Learn more about grammatical gender in Bulgarian
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Intro |
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| Michael: Do adjectives have a gender in Bulgarian? |
| Yana: And does noun gender influence adjectives? |
| Michael: At BulgarianPod101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine the following situation: Karen and Mark Lee are walking past a car salon. Karen says, |
| "I want a new motorbike." |
| Karen Lee: Искам нов мотор. (Iskam nov motor.) |
| Dialogue |
| Karen Lee: Искам нов мотор. (Iskam nov motor.) |
| Mark Lee: Искам нова кола. (Iskam nova kola.) |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Karen Lee: Искам нов мотор. (Iskam nov motor.) |
| Michael: "I want a new motorbike." |
| Mark Lee: Искам нова кола. (Iskam nova kola.) |
| Michael: "I want a new car." |
Lesson focus |
| Michael: In this lesson, we will be looking at the question: Do adjectives have a gender in Bulgarian? The answer is: yes. |
| Nouns have a gender in Bulgarian and, because adjectives must agree with the noun that they qualify, adjectives have genders too. They can be masculine, feminine or neuter, in the singular. They also change in the plural, but we will not be looking at the number in this lesson. We will be focusing on how adjectives change in accordance with the gender of the noun. |
| Luckily, you don't have to worry too much about masculine inflections. They have what is called a "zero ending." This means that, in the singular, the masculine inflection of the adjective is the same as the adjective stem or "base" adjective. So, if you know the base adjective, you know the masculine inflection. Nothing changes. |
| To illustrate this, let's have a closer look at the dialogue from this lesson: Do you remember how Karen says "I want a new motorcycle?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Yana as Karen Lee: Искам нов мотор. (Iskam nov motor.) |
| Michael: Here, the Bulgarian noun for "motorcycle" or |
| Yana: мотор (motor) |
| Michael: is masculine. As you can see, the adjective for "new" which modifies it sounds like this: |
| Yana: нов (nov) |
| Michael: This is also the base form of the adjective, so, combined together, "new motorcycle" is |
| Yana: нов мотор (nov motor). |
| Michael: Now, let's look at feminine adjectives. It's easy to convert the masculine inflection to the feminine. This is because most masculine adjectives end in a consonant and, to form the feminine inflection, all we have to do is add the letter |
| Yana: -a (-a) |
| Michael: to the end of the masculine adjective. Let's have another look at the dialogue: do you remember how Mark says: "I want a new car?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Yana as Mark Lee: Искам нова кола. (Iskam nova kola.) |
| Michael: In this case, the Bulgarian adjective for "new": |
| Yana: нова (nova) |
| Michael: agrees with the noun for "car." which is: |
| Yana: кола (kola) |
| Michael: This is because the noun is feminine. Did you hear how the masculine, or base adjective, changed when it assumed the feminine inflection? From |
| Yana: нов (nov), |
| Michael: it changed to |
| Yana: нова (nova) |
| Michael: Let's now look at the neuter gender. This too is easy to learn because all you have to do is add the vowel |
| Yana: о (o) |
| Michael: to the end of the masculine form of the adjective. As an example, listen to how one says the neuter Bulgarian noun for "place": |
| Yana: място (myasto) |
| Michael: And, now, listen to how we say "new place" in Bulgarian: |
| Yana: ново място (novo myasto) |
| Michael: You can hear how the adjective was inflected. |
| Yana: нов (nov) |
| Michael: changed to |
| Yana: ново (novo) |
| Michael: So, now, we have inflected the Bulgarian adjective for "new" in both the feminine and the neuter genders. Now, let's try out some basic sentences with the adjective "tall/high." which in the masculine form is: |
| Yana: висок (visok) |
| Michael: First, let's see the masculine form in a sentence: |
| Yana: Спортистът се състезава във висок скок. (Sportistat se sastezava vav visok skok.) |
| Michael: This means "The athlete competes in the high jump." Now, let us use the same adjective, but with a feminine noun. |
| Yana: Тя е висока жена. (Tya e visoka zhena.) |
| Michael: This means "She is a tall woman." Could you hear how we added the ending |
| Yana: а (a) |
| Michael: to the adjective? And, lastly, let's use a neuter noun: |
| Yana: Жирафът е високо животно. (Zhirafat e visoko zhivotno.) |
| Michael: This means "The giraffe is a tall animal." Did you hear the |
| Yana: о (o) |
| Michael: at the end of the adjective? This is because the noun "animal" is neuter, and therefore so is any adjective describing it! |
| In most cases, the base or masculine form of the adjective ends with a consonant. However, be careful, as some masculine forms of the adjectives can end with the vowel |
| Yana: -и (-i) |
| Michael: For example, |
| Yana: български (balgarski) |
| Michael: which means "Bulgarian." The good news is that these masculine forms of the adjectives use the same rules, or suffixes, to transform into their feminine and neuter forms. |
| And there you have it. It's really not that difficult to inflect adjectives according to gender in Bulgarian! |
| [Summary] |
| Michael: In this lesson, you have learned that adjectives in Bulgarian definitely have gender. This is because the nouns have gender and adjectives will therefore always agree with the noun that they describe or qualify. Masculine adjectives will end in a consonant, and feminine adjectives will end in |
| Yana: а |
| Michael: and neuter adjectives will end in |
| Yana: о |
| It really is that simple. As with most languages, there are exceptions to these rules, but knowing these rules will also help you to identify those exceptions easily. |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Yana: До скоро! |
| Michael: See you soon! |
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