SOFIA (AFP) - Bulgaria's bizarre linguistic row with the European Union over the spelling of the euro on Friday threatened to spike a pact Montenegro is due to sign with the bloc.

Sofia said it would not ink Montenegro's Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU if the Bulgarians were not allowed to spell the currency as 'evro' in their version of the document.
Bulgarian linguists say there is no phonetic equivalent of the sound 'eu' in the Cyrillic alphabet used in Bulgaria and other Slav nations.
Thus Bulgarians say and write 'Evropa' instead of 'Europe,' 'evtanazia' instead of 'euthanasia,' 'evkalipt' instead of 'eucalyptus,' and 'Evrika' instead of 'Eureka.'
""Bulgaria's own accession treaty to the European Union in Bulgarian talks about the 'evro' and not the 'euro.' This treaty was already ratified by all member states and is an inalienable part of European and Bulgarian legislation,"" a senior Bulgarian diplomat told AFP.
The European Central Bank, which insists that the spelling of the currency should be the same in all EU member states, has indeed missed the bizarre 'evro' spelling in Bulgaria's treaty.
But now it refers to it as a ""technical error"" and wants to change it which is inadmissible, the diplomat added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
When it joined the bloc this January, Bulgaria introduced the Cyrillic script as the third official alphabet in the enlarged union, along with Latin and Greek.