So as promised, I’ve been obsessing about Bulgarian this week. A couple of days ago, I announced that I’d started a blog in Bulgarian. Since then I’ve been thinking about it a lot. About what I want to post about. About spelling. About grammar. About comments that have been left for me. And,yes for the record, some of those comments were too difficult for me to understand and I had to use google to translate them for me.
Now there are a couple of interesting things I’ve noticed since starting this “write in Bulgarian” blog. One is that I have no sense of which words are capitalized or not. I think that this is due to the fact that I never think about Bulgarian being in capital and lower case letters because all Cyrillic looks like it’s in capital letters to me. The other reason is because I am so happy to sound out what a word is and understand it that the capitol letters get lost on me. I also dislike the Cyrillic “script” where the “T” looks more like an “m” so I avoid it. Right?! That’s an awesome solution.
The other thing I’ve been struggling with is spelling. This is clearly because I am not a great speller in English but also because I can’t reliably hear the differences between certain letters in Bulgarian. Mostly it’s this letter which trips me up: ъ as in скъпo. The result of my uncertainty about leads me to pronouncing a word a few times with different emphasis to see if it sound better that way and then I do the same thing different vowels until I have not idea which spelling or pronunciation is correct and I’m forced to look it up on google translate.
The last thing I really like to do which is apparently really annoying to Bulgarian readers is to use “I” way too much. Now this happens because in English a girl has got to use pronouns but in Bulgarian each verb conjugates different for 1-3person singular and plural. Yeah so all you really need is the verb to know who the who of the sentence is. This is a hard one for me to get used to but I am trying.
Needless to say, sometimes it’s hard to put yourself out there but I am glad that I am mostly because I don’t want people to think I am stupid so I am trying to listen to everyone’s advice and apply it right away. Oh and I don’t want to accidentally cement any bad habits/mistakes in Bulgarian because as I am sure you know it’s much harder to get things right after you’ve done it wrong a few times.
Thanks for all of the support!!
Yes, yes it is difficult – but you can do anything you put your mind to! Plus, think of the example you’re setting for your students – if you really think this microblog is useful, what’s to stop you from suggesting it as an exercise to those you teach? Awesome,no? Plus, you’re doig very well, from what I have seen so far
Keep it up!!
Thanks for the thanks. I felt a bit uneasy correcting you all the time, but now Ill do it always
@Комитата don’t worry about it. I am a teacher I spend my whole life correcting students–I can take it. I just can’t promise that I’ll remember it.
You’re a brave soul. I commend you! See you soon
Hi!
I would like to thank you for making efforts to study my language! What you do is really great!
Now I will speak honestly about your Bulgarian skills because I think it’s more useful this way.
First, the good thing is that most of the time your writing is comprehensible and this means that people can understand what you mean. This is very important. But the not-so-good thing is that there is a grammar mistake in almost every sentence. You seem to have a problem with verbs and verbs are really difficult so it’s not wonder. Sometimes even I have problems with Bulgarian verbs, haha. Pay special attention to verbs with preffixes as they are largely used. For example – мисля, измислям, помислям may sound very similar to you but they have different meanings and are used in different situation. Another problem I see is that sometimes you use sentences and expressions that are grammatically correct but sound a little awkward and are definitely not the sentences and expressions a Bulgarian would use. I know this part is really difficult for any foreign language student, yes. Here are some examples:
Instead of не искам да уча сега use не ми се учи сега.
Instead of пия моето мляко с мед use пия си млякото с мед.
I would like to get a feedback from you
I’d like to respectfully disagree with Rumi. I think your posts are more than just comprehensible. I think they are very good.
Rumi makes good suggestions on how to make your Bulgarian more conversational sounding.
Keep it up, you have come such a long way!
@Rumi and Vergil Thanks so much for your comments. It’s good to know what I need to work on.