This is Ravati Priyateli. Welcome to a test of Bulgaria where I'm giving you travel and lifestyle tips and tricks while visiting or living in Bulgaria. Today I'm gonna give you some very easy but effective points to speed up your Bulgarian learning curve. For that matter you can use it while learning any language and the best thing is it won't even cost you a penny. One of them might even earn you some money so that's what's coming up in the video. Those of you who are new to the channel my name is Gareth. I'm often getting asked how do I speak Bulgarian? Well by watching the whole of this video and sticking to all my points I promised that in no time you're gonna be having conversations in Bulgarian just like me. I'm not a language teacher nor do I speak a hundred percent Bulgarian but just like 90 percent of the English speakers out there I only speak one language and I'm gonna share with you how I was able to get over my barriers and progress because if you're anything like me you find learning languages frustrating. I was learning Spanish for a couple of years while we lived there but even after two years I still was not able to have a conversation in Spanish. Six months ago I started to focus on the Bulgarian language using my system and now wherever I go I'm not thinking about do they speak English or not. Two years learning Spanish traditional way equals knowledge of a lot of words but unable to have a conversation. Six months with new system equals knowledge of a lot of words plus a little grammar and confidence to speak which means four times faster with better results. I can now easily navigate trips to the shop ordering drinks and food in bars and restaurants and even if somebody stops me for directions on the street I have no problem and if I can do it I'm sure you can manage it too. There are four steps to my formula to success. Visual, sound, thought and verbal. After I teach you all these steps I'll then give you the ultimate weapon in learning any language. So let's get started with the first and most important step that gives the basis to the other three steps. Visual. The alphabet that the Bulgarian Jews is quite different from the one in the Latin languages. Cyrillic or Kyrillitza as it's known has 30 different letters. Unlike the English language that has 26 letters in the alphabet just looking at the strange shapes can seem a little bit overwhelming. I can guarantee you when you learn all the sounds of each letter it becomes super easy because each letter only has one sound and all the words all the sounds must be pronounced. Unlike in English or other languages where there is silent letters and different sounds take English for take English for example words like court, thought and knife catch any foreign speaker out every time. The funny thing is is I was able to read in Bulgarian before I was able to put sentences together. I was saying words when I didn't even know what they meant. Now when you get the confidence with the alphabet you should start to practice reading words. Where you can do this is with content online or if you have access to Bulgarian TV or you live in Bulgaria you should watch TV programs from the morning or the news where they put words along the bottom in titles and then you should practice these words over and over. This letter is nicely onto my next point. Sound. Watching and listening to any language is the key of importance to eventual understanding. Even if you don't have a clue at all about what they're speaking about you will start to hear sounds and words repeating themselves that will stick in your brain subconsciously. Then when you come to learn them words there'll be more easier to remember. In this time you should also be building your vocabulary. One of the best ways to do that is with flashcards. There is an app called Anky Flashcards that's amazing and free. You can download it to your computer. It's also available on your mobile but that version isn't free. You can create your own custom flashcards by putting single words like nouns, objectives or whole sentences together with pictures and pronunciations. Alternatively there is a library of flashcards made by other users that you can download or you can check out on the internet for third-party flashcards that you can input. The great thing with this program is it learns how well you remember words. So it won't show you that word again for a longer period of time and if you still remember you will push that word even further. Don't forget to add new words every single day to build up that vocabulary. Now this might take a little bit time to set up but when you're done you're all set. If you'd like me to do a complete tutorial how to use this program then mention it in the comments below. If there is enough interest I will do a full guide to Anky Flashcards. Next great tip is to listen to children's stories. The language is basic and it's spoken very clearly. I found a great channel on YouTube Bulgarian fairy tales. This also contains the English subtitles underneath which means you can watch, listen to the Bulgarian and read the subtitles. What you should do is in the night time watch this episode two or three times. Then you need to rip the audio MP3 file and put it onto your phone. On the internet they can show you many ways how to rip audio from video files or alternatively you can just press record on your telephone and record the sound that way. You should then the next day listen to these audio files on your way to work to school in the car on the train multiple times. You should try to remember the English subtitles and the visuals and then you start to listen and think which brings us nicely onto our next step thought. Now you're never going to learn a language unless you stop to think in your own language and you start thinking in the language that you want to learn. Now you fill up your vocabulary. When you're walking down the street every day you should start to say the things you see in your head in Bulgarian. Well you can say these things out loud but you might get some strange looks but I think it's better to have the focus of everything in your brain. Don't forget to make some notes of words that you don't know. You can then research them later and put them into your anky flash pad. Later when you're able to put a few words together you can also start to say sentences in your head when you're walking down the street like this for instance. The most difficult thing we learn in any languages is having the confidence to speak. You don't want to sound stupid but no matter how much grammar you learn, how much words you learn, you're still going to make mistakes at the beginning. Even after months having confidence how to speak you're still going to get things incorrect and the key is to learn not to care and how do you do this? Practice, practice, practice. Well if you're stuck for somebody to practice with then hire a great website for you. Conversation exchange. You can sign up and it's free. You can connect with people by chatting online or meeting with them physically in person because they want to learn your language they will help you practice theirs. This is an absolute win-win situation and there is no limitation to how many people you can connect with. When you start to speak in a language it's like a snowball effect and your confidence and ability will grow tenfold so don't forget you need to put all these four steps together and then you can move onto my secret weapon. I know that not everybody will have the ability to do this but if you can it's definitely a game changer. The problem for those English speakers and the reason why we don't learn another language is because no matter where you go there's someone not so far away you can speak English and we get lazy. So this means you need to take yourself out of your comfort zone by going somewhere where they don't speak English at all like in a Bulgarian village and just go have conversations with people or better still you can do like me. In the summer I took a job in a hotel kitchen where I think only three people from the twenty people had daily contracts with spoke English. The rest only spoke Bulgarian. This was an absolute breakthrough for me now my confidence is through the roof. I'm able to have conversations without having a problem whether I understand or I understood. I know that there is another way I can talk with my way around now. I hope this video has helped you out and if you ask please give me a thumbs up so we can help spread this video to other people. And if enough people want me to do the video for the Anki flashcards or pop up here. If you want to see how I challenge myself with my daughter with a language challenge then this video should pop up here. I look forward to seeing you on one of them videos.