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Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Maribor, Slovenia.
Portoroz, Slovenia.
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A typical Slovenian woman.
JS forwarded along these facts about Slovenes, some of which struck me as remarkably astute. (Especially 7, 9, 10 and 23) They seem to be written from the perspective of second-generation Slovenian immigrants, presumably in the U.S. (The big clue being the use of Fahrenheit in number ten.)
Here they are:
1. Slivovica cures everything from a stomachache to paper cuts.
2. You are well acquainted with “sarma” (cabbage rolls)
3. You eat everything with “ajvar” (eggplant spread)
4. Your profanity consists of Croatian and Serbian phrases because Slovenija is too pure to have swear words.
5. There is nothing gross about blood sausages (krvavice).
6. Drinking with your parents is normal.
7. Your relatives, especially in Slovenija, do not believe in opening the car windows on a sweltering hot day because of “prepih” (drafts).
8. When outside of Slovenia, you fight an irresistible urge to kiss the person you’ve just shaken hands with.
9. You’re not allowed to leave the house with damp hair because you’re going to become bolan(a) (sick).
10. You have to wear copate (slippers) around the house, even if you have carpeting and it is 95 degrees outside.
11. Your family makes their own vino, medica, or Slivovica.
12. You never got to sleep in on Saturday because you had Slovenska Sola (Slovenian School)
13. Mami is always making you eat.
14. You know how to dance polka and you’re proud of it.
15. Someone in your family can play buttonbox or accordion and is always bothering you to learn.
16. You’ll still drink Cockta to please your family in Slovenija even though it makes you sick to your stomach (their version of Coca-Cola)
17. English verbs are acceptable if used with the ending “-ati”, which makes them Slovenian: “play-ati”, “study-ati”, “clean-ati”, or the best one “walk-ati” - pronounced: vakati!
18. At the age of 13 you are only allowed to go out of town with your friends for folklore festivals, drinking binges, and dances.
19. Your parents were at the party where you first got drunk and maybe even offered you a drink.
20. Then they waited until the ride home to beat the crap out of you for getting drunk and embarrassing them.
21. The majority of your friends are also your relatives, even if they aren’t your relatives; because you refer to their parents as “teta” and “stric“. (aunt and uncle)
21. “Kuhovnice” (wooden spoons) are not only used for stirring when cooking… they are also used by mami to beat you when there is no “Siba” (stick) handy..
22. At least once you’ve told your parents that you’ll call the police to report “child abuse” and your parents said “Ja! Samo probaj…” (just try!)
23. Lunch on Sundays has more courses than Amerikanci have for Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner.
24. Your 13 year old sister can out-drink any Amerikan’c or Irishman.
25. You love “Golaz”, (beef stew) but don’t like bringing it to school or work for lunch because you’d be embarrassed if someone asked you what it was.
26. Vegetarianism is not a concept your parents understand.
27. All other action stops when you hear people speaking Croatian or Serbian somewhere.
28. You smell garlic or alcohol on the old man’s breath behind you sitting on the pew in church on Sunday mornings.
29. You never got the “Birds and the Bees” talk from mami or ati when growing up.
30. You are only allowed to vacation in the homeland for a minimum of 4 weeks.
31. Your relatives alone can populate a small city.
32. You’ve worked in the “Stale” (barn) at your relatives house in Slovenia and the cow smell didn’t even bother you.
33. (left blank)
34. You think mixing Coke and red wine (bambus) is an extremely tasty drink.
35. You’re still laughing your ritka off because you know every single one of these are true.
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The ones where I’ve been nodding madly are:
- the prepih thing - 7 (I never got sick because of that!)
- damp hair - 9 (I do it all year through)
- copate - 10 (I love walking around the flat in socks or with bare feet)
- making our own alcohol - 11 (we live in most densly populated area in Slovenia, my parents rarely drink and they still see it as their duty to make their own borovniÄ?evec) and
- teta&stric - 21 (I still sometimes referr to unknown adults as “tista/ena teta, tisti/en stric”).
And I disagree (although it’s just me) with Å¡ljivovica being the cure (brrrr alcohol), ajvar goes well only with Ä?evapÄ?iÄ?i and pljeskavica, I’m not proud to be able to dance polka (who can’t? it’s so damn simple, english verbs with -ati are disgusting and our Sunday lunch usualy consists of beef soup, saute potatoes (that’s how my dictionary calls pražen krompir), beef from the soup and green salad. That’s not that much is it?
So…. true…. most of them apply in my case
I disagree with 35, though; half of them will actually be terribly offended and with a long face for some weeks. Fortunately just half
OMG… This is SO true!!!…
:D
What’s wrong with cockta?!
I dont think it makes you anymore sick than any other soda. As for the taste it beats coke anytime 
That’s really funny, ’cause it’s all very true for Slovenes in Northern America. I wouldn’t agree on 17, though (that’s rather a feature of young Ljubljana inhabitants’ slang). What Slovenian immigrants usually do is to use English words for things they didn’t know before they (or their parents) came to the US or Canada. They will also use English grammar structures. For example: Danes sem vzel subway. (SLO: Danes sem se peljal s podzemno. EN: I took the subway today.) It’s kind of cool - almost a pidgin.
Such slonglish grammar structure is quite cute in my opinion. Acctualy, any direct translation of a person who’s not speaking Slovenian often is funny in a nice why. I have a friend from Trieste who answers “tudi ne” to the question “are you coming?”, because Italians say “anche no” (spelling?). And he said to a friend who lost his grandmother “sem Ä?ul, da ti je zmanjkala nona”.
Am I really the only one who just found out he/she is not Slovene at all?
Conversely, I seem to be more Slovenian than I thought (which to my knowledge of family history was not at all).
11, 26, 32… are true in my case. A black sheep?
Ok, I’m not Slovene, but can’t resist to comment on some points that were kind of “déjà vu” to me:
4) my first Slovene teacher mentioned she had a list of Slovene swear words, so I persuaded her to distribute it
When she did so, she emphasised that it’s all imported from Croatian.
11) Michael might intentionally have forgotten borovnica
19) I was at a veselica here in Germany where I met a mother and her daughter (definitive under 20). Daughter: “My drunk mother is so embarassing” - said so and took a gulp of her Coka Cola mixed with Jack Daniels
34) Germans do so, too. For some reason the drink is called “Korea” here.
@sunshine:
“pražen krompir” can be very funny if a non-Slovene talks about it. A friend of mine (American married with a Slovene) once read the menu when we were out together and asked her husband: “what’s that - prazen krompir?” (ok, i have to wath out not to make the same mistake)
@BBLN:
same do Slovenes in Germany. Quite nice was for instance: “To je Å¡ver” (schwer - difficult - težko?)
36) if you know, the person in front of you is a foreigner and he speaks Slovene to you, you look completely puzzled and continue talking in English (sometimes German, anyway this applies for approx 50%, especially for waiters in Ljubljana).
Well I think most of it is luckily true. I don’t agree with the ajvar and the slivovica, cause that has nothing to do with Slovenia, except, that the best Ajvar in the world is actually made in Kamnik by Eta.
So proud of being Slovenc and my sister being able to outdrink any Yank, hehehe!
@Mike: do you feel a Slovenc finally or not quite yet?
@dietmar: You can actually find a crazy mix of Slovene and German right across the border in KoroÅ¡ka. A koroÅ¡ki Slovenec once asked me if I could show him to the next “telefonska celica” (”Telefonzelle” actually being “telefonska govorilnica” in Slovene, though now almost extinct :-). That was really funny.
Some things could indeed be added to the list:
36. You think you can (still) speak Croatian/Serbian and do it at every possible occasion, not wondering even once whether this is really Croatian/Serbian (if you say things like: Ja sam delao).
37. You get dressed down by your family, Aunties and Uncles most of the time for not yet possessing any Hofer/Lidl etc. gadgets/several TV sets/2 EUR fleece pullovers etc. and most of all: for dressing casually.
24: Perhaps, but she would never out-drink and Irishwoman.
Muhaha, so true. But not for me. A-a. No way. Not a chance. I’m not that primitive (like my neighbours for example). I’m so much better. I am way above them. You wouldn’t have a clue i’m from slovenia if you ever met me.
(Now add this as 38. :P)
@BBLN:
also within Slovenia, for example Maribor when I was there last summer. The waiter in a pub that offers internet access: “tam je fraj” to tell me there’s a computer currently not used
Such influences are quite normal if there is a lot of “exchange” between languages. I’ve read about Pensylvania Dutch and Mexican immigrants doing the same in the USA. The outcome is sometimes amusing…
This list has given me the power to open windows in our non-AC car in the middle of summer. I love the list simply because of this.
Well, JS: do you dare drink anything after having eaten fruit, like cherries?
Do you dare leave your mobile at home/switch it off/keep it for a few years?
We need a longer list
My woman says she doesn’t let me drink after mushrooms (I don’t eat mushrooms so that’s not exactly a problem).
My mobile phone is still with the green/black old school gameboy style screen so I say it’s old.
I never thought 14 could be true … but I experienced it really is …
Hehe I found quite a few of these to be true with my relatives. 7, 9, 10 especially, even my own mother brings those up.
8o OMG how dare anybody speak negatively about Cockta, the best soda drink ever made!!
OMG, that’s us!…
Nah, these are completely false (well not false, just being stupid). So in America (or where) you can go outside with wet hair… And slippers are definetely more comfortable than SHOES…. And yes, cockta is better than Coke
Some of them so true, some way off. About Cockta for example. I don’t really understand the one with golaž - if everybody loves it, why would anybody ask you what it is. I don’t like golaž anyway - a bad experience in kindergarden many years ago.
It’s true about the birds and the bees talk - we kids found it all about in elementary school. Maybe today’s parents are not so uptight about sex anymore.
Not only mami, but there is always somebody who’s making you eat - it used to be my stara mama, now it’s my (real one) teta. She’s always saying how skinny I am and asking my mother if she feeds me at all.
39. You write: “I don’t agree with the ajvar and the slivovica, cause that has nothing to do with Slovenia, except, that the best Ajvar in the world is actually made in Kamnik by Eta.”
Now that’s Slovenian!
>cockta
If even wasps prefer “the original” …
utechristian.wordpress.com/2006/10/21/obvious/
12. You never got to sleep in on Saturday because you had Slovenska Sola (Slovenian School)
What’s Slovenska Å¡ola? I have a feeling it’s something you people did without letting us in Belgrade know about it! Who allowed you to attend it!?
But seriously now, what is it?
Dejan - I think that refers to the Slovenes in Cleveland sending their children to Slovenian language school on Saturday. Just like the Jews, Chinese, etc. … and I’m sure the Serbs as well!
Still trying to figure out # 33. Am I missing something about that one?
In my case #13 is my taÅ¡Ä?a.
#26 - My in-laws serving deep fried bacon!
26 true true true!
A friend of mine went to Prekmurje (where half of my relatives live) and before lunch he told his hosts he was vegetarian. They served him chicken
Another story goes like this (and this one has happened several times): when there is golaz on the table and somebody is vegetarian, there is a good chance the hostess will suggest this: Why don’t you leave the meat on the plate and eat the rest?
That is exactly why we vegetarians from Prekmurje, Slovenia, impress people wherever we appear. A typical response will go like this: “What?! You come from Yugoslavia and survived being vegetarian?! WOW!”
The only time in my life I really was forced to eat meat was in East Germany.
9 and 10 is still in effect in PO..
About 32 of these I have read about Bosnians. Some of those you will find in Tim Clancy’s guides to Bosnia.
I first saw this list on ‘Woglife’ an Australian site, and the list was a bit longer but related to Serbians. Except the bit about sending one’s kid out for some Drinas and Sarajevsko, and they definately had the vowel thing going.
My son calls my significant other ‘Mr. Needs to Buy a Vowel’ and then there was in The Onion a story about an airlift to BiH of ‘lifegiving vowels’
I reminded my son of other languages short on written vowels, Welsh, Arabic, Hebrew are in the catagory of vowel short languages.
Then there are the overly voweled languages like Hawaiian, which is no longer spoken. I think the people who have ‘no vowels’ are doing fine, it makes shiboleths easier! That way we can all get rid of frners and spys!
#12 pretty much defined my pre-teen years.
ajvar is made of eggplant? thought it was paprika… hum.
Ajvar has paprika, onions, garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil, it has eggplant too, but the eggplant is optional!
i have been a vegetarian for many years now and what i found out is that slovenia is actually very open towards vegi food. althought you might be right about the parents