In Bulgarian, "thank you" is blagodarya" (благодаря). This compound word is made up of two parts. The first, blago (благо), means "prosperity" or "well-being". This is followed by darya (даря), which in Bulgarian means, "to give a gift". This phrase is neither too formal nor too informal and will be your safe bet in situations where you are not too sure what way of saying "thank you" would be most appropriate. An important note on pronunciation: Bulgarian vowels are short; if you extend them, you are not changing the meaning of the word they form. Here's what they sound like: а, ъ, о, у, е, и.

Now, in Bulgarian there are other ways to express one's gratitude. There's one formal and one casual way that we will explore. Let's take a look at the casual expression first.

In Bulgarian, the casual way of expressing gratitude, for example, "thanks" is mersi (мерси). Yes, that's right! It sounds like French and this is exactly where this word was borrowed from. Keep in mind that the original French pronunciation has mutated and Bulgarians say it with the hard Slavic r.

This expression might come in handy among friends and in other casual situations, for example, when collecting your change from the cashier at a supermarket or when picking up your mail at the post office. A word of caution: a limited number of Bulgarians still consider mersi (мерси) a foreign word which shouldn't be used as there are enough "pure" Bulgarian expressions available. Also, to be on the safe side, make sure you use the higher-level expression blagodarya (благодаря) when dealing with officials in a formal context.

On the other hand, for very special occasions when someone goes above and beyond the call of being kind, when someone is extremely generous, or for any other time you're extremely grateful, we have the following phrase to express deep gratitude: in Bulgarian the equivalent of "thank you very much", is blagodarya vi mnogo (благодаря Ви много). The first word blagodarya (благодаря), as we already know means "to give prosperity". The second, vi (Ви), is the polite second person plural of the English "you".

If the person you are thanking is a friend, you can switch to a deeper level of closeness by using ti (ти), the second person singular equivalent of the English "you". Then the whole phrase becomes blagodarya ti mnogo (благодаря ти много). The last word in our expression is mnogo (много), which in Bulgarian is "much". To recap, the formal version of the phrase is blagodarya vi mnogo (благодаря Ви много) while the version we use with friends is blagodarya ti mnogo (благодаря ти много).

Quick Tip 1

What to do when someone thanks you in Bulgarian using one of the phrases we just learned? Very easy: just say molya (моля) which literally means "please" but has the effect of "you are welcome."

Quick Tip 2

As we saw in the case of mersi (мерси), Bulgarian has borrowed words from many European languages like French, German, Italian, and English. Their original pronunciation, however, was "Bulgarianized." Hence, if you want to be understood in Bulgaria, make sure that you know how to say those foreign words with Bulgarian accent.