I've been working on learning Bulgarian since I moved to Sofia as a Fulbright scholar. My progress has been well slow but steady. I arrived in country knowing the alphabet and more or less my numbers. Oh and a few greetings like: hello, good morning and good day. I had a lot to learn. I took a course and got a little better.

Then I started teaching and had less time to learn Bulgarian. When I decided to stay on for another to teach at ACS, I decided that I needed to become more serious in studying Bulgarian. Since then I've been taking classes twice a week at ACS and I have a standing private lesson on Sunday afternoons.
<a title="In 10: Learning Bulgarian by karolinka.sofia, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/7032222419/"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7231/7032222419_34b3234532_z.jpg" alt="In 10: Learning Bulgarian" width="640" height="427" /></a>

I am more confident now than I was before but frankly I still have a lot to learn. Sometimes I get discouraged by this. Other times, I am just really proud of being able to have conversations with non-English speaking colleagues. Learning another language isn't easy. It takes time and energy and I haven't always committed enough of either of these things to studying Bulgarian.

Life gets in the way sometimes. But that's okay. At this point, I'd rather be out living than at home with my Bulgarian books. It's a choice that I've made. So I do my very best with the amount of time that I can commit to it. While my Bulgarian isn't getting better in leaps and bounds, I know that it's improving bit by bit and I'm okay with that.

When it comes to studying the language, I don't love any of the text books that I have. Many have mistakes in Bulgarian because they've been made cheaply and quickly. The best one I have for grammar and practice is only in Bulgarian and doesn't have any English so I spend a lot of time on google translate looking things up.

I get asked pretty frequently about which book (or books) I recommend. But frankly, it's difficult for me to recommend a textbook because none of them really wow me. Probably the best book for studying on your own before arriving in Bulgaria is <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/LEARN-BULGARIAN-THE-EASY-textbook/dp/B002BAUFXE/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1333209074&amp;sr=1-2" target="_blank">How to Learn Bulgarian the Easy Way.</a> Although I am not convinced there is an easy way. This said, I more or less like the layout of the book and the cds are pretty helpful. It just seems to move pretty quickly for a self-study guide and there aren't a lot of changes to practice your grammar and what not. The biggest drawback is that the book doesn't seem to be in print and/or easily available.

Other In 10 Posts:
<ul>
	<li><a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/2012/03/18/in-10-bottles/" target="_blank">Bottles</a></li>
	<li><a href="../2012/03/11/in-10-12-muffins/" target="_blank">Muffins (Self-made and Take a Cake-made)</a></li>
	<li><a href="../2012/03/04/in-10-martenitsi/%20%E2%80%8E" target="_blank">Martenitsi</a></li>
	<li><a href="../2012/02/26/in-10-carrefour/" target="_blank">Carrefour</a></li>
	<li><a href="../2012/02/19/in-10-bulgarian-homemade/" target="_blank">Bulgarian Homemade</a></li>
</ul>