The Easiest Slavic Language to Learn

In this video I'll share my thoughts on why Bulgarian is the easiest and most accessible Slavic language to learn!
Bulgarian has definite articles and does not use grammatical cases compared to all other Slavic languages!
It is also a great stepping stone to learning all other Slavic languages!
Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
00:38 - Where, who (why) is Bulgaria?
03:19 - Definite Articles
04:30 - Grammatical Cases
05:17 - Bulgarian Alphabet
05:55 - Phonetic Writing System
06:18 - Verbs
07:17 - Syllable Stress
08:49 - Slavic Stepping Stone
10:13 - Flexible Word Order
10:59 - Lots of Loan Words
12:37 - Conclusion
13:12 - Outro
Thank you for watching!

[Golyplot]

Skip the ads, the channel is not monetized, if you see ads they are auto-generated by youtube.

[name]

dang youtube

[Fubukiシ]

your pfp is a bulgarian country ball, based dude, as a Bulgarian, I wish to handshake you

[RedTitan5]

Yes sir

[A nosey individual]

you should get monetized since youtube brings ads anyways. you deserve money for your education!

[Golyplot]

@A nosey individual you saw ads?

[AME]

Hungary: We'll take those extra cases if you aren't going to use them...

[micreper]

wait,Hungary is slavic?

[AME]

@micreper no, but it has a ton of grammatical cases 😆

[Proud Slav]

who asked mongol?

[Wasa Bista]

Georgian: Step aside, amateur.

[Mattia Mele]

Hungarian doesn't have cases. It has suffixes. The word itself doesn't change its ending, you just chuck a particle to it. That's not how Indo-European cases work. Hungarian is an agglutinative language, it's totally different from Slavic, Romance, Germanic etc. I majored in Hungarian at the university, I was pretty fluent and versed in it. I can assure you you can learn Hungarian without ever having to decline words as you do with languages that do have cases.

[Daniel Spaniel]

A slavic language without cases is a gift from the gods :)

[Damyan Kolev]

We have but there are only 4-5. Not like the Russian language :)

[Trump Gaming]

@Damyan Kolev Not like the polish language :)

[xsc1000]

@Damyan Kolev Russian have 6, Czech 7...

[VitaminX]

Actually, there are case remnants, but only in personal pronouns, and some are even falling out of favour, or have fallen already, to more analytical variants of the same expression. For example the dative case in personal pronouns - E.g."whom" in the dative usage (not sure, if this is the right way to put it). For example - Eng: give to whom?; Bulg(dative): да дам кому?(da dam komu?);Bulg (analytical/preposition + accusative case): да дам на кого?(da dam na kogo?);

[naskok007]

@Damyan Kolev no we don't . There are just remains from cases in the Bulgarian language

[Lars Larsen]

As Swedish living in Bulgaria, I would like to note that Bulgarian was easy to learn once the alphabet was in place. It took me 6 months but then it fell into place. Only to pronounce Копривщица took some time. It is a good base for the rest of Balkan and we are able to communicate.

[vapidcity]

I started learning the alphabet about 3 weeks ago and it really opened up a lot for me. Usually, I'll find a random word and try to read it, once I do I never forget it, much better than just memorizing a list of vocab, context + alphabet helps

[Ahiga]

Har märkt själv att Ryska är rätt likt svenska (Norrländska iaf), även om det tar sin tid att lära sig. Men har inte studerat Bulgariska. Skulle du säga att det kan vara ett bra alternativ?

[Lars Larsen]

@Ahiga Hej, vid Uppsala universitet studerade man först Bulgariska för att förbereda de Ryska studierna. Förklaringen är enkel då den Bulgariska grammatiken är enklare att förstå för oss Skandinavier så fick man vokabuläret och till viss del grammatik. Ryskan med sina kausus och tidaspekter är svårt. Som Svensk är Bulgariska språket lättare att lära när du fått det Kyrilliska alfabetet på plats. Sje ljuden är väldigt lika våra.

[Anton Tarantey]

>It took me 6 months but then it fell into place. As a Russian, now i'm really surprised with it. It seemed, westerners need about 15 minutes to learn Cyrillic azbuka - they just have to memorise that "в != b" and З, Ч & Б aren't numbers. ;-) Nevertheless, it's not a Devanagari, Arabic or Hiragana. Indeed, i think Bulgarian is in fact a good step to slavic languges, especially Russian having the same Cyrillic and sizeable layer of Church-slavonic, that came from ancient Bulgarian kingdom, with its words and forms (sometimes as an elevated and poetic stile - "злато/золото", "врата/ворота" etc).

[Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz]

@Anton Tarantey no idea what he's on it took me a day to learn cyrillic

[Eugene Karaoglu]

I speak fluent Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, Belarusian and Slovakian. Bulgarian is easy to understand because it is really connected to Russian via Old Church Slavonic.

[Aleks Bozik]

Odkiaľ si?

[ґ]

Ой! Круто я русский

[Pk]

How do you recommend learning Russian efficiently?.

[Eren Yavuz]

where are you from ? your surname is so familiar here

[Nikolai Sedov]

@Pk play Stalker haha

[Nuke Ohio]

I like people like you. Rather than push away outsiders, you encourage them to embrace your culture. I'm not Bulgarian in the slightest, but you've encouraged me to learn about it.

[lgbtq_hitlеr - Фюрера]

Only if you are not indian or black

[Tyler Blake]

@lgbtq_hitlеr - ФюрераI’m black and I’m curious about Bulgarian culture?? What is the issue ?

[Norbert]

Bulgarian is the best slavic language for me as a romanian 🇧🇬🇷🇴❤

[aDionisss1724]

Love from Bulgaria🇧🇬❤️🇷🇴

[TheBigDeal]

Why don't you adopt it over there in Romania? 😈😈After all you already used it till the middle of the 19th century. 😁😁

[day owl]

@TheBigDeal we've only used the cyrillic alphabet till 19th century but the language was still romanian as it is today..

[Anymega]

@day owl well, there was the re-latinization of the language (at the time i believe it was 40% slavic as opposed to today which is 15% slavic) so it wasn't really the exact same language but that guy is still wrong.

[Robert Costea]

@Anymega No such thing as a re-latinization of the language, only the standardization of Romanian, which meant transforming Old Romanian into a standardized language. Still, the old language and the contemporary one are pretty much the same thing (look up Neacsu's Letter from 1521, which I, as a native Romanian speaker, can understand fully).

[Duro Shebanja]

A Bulgarian friend of mine told me he thought , aside from the Macedonian language, Serbian was probably the most understandable Slavic language to him.

[Golyplot]

very true, I can understand most of serbian especially in folk music ♥️

[schmucker1989]

@Golyplot And I as a Serb understand shit when I hear spoken Bulgarian. 😅 It's not that I didn't try.

[Aleks_ Ovski416]

@schmucker1989 how about spoken Macedonian?

[Kiril Popov]

Yes. It is true. And for me polish and Czech languages are most difficult to understand

[K_Kaziuu]

@Kiril Popov as a Pole I can tell that Blugarian and Macedonian are true black magic for me haha, however if native Macedonian or Bulgarian spokes slowly, it's not hard to find many similarities, as in every other slavic language :) Czech is understandable for me in 80%, Russian in 70%, Serbo-Croatian in about 40-60% (in written croatian I understand much more). Haven't study other slavic languages then my mothertongue polish so far, but I will start to work with Russian and Czech)

[Supervivo]

I've been learning Bulgarian for a few weeks and I appreciate this video. I didn't start because it was easy but rather because a friend speaks it. The lack of cases and similarities to English and Spanish are just a bonus.

[aDionisss1724]

Agreed. I’m Bulgarian learning Spanish, it’s very easy learning some words because we use them too or are very similar. And when it comes to pronunciation it’s not hard at all!

[k0pera]

Yo soy Bulgaro para mi Español es facil pero yo practicar casi nunca. Eso es muy mal

[Brandon Cooper]

@aDionisss1724 I'm an American currently living in Peru. I went from zero Spanish to reasonably fluent in about a year, and I don't study at all. I learned the 2000 most common words, and just hung out with people speaking Spanish. I will be in the Balkans next month. Nice to know that there are folks in the Balkans that I can practice with. I'd be happy to exchange Spanish practice for teaching me some Bulgarian. I have a working knowledge of Serbian/Croatian, but I haven't really spoken it in ten years. Buena suerte con tu aprendizaje. Saludos desde Sudamerica!

[No u]

I've lived in bulgaria and it's an amazing country, has amazing people and an amazing culture!

[Sam De La Cruz]

I speak four languages, but I don't speak any Slavic one yet - So I'm definitely going to take up Bulgarian. Thanks, dude!

[Timon ŽD Eib]

Are you sure about not speaking any slavic language while having the flag of Poland in the background of your profile photo 🤣🤣?

[Sam De La Cruz]

@Timon ŽD Eib but it's not a flag, it's a red bath towel.😅

[Alvaro S]

Wow! Which languages?

[Sam De La Cruz]

@Alvaro S Portuguese (native), English, Spanish, and Greek (intermediate). I'm also learning Italian.

[September2Remember]

Learn Russian instead.

[michaela]

I'm a Bulgarian American and though I do admit I may have been jumpstarted by a lot (having Bulgarian parents lol), I never started to actually go out of my way to learn the language outside of learning phrases and sentences. I can understand a majority of it spoken but I don't know any grammatical rules. Definitely gonna start learning now :-) it's a very nice sounding language!

[PLrc]

Can you speak it?

[Ivan]

u alive bro?

[Hi7man663]

даваайй батее урааааа

[k0pera]

I think closest to our grammer is the French. The tricky parts are to find the word gender and to know how to form plural form also how to use articles in the ending of a word just like in THE English. END - the END КРАЙ - КРА(й)ят

[mihanich]

Bulgarian and Russian exchanged vocabulary a lot. First it was the Old Bulgarian that came to Rus as the literary and liturgical language along with Christianity, then it was Russian who came to Bulgaria as a source to restore literary Bulgarian language after hundreds of years of Ottoman Yoke

[Golyplot]

absolutely right

[aDionisss1724]

Very true

[Evangelos Foudoulakis]

I prefer Russian Language over Bulgarian, which is a lot more important to learn gor s number of reasons. Cases are not so difficult to master. In the russian language you will find a wealth of books such as grammars, dictionaries and many coursebooks while in other slavic languages these are very limited

[mihanich]

@Evangelos Foudoulakis you can find plenty of material in other Slavic languages. I'm Russian and I found enough materials on Polish even in Moscow bookstores, not to mention online stuff.

[Evangelos Foudoulakis]

@mihanich In Russian for example i found books on Verbal government, Cases, Vocabulary books with examples, Adapted Literature, Practice tests for all exam levels, Listening Comprehension books. In Russian there are books that help you pass the certification test TORFL

[Yavuzov]

I am Bulgarian Turk and I love my language. Slava rodu!

[mr. C]

You can take pride in the fact, that this video convinced me to learn Bulgarian first... and save Russian for later (I'm going to Bulgaria soon)

[HeroManNick132]

Супер, добро прекарване ти пожелавам тогава. :D

[Tamás Dupcsák]

2:43 Finally! Someone finally said it! As a Hungarian (who is extremely bulgarophile), this makes me happy :) Greetings from Унгария! Да живее Българя!

[HeroManNick132]

България* :)

[Teo Animations]

Me also likes Унгария! Поздрав 🇧🇬❤️🇭🇺 Да живее Унгария! (i like the Hungarian waltz also)

[Nena Vaskina]

Im russian living in England, i have a lot of Bulgarian colleagues, some of them don't even know English, and I realized that If I spoke Russian they understand me 90% of the time, and I understand them too. I decided to study a bit of Bulgarian so I could actually make proper sentences which are grammatically correct, and I realised that it's almost all the words are the same as russian but with English grammar, it was extremely easy to learn, I just had to learn the words which are unique to Bulgarian and different from Russian (which isn't many) and in just 2 weeks I could speak pretty fluently and explain anything I needed to say without any problems. I found that the "English grammar" was very easy. I've tried to learn Polish too, since there's many Polish in the UK too, and grammar is exactly the same as Russian. So, intuitively, it should be easier, since it's just like my native language. But actually I found it a lot harder for some reason. Learning how all the endings of words are different depending on case was harder to get used to... English/Bulgarian grammar is definitely so much simpler

[Golyplot]

Precisely what I aim to show, Bulgarian grammar is pretty similar to English considering it's a slavic language. Thanks for watching 😊

[จิงโจ้ ไทย]

I like the mechanism of Bulgarianisation.👌😄😃 This may be the new linguistic toy. Interesting !

[Danny Mosticchio]

Wow that is so cool to know

[Ibnenki Galileo]

Yeah, Polish is way harder than Russian

[AlexM]

I am Serbian, but I also speak Russian. When you speak two Slavic languages from different groups it is much easier to understand other Slavic languages. For me, Polish was weird at first. The accent and pronunciation was strange, but I could recognise many words that are common with East Slavic languages, but could most definetly recognise others that are common with South Slavic. In couple of months it all came to place and now I find it more similar to Serbian then Russian. As for Bulgarian, I can understand 70%, but to me sounds very archaic and at times very funny.

[HeroManNick132]

Същото бих казал за твоя език. Буквално като поставяте ударенията на първите гласните ми звучите сякаш твърде много си отваряте устата и да не говорим, че звучите като онези западни сръбски, македонски диалекти, които са по-близки до българския от стандартните версии.

[Adam]

My parents are from the Western Balkans and I am learning BCS. I speak German fluently so the cases aren't that bad but it's really difficult. Once I am fluent in BCS I might pick up Bulgarian just because it's so easy and the culture, country and people feel very familiar and are beautiful!

[Sergey Eremin]

I am from Russia. I traveled across Bulgaria and several times across all the former Yugoslav countries. I also find Macedonian easier than Bulgarian.

[Loveborn]

True. Also, the writing is 100% phonetic in Macedonian.

[David]

What is macedonian?

[Sergey Eremin]

@David It's a language of North Macedonia closely related to Bulgarian. North Macedonia borders Bulgaria and has a population of around 2 million people.

[David]

It was an Ironic question. As a bulgarian I can admit that it's the same language.

[Loveborn]

@Sergey Eremin he's just one of many in Bulgaria who try to deny the existence of Macedonian culture & language, it's been going on for more than 130 years.

[Martin Yovkov]

Това сигурно е първият коментар на Български оставен от Българин,няма значение,радвам се че си направил видео за България продължавай недей да се отказваш!❤🇧🇬

[King Crusoe]

This video is quite interesting! My native language is (predictably) English, and I know some beginner Spanish (from a few years of Spanish classes in High School), but I've started to learn another language the past week (and have made a goal to be proficient or fluent in 4 or 5 languages by the time I'm 30, which is just over 10 years now), and the first language I've started to learn is Russian. I've become very entranced by Slavic languages as a whole, and the Cyrillic alphabet is just so intriguing and interesting to me. I got the advice from many other videos and people I know to start with Russian as my first Slavic language tho just because it's the most well-known/widely spoken Slavic language, and so that's what I did lol I'd be very interested to learn Bulgarian later down the line tho, mayber as my 4th or 5th language overall, my second Slavic language. Great video tho. You earned my like :D

[Andreman]

Как успехи в изучении русского?)

[TimeTraveller]

Nice. As a Polish speaker with some knowledge of Czech and Russian, now I will denifitely give Bulgarian a shot. I would like so badly to speak fluently in other Slavic language, so Bulgarian seems fine now :D

[The Rus Report]

This was so interesting, I had no idea that Bulgarian had definite articles - I thought that all Slavic languages didn't. Fascinating. Please make more videos!

[Jordan]

The Bulgarian language is so westernised and specifically Anglicised the now day Bulgarian language you see in everyday speaking is closer to English than russian

[K Yarden]

@Jordan Anglicised? What a joke! Bulgarian dropped its cases in the end of the 14th century while English was in its Middle form. Moreover, Russian has a gigantic influences from Bulgarian, obviously. So please first educate yourself and then comment.

[Marble]

@Jordan what nonsense 😂 I suggest you learn a little bit about Proto-Slavic and the history of Bulgarian language compared to the other Slavic languages. Another topic for you is the Balkan sprachbund.

[k0pera]

@K Yarden He is right only if he talks about grammer but if he talks about words a Bulgarian can understand 70-80% in Russian and i think the Russians can understand us as well. The same is with Serbo-Croatians and i think with them is even higher 80-90%. When it comes to grammar i can't barely start make a sentence in close slav languages.

[Kolesza]

Excellent video. I'm brazillian and I have a lot of interest to learn new languages, especially slavic ones. And when we think of good slavic languages to learn, we often imagine russian or even polish, but we forget the balkans. And Bulgaria is between europe and the middle east, as you said, so its vocabulary contains a lot of other languages words, so if you learn bulgarian, you end up learning numerous other languages.

[HeroManNick132]

I mean yeah but it doesn't automatically mean you learn other languages cause they may be similar but also different and of course there are false friends. For example the most common Russian and Bulgarian false friend is "направо" - in Russian means right but in Bulgarian means straight so you have to be carefull with that. Like you know that English has similarities with the Latin languages but doesn't mean you can understand them imediatelly.

[Борис Ангушев]

Absolutely true! That's also the reason why we as Bulgarians learn English easily, because both languages are analytical and use articles, prepositions and word order to convey the meaning of a sentence instead of cases.

[Alex Nikolov]

golqm smqh

[Alex Nikolov]

bulgarian english is one of the worse

[Gina Bee]

I'm so glad I found your channel! I recently discovered that an acquaintance of mine grew up speaking Russian, so now of course I want to learn Russian. I found your video on how to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, and found this video as well! I learned a bit of Polish about 10+ years ago and already noticed a few similarities. I will have to add Bulgarian to my list, as well! Thank you!!

[D]

Bulgarian definite articles are rather native to Slavic langs. There are dying Russian dialects with functional definite articles "-то", "-та", "-те" and maybe some others, but "-то" particle (not sure on its classification, may it be a clitics?), which has the same meaning as a definite article, is widely in use. It came from pronouns like "that one/those ones", the modern versions of which in Russian are "тот" (sing. masc.), "то" (sing. neu.), "та" (sing. fem.), "те" (pl.). The very same process happened to Germanic langs including English long ago: "ðat" ("that", whatever its form was) became "ðe" - "the", "one" ("ein", again, whatever its form was) became "an" and "a"

[AG]

And then we also differanciate distance of the object/person

[Serafin Leal]

Victor, awesome videos. I speak English and Spanish but have an interest in learning other languages to expand my knowledge. You have such a clear way of explaining things. Thanks

[Marta Chudek]

Very nice video 😊 I'm Polish and I've learned cyrylic alphabet on my holidays on Bulgaria years ago to be albe to choose ice cream flavour 😉 (prorites when you are 11yo 😂). Anyway, I found reading in Bulgarian easy. Two years ago I visited Moscow... Oh God. Reading in Russian is much more difficult! Words are longer and accent is in diffetent places depending on situation

[ITSISK]

Once I started learning russian. I still can read cirillic quite well and understand many words in a sentence. Discerning if a noun is masculine, feminine or neuter is super easy, but man, the case system is so tough!!! And there are so many exceptions!!!

[Kalle Lellacévej]

You make a lot of interesting points! I actually found Bulgarian to be the most difficult Slavic language to learn. 😅 My native language is Hungarian🇭🇺. I learned Polish & Slovak when I was teenager. I recently took up Russian & Bulgarian & of all four, Bulgarian is hardest. It is so distinct from the other 3 because of the outside influences you mentioned.🌐 Also, even though my native language has articles, I'm not sure if it makes it any easier for Bulgarian to have them too.💬 You can just "ignore"(for lack of a better word) the concept all together in most the other Slavic languages. Plus, the articles have gender inflections which I found very bizarre.😮 As my first South Slavic language, maybe I'm biased in that way. Or maybe it is the lack of learning materials for Bulgarian compared to Russian/Polish/Slovak for me.📚💻 I still think it is a beautiful language & I am loving learning it!🇧🇬❤🇭🇺 You got a new subscriber today; I look forward to more of your videos!😁

[Simeon Shinovski]

Finally someone said that bg is the hardest hehe

[Gabriela Metodieva]

intersting! As a Bulgarian I found Russian quite hard because of the cases but there are areas of the language which I realised are easier - eg the tenses, the articles, we also have an extra inclination (witnessed vs unwitnessed actions). I also find it so bizarre Russians don't have "to be" in present and also that specificity in the tenses. "I have been in a room" is the same as "I was in the room."

[Rositsa Petrova]

There are no such outside influences. Analyticism is an internal process of the language. Bulgarian is the oldest literary language among the so called Slavic languages and is the basis for Old Church Slavonic, which in turn influenced Russian. The complicated verb system of the Bulgarian language shows how ancient it is.

[Golyplot]

I'm aiming to make it seem the easiest. Gotta get some more lessons out

[Kinotaurus]

​@Gabriela Metodieva Superficially "Я был в комнате" does translate both "I have been in a room" and "I was in the room", but chances are in most contexts the formert would be translated as "Я побывал в комнате". The verb "to be" in the present tense does exist - "я есмь, ты еси etc" - but it sounds very old-fashioned and is usually omitted.

[Fulvio Lumachi]

Bravo, Viktor. I'll say it in english. I am Genovese, married to a Bulgarian. In these sixteen years I have learnt a lot lot lot, and despite my big mistakes I think I do speak Bulgarian well enough (for a foreigner, needless to say). Add also that Bulgarians, when they see a non Bulgarian trying to speak their own language they literally S....T in their pants from happyness to see that, that they encourage you to keep speaking and ooo you speak great even though you speak maybe a very little bit. In other words. Bulgarians are nice people, it's a peaceful country, an old people, one of the oldest in the whole whole world, and the people are nice, friendly and warm. Да живее България, Българите и Български. Long live Bulgaria, the Bulgarians and Bulgarian! Love from Zena (Genoa).

[Kris]

Great video and many new insights into the BG language! One small omission regarding the shared vocabulary between Rusiaan and Bulgarian is that the influence went both ways; through Old Church Slavonic (which is very close to Bulgarian) and influenced many words in Russian.

[SuperDragon]

That is the most detailed, genuine, beautiful and truthful video on Bulgarian I have seen on KZbin! A lot of love from Stara Zagora❤

[Rick Townend]

Yes - I'm English, now living in Stara Zagora (beautiful city), and I agree this video is great

[Rick Townend]

Hi! - I just discovered your great channel (and subscribed). I absolutely agree your thesis; before starting to learn Bulgarian I already spoke a little Russian, Polish, and Czech, and found that Bulgarian appeared to be a kind of common thread between them all, in basic Slavic vocabulary and, to a great extent, in grammar. It's interesting to me that the Bulgarian language is so regular: in English one can say that almost every rule has its exception(s) - and some exceptions even have exceptions of their own (e.g. - [when the sound is 'ee'] it's 'i' before 'e' EXCEPT after 'c' - EXCEPT for the word 'seize'). In Bulgarian, I'm actually starting to collect a list of the few exceptions that there are - e.g. words ending щ/ст are feminine - except for мост and пръст (when it means 'finger/toe') - or maybe there are a few more I have not yet come across! I'm English but now live in Bulgaria - very happily: I love the culture, food, scenery, music and dance etc., and people have been very kind to me. I'm making very good progress with reading (if I have a dictionary to hand) and am not bad at asking for things in shops, or making short sentences. What I'm still finding hard are (1) understanding and joining in with colloquial speech and (2) listening to people talking on the TV and Radio, especially news and comedy: although Bulgarian words are - in general - longer than the English equivalents ( 'in words of one syllable' would make no sense in Bulgarian) the language seems to be well designed to be spoken at great speed; in conversation I frequently have to say 'по-бавно, моля'. Would you be able to address these issues in future videos? I take your point about stressed syllables; this seems to be the thing you have to learn word-by-word in Bulgarian - but, to me, it is easier than learning English spelling or German genders! Just going to have a look at some of the other videos on your channel - thanks again for this one!

[Marble]

You have understood so very well the country, it's culture and a lot of the language. About the stress.. When I started learning French and English what I did is I tried to think about it, in addition to the rules and grammar, as a music. Each language has its own melody and Bulgarian is very smooth in this regard. There are no phonetical stops when you talk. It's the same as in French and English. So what helps a lot is to sing and listen to music. Additionally, Bulgarian is like English where you can create poetry not only with rhymes and number of syllables but also by the melody of the sentences. Good luck and I hope you enjoy your time in Bulgaria and learning the language. 👍

[k0pera]

Имаме доста диалекти, които доста променят думите.

[Robert Seviour]

Victor, this video sets a very high standard for a factual piece, I am impressed. No waffle, information dense and presented in a very lucid way. Thank you. I knew nothing about Bulgarian before and now find it most interesting. The advantages for learners, which you describe, are very valid.

[Marcello Tenarta]

You know in Indonesian, we have no cases, no verb conjugations, no genders (not even for he/she), no plurals (words can be reduplicated but it is not a must), the verb 'to be' is not a must so it can be eliminated, no weird spellings/irregular stuff, and the phonology is relatively simple!

[HeroManNick132]

What about Malay?

[Ksawery Kaminski]

@HeroManNick132 about the same simplicity

[Pining for the fjords]

Just because it has definite articles, that doesn't mean it's easier to understand for an English speaker. I'm a brit living in Norway. Norwegian has definite and indefinite articles like English, but they are used in slightly different ways and in different contexts than in English. It's not very difficult to learn the rules, but it definitely doesn't make a language easier. I also speak Polish, and one easy thing about Polish is the lack of articles. Even as an English speaker, I've never found the lack of articles to be a barrier to understanding or communication.

[SuperHDninja]

I am Bulgarian and also grew up in Canada, Montreal specifically. I saw the QC flag on your intro so maybe you did too. Since I came back to Bulgaria the hardest thing for me is always to try NOT to translate stuff in my mind from English or French to Bulgarian. The problem with growing up with other languages is that you think in that language, kind of as if my brain was speaking French/English. Another thing is skimming through Cyrillic text. I feel like it’s so much easier to skim through a paragraph written in Latin in comparison to Cyrillic, where I have to read into the text more to understand it.

[Amy Heaney]

Thank you for this video! I am currently learning Bulgarian and this definitely helped understand understand language. It was very reassuring!

[sukromnevideo]

Perfect video, well explained. I would choose the slavic language 1, depending on where I would travel/live or 2, depending on my friends, what language do they speak 3, or definitely Slovak, because slovak has a lot in common with Latin and with Germanic as well, and it's a central slavic language well understood by other slavs as well, it's kind of slavic esperanto 4, there is a new project "interslavic" language, which realy works, all slavs understand it, and the gramma is simplified, just like the simplified english.

[Jaime Garcia]

loved the video. I didn’t know there were any Slavic languages with no cases.

[Nikolaos Peterson]

Имах на 12 години хубава бавачка от София. Роден съм на границата между Афганистан и Таджикистан, така че имаме и кирилица на таджикски.

[pravoslavnik]

Thank you from the US. Your command of English is amazing... you never stumble on a pronunciation you don't even pause to think about the syntax of a sentence ! I have a beginner's-level comprehension of Russian, and am using Russian as an entering wedge to learn more Old Church Slavonic. And Bulgarsk interests me because it is said to be a very old form of Slavic. I would like to hear you do a lecture on the history and development of Bulgarian phonology, the use of the Yers (Jers) in Bulgarian orthography, and explain why Bulgarian has no diphthongs. I have subscribed, so get my lecture ready ! ☺

[Svetoslav Stanchev]

Old Bulgarian (9th to 11th centuries, also referred to as "Old Church Slavonic") - a literary norm of the early southern dialect of the Common Slavic language from which Bulgarian evolved. Saints Cyril and Methodius and their disciples used this norm when translating the Bible and other liturgical literature from Greek into Slavic. Modern Bulgarian dates from the 16th century onwards, undergoing general grammar and syntax changes in the 18th and 19th centuries. The present-day written Bulgarian language was standardized on the basis of the 19th-century Bulgarian vernacular. The historical development of the Bulgarian language can be described as a transition from a highly synthetic language (Old Bulgarian - "Old Church Slavonic") to a typical analytic language (Modern Bulgarian) with Middle Bulgarian as a midpoint in this transition. Bulgarian was the first "Slavic" language attested in writing. As Slavic linguistic unity lasted into late antiquity, the oldest manuscripts initially referred to this language as языкъ словяньскъ, "the Slavic language". In the Middle Bulgarian period this name was gradually replaced by the name языкъ блъгарьскъ, the "Bulgarian language".

[pravoslavnik]

@Svetoslav Stanchev Thank you for the reply. Do you know the work of Horace G. Lunt? He was the principal Slavicist here in the U.S. for four decades, and his OCS grammar went through seven editions (Old Church Slavonic Grammar, 7th ed. published 2001.) He also did a grammar of early Macedonian and a fine monnograph called Progressive Palitalization in Common Slavic (1981.) Keep up the good work ! ☺ -- кириллослвъ, самий малий

[Rayna Tumbeva]

I must say, Bulgarian is indeed the first recorded Slavic language. So it's old in age, but you can't say that it's old in its content. In fact, it's probably the furthest from the so-called Proto-Slavic. Many words that are the norm in other Slavic languages are archaic in Bulgarian. Other (usually native) words have taken their place. We also have gotten rid of the letters we don't need and reformed the spelling. Scratch that, we are constantly reforming the spelling.

[Dmitry Kozhin]

From the grammar standpoint Bulgarian/Macedonian are probably the most non-slavic slavic languages. However from the point of the vocabulary Bulgarian is quite similar to Russian as there was a significant influence from Old Bulgarian to Russian in 14-17th centuries. Once I read a 'Captain Blood Odyssey' book in Bulgarian and I understood 90% of it :)

[Ranko Kostic]

Originally each Indoeuropean language had a developed flexion.5-7 cases and very developed verb conjugations.

[Moonwalk3rr]

Fantastic video man keep making more, I want to learn Bulgarian completely thank you ❤️

[Vitko Gospodinov]

Хубаво видео.Преди да го изгледам искам да кажа ,че причината в българския да няма падежи е ,че са отпаднали още 14 век, има няколко теории за това езика ни стане аналитичен.Но сме имали падежи и то 7 на брой.Все още имаме ,понякога се ползват някои падежни форми.Та появата на определителен член е ,че езика ни става аналитичен същото се е случило с английския само, че заради многото езици навлезли в езика и падежите му отпадат.Така съм чувал.

[Vengirni]

One thing about stress in West Slavic languages: while Czech and Slovak stress on the first syllable, in Polish we stress on second to last. There are some exceptions to that rule, but we don't have words that only differ in stress, so there is no risk that you will be misunderstood. We also have a fairly consistent spelling… when you pronounce written text. Writing down speech is a whole different beast, as there may be more than one way to write the same sound, so you'd better know the language already before attempting that.

[ಕೊರೊನಾವೈರಸ್ 17]

Czech is the most difficult, than polish, or, maybe they're like on the same level, but slovakian is the easiest by far. Czech to me sounds so alien. Love from croatia!!! Btw, i think that also because the polish one has lot of common words with other slavic languages, czech has so many that i don't understand :D

[Katarzyna Poroszewska]

@ಕೊರೊನಾವೈರಸ್ 17 as a Czech - I have learned Polish relatively well, and I would say that while Polish grammar is maybe a little bit easier, all the weird sounds compensate for it :D but the most comprehensible language to me (after Slovak, of course) is Slovenian, which I havent even learned in any way. Btw I actually feel like Czech has more Slavic words than Polish, which seems to use quite a lot of German ones. However, many of those Slavic words were made up in the 1800s, so they cannot match other Slavic languages.

[A W]

@Katarzyna Poroszewska Because Common Czech is a reconstructed language based on rural dialects, other slavic languages and extreme aversion for non-slavic words :)

[Илья Добрый]

The best introduction to a language i've seen. Bravo!

[Eightfourone]

I have studied romance and germanic languages before, so I can pick them up quickly, but no slavic languages! bulgarian sounds appealing ^_^ j'aime bien que vous fassiez des videos en français aussi :D c'est la langue pas-maternelle que j'aie le plus haut niveau

[Al]

I would be careful when stating that Bulgarian is the easiest and most accessible Slavic Language, it is a Category 4 language and is at the same level of difficulty as other Slavic Languages. Different != easy, it may appear so because it has a reduced set of cases, however since its verbal morphology is very divergent from Romance/Slavic/English/Germanic Languages which give it a different type of difficulty. In other words, the things you are mentioning in your video are common Indo-European observations, which don't in fact make the language the "easiest" or most "accessible". Initially the grammar may seem close to English/Romance Languages, and may seem like a really simple language. Bulgarian however is one of those languages that appears easy in the beginning, but becomes very difficult later; polar opposite of other Slavic Languages who appear difficult in the beginning but become easier later. a) A highly irregular aspect-tense system which inflects verbs to 3000 irregular forms depending not only on which context you use but also where you place the verb in the sentence. It contains: (9 basic tenses = 3 synthetic (Present, Aorist/Imperfect) + 6 analytic)* 3 moods * 4 evidentials = 3000 irregular forms for every verb + lexical aspect = irregular aspect tense system. The language is very sensitive to verb usage and context. Each verb in elementary form is not so complicated, however the full verb paradigm in all forms is very difficult to utilize correctly and will take a very very very long time to learn. Bulgarian has the worst aspect tense system out of all the Slavic Languages that has nothing in common with other Romance Languages. Furthermore, verbs in Bulgarian preserve the Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian) conjugation/declension system and will pose a very big problem to any Romance/English speaker. b) Over 40+ synthetic past tenses: you have to think about lexical aspect (imperfective/perfective/secondary imperfective) which changes meaning when you consider (past imperfect/past aorist, imperfective changes to perfective, or both imperfective/perfectives and vice versa) which also changes meaning when you consider its 4 evidential marker system (which in turn builds further embedded synthetic tenses). c) Noun declension: Bulgarian still has cases, they only became simplified with time. Vocative is not only used for addressing people, some nouns and adjectives are still declined. On top of that certain nouns decline by accusative, nominative, instrumental, locative, genitive, dative. d) Articles: are synthetic constructs not analytical, nouns are also inflected for definiteness and sometimes case, and change form according to three genders (masculine, feminine, neutral). There are many rules for which one needs to memorize when to inflect and when not to inflect nouns for definiteness and/or case. In addition, some nouns change meaning and have different stress which changes the meaning significantly. e) Renarrative/Conditional Distinction: This embedded renarrative mood and is not an independent mood. Not found in either Romance or Slavic Languages. f) Free Word Order (SOV,OVS,VSO): Unlike Romance/English word order is not restricted. Bulgarian is not strictly a SVO language, it is free to change word order when necessary. While other Slavic Languages have more involved conservative noun declensions, Bulgarian has a more involved conservative verbal inflection with additional grammatical features not found in its cousins. As you can see, there are far too many differences than similarities. An English/Romance speaker will have less of an advantage than other Slavic speakers. Btw, just from personal experience, foreigners never really become fluent in Bulgarian, and 99% of the time speak broken Bulgarian; they perform better and reach fluency in other Slavic Languages. It is ironic how the so-called "easiest" Slavic Language is also the least learnable. Just a thought.

[Ron Seymour]

I found this interesting and informative; it is difficult to encapsulate the nature of Bulgarian relative to other Slavic languages in a presentation lasting little over fourteen minutes and still cover the salient features of the language.

[BasedR4cist1984]

A Chinese man once said: "Аз съм Българин"

[sam_the_idiot]

Lol

[leftcaps6]

Periodt sis 🥵

[Alex Nikolov]

but his father was MACEDONIAN

[sam_the_idiot]

@Alex Nikolov PLOT TWISTTT

[Alex Nikolov]

@sam_the_idiot ne te razbrah geri

[Michal Poláček]

Thank you. Great video, you make everything very clear for us new learners. Greeting from Czech republic.

[Aurel Farkašovský]

Cases are not a problem in day to day communication, I'd argue that once mastered, which is not such a hard task, it can promote the understanding of what is being said, while making the language sound less stern and more flexible. Try learning it more naturally, like for instance the way Sir Orberg teaches Latin in his Familia Romana, it really made my Latin studies xyz times easier, all it takes is gradual progress, lots of context and long-term commitment. Like with basically any other language. Good luck. 🤞

[Zaza Nova]

Funny thing as a BG myself I’ve never had problems learning other languages myself, there was always something I could pronounce back with BG background, in order to learn the language.

[aDionisss1724]

Same I’m Bulgarian learning Spanish isn’t that difficult but when it comes to pronunciation I’m perfect unlike my English classmates

[salami lid]

What about French? It's not very difficult, but some words are hard for me to pronounce even with two language backgrounds.

[Rekin 16]

Depends on which language you speak I speak Polish, English, some Slovak, Czech, German, a little Serbian, Mandarin, Russian. For me Bulgarian is the hardest to understand language, since Polish and Bulgarian are the most distant(or at least top 5 if we include like silesian etc.) Slavic languages XD both about grammar and vocabulary. Different language groups, alphabets, Polish have 7 cases so we often don't have to express things like "of" by additional words, since the meaning is included in the case already. Also more influence from German in Polish and Turkish(and probably the non-slavic part of ancient Bulgarians who weren't Slavs) in Bulgarian doesn't help.

[HeroManNick132]

Well, but you know how to read Russian so it is almost the same except some sounds are bit different. Like in "Щ, Е, Ъ" but everything is pretty much the same except the grammar that makes it more distant than other Slavic languages. Macedonian has pretty much the same grammar except the grammar is taken from some Rodopian dialects and not the Standard Bulgarian but they do have also have suffixed articles which may look very unusual to you. And if you speak Serbian you basically know Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin too lol. Also Polish for me is still the hardest to understand because of the unnecessary sounds that you put and the Latin script with the special letters which confuse me a lot despite we have some similarities like with the "Л" sound. Most of the times and rarely we pronounce it as soft "ЛЬ" sound but more likely your Polish "Ł" sound. Even Czech sounds much clearer than Polish but even better - Slovak a.k.a. the language some people may consider the "Esperanto" of the Slavic languages because the artificial Interslavic language is also mainly based from Slovak. Also Bulgarian has 7 (8) suffixed articles depending on the gender, while Macedonian has 12 and varies as main, for close and far objects just like the dying out Rodopian dialects. The hardest part of these languages are the verb tenses - they are 9 while others just have 3.

[Moonlight]

I know suuuper many people that are saying that Bulgarian is one of the hardest languages./Знам суууупер много хора,които казват,че българският е един от най-трудните езици.Благодаря на всички,които казват,че ще учат български! :)

[Golyplot]

I'm trying to convince them otherwise 😊

[Emil n]

@Golyplot Аз уча български след 3 месеци и съм щастлив защото разбрах този текст. Еала. И благодаря за видеото❤️.да, Не е толкова трудно, но трябва да spend? време.

[TheTeme61]

@Emil n Мога да помагам, ако имате нужда. Поздрави!

[elsa1942]

I agree with you completely. I love the Slavic languages all the same, but to me I think Bulgarian is my personal favourite and the ur-example of modern Slavic next to Russian. Some comments on some of what you say as the video goes by. The Caucasian theory about what language was spoken in Bulgaria before the Slavs arrived actually doesn’t shock me. For example, the first part of the word for hominy “качамак” is the same as the Chechen word for “food”. Their word for finger can be seen in the name of the children’s game “илига-пилига.” But honestly I think that the pre-Slavic Bulgarian language might have been an Eastern Iranian language that had taken some words from Turkic and Caucasian languages before its arrival in the Balkans and the Slavic language eventually adopted some of the words from that language. The same thing happened with Hungarian (it’s distantly related to Finnish and Estonian), after their Uralic ancestors left Siberia and as they migrated toward Central/Eastern Europe, their language took on words from Iranian and Turkic languages. There was even a now extinct Iranian language spoken in Hungary called Jassic, it was related to Ossetian, which itself is the only surviving Sarmatian or Scythian language. Ossetian is surrounded by Russian and Caucasian languages. Also, I think the Swedish and Volga Vikings might have travelled through Bulgaria while on their way to trade in Constantinople, so there might have been some language contact along the way.

[Carlos]

Thanks. Is it worth learning Bulgarian first? If I'm interested in Slavic culture... especially Russian.

[elsa1942]

@Carlos Yeah

[soenekken]

the definite article at the end of the noun is common in Scandinavian languages. In our languages, like for you Bulgarian or me Romanian, part of the Balkan Sprachbund, this is not really an article, but a suffix to create articulation. Point is, it must have been a Dacian, Thracian feature that's been preserved in the Balkans. Now, Hungarians call themselves "Magyar", the name Hungary comes from Latin and more directly from Ungrī which was latinized into Ungari, Bulgarians have a completely different etymology. I really don't think there's a connection there

[Андрей П.]

I do not think that the postpositive article in Bulgarian (I know little about Romanian) has anything to do with the Dacian (or Thracian) substratum. The fact is that in the ancient Slavic languages, for example Old Russian there was a similar directional pronoun - то (with variations - от (masculine), - та (feminine), - те (plural), which could be in a position not only before a noun, but also after it. But unlike the modern Bulgarian, it was not an article, because it could be omitted without losing its meaning. This feature has not survived in modern Russian, but still used in some northeastern and eastern dialects (for example, in the Kirov region) and even declines in cases (муж-от, мужу-тому, мужем-тем, and so on). I assume that the Bulgarian definite article originated from this demonstrative pronoun and became entrenched in the language because the latter began to lose cases. In order for a connection between words in the sentence, the demonstrative pronoun was transformed into an article and became a permanent feature of the noun, indicating its definiteness and role in the sentence, which in Russian is precisely expressed by means of different cases). So the definite article in Bulgarian for me has a pretty obvious slavic base. And the connections of Bulgarian with the Scandinavian languages in this case are quite random.

[Dimon Spirow]

@Андрей П. Никакого письменного древнерусского языка нет, все древнерусские летописи написаны на староболгарском. "Древнерусский"язык был языком церкви, и даже знать, не говоря уже о простом населении, на нем не говорила. Разумеется,, будучи единственным из славянских письменных языков на территории древней Руси, он оказал огромное влияние на формирование общерусского языка, но отождествлять староболгарский язык с русским это слишком притянуто за уши.

[Андрей П.]

@Dimon Spirow Основная масса литературных текстов (летописи, религиозные сочинения) на Руси были созданы на церковнославянском языке древнерусского извода. Ставить знак равенства между последним и древнеболгарским я считаю, не верно, потому что это уже был своего рода гибридный язык, адаптированный под нормы восточнославянского произношения, фонетики, со своим, сформированным именно на Руси словарным фондом, которого не было на территории современных Болгарии и Македонии. Что касается именно на древнерусского, то на нем были написаны юридические документы, например, Русская правда, а также образцы древнерусского языка сохранились в различных записях торгового и личного характера (переписки между людьми). Если говорить про диалектные черты, то особенности употребления указательных местоимений (напоминающие болгарский артикль) в постпозиции задокументированы в Житии Протопопа Аввакума, написанном в 17 веке.

[Dimon Spirow]

@Андрей П. "Гибридный" древнеруски язык появил'се позней, в13 14 веку, точно на ем была написана ПВЛ. Оригинала11 века до нас не дошел, за то и нем у нас никоих источников дабы утверджати, кой реальный письменый язык ествовал в древней Руси, альмо найверойатне'ше он мало был одличный од староболгарска. Во все фейки типа берестянях грамот, але слова о полку игоревом я не вере

[mimisor66]

@Андрей П. read about the Balkan Sprachbund.

[marite amarillento]

I want to learn to speak Bulgarian, because my fiancee' is Bulgarian from Sofia and he expects me to learn the language fast because i have already stayed in Bulgaria for 7 months. I want to be ready with my basic conversational Bulgarian when i go back for the second time. Thanks for your tutorial videos.

[Toms L]

Learning Ukrainian here merely because of my interest for the country's history, mindset and culture, yet my interest for Slavic languages goes beyond. Here where I live, when it comes to Slavic languages, we are only talked about Russian, which is fine; but what about the rest? As to Bulgarian language, I found it quite interesting precisely due to its lack of cases. You Know... I'm a rocker/metalhead type of guy and have realized that your country has tons of awesome rock/heavy metal bands that sing in Bulgarian instead of singing in English like most bands over here (even though some aren't even from an English speaking country!). Impulse is the first band I came across and, since I'm learning a Slavic language after all, without skipping a beat decided to look for some songs lyrics (that's precisely where I found the main traits of Bulgarian through a basic approach). Oh Man! Your bands are unfairly underrated or simply unknown to most of us Westerners! And as to the language per se, even though I'm focused on Ukrainian I DO can understand some words when listen to songs by other bulgarian bands. How close are Ukrainian and Bulgarian with regards to similarity? Do you get along with each other? Greetings from Chile.

[druzzyaka]

Ukrainian is quite far from Bulgarian, but the same roots definitely can be noticed. Belorussian, Polish and Slovak are the closest languages to Ukrainian

[Toms L]

@druzzyaka Oh I see! Thanks for your response. I have lots of questions actually, you know...

[druzzyaka]

@Toms L you can ask me 🙂 I am @druzzyaka in Telegram. I'm really excited about the fact, that you are interested in ukrainian culture. It is so underrated... This is also true for most of east european countries

[Vae Victis]

@druzzyaka polish should be 4th after belorussian, russian and Slovak

[DR]

Ukrainian is not that similar to Bulgarian, it's really similar to Polish, Slovak and Belarusian. If you know Ukrainian, it's easy to understand Belarusian

[Branimir]

Ти си българин обаче, по акцента просто не мога да сбъркам :) А и по фацата :) Жив и здрав!

[Bread 40]

Macedonian is easier. It has all Bulgarian features eccept the stress. The stress is very simple in Macedonian, but the Bulgarian stress is very difficult.

[assolutamente_gogo]

Talking about the definite articles in Macedonian there are 3 types, depending on the distance and on if it’s a general or not! It’s much more complex then in Bulgarian For example kniga becomes knigaTA, knigaVA, knigaNA chovekOT, chovekOV, chovekON deteTO, deteVO, deteNO and so on.. So not everything is actually the same 😅 But one thing that I’ve noticed in Bulgarian is that you put articles on words such as koeTO, kogaTO which sound weird to me 😅

[SddcAnjih Fjfj]

@assolutamente_gogo Yah but the articles are easy.As Bulgarian i can say that for me macedonian sounds very weird.I barely understand more Serbo-Croatian than Macedonian 🤣

[assolutamente_gogo]

SddcAnjih Fjfj I found that sometimes we Macedonians have similar words with Serbians, other times you Bulgarians do have much more similar words with them! Once I was talking to a Bulgarian and he was asking me something like “trsja centara” and I was like what?? what does trsja means and I don’t know how I connected it with Serbian “tražim centru” and then I got it! cuz in Macedonian would be “go baram centarot” and it’s completly different

[SddcAnjih Fjfj]

@assolutamente_gogo Yeah thats true. But our languages have the same grammar.Serbian language has very diffrent grammer than macedonian and bulgarian.

[assolutamente_gogo]

SddcAnjih Fjfj it’s similar but not the same actually! As I said for the articles in Macedonian there are 3 types! and we use them differently 😅 for example the song by Poli Genova where she sings “oh daj mi ljubovta” in Macedonian sound wrong 🤭 cuz we have to put a specification if we want to use the article.. so it has to be “daj mi JA ljubovTA” otherwise if you wanna say something general them you just say “daj mi ljubov” .. but yeah for sure the grammar is more similar than with the Serbian, but I understand more Serbian then Bulgarian 🤭

[scrimlen 36]

Every language is easy when you want to learn it. I think the slavic languages for non slavic speakers will take a little more time to learn but it will be worth it.

[golongusa]

IMO, the easiness or difficulty of a language has to do with one’s ability to find language learning resources: such as grammar books, ability to practice with native speakers, TV shows and movies with subtitles, etc. With that in mind, I think Russian is the easiest Slavic language because it has the most speakers and the most language learning resources.

[Sk0lzky]

I'm not sure if lack of grammatical cases is such a great perk for someone who wants to learn other Slavic languages. I'd rather jump over the obstacle in the beginning than have to bother with it later on

[M M]

The Bulgarian verb system is super tricky!

[AARon]

Bulgarian is easy of course, but as a Polish person i have to say that Bulgarian is the hardest slavic language for me to understand when someone is speaking it :)

[Kris]

The opposite is also true :)

[AARon]

@Kris yes

[ಕೊರೊನಾವೈರಸ್ 17]

I think that czech is the hardest, for me as a croatian. not common words and difficult spelling...oh gosh :D

[AARon]

Czech is actually very similar to Polish i can understand a lot.

[ಕೊರೊನಾವೈರಸ್ 17]

@AARon yeah, it's from my personal point of view, not saying they aren't similar :D

[Yaś Agarwāl]

Hindi has 8 cases being retaining all the 8 cases of PIE we put cases after object but before verb as its SOV. But the S and O often change places as OSV in ergative case which is a part of absolutive cases. We write what we speak. The cases are like prepositions. Hindi has no gender pronouns we use vaha in eastern dialect waha in western dialects. Every character represent 1 sound श represent an ś or š or щ sound as they are same ष is like श but pronounce by the pallet.and glotis together. Many sounds are indistinguishable by english speakers like क (ka)and ख(kha) and कि (ki) की(kī) k with long I. Like this bulgarian and hindi is related we have articles.

[Ed Burkey]

Love your content 😊 keep it up

[Mehmet Çeçen]

I picked Bulgarian and Macedonian as my 8. and 9. languages

[Stefan Hansen]

Awesome! I want to learn Bulgarian!

[Wojciech Mytnik]

In 99% of the cases Polish puts the stress on second syllable from the end, for example koLEBka (a cradle), koleBECZka (a little cradle).

[Katarzyna Poroszewska]

People from the Northeast Czechia (Silesia and a bit around it) do the same, which makes listening to them pretty annoying for the rest of the country, who put stress on the first syllable :)

[Pär Vers]

What if I told you there's no such a thing as "easy" and "hard" languages to learn? The difficulty of a language strictly depends on the individual. For instance, a friend of mine, who's a native Russian speaker, mastered Mandarin in 3 years and found it easy-peasy, whereas she still struggles with basic English.

[Świeczka Niweła nie wierzę. Darek!]

You're kidding, I'm also learning Mandarin and there's no way a European could master it (as in speak fluently, fully understand natives, read books by natives and write essays) in 3 years. Unless they live in China of course.

[Ksawery Kaminski]

Yes this is subjective but i learnt english and mandarin and i can say for most of us mandarin is at least 10 times harder if your background is Indo-european. I think he had easier time with mandarin mainly because he ENJOYed learning mandarin and was TRULY interested in this language while with english she doesn't.

[Pär Vers]

@Ksawery Kaminski you got my point. Loving a language provides enough motivation itself.

[Nadia Coppola]

I want to learn Bulgarian, and also interested in the other Slavic languages Russian, Ukrainian, Croatian etc.✌🇧🇬

[QuantumBraced]

Definite articles are very common in Bulgarian, in fact Bulgarians tend to overuse "the" when speaking English, which immediately sets them apart from other Slavic speakers who tend to skip them (if they aren't fluent in English), and we know how silly skipped definite articles sound in English, so that's sort of a natural advantage that Bulgarians have. Like English, Bulgarian is highly analytic (no cases, lots of connecting words), which might make it easier for L1 and L2 English speakers to learn. That being said, Bulgarian grammar is highly complex, so I wouldn't say it's easy to learn in general.

[HeroManNick132]

''No cases'' Technically Bulgarian still has 5 cases but only 1 case is in use and that is the vocative case (and if you count the nominative too). There are leftovers from accusative, dative and instrumental cases. Also the locative and genitive cases were lost long time ago unlike these cases thart I mentioned which still can be found in Bulgarian, despite we use vocative the most.

[Animation Echo]

Pretty good video, tho I'd say Macedonian is probably the easiest to learn as it also has a more simple alphabet (all letters represent one specific sound) and its lexical stress system is usually quite consistant

[yorgunsamuray]

When your language doesn’t have articles, it’s a different story though. I think the hardest part about Slavic languages is this perfective/imperfective aspect thing. Unfinished, habitual and finished work using different verbs. Really painful.

[evil hamster]

I always thought the hardest thing is cases - dative, accusative, instrumental and so on. Except for the genitive case which is closer to nominative. i think that perfective/imperfective aspect is be like "I went/I was going" I think that in terms of grammar slavic languages look like Latin or modern German. Also, English was like that 1000 years ago.

[Marin Atanasov]

I'd add one more thing which is hard - tons of irregularities. There are rules but they don't work in a lot of situations, too much exceptions :D

[Golyplot]

I'll make a video on that to try and help out as best as I can

[marius]

indeed the verbal aspect is the most difficult part when learning a slavic language. for me even 1oo years of life are not enough to quite understand this topic. it's simple to say "finished/unfinished" action, or "repeatable/one way" action, but in fact the topic is much deeper than that.

[evil hamster]

@marius is it so hard to understand the difference between "колол/уколол/кольнул/покалывал"?

[Pичаpд Wiking]

Slovak language is hard to learn but easy to understand for most slavic nations

[ESC Lusbula]

I'm sad how I can't study South Slavic languages. I know they're easier than Russian. But Russian is the only Slavic language that is properly taught in Finland.

[Heathcliff Earnshaw]

Виктор , я - Англичанин который начинал Русский язык когда у него 19 лет , потом через всю жизнь, с интервалами , продолжал изучения. Хотя в данным моменте бегло говорю по-русски , я все-же далеко от совершения знания языка , особенно понимания фильмы и.т.д. . Думаете ли вы что изучение Болгарского языка мог б мне оказать помочь с совершением русского языка, особенно из-за того, что этимология мне очень помогает с поглощением в памяти новые слова?

[Golyplot]

Абсолютно да! Една, две години и ще говорите Български език. Удачь 😊

[Frank Paris]

Ne ne ne ne! When I don't put the stress where it's supposed to be, they don't understand me! Also, I would suggest you'd acquire a grammar of Old Bulgarian language, just to see: - where the vocabulary comes from - who influenced who. The Bulgarian language we speak today is based on a selected dialect spoken around Cyril and Methodius, which spread around with the translations of the Bible and others, followed by Clement. That's what Old Bulgarian is based upon. You can still hear it when a Pop reads something you don't understand, at all :) The Old Slavonic evolved, traveled to Russia which sent back some good old vocabulary later. It's a physical property. Your video is nice anyway, good step for foreigners to agree it's the easiest one to learn and open all doors to the other Slavic languages afterwards. BUT!!! : after about 12 years practicing everyday, my lovely wife is Bulgarian and I live in Bulgaria, there's still a huge gap between the Bulgarian I speak and the one a native Bulgarian speaks. The language is veeeeeeeeeeery rich, the verbs are very sensitive to all kinds of nuances, it takes a lifetime for a foreigner to speak it properly.

[Golyplot]

I understand what you mean, I applaud you for the effort. Nothing beats love as a motivator. The video was meant as an introduction, hopefully in the future I'll put out more specific video that can be a help for you too, so your bulgarian can reach the native level. Thanks for watching!

[jel jel]

Yes, foreigners never actually become fluent in Bulgarian.

[canko15]

I'm a simple man. I see a video about languages, I click

[Emil n]

@MattLikesTotalDrama what is it called??

[Konstantin Kodzhabashev]

Start learning it and you'll find out that it isnt easy at all

[DR]

Easiest Slavic language tho.

[Alex - Unity]

No language is easy to learn. The more you get into a language, the more you see how much harder it is.

[Setts]

@Alex - Unity i don't trust anyone with the name AlexProBG

[jel jel]

@DR It's not.

[QuantumBraced]

I think Bulgarian got its definite articles from neighboring Greek and Romanian, I seriously doubt it was from Scandinavian/Germanic influence. Some Goths did pass through the area but very few. Also, as Bulgarian doesn't have cases, definite articles help a lot.

[HeroManNick132]

Bulgarian HAS cases but most of them are leftovers. I don't get it why people say that Bulgarian is completely case free when it still has?

[Lyuben Zarev]

Great research and video! Keep them coming! :))

[areloTET]

Bulgarian doesn't seem too difficult. I could consider studying it. Edit: fixed a typo

[IhavePIE]

So what happened, is it hard for you

[areloTET]

@IhavePIE Haven't started yet.

[Blagoslav Petkov]

Great video, Golyplot! Very well done!

[Brad Karpenko]

Thank you . I am Ukrainian/American but we have Bulgarian friend where I live . This helps me to know what to expect when learning some Bulgarian .

[HeroManNick132]

Знаеш ли украински поне? И колко успяваш да разумяваш български? 😁

[Allan]

I'm learning Russian. I guess I should have picked Bulgarian - articles and all. Excellent video; thanks.

[Alex Nikolov]

stay with russian

[Daniel Ivanov]

As a Bulgarian I agree we can understand sometimes what other Slavic country's talk about

[zahari20 bonev]

Why is Bulgarian language so perfectly phonetic? The answer is very simple - the Cyrilic alphabet was created in Bulgaria in order to match the spoken language.. For every sound a letter was created. Many Greek letters were used , but also other letters were designed to match slavonik sounds that were not in the Greek language. This way letters for the sounds "sh", "ch", etc. were created.

[Ranmaru Rei]

Yet it has some Russian influence, because Я and Щ were not invented in Bulgaria, in fact.

[xsc1000]

Its more complicated. Before cyrillic there was glagolic. It was the first alphabet which has the right letter for each (slavic) sound, but letters were very complicated to write. So cyrilic was the way how to simplify it, it took standard greek letters and added similar looking letters for the rest. In fact you can do the same with latin script too - add letters for slavic specific sounds - so Czech is also phonetic, because we did this with latin script.

[MyNameIsSteveYesitis]

The original Cyrillic alphabet wasn't perfectly phonetic though. Even though it was more phonetic than most other alphabets. The simplest form of the Cyrillic alphabet is the one used in Serbia because it has been "dumbed down" essentially. They got rid of letters like я ё and ю, which are essentially ja(ya), jo(yo) and ju(yu). Instead adding a standalone letter for J(y sound). Because those 3 letters are composed of 2 sounds and not 1.

[Ive Mc Fallen]

It's.not.phonetic it's phonemic 💀

[Ranmaru Rei]

@MyNameIsSteveYesitis Vuk Karadžić reform for Serbian made sense because Ю, Я and Є was on the begining of a word or after Л, Н and vowels.

[Иванна]

Bulgaria 🇧🇬 💕

[George Nicolas]

I am a Romanic language group speaker and musician and for me count not if a language is easiest but if it is more beautiful and melodic and definitely in Slavic languages the Czech is most convenient by those reasons.

[HeroManNick132]

So you find Czech the most beautiful Slavic language? Honestly Czech sounds the weirdest in songs if I'm honest. And in most cases even Slovak sounds nicer not to be rude or biased.

[International Bolshevik]

Fun fact: Bulgaria created the Cyrillic language

[auraglow03]

*script.

[Никола Цеков]

Викторе радвам се че правиш такия видеа :D

[Vera O]

Thank you for sharing 🙂 Merci beaucoup ! Дякую !

[orven pamonag]

Im fascinated to polish, another slavic language however it is pretty tough to learn. Im amazed the fact that bulgarian eliminated the complex cases that generally appear/featured among slavic languages.

[Dimon Spirow]

Nazaisto, sistema czasovnikov, ale, jak govorât v drugih slavjanskih jazýkah, padežej, je ne silno težka, jestly upouzyvať prepozicjonnu sistemu, to znacze, sistemu, gde bylo b propisano, s kojmy prepozicjamy kojy czasovny zakonczanja korrespondujut. V nacionalnix jazykax to problemno, jednakož, naprimer, dlâ interslavânskoj lingovy, pelne razumlivoj dlâ vsex slavânev, to stvority' bude absolutno realno.

[Frost Flower]

I think it started when the Bulgars tried to learn the Slavic language of their subjects but then it got mangled.

[jel jel]

It still has cases, they are simplified however.