According to the opinion of the Russian, and especially of the
Bohemian philologians, Bulgaria and the adjacent regions of Macedonia,
are the real home of the Old Slavic language; which was here, as they
suppose, the language of the people in the time of Cyril, who was born
in Thessalonica.[1] No other Slavic dialect however, as Kopitar
remarks, has been so much affected as the Bulgarian by the course of
time and foreign influence, both in its grammatical structure and its
whole character.[2] It has an article, which, as if in order to show
whence it was borrowed, is put _after_ the word it qualifies, like
that of the Walachians and Albanians. Of the seven Slavic cases, only
the nominative and vocative remain to it; all the rest being supplied
by means of prepositions. As Bulgaria has been for centuries the great
thoroughfare of other nations, the Slavic natives have become mixed
with Rumenians, Turco-Tartars, and perhaps Greeks, It is in this way,
that the state of their language may be accounted for.
Up to 1392, when Bulgaria was an independent kingdom,--tributary to
the Greek empire, until the decline of the latter encouraged them to
break the weak tie of vassalage.--their writings were in the Old
Slavic language; and many documents in it are still extant in monastic
libraries.
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