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The 'rudeness' of shifting the stress to the left

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I've removed the following bit from the section on stress as it's way too specific and IMHO has little to do with phonology:

The stress is sometimes placed earlier in the word than it should be for emphasis[citation needed] (this is considered rude) –

  • /ˈɛla/('come here), instead of /ɛˈla/
  • /ˈkaʒi/ ('tell me'), instead of /kaˈʒi/
  • /ˈɔstavi na mira/ ('leave me alone'), instead of /ɔstaˈvi mɛ/

This applies only to the imperative forms of verbs. Stressing these on the first syllable is a feature of western dialects and my gut feeling is that the 'rudeness', if any, comes from the stereotype about speakers of these dialects rather than from anything else. Any thoughts on that? Uanfala (talk) 21:29, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It can be considered rude to talk to somebody in dialect on purpose I guess, but I think you are right otherwise. --V111P (talk) 21:56, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong note about allophones

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The section "Consonants" states in note 7:

"[l] can be analyzed as an allophone of /ɫ/, as it appears only before front vowels. A trend of l-vocalization is emerging among younger native speakers and more often in colloquial speech."

This doesn't make sense. [l] does not appear before front vowels - [ʎ] does. [l] and [ʎ] are certainly not allophones (e.g. луд [lut] vs лют [ʎut]). As stated, the note is false, it is not clear what it is trying to say and there is no source provided. I suggest removing it. Martinkunev (talk) 14:55, 12 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

On the contrary. The sound that occurs before front vowels as in лек is not the same as the one that can occur before non-front vowels as in лют. The sound in лек is [l], whereas [ʎ] can only appear before back vowels as in лют (and even then it is debatable if it is truly a palatal [ʎ] for most speakers, but at least it is palatalised.) The sound in луд is [ɫ], not [l]. The source was Sabev, I think; he describes the facts correctly. Admittedly, the view that you express does roughly correspond to the one traditionally found in Bulgarian linguistics (although the publications usually referenced do not even use the IPA and do not necessarily describe the palatalized consonants as truly palatal), so it should probably be mentioned.--Anonymous44 (talk) 22:53, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Phonology: dz

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The article states that /dz/ only exists in foreign words and is not part of the language inventory.

This is demonstrably wrong, as there are native words with this phoneme - дзифт, дзън, also dialectal дзвер and also when a final ц is voiced. It is rare, but known and any native speaker would recognize it. It also has a designated digraph, дз, which is used specifically for the voiced alveolar sibilant affricate. Petar Petrov Donchev (talk) 08:01, 23 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

All of this is either dialectal or allophonic use. Дзифт is also written as зифт, дзън as зън. Дзвиска, дзак, etc. are purely dialectal words which do not exist in Standard Bulgarian. Actually the only words that can really be argued to exist in CSB are borrowings like камикадзе & дзенбудизъм. For this reason, almost no Western authors accept /dz/ as a phoneme in Bulgarian. VMORO 05:44, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not exactly. Indeed, the sound /dz/ is rarely used. Yet, there are words that have been accepted by the norm with /dz/, not /z/. For example, "скръндза". Also, as Petar Petrov Donchev said, /dz/ can be a voiced /ts/: старец [starets], but старец горд [staredz gort], not [starez gort]. Therefore, /dz/ is not an allophone of /z/, just as /ts/ is not an allophone of /ts/.
91.139.213.126, 10:19, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given its rarity, it may be better to analyze it as a marginal phoneme, rather than throwing it out entirely. Plexus96 (talk) 17:11, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Overzealous discussion of palatalisation

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Someone has edited the article, since I last visited it, to expand on the two schools of thought regarding the phonemicity of palatalised consonants in Bulgarian, and they were very passionate about it. The article is full of irrelevant information and improper style. There was a whole paragraph discussing the atrocities committed by the Red Army in their takeover of Bulgaria at the end of WWII. While those acts were monstrous indeed, they are completely irrelevant to the discussion. It is blatantly implied that the pioneer of the palatal interpretation is misrepresenting the facts due to him being Russian. I believe the entire article about palatalisation is copy-pasted somewhere. I will try to clean up as much as possible, but I am not a phonetician and there is probably a lot of irrelevant information or blatant misinformation I am not going to pick up on. Someone please look into it. Linguist27 (talk) 05:29, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have encountered sources which claim that Bulgarian has, in fact, palatalised consonants. It's also a dialectal thing but they do not appear in the standard language. The question is if half the article must be about that. Whoever edited that could have done a PhD instead if they are so vehement about this topic. Bizko4ito (talk) 19:59, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Recent revert

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My edits (as 2001:BB6:B84C:CF00:4CAE:8D0E:FDE6:9A88) to this page, which consisted of adding IPA and lang tags, wording (e.g. word finally > at word end), and formatting (mainly replacing bulky wikitext with ya and na templates, or avoiding overlinking/italicisation of non Latin script text, etc.), have been reverted. I believe they should be restored. @VMORO 2001:BB6:B84C:CF00:9483:892:F767:BA0F (talk) 12:29, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Palatalisation

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I am a native Bulgarian speaker and I think that palatalisation is presented in a misleading way. Although the current text (08 June 2024) presents both concepts (39- and 22-consonant systems), it favours the wrong 22-consonant system.

Why the 22-consonant system is wrong? Because palatalised (soft) consonants are not combinations of hard consonants with [j]. Such combinations do not exist normally in the Bulgarian language. Yet, every native Bulgarian speaker can distingush between the following words:

лава [лава] (meaning 'lava') with a hard "л" [l];
лява [л'ава] (meaning 'left') with a soft "л" [l'];
лйава [лйава] (no such word) with a hard "л" followed by j [lj].

Combinations of hard consonants with j are rarely found in compound words. For example:

Трансйордания [транс-йор-да-ни-йа] with а hard "с" [s] followed by j in the next syllable.

Compare it with

асансьор [а-сан-с'ор] (meaning 'lift') with a soft "с" [s'] (no j).

These words are pronounced and spelled differently: сйор [сйор] vs. сьор [с'ор].

Indeed, the distinction is stated in the text:

  • Palatal consonants cannot be considered to be formed by their hard counterparts by adding (/j/), as there is a clear auditory difference between pronouncing a soft consonant (as in Russian) and pronouncing a consonant and a glide (as in English). A 2012 comparative study of palatal phonemes in Russian, palatalized phonemes in Bulgarian and CjV clusters in English has deduced that the phonetic and auditory properties of Bulgarian palatals are similar to those in Russian and deviate substantially from the English consonant + glide sequences and that Bulgarian and Russian listeners did not need to wait for formant transitions to identify a consonant as palatal/palatalized unlike English listeners.

But this crucial argument is neglected in the text afterwards. On the contrary, the text is politically biased. The text persuades the reader to believe that the 39-consonant system is supported, even by the Bulgarian Academy of Science, only due to the political influence of the former USSR! Nothing could be more inaccurate. Nowadays (08 June 2024) there is no political influence over Bulgarian science, but BAS still supports the 39-consonant model.

I think that the 39-consonant model should be favored because it describes linguistic facts precisely and is supported by native speakers, incl. BAS.

The false charm of the 22-consonant model is due to the lack of pairs of hard and soft consonants in the majority of the Western languages. This model may also describe the origin of palatalized consonants: perhaps they originated as combinations of hard consonants with j. But their present pronunciation in the Bulgarian language (and in other Slavic languages) is different.

91.139.213.126 (talk) 09:39, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Biased section "consonants"

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The consonant section clearly does not give enough weight to the 39-consonant model while zealously favouring the 22-consonant model. While neither analysis is fringe the article obviously supports one rather than neutrally presenting both — additionally, large amounts of the section not only have a clear political bias, but make many misleading and unsourced claims which border on the conspiratorial.

As such I think it's fitting to add an NPOV warning above this article, taking the last few posts. Please do not remove it without explanation. Plexus96 (talk) 17:50, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree and I have edited the section to remove the biased claims, as they were not adequately sourced.--Anonymous44 (talk) 22:22, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
More specifically, this was original research, formulating a history of the controversy that posited a strong connection with political developments - a history which was not found in any of the cited sources, bur rather was based on the editor's own analysis of different publications and generalisations based on them as well as of their own knowledge of historical events. This is not allowed on Wikipedia. The closest thing to such a history of the debate in the sources was Ignatova-Tzoneva's suggestion that the analysis with palatalised consonants did not exist in Bulgarian linguistics before Stoykov and Andreychin's contributions, so that in some sense the analysis without palatalized consonants is older, but she does not posit any connection of the competing analyses with politics either. As an aside, Ignatova-Tzoneva's interpretation of the sources is inadequate, too - the claims she cites are phonetic descriptions, not claims about phonemics, as phonemic analysis as such barely existed in Bulgarian science before Stoykov's and Andreychin's proposals. (Likewise, the quotes that the Wikipedia section provided as 'rejections' of Trubetzkoy were just phonetic descriptions, not objections to a phonological analysis or proposals of a competing analysis.) Since this is just one article and this description of the history of the matter is not found elsewhere, and since the issue of the relative age of the analyses is hardly of vital importance, I don't think that it needs to be mentioned here either. The section's suggestion that international linguists generally reject the analysis without palatalised consonants was false, too - in fact, it cited Danchev, who, in turn, did cite non-Bulgarian linguists favouring said analysis.--Anonymous44 (talk) 22:43, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]