28/01/2016
It's been a long time since I wrote anything here, as an irritating Facebook message keeps reminding me, but today at school I overheard a teacher of Bulgarian expressing her annoyance that some of her students had in the semester exam written 'Прънц Хамлет' when they should have written 'Принц Хамлет'. The word 'принц' is of course a loan-word in Bulgarian, from the English 'prince' or perhaps from the German 'prinz', but assuming the English - Hamlet after all being an English-language work - it uses a sound which the Bulgarian language doesn't have. The sound represented by the letter 'i' in 'prince', or in 'sin', 'bin' or 'Quin' for that matter.
There is the letter and sound 'и' in Bulgarian but this is pronounced 'ee' - so giving 'preence' or 'Queen'. Which is what they do here in Bulgaria with my name - spell it 'Куин', so that this FB page would be 'Queen's English', which there is of course, but that's not my name.
The other letter/sound in Bulgarian which approximates the English 'i' in 'prince' is 'ъ', the use of which by some of her students so vexed my colleague. It's the 'i' in 'prince' but semi-glottalized - the tongue is further back in the mouth, the lower jaw is a little slacker, and the sound is partially 'swallowed'.
'ъ' is a much used sound in Bulgarian - as in the name of the country itself: България - so I can understand how a Bulgarian student who hears 'Prince Hamlet' might assume that the 'i' is rendered 'ъ'. In some respects, it's more faithful to the English sound than is 'и'. The Bulgarian language gurus have seemingly ordained otherwise but perhaps they should be listening a little more closely to what the young people are doing.
