Do you have a spoon

A lot of people in Sofia speak English, and until very recently, there hasn’t been much immigration to Bulgaria, so people here, especially anyone under 40 or so, are confused by the idea of a foreigner wanting to learn Bulgarian.  Many people aren’t used to hearing adults make grammatical mistakes, get flustered and confused, and don’t know how to respond.  Worse, though, is when the person I’m talking to expects to hear English when I speak, so they actually can’t understand the Bulgarian words I say.  For example, I was at a cafe/bar and said to the bartender: “Do you have a spoon?” (“Imate li luhzhitsa?”) I hadn’t made a mistake, but because the bartender was so ready to hear English, he thought I was using an English word he hadn’t heard before.  It took my wife saying “or a fork?” (“ili vilitsa?”)  for the guy to calibrate his expectations and recognize the word I had used. I have lots more funny stories about this problem

Unfortunately, there is a more troubling social problem that arises when nobody in a country expects people to learn that country’s language.  Because so many people in Sofia speak English, there are many English-speakers who live in Sofia but never learn Bulgarian.  The fact that they speak English all the time reinforces the stereotype that nobody wants to learn Bulgarian, which makes it difficult for us foreigners to find opportunities to practice.   It is a vicious cycle that I could only escape by starting a language exchange group called the Conversation Swap, where foreigners who want to speak Bulgarian, and Bulgarians who want to learn foreign languages meet, have coffee, and talk to each other.  It’s a setting where people know what language to expect, and it’s also a way to demonstrate to the Sofia natives that a lot of foreigners really do want to learn Bulgarian. We also recently started putting together formal classes, which increased the number of Bulgarian classes for foreigners in Bulgaria’s capital to two.   I’ve been participating in the conversation swaps for a year and going to the classes for the past four months, and the bartenders are finally starting to understand me.  The next challenge will be talking to my wife’s grandpa.