Learn how to recommend something to someone
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Becky: Hello and welcome back to BulgarianPod101.com. This is Lower Beginner, season 1, lesson 23 -What Are Your Bulgarian Recommendations? I’m Becky. |
| Iva: Zdravei And I am Iva! |
| Becky: In this lesson you'll learn how to recommend something to someone. |
| Iva: The conversation takes place in a gift shop. |
| Becky: The conversation is between Maria and James; Maria is recommending a gift for James’ brother. |
| Iva: As we know, they are friends, so their speech is informal. |
| Becky: Let’s listen to the conversation. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Becky: So we had a recommendation for a type of wine that you can find only in Bulgaria. |
| Iva: Let’s talk some more about wine production in Bulgaria. |
| Becky: It has a long history in Bulgaria, dating back to the time of the Thracians. |
| Iva: There are five basic wine regions in the country. |
| Becky: The continental region offers wines like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Chardonnay, while the Black sea region offers Riesling, Sauvignon blanc, and Traminer. |
| Iva: There is also the Rose valley region, the Southwest region and the Thracian Lowland region. |
| Becky: This last one is home to the famous local wine, Mavrud, which we mentioned in the dialogue. |
| Iva: Wine tourism is getting more and more popular in Bulgaria, and winemakers are always promoting these wine regions to international audiences. |
| Becky: Among Bulgarians though, one place is famous for being the “wine cellar” of the country: Melnik. |
| Iva: The village of Melnik lies 20 kilometres from the Greek border. |
| Becky: It’s surrounded by spectacular scenery, with its main feature being huge sandstone formations, some of them in the shape of pyramids. |
| Iva: Vine cultivation started there in the 18th century. |
| Becky: Melnik is the centre of the most famous Bulgarian wine region, and is a popular destination for wine lovers. So if you love wine, you should check it out! Now let’s move on to the vocab. |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Becky: Let’s take a closer look at some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Iva: We have one important verb here - “Купувам”. |
| Becky: It means “to buy”. |
| Iva: The verb “to sell” is “продавам”. |
| Becky: OK, can you repeat them both? |
| Iva: “Купувам”. And “продавам”. |
| Becky: Buy and sell. |
| Iva: The noun “покупка”, which originates from the verb “to buy”, means “purchase” in English. |
| Becky: Got it. |
| Iva: The noun “продажба” means “sale” in English. |
| Becky: What’s next? |
| Iva: “Нещо”. |
| Becky: This is a noun meaning “something”. |
| Iva: It is in the neuter form. |
| Becky: The noun “nothing” sounds very similar to this, so please remember that too... |
| Iva: “нищо”.Basically, nouns or pronouns starting with “не-”, which change to “ня” in some cases, are about “something” and “someone”. While the ones starting with “ни-” are about “nothing” or “no one”. Finally, we have “Чувам”. |
| Becky This is a Bulgarian verb meaning “to hear”. What’s important about this one? |
| Iva: Well, it’s one of the five senses. Those verbs are - “to see” which is “виждам”, “to touch” is “докосвам”, “to smell” is “мириша”, and “to taste” is “опитвам”. |
| Becky Okay, now let’s move onto the grammar. |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| Becky: In this lesson, you’ll learn how to recommend something to someone. Making and receiving recommendations is an important part of learning a language. |
| Iva: Recommendations are also a must when you visit a new country. |
| Becky: In Bulgaria, you can hear people say: “”I recommend you do something, or try something.” |
| Iva: Remember, we had this sentence in the dialogue: “Тогава мога да ти препоръчам това вино.” |
| Becky: Ah, when Maria recommends a wine. |
| Iva: That’s right. |
| Becky: The sentence means “Then I can recommend this wine to you.” |
| Iva: Basically, when you recommend something in Bulgarian you use this sentence: “Препоръчвам ти да ~ and then an action or a thing.” |
| Becky: Can you repeat it for our listeners, Iva? |
| Iva: “Препоръчвам ти да ~” and then an action or a thing. |
| Becky: Basically we use the verb “to recommend”, |
| Iva: Which is “препоръчвам”, and then we add the pronoun for “you”, |
| Becky: In this case – the second person singular form, which is used in everyday situations. |
| Iva: Note that the verb form suggests that the person speaking is “I”, so we don’t need to specifically say “I recommend you ~”, just “Recommend you ~”. That’s because “препоръчвам” is the form for first person singular. |
| Becky: After the verb and the pronoun, you can add many different things – basically the things you want to recommend! |
| Becky: But what if we are making the recommendation in a polite way? We gave an example with the pronoun “you” in second person singular; now let’s see how this sounds in a more formal situation. Remember, that’s one where you need to use the polite form of the pronoun “you”, the second person plural one. |
| Iva: Ok, here’s an example: “Препоръчвам ви това ястие.” |
| Becky: This means “I recommend this dish to you.” |
| B: Here it is once more: “Препоръчвам ви това ястие.” |
| Becky: “I recommend this dish to you.” |
| Iva: We just change the pronoun form - the rest stays the same. |
| Becky: One note here: when you use the formal or plural version of the pronoun “you” in Bulgarian, sometimes it’s written with a capital letter, but sometimes it’s not. |
| Iva: The official rules say that the capital letter is needed when you’re addressing only one person in a formal way, and for formal documents. |
| Becky: But in a case like here… |
| Iva: When we’re speaking to many people, or when dealing with informal documents, we write the plural “you” as “lowercase в-и-е” and not starting with an “uppercase В-и-е”. |
| Becky: Make sure you check the lesson notes so you can see what we mean here. |
| Iva: Yes, I think that’s a good idea. |
Outro |
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| Becky: Okay, that’s it for this lesson. Thanks for listening, and see you next time, everyone. |
| Iva: Bye-bye! |
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