Bulgarian Citizenship Test cheat sheet

Bulgarian uses the Cyrillic alphabet with 30 letters; distinctive letters include ъ (a mid back unrounded vowel), щ (pronounced sht), and ь (soft sign, only before о).

The definite article is a suffix: -ът/-ят (masculine subject), -а/-я (masculine object), -та (feminine), -то (neuter), -те/-та (plural).

Verbs lack an infinitive; dictionary form is the 1st person singular present (чета 'I read'); subordinate clauses use да + present tense.

Bulgarian has no case inflection on nouns but preserves a vocative form (Иване, госпожо) and a renarrative (evidential) mood for reported events.

Stress is free and mobile and is not marked in ordinary writing; it can distinguish meaning (пѐра 'I wash' vs пера̀ 'I do laundry').

The postposed article and the да-construction are the two structures learners most often miss; both appear in every reading passage.

Writing tasks require correct comma use before да-clauses and relative clauses introduced by който/която/което, which agree in gender and number.

The First Bulgarian Empire (681–1018) was founded after Khan Asparuh's victory over Byzantium; it adopted Christianity in 864 under Boris I and reached its height under Simeon I (893–927).

The Preslav and Ohrid literary schools, founded after 886 under Clement and Naum, produced the Cyrillic script tradition; 24 May commemorates the alphabet and culture.

The Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396) began with the Asen brothers' uprising; its capital was Tarnovo, and Ivan Asen II (1218–1241) expanded to the Adriatic, Aegean, and Black Sea.

Bulgaria fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1396; the Tarnovo Patriarchate was abolished and the Bulgarian Church placed under the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

The National Revival (18th–19th c.) combined economic growth, a school movement, and the struggle for an independent church, achieved in 1870 by Ottoman firman.

Paisii Hilendarski's Slavo-Bulgarian History (1762) is conventionally treated as the opening text of the Revival; the April Uprising followed in 1876.

Key Revival figures include Vasil Levski (internal revolutionary network), Hristo Botev (poet and 1876 detachment leader), and Lyuben Karavelov (publicist).

The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 ended with the Treaty of San Stefano (3 March 1878), which created a large Bulgaria; the Congress of Berlin (July 1878) split it into the Principality, Eastern Rumelia, and Macedonia.

The Tarnovo Constitution (1879) established a hereditary monarchy with a single-chamber parliament; Alexander of Battenberg was the first prince.

Unification with Eastern Rumelia (6 September 1885) was followed by victory over Serbia in the Serbo-Bulgarian War; Ferdinand I declared full independence on 22 September 1908.

Bulgaria fought in the Balkan Wars (1912–13) and the First World War on the Central Powers' side; the Treaty of Neuilly (1919) ceded territory and limited the army.

The 1944 coup brought the Fatherland Front to power; a republic was proclaimed in 1946, and the communist era lasted until 10 November 1989, when Todor Zhivkov resigned.

The 1991 Constitution was adopted by the Grand National Assembly; Bulgaria joined NATO in 2004 and the European Union on 1 January 2007.

Bulgaria joined NATO on 29 March 2004 and the European Union on 1 January 2007; it has been a full Schengen member since 31 March 2024.

Bulgaria is a member of the Council of Europe (1992), the UN (1955), the OSCE, the WTO, and the IMF; it is not a eurozone member.

The country joined the EU's Exchange Rate Mechanism II in 2020 as a step toward euro adoption.

Foreign policy priorities are EU and NATO membership, regional cooperation in the Balkans, and relations with neighbors under the 1999 Stability Pact framework.

Bulgaria holds the EU Council presidency on a rotating basis; it held the presidency in the first half of 2018.

The Constitution states that treaties ratified and promulgated become part of domestic law and prevail over conflicting statute.