Intro to Bulgarian, Part 5.1 - The Cyrillic letters that will make your head spin (Episode #1)



Previously on Intro to Bulgarian: [Part 4 - The Cyrillic letters you *think* you know](https://www.duolingo.com/comment/10504033)


Pronunciations for the example words in this lesson can be found in [this Memrise course](http://www.memrise.com/course/792356/intro-to-bulgarian-lesson-sequence-on-duolingo/4/)







We learned the letters that both look and sound like their friends in the Latin alphabet - A, E, O, K, M, T.


We learned the letters that looked the same, but were naughty and decided to be pronounced differently - В, Н, Р, С, У, Х.


That marks the end of familiar territory. For the next 18 letters, we're going to travel to several countries, through several thousand years, and miraculously emerge at the end of all that with a victory. The prize? Knowing the full Cyrillic alphabet as used in Bulgarian, which pretty much means being able to read *anything* in Bulgarian!


Because we've only been looking at 6 letters at a time, and we have 18 more to cover, I'm going to take you over that final threshold in several steps.







И и



This looks like a backward N, but it's pronounced approximately like the "ee" in "feel", but as short as the "i" in "fit". It is much like the "i" sound in many Romance languages - e.g. Spanish "dia", Italian "pizza", French "filet mignon".


Example words:


* икона - icon
* интерес - interest
* хит - (musical) hit
* Ипанема - Ipanema
* аниматор - animator
* рима - rhyme
* ситар - sitar
* китара - guitar


Й й



That's almost the same as the previous letter, except for the half-circle above it. It is pronounced like the "y" in "yes", "yet" or "day", never like the "y" in "pony" or "my".


Some examples:


* Йорк - York
* Йемен - Yemen
* пай - pie
* май - (month of) May
* майор - major (army rank)
* кейк - cake


Б б



This is our "b" as in "boy" or "brother". Remember the whole thing about distinguishing between b/v? Well, to summarize: Б б = B b, and В в = V v. It may look confusing, but I promise you'll be a pro in no time.


Oh just give me some example words! OK, ok, here you go, jeez...


* брат - brother
* банка - bank
* бутик - boutique
* бойкот - boycott
* бар - bar
* Босна - Bosnia
* бебе - baby
* Бахрейн - Bahrain


Г г



This is just a thinly-disguised Greek "gamma" (Γ γ). It is pronounced like the "g" in "gum", "gold" and "log", but *never* like the "g" in "barge" or "mirage". 


Examples:


* гето - ghetto
* гримаса - grimace
* граната - grenade
* грам - gram
* сага - saga
* гигабайт - gigabyte


Д д



This may look like a weird "A", but it's actually our letter D, as it has been borrowed from Greek "delta" (Δ δ). It represents the same sound as in English.


Examples:


* Далас - Dallas
* Сан Диего - San Diego
* ден - day
* дама - dame
* модерен - modern
* борд - board (i.e. of directors)
* Адидас - Adidas
* диадема - diadem, tiara


Ж ж



Now that's a badass letter, isn't it? It represents the same sound as the "g" in "mirage", "genre", and the second "g" in "garage". Lots of words of French origin in English have that sound. It's one of those letters that made it into Cyrillic from the earlier Glagolitic script (Ⰶ), because there was no such sound in Greek. This sound occurs in Bulgarian a lot more frequently than in English, and some of that is also due to French loan words.


Examples:


* жанр - genre
* мираж - mirage
* гараж - garage
* желе - jelly, gelée
* Женева - Geneva
* режим - regime
* мажоритарен - majority (adjective, as in "majority vote")


Time for a break!



How are we doing so far? Is this format of explanation followed by several examples working for you? What can I do to make the study of the Cyrillic alphabet more interesting to you?


See you in the next episode - [Part 5.2](https://www.duolingo.com/comment/10522060)!
Is it true that "Ш" come from the Hebrew letter "ש"?
a - ii, b - iv, c - i, d - iii a
c
a
a
b 

those are answers ur welcome 1. Exceeding the speed of light.   

2. Counting to Infinity.   

3. Solving the 15 puzzle.   

4. Squaring the circle.   

5. Doubling the cube.   

6. Bench-pressing 100000000000000000000000000 pounds.   

7. Stealing the Lincoln Memorial.   

8. Teaching a legless man to tap dance.   

9. Finding a unicorn in your backyard.   

10. Traveling back in time through sheer willpower.   

11. Eating yourself.   

12. Finding a Pikachu.   

13. Bringing a dead person back to life.   

14. Living forever.   

15.Reproducing through asexual budding.   

16. Jumping over the Empire State Building.   

17. Shooting lasers through your eyes.   

18. Being in two places at once (unless you're a subatomic particle).   

19. Licking your elbow.   

20. An elephant jumping.   

21. A dog learning French.   

22. A cat learning Spanish.   

23. A horse learning Italian.   

24. Regrowing a severed arm (for humans).   

25. A woman fathering a child.   

26. A baby without an X chromosome in the 23rd pair surviving.   

27. Curing anencephaly.   

28. Surviving with a 200 temperature.   

29. Escaping from a black hole.   

30. Skateboarding without a skateboard.   

31. The following sentence making sense: This sentence is false.   

32. Literally achieving the impossible.   

33. A man with no testicles fathering a baby.   

34. A woman with no uterus giving birth to a baby.   

35. Truly destroying matter or energy.   

36. A person having three biological parents.   

37. The existence of a plane with zero thickness.   

38. A postmenopausal woman conceiving.   

39. Uncracking an egg.   

40. Unburning a piece of firewood.   

41. Knowing everything.   

42. Traveling at a negative speed.   

43. Having a negative mass.   

44. Knowing all of the digits of pi.   

45. Knowing the last digit of e.   

46. Being able to do anything.   

47. Undetonating a bomb.   

48. Finding two integers whose quotient is pi.   

49. Creating a polynomial in one variable x for which the natural numbered values of x will exactly yield the prime numbers.   

50. Creating a triangle in Euclidean space for which the sum of the measures of the three angles is not 180.   

51. Drinking all the water in the ocean.   

52. Surviving with no blood at all in your body.   

53. Creating a perfect pangram that is also palindromic.   

54. Finding an even prime number other than 2.   

55. Getting the gold cat medal on the first stage of the second world of Blinx with the default sweeper.   

56. Creating a right triangle in Euclidean space which does not satisfy the Pythagorean Theorem.   

57. Defying gravity outright.   

58. Finding a sequence of 12 prime numbers that are all exactly 1 apart.   

59. Two objects occupying the same space at the same time.   

60. Going back in time and killing your mother before your own birth.   

61. Seeing ultraviolet light with the naked eye.   

62. Holding your breath for 46 years.   

63. Magic.   

64. Running 46000 miles per hour.   

65. Turning into a jar of apple sauce.   

66. Curing HIV.   

67. Curing Alzheimer's.   

68. Curing genital herpes.   

69. A tiny one-inch tall man living in your nostrils.   

70. Having a head one thousand times larger than your body.   

71. Finding the largest number.   

72. Getting out of checkmate.   

73. Winning Monopoly when all of your properties are mortgaged and you have no money left.   

74. Having a conversation with a blurry photograph of the Loch Ness monster.   

75. Knowing for sure what happened to Amelia Earhart.   

76. A skeleton break-dancing.   

77. Gouging out your own eyes and still being able to see.   

78. Surviving being on the surface of the sun for 12 hours.   

79. Surviving for 19 years without water.   

80. Finding the letter e in the book "Gatsby".   

81. Biting your own neck.   

82. Eating with your mouth glued shut.   

83. Digging to the center of the earth with your bare hands.   

84. Swimming all the way across the Atlantic Ocean without ever stopping.   

85. Being recoginzed as a country by the United Nations without having a government.   

86. A quadraplegic winning a marathon.   

87. Spontaneous combustion.   

88. Measuring a volume smaller than the Planck length.   

89. Making a sound in space.   

90. Finding out for sure who Jack the Ripper was.   

91. Life on Earth existing without the sun.   

92. Flying by flapping your arms.   

93. Spelling the word "extraneous" correctly without using the letter x.   

94. Ghosts.   

95. Vampires.   

96. Werewolves.   

97. Phrenology being right.   

98. Calculating the first 1 quadrillion digits of pi by hand.   

99. Knowing the largest prime number.   

100. A duck fathering a snake.   

101. A snake fathering a duck.   

102. Dragons existing.   

103. Looks killing.   

104. Bringing your imaginary friends into existence.   

105. A 25-letter pangram.   

106. Two men having vaginal intercourse.   

107. A transwoman having a baby.   

108. Gay marriage in the state of Georgia.   

109. A man being 300 feet tall.   

110. A crocodile milking its young.   

111. Organisms deliberately evolving.   

112. Surviving a 440-decibel blast of sound.   

113. Polygamy in the state of Georgia.   

114. Surviving AIDS without treatment or medical attention.   

115. A 27-letter perfect pangram.   

116. Zeus quadrille, quadruple, quadruplet, quadrupled, quadruples, kibbles. start with 50 easys. if you solve those quickly, then move into mediums. hards are pretty tricky tbh i just attempt then peek answers/memorize lol a, b and c british english pronounces it with an /f/. american english doesn't. here is a list of the symbols by their names: ampersand & apostrophe or single quote ' asterisk * at @ back quote ` back slash \ braces or curly braces {} brackets [] carat ^ close brace } close bracket ] close parenthesis ) colon : comma , dollar $ equal = exclamation point ! greater than > less than < minus or hyphen - open brace { open bracket [ open parenthesis ( parenthesis () percent % pipe or bar | plus + octothorpe # quote " semi-colon ; slash or forward slash / tilde ~ underscore \_ To make a Long O sound   

1.oa (eg.) goal,road,coal,\_toast\_,\_moan\_, \_toad, load,poach,roam,roar.   

2.oe (eg.)toe,Joe,hoe,\_\_floe\_\_\_,\_shoe\_\_\_,\_woe...   

  

To make a Long U sound   

1.ew (eg.)new,blew,screw,\_knew\_\_,\_\_flew\_\_\_\_,\_... drew\_\_   

2.ue (eg.) glue,blue,fuel,\_\_true\_\_\_\_,\_clue\_\_,\_cruel... fluent\_\_\_\_ its kind difficult to understand in my POV but not impossible  

imagining it while reading


can you show some codes? or samples on what you want to achive?