Bulgarian is a gendered language. For anyone who’s ever studied a Romance language, such as French or Spanish, you’ll probably already understand what this means. It’s essentially a system that ascribes a gender to some of the words used (often nouns and adjectives). Bulgarian has three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. To learn Bulgarian, we need to know the gender of nouns to make sure any adjectives we use match them. It will also help us understand who a particular sentence refers to, given pronouns aren’t always required in Bulgarian.

Masculine nouns

Masculine nouns generally end in a consonant, such as: –к, –л, or –ж. Here are some examples:

• Морков (carrot)
• Сок (juice)
• Кашкавал (cheese)
• Хляб (bread)
• Мед (honey)

Feminine nouns

Generally, feminine nouns end in –а, –я, or –т. It’s worth noting that a number of feminine nouns end in consonants, but that’s a problem for later. Examples include:

• Пица (pizza)
• Баница (banitsa, a delicious Bulgarian pastry)
• Диня (watermelon)
• Маруля (lettuce)
• Радост (joy)

Neuter nouns

Neuter nouns generally end in –о, –е, or –ие. Here are some examples:

• Масло (butter)
• Кафе (coffee)
• Прясно мляко (fresh milk)
• Момиче (girl)
• Момче (boy)
• Съобщение (message)

You might be surprised to see girl and boy included above. I know I was when I first came across this. After all, given the words refer to gendered individuals, I’d have thought момиче was feminine and момче was masculine. However, in Bulgarian it’s common to refer to children and animals in the neuter gender.