It belongs to the group of South Slavic languages. It is spoken by approx. 12 million people, mainly in Bulgaria, where it is the official language, but also in Greece, Canada, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, USA, Turkey, and Ukraine. When listening to the Bulgarian language, one may be misled into thinking one is dealing with Russian, as the tone of both languages is remarkably similar. The only common aspect between Bulgarian and Russian is the alphabet, which is derived from Cyrillic.
