FSI Bulgarian Basic Course

What is the FSI Bulgarian Basic Course?

This FSI Bulgarian course is made up of 29 units consisting of dialogs, drills and exercises. The course is accompanied by many hours of audio, which you can use to help with your fluency and pronunciation. Bulgarian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, and since this script is relatively easy to master, the course uses Cyrillic alongside a system of transliteration, meaning you can also learn to read Bulgarian as you study. This is in contrast with other FSI courses teaching languages that use more complicated scripts, many of which avoid teaching the writing system altogether.

How was FSI Bulgarian Basic originally used?

This FSI Bulgarian course was originally designed to teach Bulgarian to US diplomatic staff who were destined for postings in the country. They attended six hours of class per day, and they were also expected to spend a further two hours each day on personal study. During lessons, they were only supposed to speak Bulgarian, and even among themselves, they were encouraged to use Bulgarian. The result was that, after only around six months of intensive study, they were able to acquire a level of Bulgarian that would allow them to live and work in the country.

How can you use FSI Bulgarian Basic?

It is highly unlikely that you will be able to recreate the same study environment enjoyed by US diplomats. However, this free online Bulgarian course contains a wealth of study materials that will greatly benefit you if you know how to adapt them to your needs.

If you have another coursebook to follow, the dialogs and drills in this course can be a valuable aid to developing your fluency and pronunciation skills. On the other hand, if you are looking for a primary source of study materials, you can use FSI Bulgarian to learn the basics before quickly moving on to more advanced language.

Taking it further

Of course, if you are learning Bulgarian, your goal is to be able to use it to communicate with native Bulgarian speakers, and we encourage you to do this as early as possible. Take the Bulgarian you have learned and try to find native speakers to practice with – and as much as you can, try to make speaking Bulgarian a part of your daily life. If you do this, you will quickly see how rapidly your Bulgarian skills are developing.