Lesson Notes

Unlock In-Depth Explanations & Exclusive Takeaways with Printable Lesson Notes

Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.

Or sign up using Facebook
By clicking Join Now, you agree to our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and to receive our email communications, which you may opt out at any time.
Already a Member?

Lesson Transcript

Здрасти, аз съм Ива. Hi everybody! I’m Iva.
Welcome to BulgarianPod101.com’s “Български в три минути”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Bulgarian.
In the last lesson, we learned how to talk about your plans. In this lesson, we are going to deal with the verb “to be” in Bulgarian, съм.
We will also discuss how to talk about your nationality.
When you meet a new person in Bulgaria, they might ask you Откъде сте? which is the equivalent of "Where do you come from?"
Сте is a conjugated form of the “to be” verb съм.
Откъде means "From where?" and it implies ‘from which country or place’.
All together it is Откъде сте?
[slowly] Откъде сте?
Answering this question is very easy! You just say Аз съм, which means "I am", then your country’s name.
For example, Аз съм от Америка.
[slowly] Аз съм от Америка.
But it is more natural to say your nationality-
Аз съм американец.
Just replace “американец” with your own nationality.
"I am German" is Аз съм германец.
"I am Italian" is Аз съм иатлианец.
"I am Brazilian" is Аз съм бразилец.
Be careful, because this is how you refer to your nationality if you are a man. For the feminine form, you have to add -ка instead of -ец at the end of the nationality.
For example, if you are an American woman, you will say- Аз съм американка.
German women say-
Аз съм германка.
For Brazilian women it is-
Аз съм бразилка,
...and so on.
To return the question you can simply say А вие? which is "And you?" in a polite way.
Now it’s time for Iva’s Insights.
Be careful because in Bulgarian, we don’t write nationality names with a capital letter like in English!
The same applies for the words “English language “or “Bulgarian language” - languages are also written in lowercase.
In this lesson we learned how to talk about nationalities.
Next time, we’ll continue to study the verb съм and we'll see how to use it to talk about locations. By the way, do you know how to ask someone where they are in Bulgarian? I'll be waiting for you with the answer in the next Български в три минути.
До скоро!

Comments

Hide