Language, religion and education in Bulgaria

Language: Bulgarian 84.5%, other 15.5%.

Religions: Bulgarian Orthodox 82.6%, Muslim 12.2%, Roman Catholic 0.6%, Protestant 0.5%, others.

Language in Bulgaria

Bulgarian is the official language of Bulgaria, is spoken by most of the people. Bulgarian is closely related to Russian and belong to the group of the Slavonic languages. Serbo-Croatian and Russian are the most similar languages to the Bulgarian. It is written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Other languages as English, German, French, Russian and Spanish are spoken by 40% of the population.

Education in Bulgaria

About 98% of all Bulgarian aged 15 or older can read and write. The government operates most schools. Nearly all students go on to high school. Bulgaria has more than 25 institution of higher education

Religion in Bulgaria

After the Communist Party came to power, the government discouraged religion and supervised religious practice. But in 1989 the reform government affirmed the rights of all citizens to practice their religion

About 80-90% of the people are members of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, one of the Eastern Orthodox Churches

Other religious groups include Muslims, Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Full freedom of the religious denominations is proclaimed in the Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria.