Languages in Bulgaria?
- By
- Aparna Patel
- |
- 22 Jul, 2023
- |
For what it’s worth, I am from Canada and have lived/worked in Sofia for 2-3 years. English was useful and most people kind of understand it, but your mileage may vary outside tourist/business areas. You might find older people who speak French. It helped me a few random times in train stations or in some remote villages. Met really nice people this way.
Although I ended up learning the Bulgarian language and it was well worth it. It’s pretty easy compared to Russian (no declinations), but it makes it possible to have some understanding of Serbian, Russian and to some extent Czech. Bulgarian is spoken as it is written, which really helps to learn the language. If you manage to at least learn enough to have some sense of the conversation, you can join a hiking club for example, and visit awesome places in the mountains 🙂
You might have difficulties finding books to learn Bulgarian. In French there was a pretty good one from the “Assimil” collection to start with. Then if you go to one of the bigger bookstores (or online bookstores such as Helikon), you can find more advanced books only in Bulgarian, but targeted at foreigners.
It’s possible to get around just with English, it depends a lot from your destination. In Sofia, Varna or some other big cities it shouldn’t be a problem, in the most towns on the Black Sea shoudn’t be a problem too. But there are also some urban areas where the local people don’t even speak Bulgarian fluently and don’t know a single word of English.
As @MarkMayo already said, the young population is likely to speak English. The “older” population has had Russian or French as a subject in school, but it would be hard to find someone speaking French in Bulgaria.
Serbian and Macedonian are very simular to Bulgarian, Russian could also be helpful, at least for the Cyrillic script. But note that there are also some words that have different meanings in Bulgarian and Russian. For example “направо” (napravo) means “turn right” in Russian but in Bulgarian it means “straight on”.
Wikitravel has a section on this.
Essentially you’ll want to learn the script – even if you can’t speak it. It at least helps you say words, or if someone says to try the cheese and tells you the word is ‘Kashkaval’, at least when you see the script saying ‘Кашкавал’ you’ll be able to figure it out, even if slowly. It’s immensely useful for street signs and being able to order off a menu – or even to learn what the name for something is on a menu if it has pictures (I’m speaking especially from experience with the Cyrillic script in Russia etc).
Often you will understand it anyway, as it sounds like the English or French word.
In terms of being understood, however, in the cities it should be easier. As Wikitravel says:
…as Bulgarian education emphasizes foreign language studies,
especially English language, it wouldn’t be a problem to talk and find
information in English in bigger cities. It’s best to turn to the
young population for a direction or an advice.
As it’s related to Serbian, Russian and other Eastern European languages, if you don’t want to learn Bulgarian, perhaps you could consider one of those. I’d suggest Russian, as it would help you in several other countries in the area.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘
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