The Bulgarian Language Resources Online platform BERON was presented today at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The digitized version of the Official Spelling Dictionary of the Bulgarian Language is its first product in which words are voiced with their correct pronunciation. A wealth of information has been added on the grammatical features of the words, on the doublets and homonyms in the literary language. Prof. Dr. Ruska Stancheva from the Institute for Bulgarian Language of BAS (IBL-BAS) is the leader and initiator of the BERON project.

The content is developed by linguists from the Modern Bulgarian Language Section of IBL-BAS and includes about 2 400 000 forms. The digital dictionary is available at beron.mon.bg and is voiced by the actress Gergana Stoyanova.

Two hundred years after the creation of Petar Beron’s “Primer with Various Instructions”, we decided to link the abbreviation of the platform BERON with the name of the author of the Fish Primer to pay tribute to its author. Some of the rules of the literary Bulgarian language are already enshrined in the Fish Primer, said at the presentation Prof. Stancheva. According to her, 85% of young people make language references on the Internet. The digitised version also includes the Question of the Day section which presents answers to questions that are received daily at the Language Reference and Consultation Service of the Institute for Bulgarian Language.

Artificial intelligence, created by scientists from the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies of BAS, was used in the development of the spelling platform BERON.

Deputy Minister of Education and Science Natalia Miteva attended the event and said that functional literacy in Bulgarian is a national priority. It is extremely important for us to develop the language skills of students and young people, she said. The Vice-President of BAS Corr. Memb. Stefan Hadjitodorov congratulated the team on behalf of the Academy’s leadership and said that the BERON platform meets the public interest and is also important for Bulgarian communities around the world.

The platform will continue to be upgraded and enriched with new features and content.

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