a book art project exploring changes to the Bulgarian language

From the 16th to late 19th century, the Bulgarian language included words from dozens of distinct regions. Closely related to farming lifestyle and village experience, as well as to Greek, Turkish, and Romani linguistic minorities, these words were disappearing by the early 20th century, after large migrations to cities, border shifts, and a dark Romantic nationalism took hold. With changing populations, and aspirations to be seen as more cosmopolitan, words closely related to land, labor and regional dialects disappeared. Nationalist sentiment sought to recover an authentic Bulgarian heritage, and “foreign” word were expunged, no matter how long they had been in use. After the orthographic reforms, which standardized spelling and grammar, only “beautiful” Bulgarian words remained …