Possession

Short possessive pronouns

These are the equivalents of English possessive adjectives my, your, their...

You may not have seen the letter ѝ before (not to be confused with й). It is pronounced just like и, but the accent is added to differentiate the words и (and) and ѝ (her).

The ѝ letter is sometimes hard to locate on a keyboard (on iOS, you can access it by long pressing the и key). Even Bulgarians often replace it with й when typing as they don't know how to type ѝ! Therefore, in this course we accept both ѝ and й (but и is a grammar mistake!).

As you know, the Bulgarian "you" is used either as a plural or as a polite singular. Like вие/Вие, ви will take a capital letter when it is used for politeness (Ви).

These short forms will be placed after the word they refer to (the owned object). In Bulgarian, that word will also get a definite article.

Examples:

"Кучето ми не харесва ябълки" - My dog doesn't likes apples
"Кучето им харесва ли ябълки?" - Does their dog like apples?
"Колата Ви е тук" - Your car is here

Don't forget that for masculine nouns, there are two definite articles: the "long" one, usually -ът (when the word is the subject) and the "short" one, usually -а (when the word is the object):

"Това е сандвичът ми" - This is my sandwich (subject)
"Харесвам сандвича ти" - I like your sandwich (object)

The reflexive pronoun

The си pronoun can be used in the object part of the sentence to refer to "one's own" object. In English, the sentence "he likes his dog" could either mean "he likes his own dog" or "he likes someone else's dog". Only the context would tell. In this case, in Bulgarian, you have to be specific and choose between му and си:

"Той харесва кучето си" - He likes his (own) dog
"Той харесва кучето му" - He likes his (another man's) dog

This applies to all third person subjects (singular and plural).

For other subjects there is no ambiguity but you can still use си:

"Харесвам кучето ми" - I like my dog
"Харесвам кучето си" - I like my dog

Placement

Note the different placement of the short possessive pronoun when used in a adjective + noun group:

"Розовата ми рокля" - My pink dress

In this case, the possessive pronoun goes after the adjective, and the adjective takes the definite article.

The на preposition

The "на" preposition can be used like the "'s" in English:

"Това е колата на Ана" - This is Ana's car (This is the car of Ana)