They say that 70 per cent of all communication is non-verbal. Good news for me since, as a newcomer to Bulgaria wrestling with the language, I still find that pointing and gesticulating can more or less get me by in my new cultural environment. The occasional bit of limbo dancing comes in handy, too.

My task now - should I choose to accept it - is to learn Bulgarian well enough to communicate with people. And I don't mean the language of shopping and restaurants: that much I can do already. In fact, ordering groceries from my local shop entirely in Bulgarian earned me a patter of applause from a customer waiting behind me and a "bravo" from the sales assistant. But communication proper is a different matter. Conversation, meaningful dialogue, the ability to debate sports, politics, literature (well, not sports, since the subject isn't wired into my brain), is something I aspire to.

A recent BBC 4 science programme said that it's been discovered that bees from one country can learn the language of bees from another. Ok, they may only be discussing pollen and where to find it, but the point is that bees communicate differently in different parts of the globe. So their ability to learn one another's language, and quickly, seems extraordinary, even in bee terms.

I know the joke that Germans and Italians are tri-lingual, French bi-lingual and the British are... monolingual. In my case that's not entirely true. English is actually my second language, Gaelic being my first, though I lost the ability to speak it by going to primary school in Glasgow. Glaswegian is, of course, a language unto itself, whose grammar consists mainly of dropping the consonants entirely and making whole paragraphs into a single sentence without punctuation.

My Bulgarian friends seem happy that I'm trying to learn their language. And they will politely correct me if I get something wrong, and patiently answer all my questions as to how you say this or that thing. But they don't even agree with one another sometimes. One person told me that "golyama rabota" means "don't worry about it" or "chill out". Someone else said, no, it can mean 20 different things, depending on the context.

Oh, and a note of caution to anyone trying to learn Bulgarian. Watch your vowels! I had an embarrassing moment in a Plachkovtsi restaurant recently. Luckily, the owner knows me and is both amused and tolerant with my attempts to speak the lingo. My brother-in-law and his wife had joined my wife and me for a meal and he asked if they had any of those tiny fried fish (sprats). I said that yes, but the owner doesn't speak English so just ask for "tsitsi".

The owner gave a mock scowl, but I could see he was trying not to laugh. He shook his head to say: "No, you definitely don't want them." And then he made a cupping gesture with his hand and jiggled an invisible dome at chest level.

I should have said "tsatsa", of course. My brother-in-law laughed and said, "Actually I will have some of them. Large ones, please."

And speaking of the issue of size, there is also the problem of coffee. That's right…coffee. A friend who had come to Bulgaria for the first time managed to grasp a few words which could be helpful in ordering food and drink. You know, the language of staying alive. You'd think ordering a coffee would be a simple matter of saying "edno kafe", but oh, no! My friend ordered a coffee and got a small espresso (malko kafe). But she wanted a large one. So she tried to ask for a large coffee (meaning a bucket of milky coffee that you get in the UK). What she got instead was the same malko kafe lying like a becalmed puddle at the bottom of a very…very…large cup.

There can be hilarity in the other direction, too. A Bulgarian friend, a former seaman who worked on fishing fleets across the world, speaks pretty reasonable English, but in the context of his work. So he knows the language of engineering, and is given to calling colleagues a "master" of something. Like "master engineer", "master joiner" and so on. Recently, he told me he had a problem with his teeth and was going to visit the "tooth master".

Only this weekend I appreciated just how critical it is that I learn some basic conversational Bulgarian, even if it takes me 20 years. An old woman stopped my wife and me as we were out for a walk and said, "Dobur den, Carole." Don't think she remembered my name, or I've just got one of those once-seen-immediately-forgotten faces! Then she said something about "kabinet", and patted her chest and legs. A comment about our wardrobe, or was she asking if we needed a desk to complete furnishing our new home? As it turned out - we looked the word up - it was something to do with medicine, doctors, medical treatment. The penny dropped. Carole is a qualified reflexologist and she had recently treated one of the women in the village. Word must have got round. Now, we think that the locals believe Carole is the resident GP. Oh, dear! I can just see them queuing up to be treated for everything from bunions to heart disease.

My next-door neighbour speaks French, Dutch, Russian and is learning English. I feel ashamed of my linguistic deficits. But my pre O-level French, plus the odd Bulgarian word and English get me by with her.

I wish I had the skill of an ordinary bee, though.

To paraphrase Tom Cruise in the film Jerry Maguire: "Show me the honey!"