Bulgaria Ski discussion board

I agree totally.

I bought a copy of "Talk Now! Teach yourself Bulgarian" from Amazon (£14.97). It's a CD Rom that uses pictures and sound to teach you basic nouns and phrases.

I spent about 30 minutes per day for a week or so before my recent trip to Borovets, and it made a HUGE difference.

I also took the Lonely Planet Eastern European phrasebook with me, which has a fair amount of basic vocabulary (and phonetic pronunciation).

I hardly ever needed to resort to English in our Hotel, Bars or Restaurants, and the locals really seemed to appreciate it. I was cross-examined by one waiter who didn't believe you could teach yourself Bulgarian to that extent without access to a native speaker.

The thing about the CD Rom is that, although it uses a rather Noddy game-playing style to teach you stuff, all the words and phrases are spoken by both a Man and a Woman, so you can really hone your pronunciation.

Anyway, to answer your question, in terms of accent, think "phony Russian".

The stress in on the italicised bits.

Good Morning: do-bro u-tro
Please: mo-lya
Thankyou: blah-gho-dah-rya (or they often use the French 'Merci')
Can I have the bill please: smet-kata mo-lya

Numbers are well worth learning. Once you get the hang of how they work, it's very straightforward. I can now count from 0 to 100 (well, it impressed me).

I never made much progress at reading the Cyrillic. Although I learnt how to pronounce many of the letters, my brain just would't let me pronounce P's as R's C's as S's etc.

I'll have forgotten it all by this time next week, but it made the holiday that bit more fun.


RichardG