Kazan — summer 2014

Tipping works a bit differently in Bulgaria than in the States. On Sunday Cleo and I were having iced tea at a local café. The waiter delivered the check, which came to 2.20 leva. She looked at it, said to the waiter три (three), and gave him a 10-lev bill, and he gave her 7 levs back. Wow. Talk about a compact way to go about that. No verbs, no nouns, no prepositions... just a context and a number.

So of course I have now tried the same thing out several times. Works perfectly even for foreigners, but with one proviso: you have to say the number in the rapid form if you want them to understand the first time. What is the rapid form? Well, the numbers in the teens and the primary multiples of the tens are written one way, say for instance седемнадесет (seventeen), can be pronounced the long, proper bookish way [sedemnádeset] or you can say it the rapid conversational way [semnáise]. If you say it the bookish way, they will be confused at first. If you say it the rapid way, they’ll get it right off.