Comments | nwhyte: Note from Bulgarian history

nwhyte

Note from Bulgarian history

May 06, 2006 09:30

How a carefully designed consociational power-sharing arrangement was subverted by a young mathematical politician

(I've taken this from R.J. Crampton's excellent History of Bulgaria, page 21; some subsequent correspondence with Crampton; and Sava Grozdev's account as given in Paul Jainta's article, "Problem Corner: Contests from Bulgaria, I" in ( Read more... )

world: bulgaria, mathematics

Comments 8

Serbo-Croat-Bulgar? anonymous May 7 2006, 12:14:34 UTC

Slightly tangentially, but triggered by the Bulgarians' ongoing fondness for Serbo-Croat speaking Macedonia... to what extent is Bulgarian essentially the same language as Serbo-Croat, albeit with some regionalised specialism? (-ian)

Re: Serbo-Croat-Bulgar? nwhyte May 7 2006, 15:15:13 UTC

Bulgarian and Macedonian are closer to each other than either is to Serbo-Croat. Serbo-Croat does not have articles, but does decline its nouns into several different cases. Bulgarian and Macedonian have the article as a suffix to the noun, and use only the vocative and nominative cases. Though for most practical purposes they are all mutually intelligible.

this is generally true anonymous May 10 2006, 23:27:41 UTC

about the standard Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbian. Yet there are the so-called transitional dialects in north Macedonia, western Bulgaria and southeastern Serbia so the picture is fuzzier, in actual fact. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torlakian

18 subsets? anonymous May 8 2006, 04:17:56 UTC

Isn't it 18 subsets? A1 ... A30 would have 180 elements in total; one can find subsets such that each element of A belongs to exactly 18 subsets.

(From the EMS newsletter, it seems that there were 47 members in total, so even if the other 17 voted together, they still couldn't get any of their candidates in.)

Very interesting story.

Salabashev anonymous May 10 2006, 10:16:39 UTC

Slabashev completed his doctorate in Prague, not in Bolhrad which was a major centre of secondary education. In the 19th century usage, "prosveshtenie", a Church Slavonic archaism, was synonymous with "prosveta", a later vernacular form, meaning education. Nowadays, "prosveshtenie" means "enlightenment" only. Nothing sinister really ...

Re: Salabashev nwhyte May 10 2006, 10:33:51 UTC

Professor Crampton, I presume?

I wondered about Prague. The Ministry of Finance website didn't mention it, and you didn't seem sure about it when we corresponded a few years back, so I left it out. But I did also wonder about Bolhrad - didn't sound like a place where one might get a doctorate!

not really anonymous May 10 2006, 23:21:54 UTC

just a modest disciple of Prof Crampton's, don't be confused by my IP address. Actually, it turns out Salabashev went to high shool in Bohemia too (in the town of Tabor). He was a teacher at Bolgard where the first Bulgarian High School had opened back in 1858. More info: http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%98%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD_%D0%A1%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%B0%D1%88%D0%B5%D0%B2

Re: not really anonymous October 8 2011, 18:15:54 UTC

Coming a bit late to the party, but ( ... )