Language barriers in Bulgaria

Yeah get to know Bulgarian people 😎

Immigrants need to learn bulgarian.  No question on this.  It's a difficult language, and bulgarians realize this, so they are happy when people make an effort.  But they also resent people who don't try to learn it.

Where I'm living, Banski is also good to know, but it's harder to learn than bulgarian.

For what ever the reason maybe, I'm not able to learn Bulgarian. However if you choose the correct environment you should just be able to scrape buy with a good choice of English words and a load of arm and leg gestures.
Luckily Bulgarian people help you as much as they can. And young people jump at the chance of striking up conversation in English.  Older people tend to be more reticent.

If an old geezer like me (69 and counting) can learn to speak, read and write Bulgarian, then I'm not sure that there's any excuse for others not to do the same.  There are English-language films with BG subtitles on TV pretty much every day, people speaking Bulgarian outside every door and window, free Bulgarian lessons on-line, and Google Translate always on call.

In my view, the main obstacle to learning is not "I can't" but "I can't be bothered to make the effort"!

Jimj -

I agree with you.

I'm learning at 44.

I agree.

I'm learning at 44

I hate when people say it is a matter of laziness or lack of effort to not learn a language.

Some people honestly have problems with languages. My mother has a hard time learning new words in English (her native language). She has trouble pronouncing several words or combinations of letters. She has been like that her entire life and struggles twice as hard as other English speakers. When she visited me for three months, she spent the whole three months trying to learn to say 3-4 words and still couldn't get the pronunciation right. Although she has never been diagnosed, I suspect she has some sort of audio learning disability.

So, no, it is not always a matter of "can't be bothered to try." Some people try and try and honestly cannot learn a second language.

My dad was picking up sentences by the end of the first week.

I do think everyone in Bulgaria should make an effort to learn Bulgarian. That being said, you can get by in just English if you are in the cities. Even Gabrovo, a relatively small city, my parents did fine with little/no Bulgarian. So if you cannot learn the language, don't worry too much. It is more important to learn and understand the culture.

That being said, learning the language will make life easier and more rewarding. It helps with feelings of isolation or a lack of control. Simple things like being able to ask for medicine at the pharmacy or pay your bills without a translator makes life easier.

Yes, it's harder for some than for others, and everyone understands this.  Bulgarian has a really high learning curve.  No one minds helping a person who is struggling with the language, even when it takes longer than usual.

But I've seen people here who still can't put a single sentence together after 2 years.  In fact, they won't even mix with the locals.  These people don't belong here, and need to go home.  No one likes this sort of person.  In fact, I've heard the locals make the nastiest remarks about them.

It's a question of respect to this country and the people here.

Some people will always have an accent or won't say everything correctly, and no one minds this, but it's the ones who won't learn that people don't like.

To be fair, there are indeed people who believe they "don't have an ear for language" but I'm not entirely persuaded that this is a real phenomenon rather than perhaps something people use, albeit unconsciously, because they have convinced themselves that they can't learn a new language.

I'm a great believer that almost everyone CAN get to grips with a new language - or indeed improve their knowledge of their own - if they really put their mind to it and make the effort.  I'm not saying that it's easy or that everyone can make progress at the same speed but it's a question of motivation and effort.  I'm not basing my remarks simply on my own language-learning efforts - I speak several languages - but more importantly on my language teaching experience.

I used to teach in a Language School in London and new students would arrive very hesitant and pretty much convinced that they were on a hiding to nothing; they were sure they'd drop out after a few lessons and in any event would never be able to progress beyond the "Good morning" and "Two beers, please" stage, however hard or long they tried.  Just to make it worse, I was teaching a language which contained sounds not found in English and with a non-Latin alphabet to boot.

The first lesson for each intake would invariably follow the same format: I would stand in front of them and PROMISE that they would be speaking the language at the end of the two-hour session; they would not believe a word of it - because they had already set themselves up to fail by convincing themselves that they were unable to achieve such a "miracle".  At the end of the session they had learned three or four nouns and a similar number of verbs and adjectives, and were able to produce a dozen sentences in this "impossible" language.  The change in their confidence and enthusiasm was palpable and they were falling over themselves to return for the subsequent sessions.  They had also begun, without even realising it, to learn the basics of the grammar - a difficult task for Anglophones since, for some bizarre reason, English grammar hasn't been taught in the vast majority of UK schools for many decades.

I should stress that I would always leave learning the alphabet and the niceties of the grammar for much later: children learn to speak their native language well before they can read and write, and for non-native speakers being forced to learn a new alphabet just reinforces their preconception of the language being "difficult".  Once they feel confident in their ability to speak the language, learning how to read it well enough to recognise the written form of words that they already know becomes much easier and is no longer such a daunting prospect; indeed, many people have no particular need, or desire, to be able to read more than a street sign - or even at all.  Being "illiterate" is not an obstacle to communication!

So, in a nut-shell I'd say that everyone can learn a new language: it may be a truism but there really aren't any "bad students", only bad teachers, and the greatest obstacle to doing it is simply overcoming the "I can't" mentality.  Like all countries, Bulgaria is full of kids chattering away in the local language - if they can do it, so can YOU!

****

It seems that you're as keen as the rest of us to - with three identical posts to say so!

I'm a great believer in a couple of old sayings: "I've never met a man so stupid that I couldn't learn something from him" and "Give instruction to a wise man and he will be yet wiser"

And of course, you're assuming that we're all above average intelligence here - and that we mix with those Bulgarians who aren't....

lefortroger wrote:

***

Stop trolling the average Bulgarian IQ is 93 and the average British IQ is 100. So you are spouting bullshit! I
I rather deal with people with an high EQ far more important.

And I think that figure is being very charitable to "the average Brit", based on the ones I've met!

I too am 69 and counting. I do take issue with your thoughts on why some people don't speak or learn to speak Bulgarian. Not all of us are the same. You may be blessed with a good memory at your age and be thankful for it, I, however, half the time can't remember what I had for breakfast or even if I have eaten breakfast. (maybe dementia kicking in). so please don't judge everyone by your standards.

                                            Terry

Well said Terry! I have been struggling to move to Sofia, from Brisbane, Australia, for the past 12 months. I have been there 3 times in the last two years, and fell in love with two things....the country, and my beautiful girlfriend.

I'm not judging anyone by my standards - and my memory is probably at least as bad as yours   

What I was saying is that I've taught well over a hundred normal, everyday people to speak a language that's at least as difficult as Bulgarian and that my experience is that if they - and I - can do it, anyone can.  What was holding them back was the lack of confidence/fear of making mistakes, not the lack of memory.  Yes, we might all forget what/if we ate at breakfast but we all manage - at least until we are in the real depths of senility or whatever - to remember how to say that we've forgotten.  The simple reason we can do that is because we practise our mother language every day - and there's no reason why we can't practise our "new" language - even if we speak, or think, it to ourselves.  If we live in Bulgaria there are several million people prattling away in Bulgarian all around us, not to mention the radio and TV; if we live abroad, there's likewise no shortage of internet TV and radio stations.  The main obstacle to learning a new language is ourselves and our own lack of confidence and persistence.

If we're determined to do something, we can find the time and opportunity, and speaking the language of the country we do, or want to, live in needs no more than some self-motivation and dedication.  Okay, most of us are never going to fool the locals that we're Bulgarians but we're never going to get even close if we just make excuses for not trying hard enough!  As the old saying goes: There's no such thing as "I can't", only "I won't"...

You cannot say your memory is as bad as mine you don't know me.Friends I see on a daily basis, their names come and go from my mind like floating clouds, I recognise the faces but I struggle to remember the name to the face. So unless you have the same problems you are far from being worse than me as far as memory is concerned. Again I say don't judge everyone by your standards.

I did say "probably" but you are clearly determined to take exception to anything I say, so I'm happy to leave you to do it on your own.  Clearly, you can still manage to remember your English, despite apparently forgetting people's faces and what you had for breakfast, so I don't really see what parallel you're trying to draw between a professed "inability" to learn a language and Prosopagnosia.

Nonetheless, my point still stands: the vast majority of people - and I'm here inferring from a statistically-significant sample of well over a hundred as opposed to your sample of one - CAN learn a foreign language if they want to and are prepared to put the necessary effort in.  Of the rest, some may well be incapable of doing so, while the majority just make excuses to save themselves the bother of even trying or what they perceive to be the "embarrassment" of failing.  As you say, I don't know you - unless I've forgotten you, always possible with my bad memory - so I'm happy to go along with your judgement about which of those categories fits your particular case.

I still think people at least have to try to learn Bulgarian even when they have learning dificulties. Just begin at a kids level and at least learn the basic words.

I do speak German, a language I learned as a much younger man when I was stationed there with the military in the 70s. Although I have forgotten a lot of the language when I hear it spoken I can pick out certain words and think to myself I know that word or phrase and a lot of it comes back to me.
But just to say about learning Bulgarian, because my brain is now turning to gloop, any words I learn today have gone from my head 10 minutes later, so believe me it is impossible for me to learn Bulgarian.

Funnily enough I was just practising my German an hour ago - renewing my ADAC membership

It's certainly tougher to retain stuff as one gets older and I well remember being surprised/disappointed when I started learning Bulgarian and found that the vocabulary and grammar went in one ear and straight out the other.  But of course that's the same at any age and with any language: for most of us, the only way to reliably retain information is through repetition and as much immersion in the language as possible. 

I've tried the "imagine a scenario containing what you want to recall" approach and to me it's just mumbo-jumbo, although some people find it works for them.  Mind you, I usually can't remember what was on my shopping-list when I'm in the real-life "Supermarket Scenario" and the damned list is still on my desk (or maybe I left it in the freezer like my old man used to?)