Learning the Lingo

Learning Bulgarian with Boris

A question which I get asked a LOT is "how are you doing with the language?" or "can you SPEAK Bulgarian?" or "isn't the language really difficult?". To these people I have promised a blog and so this one is for you.

When you are emigrating to a country where English is not widely spoken then the language is one of the first things that you will start to think about. Being able to communicate with your neighbours is vital and will mean that you can integrate much quicker. It is also really helpful if you can make yourself understood when in bars, restaurants or shops.

The Bulgarian Alphabet

This challenge is made greater when the language you need to learn is based on a different alphabet; you find yourself not just trying to remember words, but also not able to just pick up a dictionary and read a word as you have to memorise the pronunciation of unusual letters.

But what is life without a challenge, hey.

As in many parts of this whole process I was lucky in that around the time that I decided to move to Bulgaria, I was in a position to influence the hiring in of a Bulgarian developer to the company I worked at. Boris since then has proven his weight in gold (it is he who has been my main nagging weapon with the architect has he has willingly phoned her a few times, and also he who rang the Kmet about the house in the woods) and he has been teaching me Bulgarian.

The first words

I can clearly remember the first lesson where I took my notebook (front page pictured above) and the list of words which myself and my girlfriend had come up with, and attempted to pronounce "zdraste" which means "hello".

Our strategy was to pick up words which would be useful, and not worry too much about language structure and grammar at this stage. We spent all week working out what words to add for the next week and then took Boris out for dinner over which we proved what had learned the previous week, while adding new words for the next.

I really struggle with languages and found that I was only able to really pick up one or two new words a day, and sometimes not even that. Many times J managed to learn every word for the week in the first day, and then spent the rest of the time patiently trying to hammer those same words into my thick skull.

This process has slowed down since I changed jobs and don't see Boris every day, and pretty much stalled completely as things finished between me and J. In the last few days I've started taking the notepad into work and getting colleagues to assist me in breaks at work. Scottish Mike takes particular pleasure in requesting that I repeat the words with the correct angry accent (which is amusing as I've always found the language sounds soft and lyrical when locals talk).

There have been any number of examples of how useful it has been to know even the few words that have stuck; the pleasure of being able to say "studeno" (cold) when given a warm beer, and then have the warm beer removed and one with ice on it passed over is amazing. We were also able to walk into a village and communicate with a villager that we were looking for the house ("kushte") for sale ("prodava li se") and it was a flash of amazing inspiration when I understood as he said "ahhh eto tam" which means "over there" and follow him.

This blog is plenty long enough now so I will leave it here. I will do another blog covering specifically software and books which I have found useful, bought, or had recommended to me.