Reddit reviews Intensive Bulgarian, Vol. 1: A Textbook & Reference Grammar

I'm not a native Bulgarian speaker and only started learning Bulgarian a few months ago, but so far the learning materials I have used teach possession simply using на which kinda functions like English "of". The possessive form you gave with the suffix -ов is possible (I think? I haven't learned it...), but I think has much trickier rules and different usage (hopefully a native speaker or more advanced learner will be able to elaborate), so as a beginner you're probably best just sticking to на :

писалката на симеон : Simeon's pen (a specific one)

писалка на симеон : Simeon's pen (nonspecific, one of Simeon's pens)

кракът на слона : the (specific) elephant's (specific) leg

крак на слон : a leg of an elephant

кракът на слон : the (specific) leg of an elephant

Also it seems like you haven't totally learned the definitive article rules or gender agreement for nouns and adjectives, which you absolutely must get a good understanding of before learning much else in Bulgarian grammar :)

To make masculine nouns, which usually end in a consonant, definite (i.e. the elephant) you add -ът if it's the subject, but just -а if it's the object of a verb or prepositional phrase. So both слонът and слона mean "the elephant", but the one you use depends on the grammatical context.

For feminine nouns, which usually end in -а or -я (but not always!) you add -та as you said. You only have to worry about the subject/object thing for masculine nouns, luckily. писалка -> писалката. An example of a feminine noun ending in a consonant is нощ (night) -> нощта (the night)

For nouns ending in -е or -о, you add -то. кафе (coffee) -> кафето (the coffee)

Plural is a whole other thing. Plural nouns ending in -a take -та to make it definite. кафета (coffees) -> кафетата (the coffees)

All other plural nouns, whether they end in -e or -и, take the definite article -те. градове (cities) -> градовете (the cities). зайци (rabbits) -> зайците (the rabbits)

It helps to remember that ALL nouns ending in -a or -я, regardless of whether they're singular or plural, will take -та as the definite article! One of the few absolute rules with no exceptions you will find! ;)

Things get trickier once you add adjectives, because if there's an adjective, the definite article doesn't stay on the noun, but actually gets attached to the end of the adjective. малък слон (a small elephant) -> малкият слон (the small elephant). On masculine adjectives the definite article is either -ият or -ия depending on whether it's the subject or object. This is why you see that -ият on симеоновият, because it's actually an adjective (Simeon's) with the masculine definite ending. But you can't use it with писалка because писалка is a feminine noun and requires the adjective modifying it to have a feminine ending as well. So it would have to be симеоновата писалка. If you wanted to say "Simeon's elephant", since слон is masculine, you could say симеоновият слон. But just stick to using на.

I could go on and on describing more rules, but you're better off getting a textbook (I recommend this one which is super good, but very rigorous, so you have to be serious about wanting to learn Bulgarian grammar: https://www.amazon.com/Intensive-Bulgarian-Vol-Textbook-Reference/dp/0299167445)

Also a great web app for learning Bulgarian is bulgaro.io. It's basically like DuoLingo, but Duolingo doesn't currently offer a Bulgarian course. So far it takes you through a decent amount of vocab and basic grammar, like all the stuff I just mentioned, the present tense of verbs, and other stuff. A subscription only costs 2.90 € a month which I think is pretty cheap. It's still in development so they're still adding lessons.

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And finally, if I made any mistakes, please correct me, native Bulgarians!! Good luck!

My youngest son (20) has exactly the same problem, but his Bulgarian is still better than mine. Listen to Bulgarian radio and watch Bulgarian television - there are streams. Visit Bulgaria. Whenever my son visits Bulgaria, his Bulgarian skills grow exponentially.

I have been trying to teach myself Bulgarian for years now, and Intensive Bulgarian is IMHO, one of the best texts in my Bulgarian textbook library.

If you live near a university, see if there are any Bulgarian students there (I have found Bulgarians everywhere - even in Kansas).

I also try to wade my way through the Bulgarian posts and news stories here. ;)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0299167445

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKJwad7VjIWpJX4MZbqUyrA

https://www.bulgaro.io/

OR!! This is much better : https://np.reddit.com/r/bulgaria/comments/1ayk69/how_do_i_learn_bulgarian/

This used book I'm Bulgarian but I moved here at a young age so I never went to school there or anything. We speak Bulgarian at home and I just wing it but I'd like to know more about the intricacies of it all lol

^Oh ^ya ^I ^also ^spent ^a ^year ^on ^the ^moon ^studying ^plants.

Not sure where you're at or whether you're willing to spend money, but this book on Amazon is fantastic:

http://www.amazon.com/Intensive-Bulgarian-Vol-Textbook-Reference/dp/0299167445/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414423630&sr=8-1&keywords=intensive+bulgarian

This audio cd is also part of the same program:

http://www.amazon.com/Intensive-Bulgarian-Audio-Supplement-SPOKEN-WORD/dp/0299250342/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y

Honestly - they're expensive. However, it's a different feeling, having a textbook in front of you than going website to website. And this will do what you said in your post you did for French, with exercises and tables to show different conjugations.