Genders and Articles in Bulgarian 

Short forms: 1. денЯ 2. пътЯ 3. сънЯ 4. огънЯ 5. нокътЯ 6. лакътЯ 7. конЯ

That’s interesting, because in serbian the word horse, is Коњ (Њ is like нй).

comming right up

In standardized Bulgarian it's a hard 'L' sound. I have noticed the same phenomenon and my personal opinion is that the language was standardized to the point of losing both pronunciations. Look at Polish for example, they have both hard L and Ł which is like a W.

@@golyplot Hey! Thanks for the response! :D That's really interesting. It is especially interesinting that the traditional standard is the harder "L", but the majority of learning resources I have come upon as of yet use the soft one. At first, I also thought that it was somethig like in Polish, but then I noticed that the same word can be pronounced either with the soft or hard "L" without any apparent rhyme or reason and that was throwing me off a bit, because I didn't want to start learning everything with the wrong pronunciation. Thanks so much again for your response! :D Благодаря again for your response! I really appreicate it! :)

@@grafinvonhohenembs Bulgarian native speaker here! In standard Bulgarian, the "L" is always hard (like the English "W"). You can use the letter "ь" after the "L" to make it soft (like in the word "кльомба" which means this symbol @). As for the regional versions and dialects, the soft "L" is a lot more present than in the standard language, but you shouldn't really care about them. Just make a hard sound. I hope I helped :)

@@marti4ko180 Hi! Thanks so much for your input! You have no idea how much I appreciate it! :D

@@grafinvonhohenembs No problem! I’m glad it was useful :D

Thanks for the corrections. Are there any masculine nouns that DON'T represent persons that finish on Я/ЯТ thou?

@@golyplot I've been thinking about that and I actually found some. All I could think of end in й - музей - музеят, кравай - краваят, полилей - полилеят.

@@raynatumbeva780 It makes sense, as those words finish on Й

​@@golyplot There are also път - пътят, кон - конят, ден - денят, нокът - нокътят, лакът - лакътят, огън - огънят, сън - сънят, (крал - кралят, цар - царят, зет - зетят) as another comment pointed out. These are exceptions though and otherwise as far as nouns are concerned it's only masculine ones ending in й or a suffix -тел/-ар/-яр which signifies profession or occupation that get the -я/-ят articles. So I get where your idea of words for people being used with -я/-ят comes from but it can be a bit misleading to new learners when you put it that way. I'm glad you're making these videos though because from what I saw on the web Bulgarian learning materials in other languages are pretty scarce. Best of luck and I hope you keep it up.

yes, участ->участта, кост->костта

Well, the definite (full) articles are used when the word that has "the" is the main one of the action for example: "Полицаят арестува престъпника." ("The policeman arrested the criminal" - like the policeman arrested him and not the criminal arrested the policeman). If it was the case like the criminal arrested somehow the police man it will be: "Престъпникът арестува полицая." This is just an example to see how they work. The indefinite (short) articles as you saw it is used when you want to say "the" but this time the subject is not the main action. Usually that is only in masculine form changes these forms, while in the rest genders it is the same. Some words are exception in masculine that end on "ТА" or "ТО" (which "ТО" is only used for foreign words like "гуруто" - the guru or the teacher). Some words end on "TA" but they are in masculine like "бащата, съдията" and etc (the father, the judge). But overall that is the main difference how they are used.

​@HeroManNick132 So the part labeled "Masculine Gender indefinite" does NOT mean "a/an" which are the English indefinite articles? I know it says "the" for those words too but thought it had to have been a mistake because defininte means the (or the French le, la, les) and indefinite means a or an (the French un, une)

It is an interesting topic to speculate upon, from what I've seen in the literature it seems to have developped in the middle ages rather than having been brought into the Slavic language of the region earlier from Bulgar, onogur, or wtv language was spoken by Bulgar tribes. It doesn't seem to be an influence from other languages in the region either (turkish, greek). Serbian does not officially have definite articles like these, but they do use the exact same elements for saying 'Chair-there' as in Bulgarian 'The chair' so it could be both: a concept existing in souther Slavic languages so not foreign and at the same time Bulgars using it as definite articles instead as they were used to do in their language.

@@golyplot It might be just be conspiration theory, but old Iranians did use articles. Asparukh is apparently name of iranian origin. Or it might be unrelated development as articles are neccesity without cases and inflections.

It just evolved. Old Bulgarian had cases, but got rid of them. We also got more tenses making our language fully analytical. And certain dialects seem to be getting rid of the leftovers from cases in articles of masculine words. Also, so far, there are that major holes in both the Turkic and Iranian heritage theories that they make the native one which relies on conspiracy look a lot more realistic.

Don't get my partner started on Northern Macedonia 🤣 he's Bulgarian and is so passionate that it basically IS Bulgaria still and says the language is nearly the same too.

@@amyheaney haha he is telling the truth

Дай ми столА. КолелоТО е ново. ЖенаТА е руса.