Learn how to use the phrase "Do you speak English?"
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| Здрасти, аз се казвам 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 the most common forms of greetings in Bulgarian. Do you remember them? |
| In this lesson we’re going to learn a very useful phrase: “Do you speak English?” |
| If you find yourself in a situation where you need assistance in English, this phrase can be a lifesaver. And because you’re asking it in Bulgarian, you can be sure that everyone will understand what you’re saying, even if their answer is no. |
| Here's the informal way to say it. |
| Говориш ли английски? |
| [slowly] Говориш ли английски? |
| In Bulgarian, verbs change depending on the formality, and also depending on the pronoun used. This word is the informal form of the verb говоря, which means to speak. And it is conjugated for second person singular. |
| The next word is the particle ли which is used in many Bulgarian questions. Just remember that it means something like “whether”. |
| And you probably recognize “английски” to be “English.” |
| Говориш ли английски? |
| To learn how to properly conjugate verbs, like говоря, please look at our Absolute Beginner series on BulgarianPod101.com. You can find very detailed grammar lessons and resources there! |
| We’re now going to make this sentence formal. First, we need to use the formal version of “speak,” which is говорите. Everything else stays the same: |
| Говорите ли английски? |
| [slowly] Говорите ли английски? |
| Adding извинете, "excuse-me", the sentence becomes even more polite: |
| Извинете, говорите ли английски? |
| [slowly] Извинете, говорите ли английски? |
| The responses you will receive could be one of these three: |
| Да. "Yes." |
| [slowly] Да. |
| Малко. "A little." |
| [slowly] Малко. |
| Не, не говоря английски. "No, I don’t speak English." |
| [slowly] Не, не говоря английски. |
| Since this last one is a negative statement, we need to say не before the verb, говоря, and не in the beginning of the whole sentence. Notice also that the verb, говоря is slightly different than говорите. Remember, the verb changes depending on the formality and the person who is speaking. We are now talking about аз, Bulgarian for "I," thus “I do not speak” is: |
| Аз не говоря. |
| Now it’s time for Iva’s Insights. |
| For those of you who are not only English speakers, you can obviously use this question with any language you need. Bulgarian people study other European languages at school, so maybe you will get lucky! Just substitute английски with… |
| руски for Russian. |
| немски for German. |
| италиански for Italian. |
| испански for Spanish. |
| In this lesson we mentioned the expression извинете. But did you know that this could also be used as an apology? In the next lesson we will learn this and other ways to apologize in Bulgarian. It’s never too late to show your good manners with Bulgarian people! |
| I'll see you in our next Български в три минути lesson. До скоро! |
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