Institute for Bulgarian Language "Prof. Lubomir Andreychin"

The Institute for Bulgarian Language “Prof. Lubomir Andreychin” was founded on 15 May 1942 as a Bulgarian Dictionary Service at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. In 1947, the Bulgarian Dictionary Service grew into the Institute for Bulgarian Dictionary, and in 1949 – into the Institute for Bulgarian Language.

The history of the Institute is intertwined with the life and creative work of great Bulgarian linguists and marks serious scientific achievements in the field of linguistic Bulgarian studies. Head of the Bulgarian Dictionary Service and first director of the Institute for Bulgarian Language (1947 – 1951) was Academician S. Romanski. Other prominent scientists whose professional path was closely related to the Institute, are: Academician Vladimir Georgiev, Academician Stefan Mladenov, Academician Valentin Stankov, Academician Ivan Duridanov, corr-member Lubomir Andreychin, corr.-mem. Kiril Mirchev, Art. Dora Ivanova-Mircheva, Prof. Yordan Zaimov, Prof. Stoyko Stoykov, Prof. Ivan Lekov, Prof. Kristalina Cholakova, Prof. Yordan Penchev and many others.

Scientific activity

The priority research areas of the Institute are:

  • The academic dictionaries of Bulgarian language;
  • Bulgarian cultural and linguistic heritage;
  • Theoretical linguistic research;
  • Electronic language resources and language technologies.

The main lexicographical work of the Institute for Bulgarian Language is the multi-volume “Dictionary of Bulgarian Language” – the largest and most representative dictionary of the kind that includes 119 229 headers and reflects the modern state and development of the Bulgarian language since the beginning of the 19th century. Among the most significant achievements of the Institute are: the multi-volume “Bulgarian etymological dictionary” explaining the origin of the words in the Bulgarian language and its relations with other Balkan, Slavic and Indo-European languages; the two-volume “Old Bulgarian Dictionary” – a translative and interpretative vocabulary of the classical Glagolitic and Cyrillic written monuments; “Bulgarian Dialectical Atlas. Summarizing volume. Phonetics. Accentology. Lexis. Morphology”- 503 dialectal maps which represent and compare language facts based on a material of 2 300 settlements in which dialects of the Bulgarian language are spoken. More important spelling dictionaries of the Institute are: “Spelling Dictionary of the Modern Bulgarian Literary Language” (1983), “Official Spelling Dictionary of the Bulgarian Language” (2012), “Official Spelling Dictionary of the Bulgarian Language. Verbs” (2016).

The three-volume “Grammar of the Modern Bulgarian Literary Language” is the first academic grammar which presents the phonetic, morphological and syntactic structure of the Bulgarian language exhaustively. The work “Bulgarian Lexicology and Phraseology” (v. I – III) is a summary study describing the lexical and phrasaeological system of the Bulgarian language.

Educational activity

Accredited by NEAA scientific specialties for the training of PhD students at the Institute for Bulgarian Language in the professional field “Philology”, code 2.1, are: “Bulgarian language” and “General and comparative linguistics”.

The Institute for Bulgarian Language at BAS accepts for training Bulgarian and foreign graduates, offers Bulgarian language training as foreign to foreign students and citizens and specialized courses for Bulgarian language teachers at school.

Contacts

International relations