With about 10 million speakers worldwide, Bulgarian is the oldest recorded Slavic language in the world.
Whether you want to connect with Bulgarian natives, travel to Bulgaria, explore Bulgarian culture and history or you just want a challenge, you’ll need language resources that cater to your learning goals and preferences.
Having a solid learning plan is essential before you start learning Bulgarian. In order to reach fluency, you need quality resources to help you learn the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet, grammar, and vocabulary and improve your language skills.
In this post, we share some resources that you could look into as you learn Bulgarian, Cyrillic alphabet, grammar, and more. We’ve tested various Bulgarian resources and listed the best apps, courses, podcasts, and others to help you narrow down your choices. Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
Resources for Learning Bulgarian Language
Courses, apps, websites, textbooks, online tutoring – there are plenty of ways to learn Bulgarian at home, whether you’re teaching yourself the language or looking for supplementary materials for formal studies.
Mastering the Bulgarian Version of the Cyrillic Alphabet
Learning a whole new alphabet can seem intimidating, but once you get started, you’ll soon find you not only recognize the different characters but can automatically sound them out in your head.
BulgarianPod101 (who we’ll touch on in more depth under Bulgarian Language Courses and Bulgarian Podcasts) has a free downloadable ebook for learning the alphabet.
You’ll want to combine this with some kind of audio or video, however, to learn how to pronounce each letter. YouTube videos, such as this one from Learn Bulgarian Easily, will help you with this. Alternatively, if you know IPA, this Omniglot guide could be perfect for you.
If, on the other hand, you prefer to learn on your phone, try one of these two community-created courses (here and here) on Memrise.
Of course, once you’ve learned the alphabet, you’ll need a way to type it. When writing on your computer, you can use the Lexilogos Bulgarian keyboard. As for your phone, you should be able to download your phone’s official Bulgarian keyboard, the Bulgarian version of the GO Keyboard, or another Bulgarian keyboard app.
Bulgarian Language Courses, Lessons, and Websites
Freemium course BulgarianPod101 has a wide range of video and audio lessons. We recommend it as a supplementary course, especially since it will help you practice your listening and vocabulary, but it would be good to use it alongside a textbook as well. You can get some of the material for free, but if you decide you want the full subscription, you can use our promo code ‘ALLLANGUAGERESOURCES’ to get 25% off.
Bulgaro.io is an online course focused on grammar and vocabulary. We like that each level or lesson starts off with a detailed explanation of the material, and then there are a series of quizzes you have to complete, as well as links to corresponding Anki decks. You get the first few classes for free, but to access the full material (47 classes spread over 25 levels) you’ll need to pay €6.90/month. The only annoying thing is that there’s no way to skip levels, meaning that this is best designed for beginners – or people with lots of patience.
My Languages has an extensive Bulgarian section that will break down many of the grammar points for free, but there are no quizzes or exercises. Drilling the material is down to you. You could, however, combine it with these free-to-use grammar drills from linguistics emeritus professor Kjetil Rå Hauge.
Subscription-based Transparent Language will help you drill vocabulary and practice your pronunciation, although we were unconvinced of their teaching methodology, disappointed by the lack of basic grammar explanations, and bored by the repetitiveness. You can read more of our thoughts on it here.
Looking for something like Transparent Language, but that’s free? iLanguages will help you drill basic vocabulary, as will Surface Languages. Polymath covers vocabulary and grammar relatively extensively but doesn’t have audio files.
50Languages has 100 free online Bulgarian lessons. Each lesson presents you with a long list of phrases in English along with the partially obscured Bulgarian translation. You can click to show the entire translation and also listen to a recording of it. While this might sound promising, there is no explanation and you are simply memorizing phrases out of context.
101Languages has some basic phrases; information on the history, grammar, and syntax of Bulgarian; and the same online lessons as 50Languages. However, we believe that there are better options available for studying Bulgarian, especially since the grammar breakdown is quite dense and academic.
EasyBulgarian.com is a nine-lesson online course covering grammar, phrases, pronunciation, and more. It’s as comprehensive as a textbook, down to the exercises for each unit. However, it’s pricey, and the dated, garish looks and sound effects could soon get annoying.
LearnBulgarianEasily also has an eight-lesson beginner-level course, but again, we’re not convinced that it’s worth it because of the high price. Bulgaro.io and BulgarianPod101, while subscription-based, are more affordable and comprehensive options.
17 Minute Languages promises to teach you Bulgarian in just 17 minutes a day through spaced repetition and quizzes, but we recommend avoiding this one – in our experience, it has too many errors and sometimes has trouble with non-Roman texts.
Another one that we would avoid is Loecsen, which helps you drill phrases. While we like the easy-to-use interface and the usefulness of the new vocabulary, we found that too many of the phrases sounded odd in this context. While they might translate directly to the English phrase, they weren’t how native speakers would express this idea.
Should you feel like taking on a challenge, this language course is designed for Bulgarian school children from first all the way up to twelfth grade. You won’t find any English on this website, but it does have a comprehensive curriculum with lots of videos.
Alternatively, if self-directed study isn’t for you, iTalki and Verbling will help you find a teacher for online classes. We’ve reviewed iTalki here and Verbling here.
Best Apps to Learn Bulgarian
Neither Duolingo nor Memrise have official Bulgarian courses, but there is an extensive range of community-made ones on Memrise.
The paid-for app Mondly is one of the few bigger-name companies that offers a course for Bulgarian. We’re not a huge fan of the interface or the one-size-fits-all-languages curriculum, but it can be a good starting point – especially because it will let you switch between scripts, which can be handy if you haven’t yet mastered Cyrillic.
When you’re ready for more advanced vocabulary, try Clozemaster, a game-like app that presents you with vocabulary in context. It’s a freemium app but we feel that you can benefit a lot just with the free version.
uTalk will help you memorize set phrases, which can be useful if you’re visiting the country. We like their use of native speakers, as well as the ability to record and listen back to yourself speaking the Bulgarian phrases.
If you’re looking to practice reading in Bulgarian, you could try the beta version of LingQ. It has its flaws, but the import-a-text option is a handy way to read otherwise challenging books in your new language. We also like that it caters to different language-learning levels, thanks to the huge variety of content. Find more about our experience with it here.
With the paid-for app Glossika, you can practice your speaking and listening through spaced repetition. It’s a good choice if you’re studying multiple languages at once, especially since you can adjust the audio to be in any two of the 60+ languages they offer. However, it is relatively expensive ($25–$30 a month), and since it won’t help you actively practice new grammar, you’ll need to pair it with another resource. You can read more about our thoughts on it here.
Newly launched Lingohackers won’t teach you Bulgarian but it will help you practice writing it through three daily Bulgarian challenges, which fellow learners and native speakers can then correct.
Tandem, HelloTalk, and Speaky will help you find language exchange partners to practice Bulgarian with. We’ve compared Tandem and HelloTalk and reviewed Speaky to help you choose the right app for you.
Anki is a build-it-yourself flashcard program that can help you drill the new vocabulary you come across elsewhere. You can also find Bulgarian flashcard decks that other users have built. We like the way it adapts to how difficult particular words are for you.
Podcasts for Learning Bulgarian
If you want something designed for language learners, you’re in luck: the BulgarianPod101 series is great for beginner Bulgarian learners through to advanced students and is often conveniently short.
You can also download the audio files for Colloquial Bulgarian here. Despite the name, it’s not just about vocabulary and phrasing: you’ll also pick up plenty of grammar.
As for regular Bulgarian-language podcasts, you’ve also got a few to choose from. The 10-minute SBS Bulgarian episodes explore world news and Bulgarian culture, while Darik Radio has a podcast section. AWR Bulgarian is devoted to religion and spirituality.
We’ve got a whole article dedicated to Bulgarian podcasts, so find out more about these here.
YouTube Channels for Learning Bulgarian
You’ll find a lot of videos from BulgarianPod101 on YouTube, but that’s not your only option. Learn Bulgarian Easily has several short videos drilling vocabulary. While limited in number, what’s nice about them is that in addition to speaking and writing the word in Bulgarian, they also write it out phonetically and indicate where the stress should fall.
Blue Lane adds new content on an almost daily basis, while Speak Bulgarian with Bela is a new but well-structured and engaging channel.
Vasil Todorov has a series of 15-minute (ish) lessons on A1 Bulgarian. The presentation is dry, but the material is thorough.
Learn Bulgarian has a series of 17 videos that are designed to accompany a textbook. The first few won’t be much use without a text, but later ones will help you drill beginner-level vocabulary and phrases.
Once you’re at an intermediate or advanced level in Bulgarian, you might like to try videos designed for native-level or fluent speakers. Some of the most popular YouTube Bulgarian vloggers include ‘Айде БГ, Мъци, and Ала-Бала, while Fen TV BG promotes Bulgarian music and often interviews singers and artists. HeyKids – Детски Песни is also a good option for children’s shows.
