SLOVENIA II

After living in Slovenia for about two months I have developed a certain weekly routine. For instance, on Saturday there is always a big market in the city centre. Therefore, Saturday is grocery shopping day. Or my favourite bakery has some special offers only on Monday, so I won’t miss my “krofi” (Krapfen) then. In this blog I want to describe how I experienced my daily encounters with the Slovenes. Slovenia geographically and historically is connected to Austria and of course the Balkan region. One of my sources describes the language situation in Slovenia perfectly: “The Slovenian language was the first written Slavic language and is considered to be one of the most archaic languages in Europe. It is spoken by just over two million people and has almost fifty dialects.” (Posedel 2017) Slovenian dialects are categorized into seven regional groups: Carinthian, Upper Carniolan, Lower Carniolan, Littoral, Rovte, Styrian, and Pannonian. Exactly these dialects make it so difficult to learn btw. understand Slovenian in different parts of the country. For instance, the people in Ljubljana speak a completely different dialect compared to the citizens of Maribor. Due to this difference certain prejudices come to place and different regions sometimes “pretend” not to understand each other. The diversity of the Slovenian language is well captured in a Slovene proverb “Vsaka vas ima svoj glas “, meaning “every village has its own voice.” In September I have visited the coast region of Slovenia. There the Italian influence is noticeable, starting with the food and the architecture. The street signs are in both languages, Italian and Slovenian. The tour guide there also mentioned that around 30 percent of the Slovenian citizens speak Italian as a second language and also a high percentage in the aera of Koper has Italian as their mother tongue. Because travelling was no longer possible within the country, due to Covid-19, I have to rely on second-hand information when I say that people in the Štajerska region are still very connected to Austria and the German language. People there still have German as a school subject and tend to speak German with visitors with pleasure. In Ljubljana on the other hand I have experienced something different. When I first came here, I took an online course beforehand to learn some basic Slovenian words and phrases. Therefore, I was familiar with common phrases like the paying procedure at the supermarket. But to my surprise I didn’t have the chance to improve my language, because most of the people I was in contact with understand and speak (almost) perfect English. In my case, if they noticed my insecurities about their language or my wrong pronunciation, they immediately swich to the English language. Of course, this made life easier for me. Other exchange students I have talked to have experienced the same situation. To sum up, I think that the fact that English is so common here in Ljubljana it can be seen as an advantage as well as a disadvantage. Sure, it takes away the motivation to improve the Slovenian language. But for me it meant that I could easily start conversations with people in shops or on the street. This wouldn’t have been possible with my basic Slovenian skills, or at least the conversations would have been very one-sided. Source: Posedel, Andreja (2017): 9 Fascinating Facts about the Slovenian Language. Available online at https://theculturetrip.com/europe/slovenia/articles/9-fascinating-facts-about-the-slovenianlanguage/, checked on 11/28/2020