[coolasfcuk]

He heeee, well I couldnt say 'no' either and since it is almost end of the week, pheeeeeeeeew, here is the opening of the Learning BG thread (see sunnich, no punishment now)


Lesson One

ok, well, I will follow the Russian thread... and Start with the Alphabet and reading:

Cyrillc Alphabet - BG [Line #1 is Typed Capital letters, Line #2 is Typed Small letters, Line #3 is Cursive Capital letters, and line #4 is Cursive Small letters]

so, most of you already know, Bulgarian alphabet is almost identical to the Russian one, with only 3 exceptions... the Russian one has 3 extra letters: э, ы, ё. So a lot of my work has already been done in the Learning Russian thread.

Lets see - what can I say, Bulgarian is easier that Russian ... one big difference - Bulgarian is almost 100% phonetical, a lot more than Russian. So basically, if you learn the alphabet, you can read . Every letter is pronaunced just as you would say it in the alphabet, for example o is always o, it never could be pronaunced as a.

So let me back up here...I know I gave you a link to the alphabet, but let it be mainly because of the cursive writing, here is the alphabet typed:

Аа
Бб
Вв
Гг
Дд
Ее
Жж
Зз
Ии
Йй
Кк
Лл
Мм
Нн
Оо
Пп
Рр
Сс
Тт
Уу
Фф
Хх
Цц
Чч
Шш
Щщ
ъ ъ
Ьь
Юю
Яя

And here is a sound file of How to pronaunce the BG letters .

Few comments on that: first the letter й - it is called 'и кратко' = 'short i'...that is why it sounds like I say и = i twice, when really one is long и and one is short й. Then ь - this is not a very used letter in Bulgarian. In Russian it is used as soft sign, but since Bulgarian is not as soft as Russian, we do not use it as soft sign. For us it is actually a letter, but - it is never used alone - always in combination with o, so you could see: ьо which is read as yo. A word can never begin with this ьо, another way to write the sound yo is also йо - so if it should be in the begining of a word it would be йо. When is one used and when the other you ask, if it is in the middle or end of word... well, that depends on the letter before it, whether it is a soft or hard consinant - soft get the ьо and hard get йо - will have to get back to you which ones are soft and which ones are hard exactly...
Also ъ for us a vowel for us, and not a 'hard sound' as in Russian.

So, actually, let me back up some more and say:

the vowels is Bulgarian are:
а, е, и, о, у, ъ - ufff, I hope I got those right - will confirm in next posting. Listen to the file above to know how they are pronauned exactly

consonants- ah, sunny poison explained those pretty well in the Russian one, and ours arent that much different, so I will borrow some of your explanations if you dont mind

ж - zh (like in english word decision... may be just a bit firmer)
й - j (like in the 'yard')
х - h (like in 'help, but much firmer)
ц - ts (like in its - or as I like to translit it ts)
ч - ch (China)
ш - sh (sh shop)
щ - sht, hmm, cant think of an English word, but it is basically 'sh' and 't' right after it - yes, this one is different than Russian
ю - 'i' and 'u' together, so 'iu' as in Юля
я - 'i' and 'a', so 'ia' or sounds like 'yard'
well, basically all the other consonants are pretty similar to english corresponding sounds

Ok, last thing for the first and very basic lesson is that when little kids learn BG grammar in school, they are thought how to break down the word into срички = syllables.
so for example the word 'прозорец' = 'window' should be read as: 'п-р-о-з-о-р-е-ц' letter by letter, or broken into: 'про-зо-рец'.
how to read 'прозорец'

Well, since it doesnt really matter which letter is stressed in Bulgarian, no need to worry about that yet - no letter will change because they aren't stressed so basicallly, first step is то learn the alphabet and really you can read Bulgarian for the most part. Of course, next lessons come with a little more complexity - фор ехампле we also do have those 'sound' and 'unsound' consonants - б-п, в-ф, д-т, з-с, ж-ш, г-к, etc.