Started: June 2016
Why on earth would anyone want to study Bulgarian? That is a question I hear a lot, even from Bulgarians that I chat to every now and then. It’s true, it’s not the sexiest of languages and there aren’t many native speakers, definitely not where I live. It’s fair to say that I don’t know any Bulgarian.
As is the case for many of the languages I speak or learn, I never actively decide to study them. There is always something that triggers me into learning the language. And so is the case for Bulgarian as well. Let me tell you what happened.
Back in 2016, a colleague and friend gave me a book, The language hacker by Gabriel Wyner. She thought I would be interested. Long story short: the author has developed his own method for learning a language. I was intrigued – of course I was.
I never say no to a good challenge, especially not when languages are involved. So I decided to give his method a try. I wanted to do this with a language that I had no prior knowledge of and that had no ties with any other language I spoke. But what language could that be?
Then I remembered my search for Spanish evening courses. One of the language you could study at the school, was Bulgarian. I had looked briefly at the curriculum at that point, but never with the intention of studying Bulgarian. I remember asking myself the same question as I started this blog with. Why Bulgarian?
Anyway, Bulgarian popped back into my mind and I decided, yes, it must be that! Bonus points for the script! The search for resources was hard, there are very few books to be found, but I did in the end receive a course for refugees through the Bulgarian teacher from the language school (I was brave enough to e-mail her, tell her I was not going to take her class, but please, could she let me know the resources she used).
About 5 years later, I haven’t reached more than a good A2 … I got there fairly quickly, but then … Sometimes life does that, it throws things at you and you have to follow.
Thanks to italki (again, I swear, I do not gain any money from promoting them), I found a teacher with whom I have 2 conversation classes per month. I hope to reach a B1 at some point the coming years.
