In English, we have two articles: indefinite (a, an) and definite (the). They appear before the noun they refer to, but they can be separated by adjectives, e.g. “the black book”. Bulgarian doesn’t have an indefinite article, or rather the indefinite article is implied by the lack of the definite article. Unlike in English, the definite article is attached to the noun and it goes at the end, so instead of saying “the book”, they say “bookthe” (if this isn’t too simplistic a way to look at it!).

As you probably guessed, the article in Bulgarian is not really as simple as adding “the” to the end of the word. We have to think about the gender of the noun, how it ends (in the case of masculine nouns), whether it’s the subject or object (also only in masculine nouns), and if it’s singular or plural. If you haven’t read my previous posts on the gender of Bulgarian nouns, it might be worth checking that out.

Masculine nouns ending in a hard consonant

When a given masculine noun is the subject of a sentence and ends in a hard consonant, such as –д, –в, or –ж, we form the definite article by adding –ът to the end. For example:

• морков (carrot) becomes морковът (the carrot)
• белег (scar) becomes белегът (the scar)
• грам (gram) becomes грамът (the gram)
• мъж (man) becomes мъжът (the man)

However, when the above forms the object of a sentence, we instead add –a to the end, as below:

• морков (carrot) becomes морковa (the carrot)
• белег (scar) becomes белегa (the scar)
• грам (gram) becomes грамa (the gram)
• мъж (man) becomes мъжa (the man)

To give an example of what I mean by the subject and object, consider the below sentence.

Мъжът яда моркова (the man eats the carrot)

The man is the subject of the sentence because it represents the person or thing carrying out a given action. It therefore ends in –ът. As the carrot is the thing receiving the action, it is the object of the verb “to eat”. It therefore ends in –a.

Other masculine nouns

The definite article for masculine nouns ending in –й, –тел, –ар, –кон, крал, or цар is formed by adding –ят when it’s the subject of the sentence. Here are some examples:

• музей (museum) becomes музеят (the museum)
• чай (tea) becomes чаят (the tea)
• учител (teacher) becomes учителят (the teacher)
• цар (Tsar) becomes царят (the Tsar)

When the above forms the object of a given sentence, we instead add –я, as you can see below.

• музей (museum) becomes музея (the museum)
• чай (tea) becomes чая (the tea)
• учител (teacher) becomes учителя (the teacher)
• цар (Tsar) becomes царя (the Tsar)

Here’s an example of what this might look like together:

Царят пие чая (the Tsar drinks the tea)

As above, the Tsar is the subject because he’s the one performing the action. The tea is the subject as it is on the receiving end of the action.

Masculine nouns in the plural

It’s important to remember that you need to form the plural before you add the article. That is, you don’t pluralise the noun + article combination, but instead add an article only once you have formed the plural. If you don’t know how to do that, read my post on the plural of masculine nouns in Bulgarian and come back.

Most masculine plural nouns end in –и or –е. We simply need to add –те to the end to form the definite article, as below:

• Моркови (carrots) becomes морковите (the carrots)
• Музеи (museum) becomes музеите (the museums)
• учители (teachers) becomes учителите (the teachers)
• белези (scars) белезите (the scars)
• грамове (grams) becomes грамовете (the grams)
• Столове (chairs) becomes столовете (the chairs)

You’ll notice that the above examples are all formed in the same way, even though they have come from both of the sections above. This is because our starting point for using the definite article with the plural is making the plural. We add the definite article afterwards.

You’ll be relieved to know that there’s no differentiation between subject and object when using masculine nouns in the plural. See the below examples:

Учителите ядат морковите (the teachers eat the carrots)

Морковите ядат учителите (the carrots eat the teachers)

As you can see, it doesn’t matter whether the nouns are the subject or the object of the sentence. They remain the same. But let’s hope the second example never actually happens…