Bulgarian to B1 - A Journey

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Completely forgot to keep this updated! My visit out of town took over my brain and I've been busy with work. Nothing new or groundbreaking has happened - I've continued to watch Bulgarian television and I've been vigilant in my daily flashcard study.

My only issue with Quizlet is that while the interface is a lot nicer than Anki, if I wanted to study all of my words I simply couldn't. Anki's built in SRS is a lot better as well - if I wanted the same with Quizlet I think I would need to pay for the pro version.

We learned past simple tense in class this week, and so far all the verb conjugations are making sense. I need to learn the verb aspects by rote, probably. Bulgaro has a very succinct explanation. What I might need to do is go through my cards and add the perfective aspect alongside any verbs.

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I found a Bulgarian travel blogger called Lora Travels! She provides English subtitles on her videos so I can pick up on any words I miss. I honestly think my comprehension is improving more and more. I've also taken to reading comments on BG youtube and on reddit, and find I understand a lot! I know I could watch children's shows but that really doesn't appeal to me. I might be better of getting the transcript in Bulgarian and English from the youtube video and listening along, adding new words to my decks.

I'm starting to think that I might move away from Quizlet. The lack of free SRS is a bit of a pain and I want to be able to study just a few cards without 'ruining' a whole session. Fortunately Quizlet has a good export function, and hopefully Anki has a good import.

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Obviously I should have looked into Anki when I started learning! I downloaded it yesterday and I'm pleased to see that the interface has been significantly updated since the last time I used it. I was able to quickly import all of my words from Quizlet, and Anki even pointed out a fair few duplicates. The only real issue, I suppose, is that I need to power through all of the vocab I already know all over again. I've been changing my daily limit for new vocab to a higher number which has helped.

I have one final lesson next week, and then a test before I can get my certificate. There are a few grammar rules I want to go over again because I wasn't there for the lesson and they haven't quite stuck. One of these is possessive pronouns, the other is uses of което, който, кой, кое - the name of which escapes me right now. Hopefully I can find the right lesson notes document.

One last thing I want to do is to find a way to look up the perfective aspect of verbs easily. Reshnik is my go-to dictionary, but I don't think it lists the other verb aspect. Купувам (to buy, imperfective) has no mention of купя (to buy, perfective). Reshnik has a list of perfective aspects of this type (conjugation -и) but I can't find anything else. If I find a good lookup I'll post it here.

EDIT

Well I feel foolish. Right beneath the imperfective is a link to the perfective if it exists in a different aspect - I just couldn't see it because of the link colour. Well done, me!

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Back into Eragon! Sometimes I'll be able to read a full sentence without looking anything up, and other times I don't recognise any of the verbs/nouns/adjectives. I've added all my vocab to Anki, however, and I've added another field for notes. This is where I put context or the perfective form of verbs if they exist:



I have also discovered that so long as I am not logged in to Bulgaro, I can still read their grammar articles. They are extremely useful and it's a shame they try to hide them behind some kind of pseudo-paywall. In my grammar-learning journey, I am once again realising how little I know about English grammar. For example, simple accusative and dative case! There are two forms in Bulgarian - long and short.

Accusative: Me -> мен / мене -> ме
Dative: To me -> на мен/мене -> ми

I want to try to memorise these pronoun tables so these smaller words don't trip me up while reading. I also learned a new grammatical term: "clitics" (shh don't laugh). Bulgarian has a lot!

"Давам ябълката на него" - I give the apple to him
"Давам му ябълката" - I give him the apple

Apparently the short form is used most commonly, unless there needs to be emphasis on the pronoun.

- На кого даваш ябълката?
- Давам ябълката на него.

Or something.

Anyway, my final lesson for this Bulgarian course is on Thursday. I'm a little sad because it was really fun, but I need a break to free up my weekdays as I'll be busy with work. However, there is a language exchange that happens every other monday that I might start going to to practice my Bulgarian. Speaking is still very awkward for me.

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Вчера аз четах още Ерагон. Имаше едно изречение, коете аз разбирах цял! След това следваштото...ништо. Аз ще опитам да пиша на този log на български език по-често. Тази вечер е моя последен български език урок за Level 2. Ще има test за да получа моя certficate.

Wow that took a lot of braincells. My grammar is still lacking, but I think writing a little bit of Bulgarian at the beginning of each log entry is going to help exercise that part of my brain. I've been training just my comprehension, and I *really* ought to start speaking more Bulgarian at home. The feedback I consistently get is that my pronunciation is wrong but I can't hear it, or that my mouth can't move through those shapes and sounds well enough. I know shadowing should help, and I have a couple of recordings from my teacher along with transcripts, but the hurdle of getting over the embarrassment of actually doing it is huge.

Currently working my way through my Anki decks. I have about 850 words in there, 300 of which I've reviewed. My initial goal this year was to reach B1 by July, but honestly I have no idea how to measure that. I should have a working knowledge of around 2,500 words, which would mean adding and studying about 20 new terms every day on top of my existing 850 words. Yeesh! Not only that, but I need to be far more solid in my translation and speaking skills.

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Аз пиша това по-малко късно за вечер. Този сутрин аз правих моя български език test и got 62/69. Не много лош! Последният въпрос беше пиша за любимият мъ филм. Аз пишах за Поньо! Ето го:

(I'm writing this a little late at night. This morning I did my bulgarian test and got 62/69. Not too bad! The last question was to write about my favourite film. I wrote about Ponyo! Here it is:)

Любимият ми филм е „Поньо“, японски аниме филм от студио „Гибли“. Това е любимият ми филм защото е безгрижен, и има красивя анимация. Всяка година аз гледам Поньо. Аз също гледам го когато аз съм тижна.

Поньо е фентъзи филм за цялото семейство. Филмът разказва историята на Поньо и Сосуке. Поньо е златна рибка, която иска да се промени момиче. Тя на пет години. Сосуке е момче, който също на пет години.

Баща на Поньо е магьосник. Заедно те живеят под морето. Един ден, Поньо избяга от дом й и се заклещва на стъклен буркан. Сосуке търси нея, и стават приятели. Поньо вкусва кръв и се промени момиче. Сега, тя има мощна магия.

Накраят за филмът, Поньо се влюбва със Сосуке, и тя превъща момиче завинаги! Тя също губи магия й, но е щастлив край.

I should get the marks back sometime this week, and hopefully my certificate alongside.

Aside from class, Anki has been very helpful, in addition to Bulgaro. I read through a couple of articles each day as the site makes everything so clear.

I'm also getting better at speaking day-to-day. Servers now speak back to me in Bulgarian instead of in English. I've been making an effort to speak loudly and clearly despite wanting to speak quietly in case I get it wrong. Turns out that just makes things more confusing!

I haven't done more Eragon, but I have an Anki deck with all the new words from the book. I convert all the verbs to their imperfective form, and my Anki cards all have the perfective form (if applicable) on the back.

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Haven't yet got my grade for my class, but my teacher did send back some corrections to my final written test! Someone else is in charge of marking. Apart from that, I've been reviewing grammar, doing my Anki cards, and progressing slowly through Eragon. I'm getting faster with my reading, and understanding more. Anki is helping, as words tend to pop up frequently (especially in a fantasy novel).

I have a fair few weak spots still, mostly around speaking and comprehension. As soon as I hear just the slightest deviation from a sentence I understand, the whole thing goes out the window. Something as simple as "Will you be paying separately?" (which I think could be Отделно ли ще платите?) gets completely lost on me. I have to ask for English again and it's very demotivating. I'm not sure how to get around this! There are so many different ways to say everyday things.

Agh, I'll just keep going. I need to listen to more comprehensible input at native speeds, but that is so hard to find.

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I've been pretty busy this week with work, so haven't managed to update the log. I have, however, been continuing my studies. I've been keeping up with Anki every day, and at this rate it'll be nearly another month before I get through all of my cards. I'm thinking of making another deck outside of my school one for random vocabulary I pick up during the day - often I'll ask how to say something or other in Bulgarian but then forget it immediately. I'm at the stage however that I can order food confidently and respond when they ask a question I don't expect. When my friend was visiting, I ordered for him several times!

In a couple of weeks I'll be heading to Greece to visit friends, so I'm going to brush up on my Greek before then. It's easy enough to survive with English there, but knowing a little helps.

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Received an email from my teacher - apparently the test they sent out to gain the level two certificate was in fact, a level three test. I don't feel like it contained anything new - I still passed and received my level two certificate. It's just a confidence boost!

In the meantime, I've been watching Аватар: Легенда за Анг (ATLA). There are no subtitles on the site, so essentially I have the english transcript up on my other screen in case I get lost. I found Bulgarian subtitles on another site but I can't exactly read the file! I've been reading emk's log and got inspired by him watching ATLA with dual subtitles. Going to do my best with what I have!