Learn how to ask "When?"
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| 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 ask "Where" questions in Bulgarian. |
| This time, we are going to ask questions with the interrogative word "When?" |
| Let’s go! Да започваме! |
| Imagine you want to ask when your roommate is coming back home. You will ask him Кога ще се върнеш вкъщи? |
| [slowly] Кога ще се върнеш вкъщи? |
| So let’s break down this answer. |
| First we had- |
| Кога, which is the basic translation of "When" in Bulgarian. |
| Ще се върнеш is formed with the verb "to come back", връщам се, in the 2nd person form. Adding ще makes it future tense, so “you will come back”, which is ще се върнеш. |
| And finally вкъщи which is "home." |
| So, altogether it is Кога ще се върнеш вкъщи? |
| "When will you come back home?" |
| So in Bulgarian, "When" is generally translated as the word кога. For example, if you want to ask "When were you born?" Кога си роден? |
| As in English, the interrogative word is placed in the 1st position, then the verb, and then the subject. Here the subject is in masculine. If we want to ask the question in feminine we should say Кога си родена? However, make sure you’re careful when asking this question! |
| So let’s have a look at another example. |
| How can you say "When did you arrive?" |
| It’s really simple since it’s exactly the same pattern - Кога пристигна? |
| First we have кога, which is "When" |
| The second word is пристигна, which is the 2nd person form of the past tense of the verb пристигам, "to arrive." |
| Have you noticed a difference between the sentences Кога ще се върнеш вкъщи? |
| and Кога пристигна? |
| The first one is talking about a future action – "When are you coming back home?" Whereas the 2nd one is referring to the past "When did you arrive?" |
| The conclusion is that you can use the interrogative word кога to talk about any moment, whether past or present. |
| If you want to ask a question about duration, as in "Since when have you been teacher?", you will have to say От кога си преподавател? |
| Here от кога means "Since when?" We form it by adding от to the interrogative word as we did in our previous lesson when talking about “from where”. |
| Let’s see how to ask "Until when?" in Bulgarian. It’s very easy because you can translate it directly again by adding one particle. It becomes - Докога? |
| So for example, if you want to ask a friend "Until when are you going to stay here?" it will be Докога ще останеш тук? |
| But of course there are other ways to ask about time. You can even be more specific by asking about the year, the date or the hour. |
| For example, you can ask: |
| - "Which year did you start working?" which will be |
| В коя година започна да работиш? Or... |
| - "Which day is better for you?" which will be Кой ден е удобен за теб? And... |
| - "What hour can we meet?" which is В колко часа може да се срещнем? |
| Now it’s time for Iva’s Insights. |
| To ask how long an action has been taking place in Bulgarian, we could say от кога, but there is another very simple way to do it. |
| You just have to use the pattern От колко? As in От колко време чакаш? That is "How long have you been waiting?" |
| Ok, so in this lesson, we learned how to correctly use the interrogative Bulgarian word for "When", кога, but also its different variations. Now that you can ask about the time for events, how can you ask about the people who participate in them? |
| Next lesson, we’ll learn more about asking questions with "Who" in Bulgarian. |
| I’ll be waiting for you in the next Български в три минути. |
| До скоро! |
Comments
Hide