How to cut through the language?
I want to teach Bulgarian in daily “baby steps”. Ok, to be honest: I want to learn Bulgarian by taking “baby steps”. That’s the only way that will work for me, I think, after several failed attempts. Steps so tiny, I hardly realize I’m taking them.
But how to approach the huge body of vocabulary and grammar of the Bulgarian language?
Text books and courses are betting on “practical relevance”. They present typical situations of daily life which a student might encounter — meeting people, going to a farmers market, ordering at a restaurant etc. — and deliver pieces of the language in pretty big chunks of 30 to 50 words per lesson plus some grammatical concepts.
Grammar is ordered from simple to more complicated; vocabulary is matching the situations; the situations are ordered somewhat chronologically along a person’s journey to the country.
Sounds familiar? I bet. Sounds reasonable? I guess.
I think, I could follow this beaten path, no, this tried and true approach, and just chop up the lessons into small daily “nuggets”.
Alas, that does not feel right. My experience with Bulgarian is different. My real life is not a string of pearls from greeting to market to restaurant etc. like in a text book. I come across interactions with many more people. Short interactions, that is: buying a bus ticket, telling the cashier at the supermarket I want to pay with my credit card, asking a taxi driver to wait a moment, asking for directions to a shop and many, many, many more. There are so many short lived situations it’s almost of no use to list them and train them separately.
Hence, I think the value of the usual approach is not in “battle hardening” the student for the real life. Rather it’s about something to relate to, to present a familiar situation. Nothing more, nothing less. A small story — without a realistic claim to enable the student to sail through the whole experience with a solid knowledge of relevant Bulgarian. After a lesson text like this
I’m not ready to “survive” a visit to a restaurant with my Bulgarian. Sure, I’ll be prepared a bit, but real life interactions will demand very different skills. This is more like what’s helpful:
It’s “short and sweet”. I like.
But then… it’s only translation in one direction: reading and understanding.
What I’m looking for is "constant translation” in both directions: Bulgarian → English, English → Bulgarian — with the latter being more difficult, of course.
And what I’m looking for is relevance of the words I’m encountering in translation exercises.
Learning by frequency
Which words are most relevant? Which ones should I focus on? In which order should words be presented?
In the usual text books words follow the chronology of the situations presented. Again an excerpt from Step by Step:
I understand the good intention — but is this really helpful? After several years in Bulgaria I’m beginning to doubt the effectiveness of the approach. The reason is simple: I still have a hard time engaging in the simplest interactions. Why is that? It’s less a matter of grammar, it’s mostly a matter of words. I’m missing essential words. Why is that?
Until recently I was at a loss. I felt something lacking, but I could not put my finger on it. Then one day I came across the…
…and it hit me! I was missing words, because I was learning the wrong ones. I was learning “interesting” ones, not truly relevant ones.
Which words are most relevant? The ones which are used most often in a language. You’re better served to learn a word that you hear/read more often in general than a word that’s “more interesting”, but you come across only rarely. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
A frequency dictionary answers the question which words are used more often in a language. It doesn’t list the words in alphabetical order like regular dictionaries, but in the order of their frequency. The first word is the one used most often, the last one the word used least often.
Look at the first page of the above dictionary as an example:
Take your time and let it sink in what you see — and what you don’t see.
The most often used word in Bulgarian is да. Who would have thought? It seems such an innocuous word, but if you look closely it’s making Bulgarian seemingly difficult right from the beginning.
The meaning for да coming to your mind first, if you already know a bit of the language, is “yes”. That’s trivial; that’s easy to remember. But is that the reason why this word is the most often used one? I don’t think so. Sure, “yes” is said very often. But there is more to да.
My guess for the reason why да is the most frequent word is based on its second meaning, though: It’s also used as a conjunction between/in front of verbs. Remember Да започнем! (“Let’s begin!“) from my first posting? Or how about this statement: Лягам да спя (“I lie down to sleep.“). The meaning here is not “yes”, but “so that” or “(in order) to” or it’s even a prompt to do something like “let’s …”.
My feeling is, it’s this second meaning what’s easily confusing students of the Bulgarian language in the beginning. They hear да in some utterance, remember “yes” — but then cannot make sense of what’s been said. Because the well meaning language trainer wanted to spare them this kind of advanced grammatical construct.
Interesting, isn’t it?
Съм (“I am” or “to be”) on rank 2 is not much of a surprise, neither is не (“no”) as the next word. But what about се, the reflexive pronoun like in Казвам се Ралф (“I call myself Ralf“)? When is that introduced in usual language trainings? I remember reflexive verbs to be deemed advanced grammatical constructs, too.
Are you beginning to see a pattern?
No? Then let me ask you: What about nouns and verbs? Aren’t they most important for every student of Bulgarian? Aren’t they the word categories introductory material is focussing on primarily?
Well, check out the top 5 nouns…
… and verbs
Would you have guessed which they are? Време (“weather, time“) is the most frequent noun? Then ден (“day”)? And then работа (“work”)? Are these the nouns language trainings confront you with first? Not in my experience.
And look at the rank! The first noun has rank 70. Before that are 69 more frequent words, all not being nouns. This does not mirror how Bulgarian is presented in text books, I think.
This is the vocabulary from the first lesson of Step by Step. It’s almost all nouns.
Verbs appear earlier in the frequency dictionary beginning with rank 2 and then 25. Seems plausible to me, especially съм (“to be”) being the first verb. On the other hand… there are 23 non-verbs (and non-nouns) being more frequent. What are they about?
Here’s my insight: The most frequent words in Bulgarian (and probably in any language) are “glue words”. They constitute the framework of a language; they are the stable parts.
Nouns can enter a language at any time, example: phone. Even new verbs might be introduced comparatively frequently, example: to phone sb. But conjunctions or pronouns? They are very stable. And they are “bolstering” every sentence.
Conversely that means a language student is confronted with them most often. If you see испания (“Spain”) in the first lesson of Step by Step when are you going to encounter that noun again in real life? In your next conversation at the market or with a train conductor?
But if you don’t see това (“this”) and its “siblings” тази, този, тези early in your language training, you’ll be easily confused in day to day interactions. It’s on rank 11 compared to испания which is not even among the 2500 most frequent words.
You see where I’m getting at? Coming across the frequency dictionary really changed my view of how to learn/teach a language. “It’s the frequency, stupid!” Learning should follow as much as possible the frequency of words in a language. That way you’re sure to prepared best for every day language including the train station or the farmers market.
“As much as possible” is a necessary qualifier, though. Because trying to learn words in strict order of frequency rank does not lend itself to meaningful sentences quickly. Learning would be degraded to rote memorization. That’s not fun and not efficient, I’d say.
Rather lessons should try to pick from several word categories in order of frequency rank, e.g.
Particles: да (1), не (3), ли (10)
Prepositions: на (6), за (9), в (12)
Conjunctions: и (5), но (22), а (28)
Verbs: съм (2), нямам (26), мога (33), имам (37)
Nouns: ден (92), работа (94), човек (97), пари (136)
and then maybe add names like Иван or Мариа.
For the kind of small daily lessons I’m envisioning meaningful sentences can be formed, e.g.
Иван съм. (“I am Ivan.”)
Иван и Мария са. (“[This] Are Ivan and Maria.”)
Имате ли пари? (“Do you have money?”)
Нямаме бреме. (“We don’t have time.”)
Не можете да. (“They cannot.”)
Имам пари за Димитър. (“I have money for Dimitar.”)
Sure, that’s not the most exciting sentences — but they are guaranteed to train the most frequent (and thus important) words. Plus some grammar, like one form of conjugation, and irregular verb, and the placement of the question particle.
And of course some more interesting words from further down the frequency list may be thrown in, too, e.g.
Noun: куче (440)
Making surely much more real life sentences possible, e.g.
Иван има куче. (“Ivan has a dog.”)
Мария и Иван имат ли куче? (“Do Maria and Ivan have a dog?”)
Куче не мога да има пари. (“A dog cannot have money.“)
So, I think that’s going to be my take at a cut through the Bulgarian language: building small translation exercises from words in the order of their frequency. That’s primary. Secondary will be grammar. Grammar shall follow vocabulary, i.e. it will be presented as needed for understanding the words and their usage.
Does that make the same sense to you as it does to me?