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Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Maribor, Slovenia.
Portoroz, Slovenia.
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The Slovenian language provides endless enjoyment for schoolchildren.
If you are a foreigner living in Slovenia, you belong to an elite group of the damned. Especially when it comes to learning the language. There you’re faced with two problems: the byzantine difficulty of the language and the fact that once you learn it, hardly anyone else speaks it.
There are currently two million Slovenians (and dropping) and while that may sound like a decent amount, keep in mind that the language has a mind-blowing 32 dialects. These are split even further into 76 sub-groups. And some of these dialects are so different that even Slovenes can’t understand each other.
In other words, the foreigner in Slovenia is faced with a difficult decision: Learn Slovene and break parts of your brain in the process, or take a cyanide capsule and find eternal peace.
Actually, the other option is to just stick with English and the occasional eno kavo prosim. (One coffee, please.)
If that’s not for you, then the first challenge is to find a good place to learn. There are Slovene courses available in Ljubljana, of course, and there are a few (and I mean, really a few) books to help you too. Unfortunately, the books are generally hard to find and usually of a poor quality. (Check the reviews of this currently out-of-print book to get an idea.)
There’s also a web site that can help: Slovenian.com
Although it’s small, it’s nicely divided into various subjects and difficulty. There’s the hellish dual case, tenses, and (especially useful) some exercises.
It could be improved, but it’s certainly better than most other sites. And a lot better than cyanide.
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This made me laugh.
I have to say, it’s not that much better with either Serbo-Croat… ahem, sorry, Serbian… or Romanian, at least WRT the textbook issue. There is no /good/ Romanian textbook; just a couple of okay ones.
Serbo-Croat has the dual case and all the rest of it. Brrr.
Doug M.
hey - the dual is the smallest problem in your language
2. sklon is by far the worst!
Doug,
Serbo-Croat has’t got the dual case.
I’m Zlatko Beckham
I belive Slovene is the only language that has dual. And it’s wonderful. You can say "midva" (we, the two of us). Lovers are quite happy with that.
No, Semitic languages (incl. modern Hebrew) have dual case. (And yes, Serbian does not have dual case.)
uhm… What’s dual case? I speak Serbian, btw.
I´m really interested in knowing more about Slovenia and its language. But as I can see it´s really difficult to find information and some beginners structures like what´s your name? / greetings and so on….. If you can help me ,please e-mail me. Thanks in advance.
Hello, just a reply to Zlatko Zahovic, no slovenian is not the only language with dual, i speak slovenian, arabic and english, and i know for sure that arabic has dual, in fact, it has dual for 2 females, another version for 2 males, and another for mixed! so slovenian is not that hard to learn! if there’s a will there’s a way!
oh, and my friend told me that they have dual in greek as well!
I really want to learn how to speak Slovene, as I might be moving there when Im older. Is it really difficult? Can people help me speak it please?
I am really interested in learning slovene. I am swedish and currently live in Dublin. Are there any possibilities to actually learn the language under these circumstances?
Zlatko, tvoja razlaga dvojine je pa zelo lepa.
Se opraviÄ?ujem. Mislila sem na UroÅ¡evo razlago.