How to Learn Bulgarian in 6 Weeks (What I Did to Give Me Enough Bulgarian for Travel!)

[@btw4812]

I am Bulgarian and it was a pleasure to see someone interested in my language.

[@EasyGreekVideos]

Chudesno! I just started following your Fluent show and now this. I really like Bulgarian, I learned it when I lived in Sofia and could have an everyday conversation about most common topics. It feels similar to Greek in some very unintuitive ways that probably have more to do with tradition and religion than they have to do with the language. But then there's the Balkan Sprachbund. By the way, Veliko Tarnovo, the old capital of medieval Bulgaria, is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to. Did you have the opportunity to see it?

[@climatechangeisrealyoubast3231]

Oh wow I'm impressed My father is Bulgarian, but he never really tried to teach me the Language. This Video really motivated me to finlally learn the Language and to be able to communicate with my family members down there! Hope you had somenice holidays!

[@OrlinDochevOli]

I'd love to hear you saying something in bulgarian Lindsay

[@daysandwords]

Great video! How Lindsday learns a language in 6 weeks: Studies hard, does everything possible to learn the language and then celebrates small victories when in Bulgaria. How other language KZbinrs learn a language in a week: Lie about all aspects of it, including how long they've been learning. (Sorry Lindsay, nothing to do with you... just a pet hate of mine haha). I think it takes about 30 hours to learn anything of use, and maybe take 30% off that for a language like French or Swedish (so 20 hours) which have lots of similarities to English. So 30 hours, you could do that in 4 days of crazy intensive study, but most people don't have that long. It's funny, 6 weeks sounds kind of "made up" for the level you reached... but thinking about it, you would probably have had a total of, what, 50-60 hours exposure? That's quite a lot when thought about like that, so all of a sudden 6 weeks doesn't sound that short. I hope to have an opportunity soon (maybe towards the end of the year) to go deep on a language for about 2 months and see how much you really can learn in about 200 hours over 2 months.

[@jassenjj]

Wow, you learned Bulgarian just because you visited the country for a few days! I get you "do languages", but Bulgarian is the most atypical Slavic language...

[@dayanbalevski4446]

Поздрави! I would say that other slavic languages like Polish for example, are much more complicated when it comes to pronunciation and reading. The Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet is easier than Russian for example. Overall, Bulgarian is probably the easiest Slavic language to learn and speak. Bulgarian language and alphabet also has a very interesting history and evolution you should read about, and is actually the main influence on the creation of the modern Russian language/alphabet - which most people don't know.

[@stars5206]

Bulgaria is oldest country in Europe. Bulgaria is first national state in Europe which adopt Christianity and Bulgarian church became first national independent church in Europe in year 927. Bulgarians created Bulgarian Civilization with Bulgarian language, Bulgarian alphabet Cyrillic and Orthodox Christianity. Bulgarians spread Christianity and the Bible, translated into Bulgarian language and written in Cyrillic, among the so-called "Slavs" and incorporated most of the "Slavs" into Bulgarian civilization, including the Russians. All so-called "Slavic" languages are created on the basis of Bulgarian language. Russian language and so-called "Slavic" languages on the Balkans are dialects of Bulgarian language. Today about 300 million people in Eurasia including Russia use Bulgarian writing system Cyrillic as the official alphabet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Bulgarian_Empire en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_I_of_Bulgaria en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bulgarian_Empire

[@elainejones9299]

Yeah, мерси is a borrowed word from French. Merci.

[@cacaklar5059]

Hey, I'm trying to learn Bulgarian and I was wondering which book you used.

[@BadlyHonedBytes]

If you want to practice reading in Bulgarian, there's a massive semi-legal archive of books in Bulgarian online - chitanka.info/books One of the sub-sites ("Грамофонче", "Little Record Player") contains audio clips of old, Communist-era vinyl records with children's songs, fairy tales, dramatizations of children's books, etc. as well as less children-oriented material like radio plays. There's also a legal site, slovo.bg, specifically about Bulgarian literature, but it's limited mostly to the Bulgarian classics with expired copyright (i.e. very old and thus using archaic/obscure vocabulary) and a number of works that they've acquired permission to publish online. The "Authors" page also has links that group authors by period - stuff written after the end of World War II should be in more or less intelligible modern Bulgarian. :)

[@dyskr]

I know what you’re saying about certain Slavic languages grabbing you more than others. I *love* Ukrainian. It’s so pretty and i just love the sound of it. Everyone says it’s useless and that I should learn Polish (the second most spoken native language here) or that I should learn Russian. Joke’s on them since I can now have broken conversations with Poles and Russians while still learning another language

[@seustaceRotterdam]

Hi Lindsay! I never tried to learn a language in such a short time. My shortest was 6 months. It took me 3 years to get a grasp of Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian. I did however get myself a phrase book in Bulgaria and Macedonia last year and “got away with it” but I had Serbian as a base.

[@zulkiflijamil4033]

Hello Lindsay Williams, this is great and it has sparked my interest to learn Bulgarian. Thank you.

[@stevehobby2502]

Great job learning enough of the language, so quickly, for your trip. It sounds like the effort was very rewarding, and you had a great trip.

[@darrylxyz9171]

Good job! I hope that I could learn at least one Slavic language in the future :)

[@VWApachey]

Just discovered your channel. Will be subscribing now.

[@alexanderroland7981]

Lindsay Williams