What Poles know and eventually want to know about Slovenia and Slovenians ?

Slovenia, little and well developed Slavic country on the Slavic South.

Yes. Ljubliana may be one of the most attractive Central European capitals, I'm told. And then there's the resort, Bled, in the mountains, I think:-)

Interesting language for a Polish speaker.

Provided a huge amount of revenue for Yugoslavia and in particular Kosovo and Southern Serbia during the SFRJ times too.


It's impossible to understand. Reading isn't quite so terrible, but it's not really possible to speak to them.

WAsn't Tito from Slovenia?

The man was from Croatia.

Among my brief daliances with Slovene, I observed that in nearly every other Slavic language, the word for "word" bears some root similarity with "slow[v]-", while in Slovene, "word" translates as "beseda".

Interesting, I think.

Yes, very much so. Slovenian is full of interesting examples like that, which is what makes it so difficult to understand them. The spoken language is like Croatian in that it differs completely from the literary form, so that also gives huge problems for making sense of it. From what I know, it also depends on the part of Slovenia, so for instance, those people from Maribor will use German borrowings in speech, while those from Koper will use Italian ones.

What's curious for me is how loanwords in Slovene are pretty much a sign of a bad education.

Oh wow, Delph! Didn't know that. How fascinating. In some languages such as Turkish, it's quite the opposite; the educated classes as opposed to dock workers or common laborers are precisely the ones who frequently pepper their language with so-called loan calques from Arabic aka "Ottomanisms"!

Yes, it's the same in Croatia - where they invented endless words (especially post 1990) that simply aren't used in ordinary speech by most people, but are now part of the literary language. A great example is "zračna luka" - which isn't incorrect, but "aerodrom" continues to be the accepted word in speech.

Slovene is a really fascinating language though, because it also has the dual number on top of the traditional Slavic 1, 2-4 and 5+.

So, for instance, you have "en volk", "dva volkova", "trije volkovi" and "pet volkov". Insane.

Tito had Slovenian mother and father from Zagorje. I underlining this for the matter of fact, because Zagorje represent true ethnic Croatia. So, Tito`s father was real ethnic Croat, not some Croatinized Serbian no matter Catholic or Orthodox. He died as Yugoslavian and insisted his grave to be in Belgrade, not in Zagreb. Tito`s wife was Serbian.

Right, Delph! Slovene retains the old dual. Polish used to have it, but no longer, isn't that so?

How interesting that thread about Slavic Slovenians finished in off-topic and you have thread about Pakistanies, Brits, Germans, French (and many other exotic peoples) available in other sections of the forum.

What is that? Admin is now some Muslim? Sure, with all due respect on Muslims and all that but, please man (or woman), give space to us natives, too

I don't think he's talked about his particular affiliation, if any. Would it make even the slightest difference to your life if he was?

True. Not really.