the voiceless velar fricative /x/. The voicing contrast is neutralized in word-final position, where all obstruents are voiceless, at least with regard to the official orthoepy of the contemporary Bulgarian spoken language (word-final devoicing is a common feature in Slavic languages); this neutralization is, however, not reflected in the spelling.
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Dental/ Alveolar |
Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | hard | m | (ɱ) | n | (ŋ) | ||
| soft | mʲ | ɲ | |||||
| Plosive | hard | p b | t d | k ɡ | |||
| soft | pʲ bʲ | tʲ dʲ | c ɟ | ||||
| Affricate | hard | t͡s (d͡z) | t͡ʃ d͡ʒ | ||||
| soft | t͡sʲ (d͡zʲ) | ||||||
| Fricative | hard | f v | s z | ʃ ʒ | x, (ɣ) | ||
| soft | fʲ vʲ | sʲ zʲ | (xʲ) | ||||
| Trill | hard | r | |||||
| soft | rʲ | ||||||
| Approximant | hard | (w) | |||||
| soft | j | ||||||
| Lateral | hard | ɫ (l) | |||||
| soft | ʎ | ||||||
References[]
- ↑ Sometimes transcribed as /ə/.