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Why do Bulgarians use the French word "Merci"

Why do Bulgarians use the French word "Merci"

Bulgarian is a language that puzzles foreigners, especially when they try to decipher the Cyrillic alphabet on street signs. Most of the words sound strange, especially if you haven't studied another Slavic language like Russian or Serbian, and only occasionally do you hear something familiar, like French merci for "thank you" or Italian ciao for "goodbye" .

It's not that Bulgarians don't know the word "thank you" . They use the word "thank you" to express gratitude.and they use it together with the French variant, with some variations of its meaning. If you spend a little more time in the country, you will notice that the French equivalent can be heard very often. To understand why Bulgarians use the French word for gratitude so often, you have to go a little deeper into history.

Bulgaria freed itself from five years of Ottoman rule in 1879. As a young country that had been part of an eastern state for so long, it sought to create its own independent image on the world stage and be proud of its “Europeanness”. Thus, a strong tendency to deny everything that was influenced by the Ottoman era, from clothing to language, gripped the country. This was the time when the Bulgarians began to wear European clothes (as opposed to the oriental costumes they used to wear), furnish their homes with Viennese wardrobes, tables and chairs, and look for new words to replace those that existed only in Turkish, which was the main language of that time.

One of the biggest European influences in the country then were the French. Many French words have penetrated the Bulgarian language, for example, "madame"and "merci" . The use of French words in conversation was considered a sign of a modern and progressive mind.

Later, the desire to clean up the language forced linguists to work on weeding out offending words. Some of the foreign words were taken out of the language, while others managed to survive for many years, including the word "merci" .

According to the Bulgarian linguist Vladk Murdarov, the modern use of the word "merci" has slight differences from the Bulgarian word "thanks" . "Merci" is usually used when you give thanks for a small favor or something not very significant, while "thanks"suitable when you are very grateful or someone has done you a great favor. In addition, "merci" is used in informal communication, and using it in a formal situation can be considered rude.

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