February 1909 the Russian government proposed to advance to Bulgaria the
difference between the L4,800,000 claimed by Turkey and the L1,520,000
which Bulgaria undertook to pay. A preliminary Russo-Turkish protocol was
signed on the 16th of March, and in April, after the final agreement had
been concluded, the independence of Bulgaria was recognized by the powers.
Of the indemnity, L1,680,000 was paid on account of the Eastern Rumelian
railways; the allocation of this sum between Turkey and the Oriental
railways was submitted to arbitration. (See TURKEY: _History_.)

LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

_Language._--The Bulgarian is at once the most ancient and the most modern
of the languages which constitute the Slavonic group. In its groundwork it
presents the nearest approach to the old ecclesiastical Slavonic, the
liturgical language common to all the Orthodox Slavs, but it has undergone
more important modifications than any of the sister dialects in the
simplification of its grammatical forms; and the analytical character of
its development may be compared with that of the neo-Latin and Germanic
languages. The introduction of the definite article, which appears in the
form of a suffix, and the almost total disappearance of the ancient
declensions, for which the use of [v.04 p.0785] prepositions has been
substituted, distinguish the Bulgarian from all the other members of the
Slavonic family. Notwithstanding these changes, which give the language an
essentially modern aspect, its close affinity with the ecclesiastical
Slavonic, the oldest written dialect, is regarded as established by several
eminent scholars, such as [vS]afa[vr]ik, Schleicher, Leskien and Brugman,
and by many Russian philologists. These authorities agree in describing the
liturgical language as "Old Bulgarian." A different view, however, is
maintained by Miklosich, Kopitar and some others, who regard it as "Old
Slovene." According to the more generally accepted theory, the dialect
spoken by the Bulgarian population in the neighbourhood of Salonica, the
birthplace of SS. Cyril and Methodius, was employed by the Slavonic
apostles in their translations from the Greek, which formed the model for
subsequent ecclesiastical literature. This view receives support from the
fact that the two nasal vowels of the Church-Slavonic (the greater and
lesser _us_), which have been modified in all the cognate languages except
Polish, retain their original pronunciation locally