Daj, izgovori tole besedo: ČMRLJ
Jezikovni trening slovenščine redno na urniku LanguageSitterja®
Domžale so? Zakaj ne Domžale je? A niso le ene?
When people hear you’re learning Slovenian, they never fail to mention how difficult their language is. They usually wonder if you have issues with pronunciation. Let me tell you, that is the least of my worries!
In my experience what most Slovenian language learners face difficulties with is the sheer number of personal pronouns, verb conjugations and noun declensions in 6 different cases. It’s not hard to grasp the concept of dual tone but memorizing all the previously mentioned declensions practically requires you to be a living computer. As someone genuinely interested in linguistics, I find Slovenian grammar truly fascinating and actually quite logical; however, I feel that even if I manage to remember all these rules, I’ll never sound like a native speaker due to my lack of a regional dialect. And don’t even get me started with irregular plurals, such as ‘Domžale so’… Why isn’t that ‘je’? I guess it’s better if we just embrace these peculiar little exceptions. |
Getting in touch with Slovene meant a big leap out of my comfort zone for me. So far I had been surrounded by Romance and Germanic languages; that way I had been able to figure things out in many languages through comparison and familiarity. But when it comes to Slavic languages, you must hold a PhD in philology if you want to compare them to other Indo-European tongues.
As most people venturing into Slovene, I still find a huge obstacle I shall eventually (hopefully) overcome: SKLONI! What, isn’t it about adding random vowels and weird morphemes at the end of each noun? It certainly sounds like that when you are a novice… And when your mother tongue is Spanish – where mostly everything ending in “a” is female and if the last letter is “o” it’s male – it’s especially difficult to understand that coffee actually doesn’t change its gender when you first name and then order it… |
Slovene, what can I say? Ful težko je! I enjoy trying to learn Slovene but I realise how important it is to keep it up because as soon as I’m not using or practising it, I forget the basics. The grammar and word endings can drive you crazy but then I also think you can start to overthink it as well instead of going with the flow. There are certain sounds it is hard for us English to pronounce as well such as the ‘rolling r’ the Slovenes have.
But, whenever I am out and about, I always try and speak in Slovene even if it’s not correct. If someone else can just about understand my meaning then I’m happy. Correctly ordering coffee or lunch can feel like a big achievement! |
Slowenisch war für mich eine eher unbekannte Sprache, da ich mit slawischen Sprachen bisher nicht in Kontakt gekommen war und in der Schule nur in den Genuss von Englisch und Französisch kam.
Somit war erst einmal alles neu und aufregend als ich vor mehr als 4 Jahren das erste Mal in Berührung mit der Sprache kam. Alles hörte sich zu Beginn wenig vertraut an und Ähnlichkeiten traten nur ab und zu bei Überbleibseln aus österreichisch-ungarischen Zeiten auf oder Autoteilen wie dem Scheibenwischer oder dem Vergaser. In Gesprächen und Internetbeiträgen wird (vom Gegenüber) auch immer fleißig darauf aufmerksam gemacht, wie schwer doch slowenisch sei, was die Motivation nicht unbedingt steigert. Gleichzeitig sind Menschen erstaunt über Slowenischlernende und tun ihre Wertschätzung gerne kund, was wiederum hilfreich ist. Gar nicht mag ich die Frage, ob denn Slowenisch eine schwere Sprache sei, besonders mit der Betonung, dass zum Beispiel Englisch doch so viel leichter wäre. Meine Antwort ist dann immer, dass man es als Lernender selbst in der Hand hat, etwas, bevor man wirklich anfängt, als schwer zu klassifizieren oder doch eher die positiven Seiten des bisherigen (Lern-)Erfolgs herausstellt und Spaß bei der Sache im Vordergrund steht, wovon ein elementarer Teil das niemals endende Machen von Fehlern ist, denn durch diese lernt man doch das meiste, um mit Wilhelm Busch zu sprechen: „Durch Fehler wird man klug, darum ist einer nicht genug.“ |
My native language is rather similar to Slovene, but different enough that I had to learn Slovene pretty much from scratch. The following pertains to both my mother tongue and the Slovene language: I find the Slovene language to be ugly sounding, no melody or rhythm, with harsh and nasal sounds. The grammar is unnecessarily complex, and does not contribute to understanding at all (there doesn’t need to be 6 or 7 ways to say a noun, especially if there is a clear preposition before it). The language is also not rich in vocabulary, and therefore lags greatly behind in nuanced words, when compared to English, for example. It is interesting to learn how such grammar developed, so from that scholarly angle, the language is fascinating. However, if I didn’t have to learn Croatian or Slovene, I most certainly wouldn’t go out of my way to do so.
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