Archives for December 6th, 2005

An example of Slovene, Fužine-style.

Borut, who comes from the Fužine area of Ljubljana, sent me this nice example of a Slovenian dialect that is often (officially) ignored: Fuđinian. The area has a high concentration of ex-Yugoslavs, and they’re known for speaking something that is a mix of Serbo/Croat and Slovene. The sign above, for example, says in broken Slovene: "I warn you. I don’t want to see dog shit in front of the atrium. I’ll call the inspector. You have no shame." (It’s quite funny in the original)

Still: I often wonder if it’s more difficult to learn Slovene if you already speak a language that is similar or if it’s better to start with a blank slate. At first, I guessed it must be easy for, say, a Croat to move here, since they would immediately recognize a lot of words. But now I think the slight differences are probably aggravating, the way it is when a German speaker hears Dutch. It just sounds like someone is mispronouncing everything. I would imagine that learning to stress words in a different way must be incredibly frustrating. (For example, Slovenes say "pes" for dog, while Serbs and Croats say "pas." Making the jump from one vowel to another might seem easy, but as the sign demonstrates, it obviously isn’t.)

At any rate, the day after I got this I found dog crap outside our apartment building. It was kind of a zen moment, but I realized that I agreed with this guy. Some people really are shameless.

(Thanks Borut!)