The Easiest Slavic Language to Learn 

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Hungary: We'll take those extra cases if you aren't going to use them...

A slavic language without cases is a gift from the gods :)

I'm a simple man. I see a video about languages, I click

I like people like you. Rather than push away outsiders, you encourage them to embrace your culture. I'm not Bulgarian in the slightest, but you've encouraged me to learn about it.

A Bulgarian friend of mine told me he thought , aside from the Macedonian language, Serbian was probably the most understandable Slavic language to him.

As Swedish living in Bulgaria, I would like to note that Bulgarian was easy to learn once the alphabet was in place. It took me 6 months but then it fell into place. Only to pronounce Копривщица took some time. It is a good base for the rest of Balkan and we are able to communicate.

I speak fluent Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, Belarusian and Slovakian. Bulgarian is easy to understand because it is really connected to Russian via Old Church Slavonic.

Bulgarian is the best slavic language for me as a romanian 🇧🇬🇷🇴❤

I speak four languages, but I don't speak any Slavic one yet - So I'm definitely going to take up Bulgarian. Thanks, dude!

2:43 Finally! Someone finally said it! As a Hungarian (who is extremely bulgarophile), this makes me happy :) Greetings from Унгария! Да живее Българя!

I am Bulgarian Turk and I love my language. Slava rodu!

I've been learning Bulgarian for a few weeks and I appreciate this video. I didn't start because it was easy but rather because a friend speaks it. The lack of cases and similarities to English and Spanish are just a bonus.

Bulgarian and Russian exchanged vocabulary a lot. First it was the Old Bulgarian that came to Rus as the literary and liturgical language along with Christianity, then it was Russian who came to Bulgaria as a source to restore literary Bulgarian language after hundreds of years of Ottoman Yoke

Im russian living in England, i have a lot of Bulgarian colleagues, some of them don't even know English, and I realized that If I spoke Russian they understand me 90% of the time, and I understand them too. I decided to study a bit of Bulgarian so I could actually make proper sentences which are grammatically correct, and I realised that it's almost all the words are the same as russian but with English grammar, it was extremely easy to learn, I just had to learn the words which are unique to Bulgarian and different from Russian (which isn't many) and in just 2 weeks I could speak pretty fluently and explain anything I needed to say without any problems. I found that the "English grammar" was very easy. I've tried to learn Polish too, since there's many Polish in the UK too, and grammar is exactly the same as Russian. So, intuitively, it should be easier, since it's just like my native language. But actually I found it a lot harder for some reason. Learning how all the endings of words are different depending on case was harder to get used to... English/Bulgarian grammar is definitely so much simpler

I've lived in bulgaria and it's an amazing country, has amazing people and an amazing culture!

A Chinese man once said: "Аз съм Българин"

Имах на 12 години хубава бавачка от София. Роден съм на границата между Афганистан и Таджикистан, така че имаме и кирилица на таджикски.

I'm a Bulgarian American and though I do admit I may have been jumpstarted by a lot (having Bulgarian parents lol), I never started to actually go out of my way to learn the language outside of learning phrases and sentences. I can understand a majority of it spoken but I don't know any grammatical rules. Definitely gonna start learning now :-) it's a very nice sounding language!

Bravo, Viktor. I'll say it in english. I am Genovese, married to a Bulgarian. In these sixteen years I have learnt a lot lot lot, and despite my big mistakes I think I do speak Bulgarian well enough (for a foreigner, needless to say). Add also that Bulgarians, when they see a non Bulgarian trying to speak their own language they literally S....T in their pants from happyness to see that, that they encourage you to keep speaking and ooo you speak great even though you speak maybe a very little bit. In other words. Bulgarians are nice people, it's a peaceful country, an old people, one of the oldest in the whole whole world, and the people are nice, friendly and warm. Да живее България, Българите и Български. Long live Bulgaria, the Bulgarians and Bulgarian! Love from Zena (Genoa).

Absolutely true! That's also the reason why we as Bulgarians learn English easily, because both languages are analytical and use articles, prepositions and word order to convey the meaning of a sentence instead of cases.

The best introduction to a language i've seen. Bravo!

Thank you. Great video, you make everything very clear for us new learners. Greeting from Czech republic.

This was so interesting, I had no idea that Bulgarian had definite articles - I thought that all Slavic languages didn't. Fascinating. Please make more videos!

You can take pride in the fact, that this video convinced me to learn Bulgarian first... and save Russian for later (I'm going to Bulgaria soon)

Това сигурно е първият коментар на Български оставен от Българин,няма значение,радвам се че си направил видео за България продължавай недей да се отказваш!❤🇧🇬

That is the most detailed, genuine, beautiful and truthful video on Bulgarian I have seen on RU-vid! A lot of love from Stara Zagora❤

Thank you for this video! I am currently learning Bulgarian and this definitely helped understand understand language. It was very reassuring!

Great video and many new insights into the BG language! One small omission regarding the shared vocabulary between Rusiaan and Bulgarian is that the influence went both ways; through Old Church Slavonic (which is very close to Bulgarian) and influenced many words in Russian.

Nice. As a Polish speaker with some knowledge of Czech and Russian, now I will denifitely give Bulgarian a shot. I would like so badly to speak fluently in other Slavic language, so Bulgarian seems fine now :D

Fantastic video man keep making more, I want to learn Bulgarian completely thank you ❤️

Victor, awesome videos. I speak English and Spanish but have an interest in learning other languages to expand my knowledge. You have such a clear way of explaining things. Thanks

From the grammar standpoint Bulgarian/Macedonian are probably the most non-slavic slavic languages. However from the point of the vocabulary Bulgarian is quite similar to Russian as there was a significant influence from Old Bulgarian to Russian in 14-17th centuries. Once I read a 'Captain Blood Odyssey' book in Bulgarian and I understood 90% of it :)

Thank you from the US. Your command of English is amazing... you never stumble on a pronunciation you don't even pause to think about the syntax of a sentence ! I have a beginner's-level comprehension of Russian, and am using Russian as an entering wedge to learn more Old Church Slavonic. And Bulgarsk interests me because it is said to be a very old form of Slavic. I would like to hear you do a lecture on the history and development of Bulgarian phonology, the use of the Yers (Jers) in Bulgarian orthography, and explain why Bulgarian has no diphthongs. I have subscribed, so get my lecture ready ! ☺

Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

Victor, this video sets a very high standard for a factual piece, I am impressed. No waffle, information dense and presented in a very lucid way. Thank you. I knew nothing about Bulgarian before and now find it most interesting. The advantages for learners, which you describe, are very valid.

loved the video. I didn’t know there were any Slavic languages with no cases.

can't believe you guys don't have any cases!? Such a relief

Thank you for sharing 🙂 Merci beaucoup ! Дякую !

I'm so glad I found your channel! I recently discovered that an acquaintance of mine grew up speaking Russian, so now of course I want to learn Russian. I found your video on how to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, and found this video as well! I learned a bit of Polish about 10+ years ago and already noticed a few similarities. I will have to add Bulgarian to my list, as well! Thank you!!

You make a lot of interesting points! I actually found Bulgarian to be the most difficult Slavic language to learn. 😅 My native language is Hungarian🇭🇺. I learned Polish & Slovak when I was teenager. I recently took up Russian & Bulgarian & of all four, Bulgarian is hardest. It is so distinct from the other 3 because of the outside influences you mentioned.🌐 Also, even though my native language has articles, I'm not sure if it makes it any easier for Bulgarian to have them too.💬 You can just "ignore"(for lack of a better word) the concept all together in most the other Slavic languages. Plus, the articles have gender inflections which I found very bizarre.😮 As my first South Slavic language, maybe I'm biased in that way. Or maybe it is the lack of learning materials for Bulgarian compared to Russian/Polish/Slovak for me.📚💻 I still think it is a beautiful language & I am loving learning it!🇧🇬❤🇭🇺 You got a new subscriber today; I look forward to more of your videos!😁

You are very convincent in your points, young man...hahahah I´m going to have your language a try! Greetings from Brazil!

Love your content 😊 keep it up

Once I started learning russian. I still can read cirillic quite well and understand many words in a sentence. Discerning if a noun is masculine, feminine or neuter is super easy, but man, the case system is so tough!!! And there are so many exceptions!!!

This video is quite interesting! My native language is (predictably) English, and I know some beginner Spanish (from a few years of Spanish classes in High School), but I've started to learn another language the past week (and have made a goal to be proficient or fluent in 4 or 5 languages by the time I'm 30, which is just over 10 years now), and the first language I've started to learn is Russian. I've become very entranced by Slavic languages as a whole, and the Cyrillic alphabet is just so intriguing and interesting to me. I got the advice from many other videos and people I know to start with Russian as my first Slavic language tho just because it's the most well-known/widely spoken Slavic language, and so that's what I did lol I'd be very interested to learn Bulgarian later down the line tho, mayber as my 4th or 5th language overall, my second Slavic language. Great video tho. You earned my like :D

I agree with you completely. I love the Slavic languages all the same, but to me I think Bulgarian is my personal favourite and the ur-example of modern Slavic next to Russian. Some comments on some of what you say as the video goes by. The Caucasian theory about what language was spoken in Bulgaria before the Slavs arrived actually doesn’t shock me. For example, the first part of the word for hominy “качамак” is the same as the Chechen word for “food”. Their word for finger can be seen in the name of the children’s game “илига-пилига.” But honestly I think that the pre-Slavic Bulgarian language might have been an Eastern Iranian language that had taken some words from Turkic and Caucasian languages before its arrival in the Balkans and the Slavic language eventually adopted some of the words from that language. The same thing happened with Hungarian (it’s distantly related to Finnish and Estonian), after their Uralic ancestors left Siberia and as they migrated toward Central/Eastern Europe, their language took on words from Iranian and Turkic languages. There was even a now extinct Iranian language spoken in Hungary called Jassic, it was related to Ossetian, which itself is the only surviving Sarmatian or Scythian language. Ossetian is surrounded by Russian and Caucasian languages. Also, I think the Swedish and Volga Vikings might have travelled through Bulgaria while on their way to trade in Constantinople, so there might have been some language contact along the way.

Great video, Golyplot! Very well done!

such a great review! very useful

Excellent video. I'm brazillian and I have a lot of interest to learn new languages, especially slavic ones. And when we think of good slavic languages to learn, we often imagine russian or even polish, but we forget the balkans. And Bulgaria is between europe and the middle east, as you said, so its vocabulary contains a lot of other languages words, so if you learn bulgarian, you end up learning numerous other languages.

Ne ne ne ne! When I don't put the stress where it's supposed to be, they don't understand me! Also, I would suggest you'd acquire a grammar of Old Bulgarian language, just to see: - where the vocabulary comes from - who influenced who. The Bulgarian language we speak today is based on a selected dialect spoken around Cyril and Methodius, which spread around with the translations of the Bible and others, followed by Clement. That's what Old Bulgarian is based upon. You can still hear it when a Pop reads something you don't understand, at all :) The Old Slavonic evolved, traveled to Russia which sent back some good old vocabulary later. It's a physical property. Your video is nice anyway, good step for foreigners to agree it's the easiest one to learn and open all doors to the other Slavic languages afterwards. BUT!!! : after about 12 years practicing everyday, my lovely wife is Bulgarian and I live in Bulgaria, there's still a huge gap between the Bulgarian I speak and the one a native Bulgarian speaks. The language is veeeeeeeeeeery rich, the verbs are very sensitive to all kinds of nuances, it takes a lifetime for a foreigner to speak it properly.

thank you so much this video was very helpful!! (also your smile is super cute)

Good job bro, well explained

Hi! - I just discovered your great channel (and subscribed). I absolutely agree your thesis; before starting to learn Bulgarian I already spoke a little Russian, Polish, and Czech, and found that Bulgarian appeared to be a kind of common thread between them all, in basic Slavic vocabulary and, to a great extent, in grammar. It's interesting to me that the Bulgarian language is so regular: in English one can say that almost every rule has its exception(s) - and some exceptions even have exceptions of their own (e.g. - [when the sound is 'ee'] it's 'i' before 'e' EXCEPT after 'c' - EXCEPT for the word 'seize'). In Bulgarian, I'm actually starting to collect a list of the few exceptions that there are - e.g. words ending щ/ст are feminine - except for мост and пръст (when it means 'finger/toe') - or maybe there are a few more I have not yet come across! I'm English but now live in Bulgaria - very happily: I love the culture, food, scenery, music and dance etc., and people have been very kind to me. I'm making very good progress with reading (if I have a dictionary to hand) and am not bad at asking for things in shops, or making short sentences. What I'm still finding hard are (1) understanding and joining in with colloquial speech and (2) listening to people talking on the TV and Radio, especially news and comedy: although Bulgarian words are - in general - longer than the English equivalents ( 'in words of one syllable' would make no sense in Bulgarian) the language seems to be well designed to be spoken at great speed; in conversation I frequently have to say 'по-бавно, моля'. Would you be able to address these issues in future videos? I take your point about stressed syllables; this seems to be the thing you have to learn word-by-word in Bulgarian - but, to me, it is easier than learning English spelling or German genders! Just going to have a look at some of the other videos on your channel - thanks again for this one!

I am from Russia. I traveled across Bulgaria and several times across all the former Yugoslav countries. I also find Macedonian easier than Bulgarian.

Викторе радвам се че правиш такия видеа :D

Great video. Very interesting.

Bulgarian definite articles are rather native to Slavic langs. There are dying Russian dialects with functional definite articles "-то", "-та", "-те" and maybe some others, but "-то" particle (not sure on its classification, may it be a clitics?), which has the same meaning as a definite article, is widely in use. It came from pronouns like "that one/those ones", the modern versions of which in Russian are "тот" (sing. masc.), "то" (sing. neu.), "та" (sing. fem.), "те" (pl.). The very same process happened to Germanic langs including English long ago: "ðat" ("that", whatever its form was) became "ðe" - "the", "one" ("ein", again, whatever its form was) became "an" and "a"

I want to learn to speak Bulgarian, because my fiancee' is Bulgarian from Sofia and he expects me to learn the language fast because i have already stayed in Bulgaria for 7 months. I want to be ready with my basic conversational Bulgarian when i go back for the second time. Thanks for your tutorial videos.

You persuaded me to start learning Bulgarian!

My parents are from the Western Balkans and I am learning BCS. I speak German fluently so the cases aren't that bad but it's really difficult. Once I am fluent in BCS I might pick up Bulgarian just because it's so easy and the culture, country and people feel very familiar and are beautiful!

Very nice video 😊 I'm Polish and I've learned cyrylic alphabet on my holidays on Bulgaria years ago to be albe to choose ice cream flavour 😉 (prorites when you are 11yo 😂). Anyway, I found reading in Bulgarian easy. Two years ago I visited Moscow... Oh God. Reading in Russian is much more difficult! Words are longer and accent is in diffetent places depending on situation

Awesome! I want to learn Bulgarian!

Hi, I just discovered your channel because I was searching for channels where I can learn Bulgarian quickly and easily, especially for an older English speaking person who doesn't speak another language. I will look at other episodes to see if you are the one that can help me. Oh, by the way, I have liked and subscribed too .😊

Super video sir👌

The Bulgarian verb system is super tricky!

I'm learning Russian. I guess I should have picked Bulgarian - articles and all. Excellent video; thanks.

You’re a good presenter! Good luck on subs :)

unikalno video brat evala

the definite article at the end of the noun is common in Scandinavian languages. In our languages, like for you Bulgarian or me Romanian, part of the Balkan Sprachbund, this is not really an article, but a suffix to create articulation. Point is, it must have been a Dacian, Thracian feature that's been preserved in the Balkans. Now, Hungarians call themselves "Magyar", the name Hungary comes from Latin and more directly from Ungrī which was latinized into Ungari, Bulgarians have a completely different etymology. I really don't think there's a connection there

Hindi has 8 cases being retaining all the 8 cases of PIE we put cases after object but before verb as its SOV. But the S and O often change places as OSV in ergative case which is a part of absolutive cases. We write what we speak. The cases are like prepositions. Hindi has no gender pronouns we use vaha in eastern dialect waha in western dialects. Every character represent 1 sound श represent an ś or š or щ sound as they are same ष is like श but pronounce by the pallet.and glotis together. Many sounds are indistinguishable by english speakers like क (ka)and ख(kha) and कि (ki) की(kī) k with long I. Like this bulgarian and hindi is related we have articles.

Perfect video, well explained. I would choose the slavic language 1, depending on where I would travel/live or 2, depending on my friends, what language do they speak 3, or definitely Slovak, because slovak has a lot in common with Latin and with Germanic as well, and it's a central slavic language well understood by other slavs as well, it's kind of slavic esperanto 4, there is a new project "interslavic" language, which realy works, all slavs understand it, and the gramma is simplified, just like the simplified english.

Interesting all that! :) Sub for the content and the miniature! :)

I am Serbian, but I also speak Russian. When you speak two Slavic languages from different groups it is much easier to understand other Slavic languages. For me, Polish was weird at first. The accent and pronunciation was strange, but I could recognise many words that are common with East Slavic languages, but could most definetly recognise others that are common with South Slavic. In couple of months it all came to place and now I find it more similar to Serbian then Russian. As for Bulgarian, I can understand 70%, but to me sounds very archaic and at times very funny.

Funny thing as a BG myself I’ve never had problems learning other languages myself, there was always something I could pronounce back with BG background, in order to learn the language.

The spokesman for the Bulgarian language :). Nice video

Great research and video! Keep them coming! :))

I picked Bulgarian and Macedonian as my 8. and 9. languages

Хубаво видео.Преди да го изгледам искам да кажа ,че причината в българския да няма падежи е ,че са отпаднали още 14 век, има няколко теории за това езика ни стане аналитичен.Но сме имали падежи и то 7 на брой.Все още имаме ,понякога се ползват някои падежни форми.Та появата на определителен член е ,че езика ни става аналитичен същото се е случило с английския само, че заради многото езици навлезли в езика и падежите му отпадат.Така съм чувал.

I found this interesting and informative; it is difficult to encapsulate the nature of Bulgarian relative to other Slavic languages in a presentation lasting little over fourteen minutes and still cover the salient features of the language.

You sound as a very smart a nice person. I will take a look at Bulgarian.

Много добро педставяне!

I know suuuper many people that are saying that Bulgarian is one of the hardest languages./Знам суууупер много хора,които казват,че българският е един от най-трудните езици.Благодаря на всички,които казват,че ще учат български! :)

Hey, I grew up in Canada (Toronto) too, but moved back in Varna now! Здрасти!

As a half Bulgarian, I liked hearing this

One thing about stress in West Slavic languages: while Czech and Slovak stress on the first syllable, in Polish we stress on second to last. There are some exceptions to that rule, but we don't have words that only differ in stress, so there is no risk that you will be misunderstood. We also have a fairly consistent spelling… when you pronounce written text. Writing down speech is a whole different beast, as there may be more than one way to write the same sound, so you'd better know the language already before attempting that.

Proud Bulgarian here 🇧🇬

3:13 We also share some words that are the same (at least in Norwegian) like basseng - басейн, svinekjøtt - свинско, svaker - свекър, koffert - куфар,... And many nore that I don't remember now but I found it really interesting as I've been learning Norwegian.

Are you planing to make any more videos?

Just because it has definite articles, that doesn't mean it's easier to understand for an English speaker. I'm a brit living in Norway. Norwegian has definite and indefinite articles like English, but they are used in slightly different ways and in different contexts than in English. It's not very difficult to learn the rules, but it definitely doesn't make a language easier. I also speak Polish, and one easy thing about Polish is the lack of articles. Even as an English speaker, I've never found the lack of articles to be a barrier to understanding or communication.

Bulgarian doesn't seem too difficult. I could consider studying it. Edit: fixed a typo

Cases are not a problem in day to day communication, I'd argue that once mastered, which is not such a hard task, it can promote the understanding of what is being said, while making the language sound less stern and more flexible. Try learning it more naturally, like for instance the way Sir Orberg teaches Latin in his Familia Romana, it really made my Latin studies xyz times easier, all it takes is gradual progress, lots of context and long-term commitment. Like with basically any other language. Good luck. 🤞

Hi Mr. Golyplot, I was wondering if you knew of any apps for learning Bulgarian that you find personally to be quite reliable. Duolingo and Babbel don't seem to have it.

Why is Bulgarian language so perfectly phonetic? The answer is very simple - the Cyrilic alphabet was created in Bulgaria in order to match the spoken language.. For every sound a letter was created. Many Greek letters were used , but also other letters were designed to match slavonik sounds that were not in the Greek language. This way letters for the sounds "sh", "ch", etc. were created.

"Bulgarian compared to all other Slavic languages does not have cases." Leskovcani: "Hold my pljeskavica!"

Thanks

I agree. I've studied most of the Slavic languages, and I would say that Bulgarian has been easiest, for all the reasons you mention. Bulgarian wine also tastes good and then there are Bulgarian girls! Molya!

Start learning it and you'll find out that it isnt easy at all

You know in Indonesian, we have no cases, no verb conjugations, no genders (not even for he/she), no plurals (words can be reduplicated but it is not a must), the verb 'to be' is not a must so it can be eliminated, no weird spellings/irregular stuff, and the phonology is relatively simple!

I am Bulgarian and also grew up in Canada, Montreal specifically. I saw the QC flag on your intro so maybe you did too. Since I came back to Bulgaria the hardest thing for me is always to try NOT to translate stuff in my mind from English or French to Bulgarian. The problem with growing up with other languages is that you think in that language, kind of as if my brain was speaking French/English. Another thing is skimming through Cyrillic text. I feel like it’s so much easier to skim through a paragraph written in Latin in comparison to Cyrillic, where I have to read into the text more to understand it.

Regarding stressing - Czech stresses Always the first syllable :)