Bulgarian Language and Professional Communication
Concepts to master
Official drafting requires orthographic accuracy (use of ъ and ь, the rules on ьо, the spelling of prefixes and the hyphenation of compounds), grammatical agreement of the definite article (the postpositive член), correct use of the renarrative mood (преизказно наклонение) in reported speech, and the vocative form in address. Learn punctuation: the comma before subordinate clauses, the rules on dashes and quotation marks, and the writing of numerals, dates and abbreviations. Style matters: official documents should be impersonal, precise, and free of tautology, pleonasm and foreign words with Bulgarian equivalents. Know the structure of an official letter, a report, a protocol and a decision: addressee, subject, reference number, body, signature block, annexes. Editing involves removing ambiguity, replacing nominalisations with verbs, and ensuring consistent terminology.
Traps
Examiners test the definite article on multi-word phrases, the renarrative forms in witness statements, the correct abbreviation of institution names, and the comma before a relative clause. Watch for pleonasms such as "съвместно сътрудничество" and for the misuse of the numeral "двама/две".
Worked example
In "Заповедта се съобщи на служителя", the article is correct because the noun is definite and masculine; but in a protocol you write "присъстваха двама служители", not "два служителя", because the masculine personal numeral is required.
Rule of thumb
Read the sentence aloud; if a word can be deleted without loss of meaning, delete it.