Language/Bulgarian/Pronunciation/Affricates

Affricates in Bulgarian

The Bulgarian sound system includes six affricated stops (complex consonants consisting of a brief stop followed by a fricative): alveo-dental ц (=[т с]) and дз (=[д з]), with palatalized counterparts ц’ (=[т’ с’]) and дз’ (=[д’ з’]), and palatal ч (=[т ш]) and дж (=[д ж]).

The voiceless affricates occur in many native words inherited from Common Slavic (e.g. цена ‘price’, час ‘hour’) and this is reflected in the existence of Cyrillic letters to represent them.

The voiced affricates occur primarily in more recent borrowings from other languages and in onomatopoeic words and are spelled with digraphs (e.g. джин ‘gin’, джаз ‘jazz’, дзън-дзън ‘ting-a-ling’).

Sources

http://www.seelrc.org:8080/grammar/pdf/stand_alone_bulgarian.pdf

Other Lessons

• Alphabet and Pronunciation
• Palatalization
• Voicing