Bulgarian Pronouns - Personal Pronouns

Personal Pronouns

In Bulgarian, there are two types of personal pronouns (лични местоимения): full (stressed, free) and short (unstressed, clitic). The full are used with both verbs and prepositions (only the direct object forms), whereas the clitic only with verbs. As in English, personal pronouns change depending on their function within the sentence (as a subject or an object, in other words they have cases: Nominative (Именителен), Accusative (Винителен) and Dative (Дателен). The dative clitic forms can also be used to indicate possession (most Bulgarian grammar books refer to them as short forms of the possessive pronouns). The subject forms are always strong and are used as subjects only when special emphasis is intended, since unstressed subjects recoverable from context are not overtly expressed anyway. In some special cases the full and the short forms of the object pronouns can be used together.

†The full forms are rather archaic and are usually substituted by accusative constructions: на мен/на мене, на теб/на тебе, на него, на нея, на нас, на вас, на тях.