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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!

Well, you could try reading old folktale books, they have a very colorful and fun style of writing, tho Im not sure how many have good translations.

I do know a few good step by step books. Here are links to some.
https://www.linguajunkie.com/bulgarian/best-bulgarian-textbooks
https://www.europeanbookshop.com/languagebooks/series/BUL/m1/c3/6/COBU

Getting a Dutch-Bulgarian/English-Bulgarian Dictionary is also quite useful, these are relatively common.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bulgarian-English-English-Bulgarian-Dictionary-Hippocrene-Dictionaries/dp/0870521454

I hope some of this is useful to you and good luck!

Cultural Marxism is not an invention of the paranoid right. It's a school of thought developed by left-wing Marxists and named by them as such because it describes the application of their own theory to culture rather than economics. Whether you agree with the movement or disagree with the movement, saying that it's not a movement, or that William Lind created a fictitious movement in 1998, is absurd. You are either misinformed or lying.

Below is a list of sources drawn exclusively from professors and scholars practicing cultural Marxism in which they use the term to describe the Frankfurt- and Birmingham-descended schools of thought.

1. Richard R. Weiner's 1981 book "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology" is "a thorough examination of the tensions between political sociology and the cultural oriented Marxism that emerged int the 1960s and 1970s." You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Political-Sociology-Research/dp/0803916450
   
   
2. Marxist scholars Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson further popularized the term in "Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture", a collection of papers from 1983 that suggested that Cultural Marxism was ideally suited to "politicizing interpretative and cultural practices" and "radically historicizing our understanding of signifying practices." You can buy it here:http://www.amazon.com/Marxism-Interpretation-Culture-Cary-Nelson/dp/0252014014
   
   Note that the left-wing and progressive Professor Grossberg is a world-renowned professor who is the Chair of Cultural Studies at UNC, near my house. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Grossberg
   
   
3. "Culutral Marxism in Postwar Britain", by Dennis Dworkin, is described by Amazon as "an intellectual history of British cultural Marxism" that "explores one of the most influential bodies of contemporary thought" that represents "an explicit theoretical effort to resolve the crisis of the postwar Left". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Marxism-Postwar-Britain-Post-Contemporary/dp/0822319144
   
   
4. "Conversations on Cultural Marxism", by Fredric Jameson, is a collection of essays from 1982 to 2005 about how "the intersections of politics and culture have reshaped the critical landscape across the humanities and social sciences". You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Jameson-Conversations-Cultural-Post-Contemporary-Interventions/dp/0822341093
   
   Note that Dennis Dworkin is a progressive professor at the University of Nevada, where his most recent book, "Class Struggles", extends the themes of "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain".
   
   
5. "Cultural Marxism," by Frederic Miller and Agnes F. Vandome, states that "Cultural Marxism is a generic term referring to a loosely associated group of critical theorists who have been influenced by Marxist thought and who share an interest in analyzing the role of the media, art, theatre, film and other cultural institutions in a society. The phrase refers to any critique of culture that has been informed by Marxist thought. Although scholars around the globe have employed various types of Marxist critique to analyze cultural artifacts, the two most influential have been the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany (the Frankfurt School) and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, UK. The latter has been at the center of a resurgent interest in the broader category of Cultural Studies." You can buy it here. http://www.abebooks.co.uk/Cultural-Marxism-Frederic-Miller-Agnes-Vandome/2237883213/bd
   
   The essay "Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies," by UCLA Professor Douglas Kellner, says " 20th century Marxian theorists ranging from Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, and T.W. Adorno to Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton employed the Marxian theory to analyze cultural forms in relation to their production, their imbrications with society and history, and their impact and influences on audiences and social life... There are, however, many traditions and models of cultural studies, ranging from neo-Marxist models developed by Lukàcs, Gramsci, Bloch, and the Frankfurt school in the 1930s to feminist and psychoanalytic cultural studies to semiotic and post-structuralist perspectives (see Durham and Kellner 2001)." The essay is available here: http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/culturalmarxism.pdf
   
   Note that Professor Kellner is a progressive professor, an expert in Herbert Marcuse, and critic of the culture of masculinity for school shootings.
   
   
6. For another reference, see http://culturalpolitics.net/cultural_theory/journals for a list of cultural studies journals such as "Monthly Review", the long-standing journal of Marxist cultural and political studies". Note that the website Cultural Politics is a progressive site devoted to "critical analysis" of the "arena where social, economic, and political values and meanings are created and contested."
   
   
7. You could also check out "Cultural Marxism: Media, Culture and Society", Volume 7, Issue 1 of Critical sociology, of the Transforming Sociology series, from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociology.
   
   I hope that this brief survey amply demonstrates that Cultural Marxism is a term created and actively used by progressive scholars to describe the school of thought that first developed at Frankfurt and Birmingham to apply Marxism to cultural studies.

Hey you! Let me give you this:
http://themysteryofthebulgarianvoices.com/www/news/the-mystery-of-the-bulgarian-voices-ft-lisa-gerrard-boocheemish-reviewed/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Boocheemish-Mystery-Bulgarian-Featuring-Gerrard/dp/B07BF8554Y/
It is an amazing collaboration and a (mind)melt of East and West, or East and very very far East?
For me these girls :) are creme de la creme of Bulgarian song tradition and Lisa Gerrard is a cosmic life force. Hope you enjoy it!

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.

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. ;)

I know this is old but I just wandered across this topic. I would strongly recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Verb-Activator-212-Bulgarian-Verbs/dp/1512295736 for verb forms. I found it really helpful when I was studying Bulgarian.

Just start from here and dive in. Look for the history of the country, famous events etc.

You can also try a book or two. I recommend this, its funny and satirical towards bulgarians. You can learn a lot about a culture from its comedy :)

A true Professor !! I can spend a happy lifetime looking at the selection. But I will keep on looking for these two specific CDs - which are not there it seems :

Yanka Rupkina

Stefka Sabotinova

Ooh, I forgot perhaps the most popular Bulgarian movie of the last 20 years. Zift. Another (very) dark comedy, perhaps nsfw. AFAIK it has been broadcasted internationally, so unlike most Bulgarian movies, you can actually find it translated in English.

I found this
> This Album Is Dedicated To Children. It Mixes Original Compositions From De Courson & Gubitsch With Traditional Chants And Kids Chants From Egypt, China, India, Spain, England, France, South America,Africa And Hongaria. Features The Symphonic Orches.

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/

Според мен най-добре използвай amazon - https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0786939532/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517925478&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=The+Legend+of+Drizzt&dpPl=1&dpID=51cDAwaY4aL&ref=plSrch

There's always this: http://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Bulgaria-Cambridge-Histories/dp/0521616379

Yanka Rupkina- Keranka

I'm having a hard time finding any Stefka Sabotinova CDs. I guess you can order that one from the US Amazon or try this

Yes, it's harmful and I don't smoke (not for some moral reasons, actually, but as a smokers' kid I was never prohibited from it and also it was smelly and not interesting; besides, never was a popular kid, obliged by peer pressure to hang out in parks or cafes and smoke every class break or after school)...

On the other hand, there are lots of better fast stress-relievers, but just a few of them one can do at work in the post-industrial world, e.g. and just waste some time without messing the whole thing up. You can't drink at work, you usually can't play sports at work or have sex at work, so... Oh, well, here comes the internet addiction (hello Reddit!)... I read another point in Terence McKenna's "Food of the Gods" once and he compared today's caffeine and nicotine to the war drugs of Berserkers and Persians like mushrooms and haoma - some of them give us the qualities we need to deal with our small battles in everyday life, to be alert, tough and competitive. Many other companies benefit from our needs, vanity and addictions (food giants sell us tons of carbs and bad lipids, etc.); many conditions are medicalised and people taking all those sedatives and anti-deppressants - modern life is a shitty game after all, making it easier than ever to survive and hard to stay sane.

Edit: Book title and link.