Letter Б б and Pronouns

It's the weekend, so it seems like a good time to write about some tougher stuff.

But first, the letter of the day. Just like English, the second letter in the Bulgarian alphabet is a "b" sound. Unlike English, it looks like this:

Б б

Now to the big stuff:

I want to start introducing some basic verbs. Before I can do that though, you have to know the basic pronouns. You'll see why later when I introduce verbs. For right now, just focus on pronouns.

The following are all the pronouns in the subjective case, meaning they can all take the place of the subject of a sentence:

az = I
ti = you (informal or singular you)
toi = he
tya = she
to = it
nie = we
vie = you (formal or group you, such as "you all")
te = they

Before I show you how these sound, I want to quickly go over the Bulgarian idea of the informal and formal you. Let's use this sentence as an example: "Do you want coffee?" If I was at home asking my wife or anybody with whom I was personally familiar, I would use the pronoun "ti." However, if I was asking a superior, a customer at a restaurant, or someone with whom I was unfamiliar, I would want to use the pronoun "vie."

The Bulgarian language is not the only language that does this. I know the German language does this. It's something that didn't transfer over or got lost along the way in the English language.

Now, here's how those subjective pronouns sound. I'll be honest, I don't think I have the pronunciation for "he" correct, but it's the best we can do for the moment.



Dobur den.