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Bulgarian Language

The Bulgarian Language Program contains 18 hours of audio, and two textbooks in PDF file format with 954 pages.

Each unit of this course, aside from review units, is divided into three parts: Bulgarian Basic Sentences , Notes, Drills. Units 13 on have a fourth part, a reading passage. The Basic Bulgarian Sentences are normal dialogue material, meant to be memorized. The Bulgarian Notes explain the grammatical structure of the language and are divided roughly into three phases. The first phase (Units 1-5, 7-11) has a great deal of grammatical material per unit, in order to give the student a working knowledge of the most frequent patterns. The second phase (Units 13-17, 19-23) treats fewer grammatical features per unit. The third phase (Units 25-29) gives more overall treatments of selected features.

Bulgarian Drills are recorded first for listening, then for familiarization through repetition, and finally for participation. During the participation step, when the student performs the required manipulation, his utterances are confirmed on the audio immediately following the space provided for his participation.

Bulgarian Drills are generally in two groups in any unit: a) variation drills on pattern sentences, which provide opportunities for the student to develop flexibility in the use of patterns already memorized, and b) grammar drills, which are intended to provide practice for the student in the operation of the patterns explained in the immediately preceding grammar notes.

About the Bulgarian Language

Bulgarian is spoken by more than ten million people worldwid and is the official language of the Republic of Bulgaria. It is not a difficult language for English-speakers. In fact, of all the Slavonic languaes, Bulgarian's structure makes it one of the easiest for English speakers to learn. True, the Cyrillic alphabet of 30 letters, which takes its name from the ninth century scholar and holy man St. Cyril, may at first seem a bit of a barrier, but it is not difficult to master. The Cyrillic alphabet is very logical, extremely efficient and well adapted to rendering the sounds of Bulgarian.

Bulgarian is a member of the Slavic language subfamily, which is a branch of the large Indo-European family of languages. It bears close similiarities to the other Slavic tongues in both vocabulary and grammar, but its resemblance to Russian, Ukranian, Belorussian and Serbian is especially conspicous, since they all share a common alphabet, Cyrillic. It should be noted here that after the death of the creators of the Cyrillic alphabet, the brothers Cyril and Methodius, it was namely Bulgaria that their students developed and popularized the modified version of the Cyrillic alphabet which, with some slight differences, is used today.

Irrespective of all features classifying it as a Slavic language, Bulgarian has its own specific characteristics that differentiate it from the other members of this linguistic division and make it particularly interesting for the Slavic scholars. Undoubtedly, this interest is strengthened by the fact that modern Bulgarian is the direct heir to the classical for the Slavic world Old Church Slavonic language.

Unlike all other Slavic tongues, modern Bulgarian lacks the case-marking system, i.e. the grammatical function of a noun, a pronoun or an adjective is not indicated by changes of inflection. Instead, prepositions are used, just as in modern English. Also unlike all other Slavic languages, during its centuries-long historical development Bulgarian has acquired a new grammatical category - the definite article of nouns, appearing in the form of a suffix, added to the stem. At the same time, adjectives and adverbs form their comparatives and superlatives in an analytical manner, by means of word-particles.

Generally speaking, the Bulgarian language has evolved from synthetism towards analytism. Today, syntactic relationships are expressed by function words and changes of position rather than by inflected forms.