e "Middle Bulgarian"; it stands midway between
the old ecclesiastical Slavonic and the modern speech.

In the first half of the 16th century the characteristic features of the
modern language became apparent in the literary monuments. These features
undoubtedly displayed themselves at a much earlier period in the oral
speech; but the progress of their development has not yet been completely
investigated. Much light may be thrown on this subject by the examination
of many hitherto little-known manuscripts and by the scientific study of
the folk-songs. In addition to the employment of the article, the loss of
the noun-declensions, and the modification of the nasal vowels above
alluded to, the disappearance in pronunciation of the final vowels
_yer-golem_ and _yer-maluk_, the loss of the infinitive, and the increased
variety of the conjugations, distinguish the modern from the ancient
language. The suffix-article, which is derived from the demonstrative
pronoun, is a feature peculiar to the Bulgarian among Slavonic and to the
Rumanian among Latin languages. This and other points of resemblance
between these remotely related members of the Indo-European group are
shared by the Albanian, probably the representative of the old Illyrian
language, and have consequently been attributed to the influence of the
aboriginal speech of the Peninsula. A demonstrative suffix, however, is
sometimes found in Russian and Polish, and traces of the article in an
embryonic state occur in the "Old Bulgarian" MSS. of the 10th and 11th
centuries. In some Bulgarian dialects it assumes different forms according
to the proximity or remoteness of the object mentioned. Thus _zhena-ta_ is
"the woman"; _zhena-va_ or _zhena-sa_, "the woman close by"; _zhena-na_,
"the woman yonder." In the borderland between the Servian and Bulgarian
nationalities the local use of the article supplies the means of drawing an
ethnological frontier; it is nowhere more marked than in the immediate
neighbourhood of the Servian population, as, for instance, at Dibra and
Prilep. The modern Bulgarian has admitted many foreign elements. It
contains about 2000 Turkish and 1000 Greek words dispersed in the various
dialects; some Persian and Arabic words have entered through the Turkish
medium, and a few Rumanian and Albanian words are found. Most of these are
rejected by the purism of the literary language, which, however, has been
compelled to borrow the phraseology of modern civil