Learn how to describe people using Bulgarian adjectives
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Becky: Hello and welcome back to BulgarianPod101.com. This is Lower Beginner, season 1, lesson 11 - Using Bulgarian Adjectives. This is Becky. |
| Iva: Zdravei And I’m Iva! |
| Becky: In this lesson you'll learn how to how to describe people using adjectives. |
| Iva: The conversation takes place at a beauty salon. |
| Becky: It’s between Maria and Petia. |
| Iva: The speakers are good friends, so they’ll use informal Bulgarian. |
| Becky: Let’s listen to the conversation. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Becky: Iva, what can you tell us about Bulgarians generally? |
| Iva: Well, Bulgarian national identity is based on the understanding that the Bulgarian nation has a distinctive ethnic identity reaching back to the Middle Ages. Bulgarians are a mix of Slavic, Bulgar, and Thracian ethnicities. |
| Becky: What about Bulgarian personalities? |
| Iva: Bulgarians generally pride themselves on their hospitality and neighborliness. |
| Becky: I’ve heard that! That’s nice. |
| Iva: Yes. And did you know that when you visit someone's home, it’s customary to bring flowers or sweets? |
| Becky: I knew about the flowers… but not about the sweets. |
| Iva: Well, it’s a token of gratitude in return for the hospitality and of course, friendliness. |
| Becky: I also know that in public transportation, it’s expected that younger people will give up their seat to an older woman, or to a parent with a young child. |
| Iva: That’s true. And finally, I have to say that Bulgarians love celebrating and are very open to making friends. |
| Becky: Ok, now let’s move on to the vocab. |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Becky: Let’s take a closer look at the usage of some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Iva: First, let’s talk about “Той” - the Bulgarian pronoun meaning “he”. |
| Becky: I think this one’s easy to remember. |
| Iva: So let’s add all of them. The other personal pronouns for the third person singular are: “тя” meaning “she” and “то” meaning “it”. |
| Becky: OK. Please repeat all of them for our listeners. |
| Iva: Let me just add the one for the third person plural - the pronoun is “те”. |
| Becky: So altogether, they are? |
| Iva: “Той” - “he”; “тя” - “she”; “то” - “it”, and “те” - “they”. |
| Becky: Great! |
| Iva: It’s easy to remember them since they all start with the same letter – “т”. |
| Becky: That’s a good tip! |
| Iva: Next we have “Заговарям”, which is a Bulgarian verb with a very special meaning. |
| Becky: It’s something like “to start talking with someone”, but it usually implies that the people don’t know each other, and are maybe even meeting for the first time. When you use it for people who know each other, it can mean something like “to start talking to break a silence”, right? |
| Iva: Yes. And finally we have “Наистина ли”; which is a Bulgarian interjection that’s used a lot. |
| Becky: It has the same meaning as the English “Really?” |
| Iva: Sometimes, in more informal situations, the particle for forming questions in Bulgarian, “ли”, can be omitted, and we just ask with the typical question intonation “Наистина?” |
| Becky: “Наистина?” |
| Iva: (laughs) Yes! |
| Becky: OK, now on to the grammar! |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| Becky: In this lesson, you’ll learn how to describe someone or something using adjectives. |
| Iva: Well, the most common sentence structure for describing people is “(Somebody) е (adjective).” |
| Becky: In English this is equal to “(Somebody) is (adjective).” |
| Iva: And in this sentence structure, you can use more than one adjective, as we did in the dialogue. |
| Becky: You just need to add commas between every pair of adjectives. |
| Becky: Can you give us an example? |
| Iva: You can say “Учителят е строг и сериозен.” |
| Becky: OK. In English, this will be “The teacher is strict and serious.” |
| Iva: Exactly. When we have only two adjectives, we connect them with the conjunction “and”, in Bulgarian “и”. |
| Becky: So we said that the teacher is “strict and serious”. |
| Iva: In Bulgarian this is “строг и сериозен.” Note that we have to use the corresponding adjective form that matches the gender of the noun - the subject - in the sentence. |
| Becky: In this example, “teacher” is masculine. |
| Iva: Yes. In Bulgarian, it’s “учител”. So the two adjectives “строг” meaning “strict” and “сериозен” meaning “serious”, are also in masculine. |
| Becky: What happens with the feminine forms? |
| Iva: If they are feminine, they usually end in “-a”. |
| Becky: So again with this example… |
| Iva: For this sentence, they will be “строга” and “сериозна” and the whole sentence is “Учителката е стрига и сериозна.” |
| Becky: So the word “teacher” changes its form for the feminine and the masculine. And then, if we have the adjectives for the subjects of the sentence in neuter, we have to change the adjective form to end in an “-о”. |
| Iva: For example “Небето е ясно и синьо.” In English, “The sky is clear and blue.” |
| Becky: Wow, that’s a lot of examples now. |
| Iva: And there are a lot more in the lesson notes. |
Outro |
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| Becky: So don’t forget to check them! Until next time, thanks for listening, everyone! |
| Iva: Bye! |
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