On the transitory and the persistent in Bulgarian colloquial speech over the past 30 years (at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century) and on some parallel usages in spoken communication that resemble doublets

Main features of Bulgarian colloquial speech are presented in 3 groups – stable trends, doublet variants and transitional lexemes and expressions. The first group includes: verb saturation, the interference from English and neglecting of the use of the polite form and the second one – the ending -me instead of -m for one category of verbs, the polite form with agreed by gender past active participle and some uses of prepositions. In the third group are presented intensifiers and response-clichés for expressing approval, disapproval and astonishment/surprise. A survey carried out by the author illustrates how, out of the existing multitude of cliché response options, only 25% to 33% are in active use in colloquial speech. It’s demonstrated also the opposite connotation of some phrases with meaning depending on the intonation, the implicit background or some extra-linguistic factors – an indicator that oral interaction needs more comprehensive observations including a complex of factors.