site.btaVice President Iotova: Bulgarian Language Is Indispensable, Essential Part of World Civilization

The Bulgarian language is an invariable and very essential part of world and human civilization, Vice President Iliana Iotova said, emphasizing the role of the Preslav and Ohrid Literary School. "Today, over 300 million people around the world write in Cyrillic," she said at the opening of the 60th Summer Seminar on Bulgarian Language and Culture for Foreign Students in Bulgarian and Slavic Studies.

The Seminar is one of the longest-standing initiatives of Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski. It was founded in 1962 and has so far trained over 6,000 students and teachers from various universities of Europe, Asia and America. Many of the participants have achieved excellence as professors, teachers, researchers, translators, journalists and diplomats, and have become informal ambassadors for Bulgaria.

Initially conceived as a forum for improving the Bulgarian language skills of overseas students and teachers, the seminar gradually expanded the scope of participants. In recent years, the summer seminar has also been attended by translators and students of other Slavic languages, ethnic Bulgarians from Bessarabia, Moldova, the Western Outlands or other regions with a compact Bulgarian population, as well as children or grandchildren of Bulgarian emigrants in Western Europe and America.

About 80 students and faculty from 23 countries in Europe and Asia, including Albania, Austria, Azerbaijan, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Ukraine, are participating in the 60th Seminar.

Rector of Sofia University Prof. Anastas Gerdzhikov said that he is extremely proud and happy because this seminar, conceived more than six decades ago as a forum for improving the Bulgarian language skills of overseas students and teachers, is today a large-scale event bearing rich fruit.

The Seminar is organized with the financial support of the Ministry of Education and Science and Sofia University. The overall preparation and organization of the seminar are entrusted to the Faculty of Slavonic Philology of Sofia University.