Bulgaria with Noodles

When a horrible war and ghastly suffering are going on just along the coast of the Black Sea, the best thing to do is to learn Bulgarian. The computer-based learning program called uTalk is a good way to do that. If you are interested in starting a new life in Bulgaria, then you simply MUST try to learn some Bulgarian words and phrases. You will find that many locals are a lot more helpful and friendly if you make at least some attempt to learn the lingo. And when you mispronounce things, it will give the locals something to laugh at! One of the best ways to make a start with learning Bulgarian is a computer-based language learning program called uTalk. uTalk allows you to record you speaking (or trying to speak!) lots of Bulgarian words and phrases. Your efforts can then be compared with a real Bulgarian person saying the same words and phrases. Yes, that could be embarrassing, but hey, we all have to start somewhere. The program has about forty or fifty different topics, ranging from...

A few months ago I wrote a piece for my blog about learning Mandarin, Character Building . Now I am going to write something about learning Bulgarian. I remember that I had a CD and a little book called Easy Peasy Mandarin . It probably is part of a series: Easy Peasy Brain Surgery , Easy Peasy Rocket Science and Easy Peasy Quantum Mechanics . Well, compared to learning Mandarin, learning Bulgarian really is easy , but then again learning just about any language would be easy, compared to Mandarin. So what makes Bulgarian (relatively) easy? Well, first of all, there is an alphabet. Yes, okay, some of the letters are not the same because an H in Bulgarian is X, whereas an N is an H! The “ya” sound is made by a letter that looks like an R but it is the wrong way round, while the Bulgarian “S” sound is written like a C. While the Bulgarian alphabet is supposed to be based on the Greek letters, some things have been changed a bit over the years. So, yes, the alphabet is a bit of...