The Easiest Slavic Language to Learn
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- čas přidán 31. 07. 2024
- 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!
Skip the ads, the channel is not monetized, if you see ads they are auto-generated by youtube.
dang youtube
your pfp is a bulgarian country ball, based dude, as a Bulgarian, I wish to handshake you
Yes sir
you should get monetized since youtube brings ads anyways. you deserve money for your education!
@@attilathepun7983 you saw ads?
Hungary: We'll take those extra cases if you aren't going to use them...
wait,Hungary is slavic?
@@micreper no, but it has a ton of grammatical cases 😆
who asked mongol?
Georgian: Step aside, amateur.
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.
A slavic language without cases is a gift from the gods :)
We have but there are only 4-5. Not like the Russian language :)
@@damyankolev5662 Not like the polish language :)
@@damyankolev5662 Russian have 6, Czech 7...
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?);
@@damyankolev5662 no we don't . There are just remains from cases in the Bulgarian language
I'm a simple man. I see a video about languages, I click
@@mattlikestotaldrama8534 what is it called??
same
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.
Odkiaľ si?
Ой! Круто я русский
How do you recommend learning Russian efficiently?.
where are you from ? your surname is so familiar here
@@Pk-wu9tl play Stalker haha
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_hitlr-4256I’m black and I’m curious about Bulgarian culture?? What is the issue ?
A Bulgarian friend of mine told me he thought , aside from the Macedonian language, Serbian was probably the most understandable Slavic language to him.
very true, I can understand most of serbian especially in folk music ♥️
@@golyplot And I as a Serb understand shit when I hear spoken Bulgarian. 😅 It's not that I didn't try.
@@schmucker1989 how about spoken Macedonian?
Yes. It is true. And for me polish and Czech languages are most difficult to understand
@@kirilpopov7888 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)
Bulgarian is the best slavic language for me as a romanian 🇧🇬🇷🇴❤
Love from Bulgaria🇧🇬❤️🇷🇴
Why don't you adopt it over there in Romania? 😈😈After all you already used it till the middle of the 19th century. 😁😁
@@MrEndeavour7 we've only used the cyrillic alphabet till 19th century but the language was still romanian as it is today..
@@verloren_ruhe 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.
@@anymega3540 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).
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.
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
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?
@@realahiga 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.
>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).
@@antontarantey3500 no idea what he's on it took me a day to learn cyrillic
I speak four languages, but I don't speak any Slavic one yet - So I'm definitely going to take up Bulgarian. Thanks, dude!
Are you sure about not speaking any slavic language while having the flag of Poland in the background of your profile photo 🤣🤣?
@@timonzdeib9295 but it's not a flag, it's a red bath towel.😅
Wow! Which languages?
@@alvaros3168 Portuguese (native), English, Spanish, and Greek (intermediate). I'm also learning Italian.
Learn Russian instead.
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.
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!
Yo soy Bulgaro para mi Español es facil pero yo practicar casi nunca. Eso es muy mal
@@aDionisss 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!
I met a Bulgarian friend in Uni and he sounds just like a native in European Portuguese. I suppose the sounds are very easy for a Balkan Slav(apart from maybe the nasals).
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
Precisely what I aim to show, Bulgarian grammar is pretty similar to English considering it's a slavic language. Thanks for watching 😊
I like the mechanism of Bulgarianisation.👌😄😃 This may be the new linguistic toy. Interesting !
Wow that is so cool to know
Yeah, Polish is way harder than Russian
Your post is full of so much nonsense that I don't even know when to start. First, I highly doubt you are actually fluent. Bulgarian grammar is similar to English only on the surface level, however if one wants to express himself in anything beyond the basics it diverges significantly. Lexical aspect, evidentials, and tenses work differently from other Romance/Slavic Languages and have nothing in common with English. So I'm calling bullshit on this post.
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
absolutely right
Very true
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
@@vaggfoud 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.
@@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
2:43 Finally! Someone finally said it! As a Hungarian (who is extremely bulgarophile), this makes me happy :)
Greetings from Унгария!
Да живее Българя!
България* :)
Me also likes Унгария! Поздрав 🇧🇬❤️🇭🇺
Да живее Унгария!
(i like the Hungarian waltz also)
A Chinese man once said: "Аз съм Българин"
Lol
Periodt sis 🥵
but his father was MACEDONIAN
@@alexnikolov2654 PLOT TWISTTT
@@sam_does_stuff ne te razbrah
geri
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!
Can you speak it?
u alive bro?
даваайй батее урааааа
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
Имах на 12 години хубава бавачка от София. Роден съм на границата между Афганистан и Таджикистан, така че имаме и кирилица на таджикски.
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!❤🇧🇬
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).
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!
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
@@JustsJordan 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.
@@JustsJordan 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.
@@kyarden7971 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.
The best introduction to a language i've seen. Bravo!
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.
golqm smqh
bulgarian english is one of the worse
Абсолютно вярно, много по-лесно е да научиш английски отколкото руски, въпреки общите корени на думите.
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.
Fantastic video man keep making more, I want to learn Bulgarian completely thank you ❤️
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 :)
Thank you. Great video, you make everything very clear for us new learners.
Greeting from Czech republic.
Thank you for this video! I am currently learning Bulgarian and this definitely helped understand understand language. It was very reassuring!
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)
Супер, добро прекарване ти пожелавам тогава. :D
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
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.
I've lived in bulgaria and it's an amazing country, has amazing people and an amazing culture!
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 ! ☺
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".
@@svetoslavstanchev9977 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
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.
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!😁
Finally someone said that bg is the hardest hehe
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."
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.
I'm aiming to make it seem the easiest. Gotta get some more lessons out
@@gabrielametodieva8360 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.
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
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!!
can't believe you guys don't have any cases!? Such a relief
loved the video. I didn’t know there were any Slavic languages with no cases.
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!!!
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
Как успехи в изучении русского?)
You are very convincent in your points, young man...hahahah I´m going to have your language a try! Greetings from Brazil!
Abraço da Bulgária mermão, o sotaque brasileiro é mt lindo mesmo. Até me levou a aprender o português! Kkkkk
That is the most detailed, genuine, beautiful and truthful video on Bulgarian I have seen on CZcams! A lot of love from Stara Zagora❤
Yes - I'm English, now living in Stara Zagora (beautiful city), and I agree this video is great
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.
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.
😂 false friend ' v djoba ' в джоба'
Knowing Bulgarian helps you to catch up not only Slavic but also other languages
And phonetically is easier to pronounce.
@@HeroManNick132
I suppose the English pronunciation of Latin words is far from the original one
Викторе радвам се че правиш такия видеа :D
Great video, Golyplot! Very well done!
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.
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!
Yes, foreigners never actually become fluent in Bulgarian.
If this will make you feel better, I am Bulgarian and for my children Bulgarian was a second language even for the last 13 years they are living in Bulgaria and completed their school and university here, they still make grammatical and pronunciation mistakes.
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"
And then we also differanciate distance of the object/person
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.
thank you so much this video was very helpful!! (also your smile is super cute)
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.
Thanks. Is it worth learning Bulgarian first? If I'm interested in Slavic culture... especially Russian.
@@Carlos-xy9wr Yeah
The Bulgarian verb system is super tricky!
Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
Love your content 😊 keep it up
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!
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
You’re a good presenter! Good luck on subs :)
Hi, I just discovered your channel because I was searching for channels where I can learn Bulgarian quickly and easily, especially for an older English speaking person who doesn't speak another language. I will look at other episodes to see if you are the one that can help me. Oh, by the way, I have liked and subscribed too .😊
I am from Russia. I traveled across Bulgaria and several times across all the former Yugoslav countries. I also find Macedonian easier than Bulgarian.
True. Also, the writing is 100% phonetic in Macedonian.
What is macedonian?
@@David-qq5yf It's a language of North Macedonia closely related to Bulgarian. North Macedonia borders Bulgaria and has a population of around 2 million people.
It was an Ironic question. As a bulgarian I can admit that it's the same language.
@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.
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.
Thank you for sharing 🙂
Merci beaucoup !
Дякую !
Great research and video! Keep them coming! :))
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!
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. 👍
Имаме доста диалекти, които доста променят думите.
It's interesting how are you doing today, 2 years later. You have properly identified that all words ending in "-oст", "-ест", "-аст" are feminine, but "пръст" is not of this group and has different meanings in the different genders - the masculine means "finger"(only), the feminine is "soil", "ground", "mould", "clay", the thing that one gets buried in... So, again, there is a hard rule with no exceptions that defines the grammar behind these words. Maybe the real exception are the words ending in "щ": "плащ" is m, "мощ" is f but I can't think of other examples.... Have you met other exceptions?
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
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.
@@user-nh6op5rq4y 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.
@@dimonspirow6830 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.
@@user-nh6op5rq4y "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
@@user-nh6op5rq4y read about the Balkan Sprachbund.
Good job bro, well explained
Interesting all that! :) Sub for the content and the miniature! :)
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.
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.
My superficial knowledge of Russian from the times when it was a compulsory language taught in Poland and my knowledge of my native language mean that today I understand almost everything that Belarusians and Ukrainians say.
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.
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.
Super video sir👌
Awesome! I want to learn Bulgarian!
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.
Yet it has some Russian influence, because Я and Щ were not invented in Bulgaria, in fact.
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.
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.
It's.not.phonetic it's phonemic 💀
@@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.
Great video. Very interesting.
You persuaded me to start learning Bulgarian!
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! :)
I'm trying to convince them otherwise 😊
@@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.
@@emiln3340 Мога да помагам, ако имате нужда. Поздрави!
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.
The spokesman for the Bulgarian language :). Nice video
unikalno video brat evala
Start learning it and you'll find out that it isnt easy at all
Easiest Slavic language tho.
it's easy you dim-wit
No language is easy to learn. The more you get into a language, the more you see how much harder it is.
@@xXrandomryzeXx i don't trust anyone with the name AlexProBG
@@dav2ry7 It's not.
I'm learning Russian. I guess I should have picked Bulgarian - articles and all.
Excellent video; thanks.
stay with russian
Are you planing to make any more videos?
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!
What about Malay?
@@HeroManNick132 about the same simplicity
Много добро педставяне!
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.
Same I’m Bulgarian learning Spanish isn’t that difficult but when it comes to pronunciation I’m perfect unlike my English classmates
What about French? It's not very difficult, but some words are hard for me to pronounce even with two language backgrounds.
Such a great video. I'm Polish and sadly I don't u derstand almost anything in Bulgarian. I once saw a diagram that showed that from all Slavic languages Polish and Bulgarian are the most distant from each other. It also make sense when you look at the map....Anyway, thanks a lot. My grandfather came to Poland from Bulgaria and I seriously think about learning at least some basics and visit Bulgaria soon. Your video made me less terrified with the idea of learning some strange, distant language written with another alphabet. ❤
Polish is my favorite slavic language, it took a while for me to get used to how you pronounce worss in Polish, but once I did, I realized that I understand almost half of them. I did a video with a Polish youtuber on this subject, checkout Stelcio - Bulgarian Language
Hi Mr. Golyplot, I was wondering if you knew of any apps for learning Bulgarian that you find personally to be quite reliable. Duolingo and Babbel don't seem to have it.
"Bulgarian compared to all other Slavic languages does not have cases."
Leskovcani: "Hold my pljeskavica!"
How do you pronounce "Srdjan"?
@@zahari20 I assume you are from Russia? If so, in Russian it would be "Срджан Рудич". Which is pretty strange to me, because dj or đ should be closer to дь than to дж, but anyways, you write it with дж. In Serbian Cyrillic, we write it as uppercase Ђ or lower ђ.
@@srdjanrudic Then why it is not written as "Srđan Rudić" and make it more confusing when you use the Latin variant? "Сърджян Рудич" will be in Bulgarian
@@HeroManNick132 It is written as Srđan Rudić, I'm just too lazy to switch between RS and US keyboard layouts :D
@@srdjanrudic Wouldn't this in Serbian sounds like "Срдjан" But I guess you wrote your name like Novak Djokovic, right?
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.
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
@@user-sb2gt8dy6i 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.
@@katarzynaporoszewska3204 Because Common Czech is a reconstructed language based on rural dialects, other slavic languages and extreme aversion for non-slavic words :)
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.
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 .
Знаеш ли украински поне? И колко успяваш да разумяваш български? 😁
I picked Bulgarian and Macedonian as my 8. and 9. languages
There is nothing such as an easy Slavic language!
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
@@JustsJordan Љ Њ just entered the chat
Is there an index somewhere of how long children of each country take (on average) to learn to speak their native language? There are plenty of grown up British people who wouldn't have enough formal language skills to pass a test to apply for British citizenship! - and plenty who cannot spell many words correctly... However most of these people actually speak their own dialect perfectly well; a teacher in Liverpool told me that in order to teach 'Scouse' children to write, he first had to teach them a new language (formal English) e.g. instead of 'Gorra ball?' they have to learn to say 'Have you got a ball?'.
You sound as a very smart a nice person. I will take a look at Bulgarian.
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. 🤞
The problem is, that Bulgarian is less understable Slavic language for other Slavs. Learn Slovakian, this is Slavic lingua franca.
I completely agree. I'm serbian, i traveled in all of eastern europe from Bulgaria to Poland and i met a lot of people and made some good friends in all of these countries but from a language perspective i only really felt close to slovakian, because i could basically understand 80% of what slovak people said to me and could answer them in serbian without using english. In all other slavic countries i had to use much more english, particularly in Bulgaria where i had so much trouble understanding them, at first glance it doesn't even sound slavic. So yeah Slovakian is for sure slavic lingua franca, at least in my opinion.
@@marcorossi2854 Ако бъда честен с тебе, вашият сръбски акцент е леко смешен за моите български уши. Звучите ми сякаш всеки жител е като от онези селяни в България, които са близо до вашата граница или с тази на Северна Македония и е разбираемо защо е така. Вие доста често обичате да слагате ударенията на първите гласни букви, както и македонците и по тази причина ми се струвате сякаш ми говорите твърде бързо.
Да не говорим, че някак си сърбо-хърватските езици не са чак така близки, за колкото повечето ги смятат. Да близки са, но в повечето случай не мога да разбирам повече от 80% на сърбо-хърватски, особено в нормална реч доста по-малко да кажем на 50-60%. В някой случай бих казал, че на руски бих могъл да разбера повече думи, отколкото на сърбо-хърватските езици.
От всички славянски езици най ми е лесен за мен, разбира се е македонския език. Буквално повечето думи, които ги срещнаш там, ги има на български, но разбира се зависи и от регионите, в които се използват тези думи. Разбира се и в македонския има и сръбски заемки още от времето на Югославия, но се вижда как македонският език е всъщност по-близък до българския, отколкото до сърбо-хърватските езици.
Най-вече акцентът се различава доста, защото те говорят по почти същия начин както вие, но там нямам проблеми за разлика от сърбо-хърватските езици и го разбирам почти перфектно на 90-95% (може 1-2 думи да не са разбираеми, но това не е голям проблем.)
Полският ми е най-труден, заради излишните звуци, където те слагат, макар че имаме пак доста прилики с някои думи. И относно за словашкият език, за разлика от чешкия - той е доста по-ясен и разбираем изненадващо, даже и за мен, макар че не разбирам всичко на 100% - поне на 40-50%.
Със сигурност на писменост, българският ще ти се стори по-лесен за разбиране, отколкото на говор, прав ли съм?
@@HeroManNick132 slovakian is really easy to understand for most people, polish or czech is very hard for me, bulgarian sounds difficult for me but it's in the middle. But i thought that spoken bulgarian was easier to understand because we are close countries, we also have many common words that are typical in balkan. From a cultural perspective there's not much difference, for me only language was the problem.
@@HeroManNick132makedonski je mix bugarskog i srpskog
@@marcorossi2854 As I said the accent is very different from yours. In Bulgarian is more dynamic while in the Serbo-Croatian is mostly at the first vowel like for example: "магиjа/magija" and "магия". We pronounce it like "магИя" while you like "мАгия" same with the word "гОдина" and "годИна".
Also you have to be careful because some words change its meaning by the accent. Like if you say "вЪлна" it means wool, while "вълнА" is wave, "извЕстен" - famous, "известЕн" - notified, "пАри" - steam/vapor, "парИ" - money (singular - "парА" coin), "вратА" - door, "вратЪ" (same word but A become an Ъ sound) it means the neck - short form and etc.
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
I am Bulgarian born naturalized American. I speak both languages fluently. Self- taught in English, but never knew all the specific terms used to describe the Bulgarian language. I was actually under the impression Bulgarian is a tough language to learn. I guess I was wrong. Excellent video.
such a great review! very useful
Proud Bulgarian here 🇧🇬
Not “some Slavic languages have up to 6-7 cases” all Slavic languages except for Bulgarian and Macedonian have up to 6-7 cases lol
Hey, interesting video. So you're a Bulgarian born in Bulgaria, who grew up in Canada and then came back?
Hey, I grew up in Canada (Toronto) too, but moved back in Varna now! Здрасти!