More Odds and Ends: Misconceptions About the Cyrillic Alphabet, Bagpipes, and Bulgarian Geography

This old T-shirt, which reads "Koprishvitsa 2005" was one of the first items I received in the mail from Bulgaria, along with a CD of songs by Kostadine Gugov. (I have never been to the Koprishvitsa festival, which is one of the places on my bucket list.) I got it back in the days when the website, http://balkanfolk.com/ gave a monthly prize in a drawing that the site used to have. In order to enter it, you had to vote on your favorite Bulgarian folk song.

The Cyrillic lettering aroused my daughter's curiosity, since she had taken Russian in elementary school. So she asked me:

"Is that the Russian alphabet?"

I explained to her that it wasn't Russian but Bulgarian.

"It's Russian."

"It's the Cyrillic alphabet. It's used both in Bulgaria and Russia." (there are other countries that use it too, but I wasn't going to get into that.)

"Oh." She had a bemused and confused look on her face. She still didn't get it. So much for explaining азбука (azbuka) to my daughter.

From what I've seen Americans don't see much of the Cyrillic alphabet except in old spy movies which took place in the former Soviet Union, which is why they automatically associate Cyrillic with Russian.

People are often surprised when they first hear Bulgarian folk music played on the bagpipe. In the States, bagpipes are associated with Scotland, men wearing kilts, parades, and sometimes funerals.



In this commercial, men play a Bulgarian folk tune on Scottish bagpipes. This is a cleverly crafted ad for rakia (brandy).
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The Bulgarian bagpipe (gaida) is a totally different species from the Scottish. It's made from the stomach of a goat or sheep which gives it a distinctive sound. Although Scots have been known to dance to bagpipe music, Bulgarians sing as well as dance along to it. In this case it's the entire village, and there's a surprising display of firepower near the end.



Another question I've been asked is if Bulgaria has a seacost. Americans, in general, know little of European geography unless they've actually traveled around the Continent.

I lived in Germany for four years, so ignorance of geography was not an option, especially when guiding my husband with the map (yes, we actually used those in the days before the GPS!) And we did sometimes get lost!

Bulgaria not only has a seacoast, it is a very popular vacation spot for Western Europeans, especially those from cooler, rainier climes like Germany and Holland. The North Sea is too cold (even in summer) and the main attraction of the Black Sea towns, so I've been told, is the endless party, especially for the under 30 crowd. Then of course, there's the beach.



Judging from the travel ads I've received in the mail, Bulgaria is not a very popular tourist destination in the United States (except for people involved in folk music, who see visiting this country as a pilgrimage of sorts.) Friends of mine who actually been there have told me their visit was religious experience of the musical kind, especially that aforementioned Koprishvitsa festival.

The problem with a tourist destination becoming popular is that it loses the local flavor. I'm for traveling off the beaten path, which I was able to do when I lived in Germany; living in a foreign country is a lot different than visiting during a short vacation.

Maybe it's a good thing Bulgaria isn't infested with tourists from the United States :) Otherwise the entire country would resemble Sunny Beach.

If you enjoyed this you may also like:

The Bagpipe and Bulgarian Folk Music (it's an instrument some people love to hate)

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2010/06/bagpipe-and-bulgarian-folk-music.html

The Cyrillic Alphabet: Cracking the Code (have you ever wondered is there is such as thing as Cyrillic alphabet soup?

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2011/05/cyrillic-alphabet-cracking-code-and.html

Listening to Bulgarian folk music can induce altered states in susceptible people.

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-bulgarian-folk-music-induces.html


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The Cyrillic Alphabet: cracking the code, and pondering why there is no such thing as Cyrillic Alphabet Soup....

(Saints Cyril and Methodius, photo from Wikipedia)

One afternoon one of my daughters came home from class, and I was sitting at my usual spot, in front of the computer.

What really puzzled her was that I had a webpage from Radio Bulgaria on the screen. It was not in English.

“Mom, can you read the acrylic alphabet?"

That malapropism was so cute, although it didn't come from a child, but from an intelligent young woman who just completed her third year in college.

“Marty, I can pick out a word here and there, but if I really want to read this I have to use Google Translate. It translates entire webpages into English (from over 50 different languages, although sometimes something can be lost in translation along the way). And by the way, did you mean the Cyrillic alphabet? I remember you guys learning that in elementary school."

When my daughters started school our town had a large influx of Russian immigrants, and their school offered, as part of the curriculum, classes in spoken and written Russian. I picked up a little Russian and a few words in the Cyrillic alphabet during this time, which helped me with Bulgarian later on.

My daughters have long since forgotten what they learned, and Marty, I remember, had a lot trouble with the “acrylic" alphabet." If you don't use it, you lose it.

I was always fascinated by the Cyrillic alphabet. Two brothers from Greece, Cyril and Methodius, devised a writing system based on the Greek alphabet during their missionary work in Slavic lands. Disciples of Cyril and Methodius, one of whom was St. Clement of Ohrid, created what is now the Cyrillic alphabet, named, of course, after St. Cyril.

Although most people associate the Cyrillic alphabet with Russia, Bulgaria was the first country to adopt it, and it is now one of the official alphabets of the European Union, along with the Roman and the Greek.

In Bulgaria, the Cyrillic Alphabet, or azbuka, has its own holiday on May 24, known as "Bulgarian Education and Culture and Slavonic Literature Day." There is even a song about it:



Although I can recognize a number of words in Cyrillic, and can understand a few words of Bulgarian, this alphabet is still very much a mystery to me. I still have trouble cracking the code, and I don't know how many times I've resorted to Google Translate to decipher Bulgarian web pages.

According to my mom, I taught myself how to read before I started school, and by the time I entered the classroom, I was already ahead of the other kids. I found school boring since a lot of what was taught was stuff I already knew, and I had a knack for getting into mischief.

By the time I was in 6th grade, passing notes to my friends got me into trouble on many occasions. Since part of the problem with the teacher was her ability to read the notes, I invented a code, with a symbol corresponding for each letter of the alphabet, gave my friends each a copy, and we committed it to memory. From then on we were able to write notes that the teacher found impossible to read......

Back in the day, I probably could have learned Russian, or Bulgarian, or any language with a different alphabet, but they weren't taught at my school and I didn't plan to work in the CIA, where I'm sure they had classes in Russian for those considering a career in espionage.

As for the "acrylic" alphabet, for the most part it's still "Greek" to me, and I'm a big fan of Google Translate.

For more on "lost in translation" read my post on Bulgarian proverbs, a humorous take on what happens when folk sayings are translated from Bulgarian to English:

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2010/09/sometimes-lost-in-translation-bulgarian.html

The webpage for Google Translate can be found here:

http://translate.google.com/#

If you're interested, you can read about the history of the Cyrillic alphabet on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_alphabet

And a final thought: Has anyone ever come up with the idea of Cyrillic alphabet soup?


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.