Yat - Bulgarian

Bulgarian

In Bulgarian, the different reflexes of the yat form the so-called yat border (ятова граница), running approximately from Nikopol on the Danube to Solun (Thessaloniki) on the Aegean Sea. The yat border is the most important Bulgarian isogloss. West of that isogloss, old yat is always realized as /ɛ/ (a continuation of the Ekavian Serbian dialects). East of it, the reflexes of yat prototypically alternate between /ja/ or /ʲa/ (in stressed syllables when not followed by a front vowel) and /ɛ/ (in all other cases). After World War II, Literary Bulgarian was based on the pronunciation of the eastern dialects. Some examples of the alternation in the standard language follow:

• mlyako (milk) → mlekar (milkman); mlechen (milky), etc.
• syadam (sit) → sedalka (seat); sedalishte (seat, e.g. of government), etc.
• svyat (world) → svetoven (worldly); svetski (secular), etc.

From the liberation of Bulgaria until 1945, the standard Bulgarian orthography did not reflect this alternation and used the Cyrillic letter yat for both "ya" and "e" in alternating roots. This was regarded as a way to maintain unity between Eastern and Western Bulgarians, as much of what was then seen as Western Bulgarian dialects was under foreign control. In 1947 the letter was removed from the Bulgarian alphabet and the spelling was changed to conform to the Eastern pronunciation.