One benefit of my new job at the American University in Bulgaria is that I get to take a course in the Bulgarian language and culture for free, on a pass/fail basis. While I might pass the course, I’ll never pass for a speaker of Bulgarian. But I have learned a few things already.

Bulgarian belongs to the family of Slavic languages, which includes Russian and Polish and Serbian and Croatian, among others. Some countries use the Cyrillic alphabet, as Bulgaria does, and some of them use our familiar Latin alphabet. Often, it’s the politicians, not the people, who decide which one to use. Some Bulgarians favor switching to the Latin alphabet, because they think it will hasten the country’s assimilation into the European Union, of which the country has been a member since 2007. But the Greeks are still using their ancient alphabet (from which the word “alphabet” is, of course, derived). I think they are alone in the world in using it.

Since the Cyrillic alphabet was invented in Bulgaria (though Russians like to claim they expanded and improved upon it), national pride will likely keep it in use for the foreseeable future. But it might explain why the names of the streets on the signs in Blagoevgrad are in both alphabets.

The nice thing about the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Bulgarian language, is that it’s completely phonetic. Each letter is pronounced, and each letter has one, and only one, pronunciation. It makes sounding out the unfamiliar words a little but easier. I’ve been walking the streets doing exactly that. I haven’t memorized all the letters yet, but I’ve got most of them. As for what the words mean… well, that will take a bit more time. But I’ve managed to learn a few, enough to buy tomatoes and cheese and other goods at the farmers market, and to make simple monetary transactions.

Bulgaria is bordered on the west by Serbia and a country that calls itself Macedonia, which irks their Greek neighbors. When the former Yugoslavia broke up into separate nations, each nation took pains to differentiate itself from the others.  The Serbs and Croats, for instance, spoke in tongues so similar that they were considered dialects of the same language. But the Croatian government commissioned a group of linguists to invent new words for things like “passport.” There is a whole list of new Croatian words, invented by some committee to make Croatian a separate language from Serbian. A funny observation was shared with me: when they are abroad, Serbs and Croats are brothers and sisters with a common language: Serbo-Croatian. Only at home do they squabble over the differences.

My first weeks here have given me the tiniest glimpse into what the immigrant experience in America must be like. Every time I step out my door, I’m reminded that I’m a foreigner. And it’s not just the language. How do you behave at a restaurant, or in a line at the store? What’s the proper etiquette for greeting someone, or asking for help?

 When I overhear someone speaking English, it’s like a lifeline: someone I can ask question, and get an intelligible answer. Is it any wonder that immigrants in the United States tend to seek each other out, and stick together?

I’m newly sensitive to what immigrants must feel when some of my compatriots criticize them for failing to “assimilate.” You’re in a strange land where everything is alien to you, and you’re supposed to find a place to live, feed your family, get a job. You don’t know whether your electricity and heat are covered in the cost of your new home, because you can’t read a rental agreement. You can’t read the labels at the store, so you only buy food you recognize. You rely on your fellow immigrants for the few work opportunities that are available to you.

Assimilate? I could live here for the rest of my life and not be fully assimilated into Bulgarian society. Should we not assume the same is true of immigrants to the U.S. from Somalia, or Southeast Asia, or Latin America? Yet some Americans would deny them access to basic services in their own language.

How realistic is it to expect non-natives to immediately adopt English as the language of their day-to-day commerce? More to the point, why shouldthey? Many of us are descended from Anglo-Saxons, but it’s only an accident of history that English speakers colonized what is now the United States. Why shouldn’tpeople speak Spanish in places named Los Angeles and El Paso, or French in Calais and Montpelier, or Greek in Philadelphia and Athens, Georgia?

Instead of berating them, perhaps we should listen. We might learn something.

[wpdevart_like_box profile_id=”slowertraffic” connections=”show” width=”300″ height=”550″ header=”small” cover_photo=”show” locale=”en_US”]