Dober dan vsi,

This isn't really a post with any news about what I've been up to (all good, thanks for asking) but some random observations about the Slovene language and my mission to get passably good at it.

1. Slovenščina je težek jezik (Slovene is a difficult language). One of my main aims in coming to Slovenia was to learn how to speak the language. I figured given total immersion, it might take me about 6 months to be able to have a proper conversation. There is more chance of me being called up to the England football team than there is of this actually happening.

The Slovenes seem to be natural polyglots and take pride in speaking other languages. It has happened on several occasions that I have been talking to a Slovene about some abstract concept or current affairs issue, where, due to not being able to remember the correct term for dialectical materialism they hold their hand up and say 'Sorry, I really don't speak English' (nb: the conversational topics outlined above are an exaggeration, I'm not that much of a wanker)

The fact that many of them can speak four or five langauges fluently means that they always like to practice their English and seem to do so at every opportunity (Hey, I'm an English teacher here, you don't get my 'skills' for free you scroungers...) The Slovene who can only speak Slovene is a rare beast indeed. But I gave my self heart by the fact that there must be some really, really stupid Slovenes - an assumption pretty much confirmed whenever you listen to commercial radio or observe the quality of car parking across Ljubljana.

So, there must be some. And at least all the guide books tell you that Slovenes will hold few things in higher regard than a foreigner who knows a bit of the language. The reference books say a lot of things which turn out to run counter to reality. An excellent example is my 'Teach yourself Slovene' book, which kindly informs you that the standard greatings are:
'Dobro jutro', 'Dober dan' and 'Dober večer' (Good morning, good day and good night)
According to the aforementioned book, these greetings must be given in full and it would be wrong to shorten them. A statement not borne out by the fact that everywhere you go people great you with 'dan', 'večer' or even for those for whom brevity is important, ''čer'. Predictably, I'm not normally around in the mornings, so I don't know what they say for 'jutro'...

Anyway, I've got to the point where I use all of the standard words and phrases as you do. But I've got to the point where I want to order things in Slovene and try to do the whole transaction in the language. 'Šest žetone prosim' is the grammatically incorrect but clear request for six tokens to use on the bus. This transaction always works because the lady at my local trafika can't speak any English. However, even the obvious and straight forward 'Eno veliko točeno Laško' (one large draught Laško) results in hysterical laughter from bar staff - all Slovenes we talk to tell us sympathetically that these people are laughing with us, not at us. Note to Slovenes: that statement is only of comfort if you are trying to be funny.

We have decided that this happens because of two main reasons:

2. Ne, je zelo, zelo, težek jezik (No, it's a really, really difficult language - this won't be right, see below to understand why!) Ok the first of these reasons is the grammatical complexity of the language. This issue has been covered elsewhere better than I have the skill to do, but here is a breif extract from 'Teach yourself Slovene':
"Slovene nouns are characterised by gender, case and number. There are:
* Three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter
* Six cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative and instrumental
* Three numbers: singular, dual (!) and plural
Nouns (and numbers) are declined, which means that they change their form from one case to another, depending on their function in a given sentence."

Well, fucking great, thanks Slovenia. I'll try and illustrate the madness by using an extract from 'Teach yourself Slovene' again. I should stress that although this is very, very basic Slovene, the extract is taken from an appendix entitled '(declining feminine nouns with an adjective modifiying them)'. The example used is velika hiša, this means large house. In English it means large house and is written LARGE HOUSE whenever it is used. However, this would be too easy for Slovenians, so they do this instead:
Nominative : velika hiša
Genitive : velike hiše
Dative : veliki hiši
Accusative : veliko hišo
Locative : v veliki hiši
Instumental: z veliko hišo

You have to get this right for the fundamental meaning of your sentence. This is because Slovene doesn't use articles and rarely uses pronouns. We haven't begun to drop any verbs in yet, then things get really fun. For anyone interested in a better and more scathing treatment of this aspect of Slovene, I refer you to Michael Manske's excellent website (I don't know the link, why don't you just bloody google his name)

3. Oprostite Mate, ne razumen (sorry mate, I don't understand) Slovenes are very proud of their language and have developed a secret and exclusive cult based on it. This cult is designed so that unless a foreigner pronounces a word or phrase absolutely perfectly, then the Slovenian will look at them in the most profound confusion, mouth agape, scrathing their head. This first happened to me when I asked my neighbour Senki where Zelena Jama is (this is an easy one to pronounce, something along the lines of Za-lane-a Yama) Now, there is no other place in Slovene that is particularly similar to this (as far as I can tell) and there is nothing else I could have been trying to say. However after saying it a couple more times I conceeded defeat and explained to him which bus I had seen it on before he replied 'Oh, Za-lane-a Yama'.

This happens a lot, with most Slovenes. But we've now worked out a theory that may absolve them slightly. It works like this: Because English is a world wide language, we're used to people butchering it, but we know what their trying to say, so everything is cool. But, because Slovenes are so unused to hearing their language spoken with a foreign accent they panic and get confused. All they can think about is the awful pronunciation and they stop listening for the meaning, so in the end it just becomes easier to talk in passable English than poor Slovene.

This doesn't excuse those Slovenes who are clearly embarrassed/openly hostile/vomit when you try speaking the language, but then that's only around 20% of the population, so things could be worse. To stop being flippant for a second, it's been a real eye-opener to come here and see how differently you can structure a language. I naively thought that all languages were basically similar but with different words and sentence orders.

I was, and remain, a fool.

I'll get there eventually, vse je mogoče

Take care of each other, and don't have nightmares.

J x