A dose of grammar...and some new words

Since I took a few days off last week, I'm going to put a lot of information out today.

I've talked a little bit about the gender of nouns and adjectives in a few of the posts. Up to this point, I've said that the only way to know the gender of a noun is to memorize it. That's still true. However, the Bulgarian language is nice enough to give hints as to what the gender of the noun is if you don't have the gender memorized. Today, I'm going to talk about those hints.

Let's start with the easier genders, feminine and neutral. Note that these hints only work for the singular form of these nouns.

In general, a singular feminine noun ends with an -a or a -ya sound. These are all feminine nouns:

oolitsa = street
voda = water
rakiya = Bulgarian brandy

Notice that they all end in a. Hear them here:



Let's move on to a singular neutral nouns. Typically, these nouns end in an -e or -o. These are all neutral nouns:

vino = wine
tsvete = flower
dete = child



As you can see, it is relatively simple to decide on the gender of a feminine or neuter singular noun.

Masculine nouns can be a little trickier, but there are still ways to determine a masculine noun. One simple way is process of elimination. If the noun is singular and doesn't end in -a, -ya, -o, or -e, it's most likely masculine. Also, masculine nouns tend to end in consonsants. Here are some masculine nouns:

brat = brother
chovek = person
stol = chair

These rules don't always work, though. Just to prove it, here's a word:

bashta = father



According to the rules layed out here, bashta would be a feminine noun because it ends in -a. However, it is a masculine noun; it would be weird to have a noun meaning father be feminine.

I don't add this last word in to make these rules confusing, but just to illustrate a point: ultimately, genders have to be memorized. However, you can use these hints to guess at the gender of the noun and get it right often enough.

And, if this doesn't all make sense, don't worry about it. For people who need to learn a few important words when traveling to the country, knowing the grammar this deeply isn't integral. I'm introducing the rules, though, so that I can continue returning to them as the blog goes on.

Now you've got 10 new words and some grammar rules. Have fun!