Bulgarian alphabet Bulgarian alphabet The Bulgarian alphabet is used to write the Bulgarian language. In AD 886, the Bulgarian Empire introduced the Glagolitic alphabet, devised by Saints Cyril and Methodius in the 850s. The Glagolitic alphabet was gradually superseded in later centuries by the Cyrillic script, developed around the Preslav Literary School, Bulgaria at the beginning of the 10th century. Several Cyrillic alphabets with 28 to 44 letters were used in the early and middle 19th century during the efforts on the codification of Modern Bulgarian until an alphabet with 32 letters, proposed by Marin Drinov, gained prominence in the 1870s: it
Glagolitic script By the time of the devastating Italianization movements under Fascist Italy in the early 20th century, numerous independent events had already greatly reduced the area of the liturgical use of Glagolitic. The tradition that the alphabet was designed by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius has not been universally accepted. A less common belief, contradicting allochthonic Slovene origin, was that the Glagolitic was created or used in the 4th century by St. Jerome (Latin: "Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus"), hence the alphabet is sometimes named Hieronymian. It is also acrophonically called azbuki from the names of its first two letters in Bulgaria, on