Product Description

Teach Yourself Bulgarian is a complete course for beginners in spoken and written Bulgarian. It aims to teach you to understand and use the contemporary language in a variety of typical, everyday situations. Above all, it is functional, enabling you to communicate and interact, using the language for positive, practical purposes. You are introduced to the Bulgarian alphabet right from the start of the course and there is help with both reading and writing the Cyrillic script throughout the book

The course is divided into 20 carefully graded and interlocking units. Each unit is devoted to a particular topic or situation and each successive unit builds naturally on the material covered in previous units.

The first half of the book is a basic grammar and thematic 'survival kit'. The emphasis here is on the present tense and on immediate situations such as those you would encounter in Bulgaria.

From unit 10 you progress to learn about the other tenses and more advanced grammar. As your grammar and vocabulary increase, you will be able to make more use of the tables and lists in the Appendix at the back of the book.

New language is introduced via the dialogues which are available separately on cassette (ISBN 0 340 87054 0) or CD (0340 90622 7) or together with the book in a pack (book/cassette ISBN 0 340 87053 2; book/CD 0340 90621 9). The recording will also help you with your pronunciation and give you extra practice with listening comprehension.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #317576 in Books
• Published on: 2003-12-26
• Original language: English, Bulgarian
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

About the Author
Mira Kovatcheva was born in Sofia and studied English at Sofia University where she is now Senior Lecturer in the Department of English Studies. Michael Holman is of mixed Russian and English parentage. Since 1996 he has lived in Yorkshire where he is Professor of Modern Slavonic Studies at the University of Leeds.

Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Bulgarian, Holman,M. and Kovatcheva,M.
This book takes you from the absolute basics of pronunciation and reading the Cyrillic alphabet up to the grammatical information you'll need to be able to communicate effectively. There are plenty of chances to practice written and oral skills as you go along, especially if you buy the accompanying tape, which I would definitely recommend. Grammatical points seem to be presented in a non-daunting way on a need-to-know basis, but some could do with a bit more fleshing out. Also, a few more listening exercises would be useful. Overall, an excellent, well-structured place to start your Bulgarian learning.

You won't learn Bulgarian in 5 minutes, but if you're serious this can be a useful book
The initial reaction to this self-study course is that it is far too advanced for the beginner. It starts quite simply, then and appears to race off into the distance. But learning a new language is never easy, and for a retired person the learning process becomes ever that much slower!

However, if you're serious about learning the language and you are willing to persevere you can eventually make real and satisfying progress. Most of the information you need is in this book, though it does help to have alternative texts available to stretch the vocabulary a little - and, of course, a good dictionary. (This latter not so easy to find!)

The CD's are a real help and whilst each new lesson at first sounds totally incomprehensible, you find that as you progress you can return to earlier tracks and pleasantly surprise yourself that you are now understanding spoken Bulgarian at a reasonable speed. Without the CD's, the course would be impossible for a beginner, and I imagine that manipulating the tape cassettes would become far too tedious to be helpful.

This course is far, far better than a number of courses I have seen published in Bulgaria!

Beginners Beware!
Beginners will not be at all pleased with this book. It is far too advanced for any useful home study without a tutor. There is no easy explanation how the words are to be pronounced, and the audio tape/CD goes off far too quickly, into advanced situations (Mr Businessman ordering a hotel room etc.) Yoghurt is in its dictionery, but not cat, dog, or face.

You cannot even find simple words like numbers, days of the week, months etc, let alone how to pronounce them. There is no Phonetic representation how the words are said.

I have studied languages for 50 years and this is the worst language tutor book I have ever read. I may be able to find a Bulgarian teacher who can make use of it, but as a self-study book, AVOID this one!