# Bulgarian: Три месеца



## Diaspora

I heard this phrase "три месеца", while watching an interview in Bulgarian. 
It means three months. But I was surprised by the "a" ending, I thought month in Bulgarian is месец(и), the -a at the end sounds like BCS declination. What does the -a mean in the ending of a Bulgarian word?


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## sokol

It should be the postpositive article - "a" is a possible article ending for masc. nouns, but only if the noun is not the subject of a sentence (says my Pons Reisewörterbuch).


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## DarkChild

sokol said:


> It should be the postpositive article - "a" is a possible article ending for masc. nouns, but only if the noun is not the subject of a sentence (says my Pons Reisewörterbuch).


No, this is not an article as the article would have been added to три, not месец. This is the numerical plural form which is used when you specify the number. It's used only with masculine nouns. So the plural of month is месеци, but you can't say три месеци, but you say три месеца. If anyone can correct this, please do so.


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## Duya

So, Bulgarian has that particular remnant of the dual (like all other Slavic languages)?

Ah, Wikipedia has something about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_grammar#Remnant_of_the_dual
(see also the footnotes thereof).


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## sokol

Ah - that's really interesting!  Thank you both for digging this up.


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## jazyk

Macedonian is like Bulgarian in this respect.


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## Diaspora

So it's the same in  Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbocroatian - tri meseca.
The key difference is in SC it is a feauture of declination while in the other two it's a different grammatical matter.


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## TriglavNationalPark

Diaspora said:


> So it's the same in Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbocroatian - tri meseca. The key difference is in SC it is a feauture of declination while in the other two it's a different grammatical matter.


 
Slovenian is the only Slavic language besides Lusatian Sorbian with the proper grammatical dual, so here's how it handles this situation (note the specific dual use of "meseca"):

*Prvi mesec je minil hitro.* *Se ga spomniš?* = The first month (*singular*) passed by quickly. Do you remember it?

*Prva dva meseca sta minila hitro.* *Se ju spomniš?* = The first two months (*dual*) passed by quickly. Do you remember them?

*Prvi trije meseci so minili hitro.* *Se jih spomniš?* = The first three months (*plural*) passed by quickly. Do you remember them?


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## Diaspora

The formal grammatical reasons are very confusing because they are different for both languages but the phrase is exactly the same!


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## iobyo

jazyk said:


> Macedonian is like Bulgarian in this respect.



You're probably either thinking of what some Macedonian linguists call the dual: _два збора_, _два града_, _обата начина_, etc. or the quantitative plural used for certain words, for example: _три дена_ ("three days") but _овие денови_ ("these days"). I guess the latter is a remnant of what Bulgarian has.


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