# Connection between Bulgarian "ъ" and Turkish "ı"



## Kartof

In transcription, the Turkish "ı" and Bulgarian "ъ" are interchangeable. I'm aware that the Bulgarian "ъ" descends from an Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian) vowel with a different pronunciation, but might the Turkish vowel have influenced the pronunciation of the Bulgarian one? Any thoughts are welcome.


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## iobyo

The sounds represented by the letters ‹ь› and ‹ъ› (and, of course, their Glagolitic equivalents) were distinct phonemes up until the 9th century in all Slavic areas (possibly /ɪ/ and /ʊ/, respectively). Only a century later, we can see—on the basis of spelling conventions in manuscripts—that they began merging into a single sound (most probably [ə] with positional variants) in areas where Bulgarian, BCS and Slovene are spoken today. 

So, to answer your question, it's unlikely that this change occurred under the influence of Turkish because it predates the Ottoman conquest of the peninsula; however, it is possible that the presence of similar sounds in Turkish may have had some effect in, let's say, preserving its phonemic status (as with /x/ in the urban dialect of Ohrid and /ə/ in some Eastern Macedonian dialects, for example).


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## Christo Tamarin

Kartof said:


> In transcription, the Turkish "ı" and Bulgarian "ъ" are interchangeable. I'm aware that the Bulgarian "ъ" descends from an Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian) vowel with a different pronunciation, but might the Turkish vowel have influenced the pronunciation of the Bulgarian one? Any thoughts are welcome.


The vowel denoted by the letter "Ъ" did not changed in Standard Bulgarian more than one thousand years. Its pronunciation in OldBulgarian/OldSlavonic was the same as in standard modern Bulgarian. So, it is definitely not influenced by any Turkic language. Rather, it is just an archaism in Bulgarian. 

Anyway, the opinion that in the Ъ-sound were an innovation influenced by Turkish prevailed in the 19-th-century's Bulgaria. Most of Bulgarian scholars being Turcophobes (and Russophiles), that opinion created many troubles in the Bulgarian orthography, still evident.


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## ahvalj

I wonder how one can substantiate the constancy of the Bulgarian pronounciation of "ъ" during the last thousand years. As far as I can judge, we only know that this sound was a plain "u" (or a sound close to that) at the time of the first contacts of Slavs with Greeks, proto-Albanians and proto-Romanians, judging from borrowings to both directions, and then it was becoming more open and more central. The very word "българи" for the Turkic "bulghar" shows that this was still a kind of "u" at the time of the Turkic Bulgarian conquest. 

 Probably, later Turkish borrowings in Bulgarian may give a clue to the time when the sound reached its present quality and started to be used for the Turkish central sound.


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## ahvalj

iobyo said:


> Only a century later, we can see—on the basis of spelling conventions in manuscripts—that they began merging into a single sound (most probably [ə] with positional variants) in areas where Bulgarian, BCS and Slovene are spoken today.


The merger of both yers across most of the Slavic area is a known phenomenon, indeed, but there also are occasional cases in East Slavic when both sounds interchanged (дьбри instead of the etymological дъбри, въдова instead of вьдова), so part of these mergers in early manuscripts may be attributed to the special nature of these vowels after they started to evolve into a more open direction. Interestingly, some speakers of Lithuanian pronounce their short "i" and "u" as rather indistinct, sometimes even schwa-like sounds, mirrorring the initial stages of the Slavic development that took place some 13-12 centuries before.


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## Christo Tamarin

ahvalj said:


> I wonder how one can substantiate the constancy of the Bulgarian pronounciation of "ъ" during the last thousand years. As far as I can judge, we only know that this sound was a plain "u" (or a sound close to that) at the time of the first contacts of Slavs with Greeks, proto-Albanians and proto-Romanians, judging from borrowings to both directions, and then it was becoming more open and more central.
> 
> Probably, later Turkish borrowings in Bulgarian may give a clue to the time when the sound reached its present quality and started to be used for the Turkish central sound.



At the time when the PIE vowel quantity was still relevant for Slavic, the sound Ъ was just a short U. Later, it changed to Ъ having lost just its labialization. At the time of the Bible translation into Slavonic, i.e. OldSlavonic, that sound was already Ъ, the same as in the modern Bulgarian. Let us consider two modern Bulgarian words, ЛУК and ЛЪК. The only difference is the labialization (*roundness*) of the vowel in ЛУК. Hellenophones (and early Romanophones) did not distinguish those Slavic vowels, they both were U (Greek OY) for them. 

Actually, the Ъ sound in the modern Bulgarian has more than one acceptable positions even in a stressed position. We have five similar sounds in the languages in neighbourhood: 

in Bulgarian: Mid_back_unrounded_vowel
in Albanian: Mid-central_vowel
in Romanian: Mid-central_vowel
in Romanian: Close_central_unrounded_vowel
in Turkish: Close_back_unrounded_vowel
Note_1: Bulgarians cannot distinguish them. Whichever of those implementations of the Ъ sound being used, no accent will be noticed for the speaker. 

Note_2: Any of those implementations of the Ъ sound was probably possible for the Ъ sound in OldSlavonic across its dialects. In protoChech and protoPolish, Ъ merged into Ь and went another way.

Note_3: In Turkish and Greek and all over Slavonic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_back_rounded_vowel: this is U in ЛУК. The main difference with Ъ: Ъ is unrounded (de-labialized).

Note_4: Bulgarians now do not distinguish the two Romanian vowels mentioned above. (By the way, some native Romanians do not either.) However, probably, some centuries ago, Bulgarian also had two similar sounds, Ъ and Ѫ (from a former nasal) which later merged.

Note_5: This is A: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_central_unrounded_vowel. In SerboCroatian, the OldSlavonic Ъ merged into A. 

Note_6: This is O: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid_back_rounded_vowel. In Russian, the OldSlavonic Ъ merged into O. 

Note_7: In Bulgarian, the OldSlavonic Ъ has been preserved as un-open (mid or close), un-front (back or cental), and unrounded.

Note_8: What about the OldSlavonic Ь sound? Please consider Close-mid_front_rounded_vowel. Like Ъ and И/I (the short I was its predecessor), it was un-open (i.e. close). Like И/I (the predecessor) and in contrast to Ъ, Ь was front. Roundness did not matter, probably. Nowever, we have to add anothere thing: de-labialized (like Ъ, by the way).

Note_9: 


ahvalj said:


> The very word "българи" for the Turkic "bulghar" shows that this was still a kind of "u" at the time of the Turkic Bulgarian conquest.


 Actually, this is just mythology.


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## ahvalj

Could you please explain which reasons you have to believe that 1000 years ago that letter was used for basically the same sound as in the modern Bulgarian? I see no way to deduce the quality of "ъ" in the language of that period. It may have been already middle or still back, or may have varied across dialects, we simply don't know. By the way, Macedonian mostly has "о" in the place of "ъ", like in East Slavic, so at least in a part of the East Balkan area the sound "ъ" never lost the labialization.

As to the origin of the Slavic sound. This is the first time ever I encounter a person that has doubts about its nature. You seem to believe that the shift from "u" to a more open quality had occurred much earlier, before the Slavic invasion to the Balkans. But the problem is that this correspondence is attested in the middle 1st millenium borrowings from and to *all* the contacting languages, including Baltic and Finnic in the north, Germanic in the north and west, Romance in Illyria, Turkic in the south east. The East Slavs called their Turkic neighbors "търци", which is beautifully explained if that word was first borrowed when the future "ъ" was still a closed labial vowel used to substitute the Turkic "ü" in "türk".

When speaking about the Balkanic schwa vowels, it is important to remember that in cases of Sprachbunds there usually is no exact correspondence between phenomena in all involved languages: contacting languages more often share the principle, whereas the realizations may differ significantly. There is a fact that most languages of that area (except Greek, as far as I understand) share a kind of middle indistinct vowel. It is also a fact that the origin of it is different in each language (well, in Romanian and Albanian they are closer in origin). The Turkish "ı" stands apart in that it is a primary vowel that existed still in the Common Turkic and morphophonemically is a back correspondence of "i". The question is not that Turkish has induced the origin of that middle vowel, which is not so, but whether the exact pronunciation of it was somehow leveled in all the contacting languages, since for many generations there was a large population that spoke Turkish alongside one or several other East Balkanic languages.

What's wrong with "българи"?


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## ahvalj

For illustrations of predecessors of the Slavic yers in the borrowings of the middle first millennium see e. g. Shevelov 1964 (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_7IkEzr9hyJYUZ1ck5vdWE2Q1U/edit?usp=sharing), pp. 436–439.
Update: also on pp. 482–483 (i/uS groups).


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