December 13, 2005
The Diabolicalness of Dialects
A Slovenian dialect map from 1935 by Fran Ramovš. (source)
In a recent post about dialects, AZ2SI linked to a write-up he did on Resian, "an unusual Slovenian dialect spoken by about a thousand people in the Resia Valley of north-eastern Italy." He writes: "Because of the area's geographic isolation, it developed separately from Slovene and other Slavic languages, and is therefore incredibly difficult for an average Slovenian -- not to mention another Slavic speaker -- to understand."
I listened to a clip (Windows media) he posted -- and sure enough, I understood virtually nothing. (I could pick out a word or two, but that was it. I think I'd have an easier time understanding Slovak or another foreign language.)
It's always remarkable to me that Slovenia, a country the size of Massachusetts, has such an astonishingly high number of dialects stuffed into such a small place. There are 32 (main) dialects, and they're not always mutually intelligible. If you're a fool, like me, who is learning the language, it's enough to make you want to slit your wrists and let eternal sleep take you to a better place. I mean, imagine learning an insanely difficult language and then going 50 kilometers away and discovering it doesn't work anymore.
I was recently exposed to some gorenjsko (Upper Carniolan) and I had to summon all my mental powers to understand what was being said. I got it, but just barely. But if someone (anyone) turns on the dialect full-blast, I get lost. It might as well be Japanese.
I better stop now before I demoralize myself any further. But do check out the clip. It's something else.
(Thanks AZ2SI!)
Posted on December 13, 2005 to Slovenia
Comments
Thanks for the write-up, Michael! Unfortunately, the site resianet.org appears to be down at the moment, so the audio file is inaccessible. Since this has happened before, I hope it's only temporary and that I didn't cause them to exceed their bandwidth by linking directly to their files. I usually try to avoid doing that, but in this case, the files were a bit hard-to-find.
I'm fascinated by Slovenia's dialects and the history of my native language. I'm not a linguist, so I'm ready to get some flack if I got anything wrong in my description of Resian. I am trying to learn more, though: I just ordered a reprint of Ramovs' seminal book Kratka zgodovina slovenskega jezika (A Short History of the Slovene Language), reprinted a few years ago. (For anyone who didn't notice, he's the author of the map above.) It should be interesting.
Until the site mentioned above comes back up, this site about the Resian dialect (known as "rezijsko narecje" in standard Slovene and "rozajanski romonenj" or "rozeanski romon" in Resian) is definitely worth checking out for lots of scholarly papers and original texts -- and even a very basic Resian dictionary.
I visited the Resia Valley a few years ago and was surprised to see that all signs and church bibles were in Resian, rather than in standard Slovene, further blurring the line between a dialect and a language. Interestingly, many Resians do not call themselves Slovenes at all, since their national identity never developed properly due to their isolation.
Posted by: AZ2SI at December 13, 2005 07:12 AM
AZ2SI: this is so interesting. Do you happen to know of any bibliography in (ehm) English? Or anyone else? (Of course, the difference between language and dialect is political, cultural and social only -- there is nothing about a language variety otself that 'makes' it a language or a dialect.)
Michael: Japanese, eh?
Posted by: Loxias at December 13, 2005 07:36 AM
At the risk of totally monopolizing this discussion, I should add that the Bela Krajina dialect is also very interesting. First of all, it is, like Resian, on the periphery of the Slovene world, so it has preserved some archaic forms. However, it has also been heavily influenced by Croatian and Serb both because of its proximity to Croatia and the settlement of Serbian and Croatian Uskoki in the region (via Dalmatia).
This influence is particularly noticeable in folk songs. Listen to the song "Hruske, jabuke, slive" on this page -- the lyrics are very similar to standard Croatian or Serb and very different from standard Slovene. (Besides lingusitic influences, there are still some Serbian villages in Bela Krajina today. Their residents are Orthodox Christians and many even speak Serbian.)
Even today, people in Bela Krajina use znati when other Slovenes would use vedeti ("I don't know" is "neznam" instead of "ne vem") In this respect, Bela Krajina falls south of the vedeti/znati divide which seperates most Slovenes from the other South Slavs (the West Slavs, like the Slovenes, also use versions of "vedeti").
Posted by: AZ2SI at December 13, 2005 07:59 AM
Loxias: Do you happen to know of any bibliography in (ehm) English?
You mean a bibliography of English-language books about the Slovenian language? The only historical overview that I found -- and I'm just beginning to explore this field of study -- is Marc Greenberg's A Historical Phonology of the Slovene Language, which is said to be a great introduction to the language, and won some prestigious award, but is incredibly difficult to find in its English original. I just ordered the Slovenian edition together with the Ramovs book, but you may get the English-language edition from Universitatsverlag C. Winter in Heidelberg.
Posted by: AZ2SI at December 13, 2005 08:10 AM
P.S. To give you a better idea if the Greenberg book is what you are looking for, according to a review in the journal Language (by Mark J. Elson), the volume provides, among other things, "a comprehensive account of Slovene historical phonology with chapters on dialectical diversity, contact between Slovene and other languages, the origin of Slovene, Slovene and its relationship to West Slavic, as well as Slovene and its relation to Serbian dialects," the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European languages calls it "an outstanding work of Slavic dialectology," and Ebert and Roeper give it "two thumbs up."
Posted by: AZ2SI at December 13, 2005 08:41 AM
Thanks for the info!
Although I was primarily interested in Resian and its status within Slovenia, I guess Greenberg's book will do for a start.
Posted by: Loxias at December 13, 2005 10:38 AM
i'm no expert either, so this post might of course be flawed. and, i think i'll probably be stating the obvious, but here goes.
i think there are several reasons for slovenia's rich diversity in dialects. the first one would obviously be slovenias natural diversity, with its aboundance of natural barriers obstructing but not preventing free travel. because of this, people from different areas could have ties between themselves, but they were not too close - therefore there wouldn't be too much influence of dialects on each other, which would lead into merging of these, but the language on the whole would remain preserved.
another reason would, in my opinion be the lack of organised literature until fairly recently. written word has the ability to preserve a language, but it also ties it down and slows its development. so with next to no actual literature and little other written documents until about two hundred years ago, the slovene language was pretty much free to develop any way it saw fit. which it of course did differently in different areas.
the third reason, similar to the second, would be the lack of an organised slovene nation country structure until recently. slovenia has been a part of almost all the great empires in europe (heck, prekmurje was even part of djengis khan's mongol empire for the briefest of time), but it was never considered an independent country in itself. the political and governmental structures were almost always in the history of the slovenes lead in foreign languages. this would bring about a situation, where the taxes were paid in a foreign language, but the goods were produced in slovene. again, the development of the language was unhampered by a factor that did a lot to homogenize other languages.
this
of course raises the question of how the language managed to
survive in spite off the odds. part of this would of course amount to
historical luck. another important part would be, to use the hipothesis
of a friend of mine, the incredible stubborness of the slovene
people.
Posted by: Cornelius at December 13, 2005 11:50 AM
Nice one Mr. M! I wonder how far the map is still equivalent to reality. There is no Ljubljanščina marked there, for example. I hate Ljubljanščina. It's the slang speaked by the inhabitans of Barje (known as Slovene capital). Unfortunately 95% of Slovene media is located there, so the whole land has daily the chance to hear that nasty slang (TV & radio). BTW, there is no radio station in Slo that speaks neutral Slovene. Maybe Radio Maribor is most neutral, yet some stajerski dialect comes thru...
How
tough Slovene is you notice when listening to the natives when they
speak it. I listen to Val 202, they broadcast a special about zavarovalnica.
They have two experts in the studio. The word zavarovalnica (insurance)
falls very often. It's a tough word. One of the experts pronounces is
sloppy zavralnica... lovely...
Posted by: Dragan at December 13, 2005 11:59 AM
Cornelius made some points above there.
1) I think the obstruction is pretty much resident in the heads of the
people. It's not Alaska, you can get everywhere in Slo by car (well,
maybe not in winter). But the people don't like to travel. Most mundane
Slovenes have visited more places abroad as in their own country. The
result is that almost each village speaks its own dialect...
2) Sorry, but I have to dismiss the later point. Slovenia has probably
the most dense organized linguistic literature in
the world (it definitely has the most fanatic linguists ever!)
3) Concerning this one: I think in the recent years Slovenia didn't
get better organized, it only got strongly centralized. I don't think
this is good for resolving (linguistic) diversities, rather the
opposite. As I wrote in my previous post, the dominant dialect in the
media is Ljubljanski, most people outside of Lj are pissed off by -
and get encouraged for their language diversion.
p.s.
Cornelius, could it be you live outside of Slo?
Posted by: Dragan at December 13, 2005 12:20 PM
well, first of all, i wasn't trying to peddle my views as the
ultimate truth. hence the disclaimer at the beginning of the post. it
was my intention to relay some of my views on language history and
development, not the recent events. if i was unclear about this, i
apologize.
yes, since the relatively modern-day development of seeing the
language as the ultimate tool for the purposes of advancing national
agendas, which happened somewhere about a hundred years ago, slovene
literature has been semi-deified. a view, i regret to say, is still
prety strong today. in my opinion, this hampers the development of
literature, and gives it a high-and-mighty aura that can be distracting
to a lot of people. however, while the english, the german, the french
and other cultures wrote hundreds of classical tomes centuries ago, not
a lot was happening in that area in slovenia, save for trubar's and
valvasor's valiant efforts.
as far as your point about the national media, i think it only goes to prove the exact same thing. national media permeates and has an effect on the daily life of all who follow it. as such, it serves as a homogenizer of language. i mean to pass no judgement on this particular fact.
as for the p.s. query, i live in slovenia right now, but i have spent some time abroad as well.
Posted by: Cornelius at December 13, 2005 12:45 PM
Hey Cornelius, no need to apologize, I read your disclaimer and I woudn't claim either to be 100% free of aberration myself.
I agree about how literature & linguistic were following national
agendas, this ain't particulary a slovene phenomenon, it could be seen
all over the (post)socialistic world. I don't know if you dig into
modern slovene literature, but some of the current authors are
completely free of this stigmata & not ever been into it (like Ales
Steger, hopefully stays so), some of them yet been simply ignoring it (like
Vinko Möderndorfer).
Back to linguistics, Slovenia is probably one of the few countries in
the world where writers & intelectuals have gained institutional
powers. I'm not sure yet if what they're doing is good or bad for the
language.
Posted by: Dragan at December 13, 2005 01:09 PM
A dialect stays a dialect, it becomes a language when it has an army behind.
BTW check here to see some more about minority languages.
Here is a link to the European minority news agency.
Posted by: mAT at December 13, 2005 02:01 PM
Maybe you will enjoy this:
http://rapidshare.de/files/9090491/Da_pa_canynu_sednu_dow.mp3.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/9095065/Pastirce_mlado.mp3.html
-
two songs by Magnifico. One with a little Rezian feel (Da pa čanyanu
sednu dow), other from Bela Krajina (Pastirče mlado).
Posted by: Nik at December 13, 2005 02:12 PM
thanks Nik, great links, gimme more... :)
Posted by: Dragan at December 13, 2005 02:27 PM
2) Sorry, but I have to dismiss the later point. Slovenia has probably the most dense organized linguistic literature in the world (it definitely has the most fanatic linguists ever!)
Not only that, but when they go to the new world, what do they do? They turn natives to Catholics (well, I am sorry about that). But on the other hand they write them a grammar and a dictionary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Baraga
Posted by: Nik at December 13, 2005 03:35 PM
In case you were interested here is a map of Slovak dialects http://www.pitt.edu/~armata/dialects.htm You know, just to show we are no light-weights dialect-wise either. ;)
Posted by: lemuel at December 13, 2005 04:01 PM
I can tell you that resian dialect, even if it belongs to the slavic languages group, sounds like other Friuli dialects (Friuli is the italian region next to slovenia).Actually they are italian dialects, or better, they are a sort of a slovene-influenced italian dialects.
Nevertheless Resians speak a "language" which is easily understandable from Friuli "italian" people. I think their slavic roots have changed deeply during the years.
For AZ2SI: it's funny enough that an italian village has its own signs written in a dialect (i.e. the resian one) and not in standard italian ...it would be ridicolous if they were written in a foreign language, don't you think?
Don't worry about slovenian linguistic complexity, italy is in the same condition: 20 regions and hundreds of dialects. Most of them are truly ununderstandable for a standard italian speaker. Fortunately we have a region where people speak almost standard italian (where i live..florence tuscany!)
P.S. Italy has an extra fabolous linguistic history but i don't think this is the right place to discuss about it!
Posted by: michele at December 13, 2005 04:13 PM
'češ vidit kaj ful kul? Pejd na www.spaces.msn.com/members/slovenia00
če ne razumeš, nisi sam!
Posted by: it at December 13, 2005 04:41 PM
Actually, Resian is not so difficult to understand for people who come, like me, from Primorska region. I have to admit it's quite different from the other two dialects of Beneška Slovenia (a mountainous region in Friuli on the border with Slovenia), which I can understand without any particular problems. Personally, I find it much more difficult to understand the Prekmurski dialect from Porabje (in Hungary) or Carinthian from Rož/Rosental (Austria): I had the chance to listen to the latter in the film F.A.Q. (a documentary on Carinthian SLovenes); fortunatelly, there were subtitles in standard Slovene, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to understand a thing.
And, Michele: Friulian is not a dialect of Italian, it's a separate language (all linguists agree on this point, but the Italian ones), as it is Sardinian and Ladin (in South Titol).
Posted by: Luka at December 13, 2005 04:46 PM
italian dialect my ***.
Resian is slavic and if not slovenian then at least most related to slovenian. I am very interested in slovenian folkmusic and have learnt some resian songs and to me they are slovenian and nothing else...although admittingly a bit curious slovenian ;o)
Prekmurski is like pure music to my ears:o) When I hear my grandmother talk, I know I have come home to the place of my heart.
And about the znati/vedeti....I think we say znati in prekmurje also: jaz vem=ge znan
zrinski
Posted by: Peter Zrinski at December 13, 2005 05:24 PM
I could understand a few words (sentances maybe, but that'd be an optimistic statement). I heard about these Resians before but kind of shruged it of in my mind. It can't be THAT much of a difference, I thought. But this is... mind-boggling. It really is a whole other langauge. I doubt it can still be classified as a dialect of Slovene anymore. For sure Slovakian and Serbo-croatians are closer to modern Slovene than Resian is (IMO even Russian is closer, since I understand it way more than Ressian). Fascinating stuff, really.
Someone mentioned that the borderline between a dialect and a langauge is mostly a political issue and I totally agree on that point. Slovene and Croatian dialects close to the border share more similarities amongst themselves than they do with their native tongues. There's no clear divide between langauges of one particular langauge group - there's always a gradual switch from one region to another - and if you tie all the broken pieces together you notice langueges seamlessly blending into another.
Posted by: freddie at December 13, 2005 05:48 PM
Michele: "it's funny enough that an italian village has its own signs written in a dialect (i.e. the resian one) and not in standard italian ...it would be ridicolous if they were written in a foreign language, don't you think?"
Um, Resian is a form of Slovene, a Slavic language, with some Italian and Furlan influences. There is no linguist in the world who considers it a dialect of Italian. Furthermore, I don't see why signs in a "foreign" language are ridiculous. In Italy, there are plenty of German-language signs in South Tyrol and even some Slovene ones around Trieste. Also, as you probably know, Slovenia's coast is fully bilingual (Slovene-Italian). What makes the situation in Resia different is that they use their dialect rather than standard Slovene.
BTW, maybe I'm the last to notice, but the clip is now up.
Posted by: AZ2SI at December 13, 2005 06:03 PM
Thanks for the links, Nik. The group Katalena also combines traditional folk songs sung in dialects such as Resian and Belokranjski with modern sounds. You can watch some of their music videos on their official site. "Pobelelo pole z ovcama" is from Bela Krajina, for example, while "Da gora ta skarbinina" is from Resia.
Posted by: AZ2SI at December 13, 2005 06:34 PM
OK, you are exaggerating! Maybe it's difficult for people from "Continantal Slovenia" (as we say in Primorska), but I come from Nova Gorica, at the border with Italy and I can tell you it's almost completely understandable, although I have to admit it sounds very odd, since we are not used to the Resian accent and at first don't recognize the words.
To prove you that I have unerstood most of it quite well (with problems, that's logical), I can translate the first minute of the clip into standard Slovenian:
(it starts in the middle of the sentense, so I couldn't grasp the firs couple seconds, but then it goes on:) "...on pravi, da bi naredili tu v Reziji, na tem radiu, rubriko "Rezija-ne samo zjutraj" (...then two frases I didn't understand)... Povedati moram še, da naše društvo "Pro loco Val Resia", ki združuje skoraj vsa društva, ki delujejo tu v Reziji; torej, da naša predsednica, ki je bila Ana Micelli, je odstopila s svojega položaja in na njeno mesto je prišla Karmela Barile. Karmela je doma z Njivic, je učiteljica, uči tukaj v Reziji že več let. In mi Rezijani ji voščimo dobro delo ... (and so on and so on)"
There is a very good presentation of the Resian dialect (or, as local like to call it, "language") on the "val Resia" web page (written by a foreign linguist, but unfortunately only in Italian): http://www.resianet.org/index.asp?Pagina=3&TipoPagina=T1
Posted by: Luka at December 13, 2005 06:43 PM
freddie: There's no clear divide between langauges of one particular
langauge group - there's always a gradual switch from one region to
another - and if you tie all the broken pieces together you notice
langueges seamlessly blending into another.
I agree with the above. And this language continuum goes down to east Bulgaria. But on the other hand, there are lingustic things that separate Slovene from Croatian. First of all phonetical changes of dialects in time. Certain phonemes changed differently in Slovene dialects than in Kajkavian Croatian dialects. Of course one phoneme is not enough, all historical changes in a develomplent of phonetics must be observed to make a conclusion. Secondly syntactical forms: most Slovene dialects use dual, Croatian don't. Other dividing syntactical items would be imperfect, aorist, vocative, etc...
I have read a few documents on Resianica (cool site, thanks). One was particuarly interesting: Fran Ramovš “Razvoj imperfekta v rezijanščini” (1924). Few quotes:
"Znano je sicer, da je rezijanščina edino slovensko narečje, ki je do danes ohranilo nekdanji imperfekt."
"Na podlagi teh primerov moremo nastaviti tole regularno fleksijo: jêdêhon, jêdêše, jêdêše; jêdêhova, jêdêšeta, jêdêšeta; jêdêhomo, jêdêšete, jêdêho."
"Večinoma znači rez. imperfekt še vedno dejanje, ki se v preteklosti vrši: v́ȋte̦r pýhaše‚ je pihal‘." (veter pihaše, 'y' seems to be a variant of 'i'. IMO: it would be very cool if Slovene would still have imperfect.)
What is interesting, Resian dialect still uses dual, but it also
kept imperfect. To me it show that the language is archaic.
Probably vocabulary is old as well, plus Italian and Friulian
borrowings... Enough to make it troublesome for understanding.
AZ2SI: What makes the situation in Resia different is that they use their dialect rather than standard Slovene.
Is this really so strange? Everyone in Slovenia speaks in his
dialect, I think, especially if he lives and works in and around his
place of birth (or they start mixing dialects). Maybe the strange thing
is that they also WRITE in Resian rather in standard Slovene. The thing
is that unlike Slovenes, Resians don't learn standard literary language
in schools - they just learn Resian.
Dragan: Here are few songs sung in dialect. One from Ana Pupedan
(I think it is a sort of Primorje dialect) and a few from Iztok Mlakar
(AFAIK he uses Cerkljansko and Tolminsko narečje). Also one song from
Ana Pupedan in Croatian and one traditional Macedonian song. Few of
them might be labeled 'revolutionary'... :)
http://rapidshare.de/files/9108928/apim.zip.html
Posted by: Nik at December 13, 2005 07:02 PM
Nik: Yes, that's what meant; they use a standardized written form of their dialect -- not standard Slovene -- for official purposes. I didn't know that before I visited Resia.
Posted by: AZ2SI at December 13, 2005 07:10 PM
And the last minute, too, so you won't say I just made the first one up:
"Torej: kot smo že spomnili, smo v prvih dneh aprila otvorili "Percorso circolare (krožno pešpot) Ta lipa pot". 15. maja bomo dobili "erogazione" (? it's a public allowence of some kind), kot vsako leto. In na 25. junija bomo imeli teden, posvečen ekologiji in okolju. Kot vsako leto pa se s tem na Stolbici zamuja, morali bomo očistiti te stare (...?), tam je tudi precej ostankov (smeti); ko bomo očistili, bo malo bolje za našo lepo dolino. To je za zdaj vse, slišali se bomo v drugih oddajah, da vam sporočimo (če hočete vedeti) druge stvari, ki jih delamo zdaj v Reziji." (then the host takes the word again and says the final phrases)
Today it's the first time I've ever heard Resian. But a lot of words are similar to the Slovenian Istrian dialect my grandmother speaks (ćemo djelat for bomo delali, znan for vem, the sounds ć, ue, etc.). Strange, funny, difficult to understand, but defenetely a Slovenian dialect. I guess people from the Nadiza/ Natisone, Ter/ Torre, and Kanalska/Valcanale Valley don't have any grater problems undesratnding Resians. We, from Primorska, have no problems understanding the dialects from Nadiza and Ter, and people from Carinthia or Kranjska Gora shouldn't have any problems understanding the Valcanale speech. So, it's easy to see, how the whole Slovenian language is connected together from one dialect to another.
Posted by: Luka at December 13, 2005 07:13 PM
Nik, this is a bit OT, but since you know a lot about this: Do any Croatian Kajkavian dialects use the dual?
Another thing that has interested me is the presence of some forms transitional to West Slavic in a few Slovene dialects, particularly some Carinthian ones. Apparently, they tend to use the West Slavic prefix vy- instead of -iz ("vyhod" instead of "izhod), and the neuter adjective ending -e instead of -o ("nove mesto" instead of "novo mesto"), among other things.
Posted by: AZ2SI at December 13, 2005 07:21 PM
Luka: You must be a genious! WTF is 'sočacijon'? Društvo?
Well, I am from Pohorje. Other side of the continent-let... :) :)
Posted by: Nik at December 13, 2005 07:28 PM
Nik, this is a bit OT, but since you know a lot about this: Do any Croatian Kajkavian dialects use the dual?
I have never heard of anything like that.
Posted by: Nik at December 13, 2005 07:41 PM
Dual in Croatian: don't forget that besides the standard language, the dual is fully alive only in very few Slovene dialects and I guess even gone in some (Bela Krajina?).
Dialect
as official language in Resia: it's interesting solution, but not very
unusual, speaking of linguistic communities with poor knowledge of the not-so-similar standard language. Last
time I saw the program for Slovene minority in Hungary (a stingy half
an hour a month), half of it was in their dialect and half in standard
language - I mean the journalists's off-screen commentary, not just
locals speaking in front of camera.
Posted by: ipe at December 13, 2005 09:08 PM
AZ2SI: The group Katalena also combines traditional folk songs sung in dialects such as Resian and Belokranjski with modern sounds.
Yes, I have heard of them. It is ok, but not as good as Brina (IMO). And Brina also has a 'Pobelelo polje'. A link:
http://www.jazzinty.com/stringsi/brina/glasba.html
http://www.bof.si/search.cp2?class=all&q=brina
4 songs:
http://rapidshare.de/files/9123313/Brina.zip.html
They also have a second CD out now, which I haven't heard yet in full,
I have just heard few songs on a Radio Študent presentation. From that
sample I conclude it is even better than the first one.
Posted by: Nik at December 13, 2005 10:09 PM
To Nick: no need to be a genious, just try to listen carefully. Yes, "asočacjon" is "društvo", from Italian "associazione". I noticed all the "modern" words, those which don't exist in any Slovenian dialect, are used in their Italian, rather than standard Slovenian form. Which is logic, since the people from Resia never had the chance to hear or use the standard Slovene. But again, there's is not such a big difference with the speech of our grandmothers and grandfathers who also attended only Italian schools and thus use a lot of words from standard Italian (much, much more than from neighbouring Italian dialects; just listen to the lyrics of Iztok Mlakar, who is certenely not Resian)
Posted by: somebody at December 13, 2005 11:40 PM
To Nick:
there's no need to be a genious, just try to listen carefully. Yes, "asočacjon" apparently means "društvo", from the Italian "associazione". I noticed that all the words that don't exist in the Resian dialect (nor they in any Slovenian dialect) are borrowed from standard Italian rather than (as is the case in Slovenia, but also in Trieste and Gorizia) from standard Slovene. It's quite understandable, since Resians never had the chance to learn standard Slovene (not even Slovene radio or TV signal gets there). But again, the speech of our grandmothers (I'm from Primorska) is not very different in this regard. They attended Italian schools, so they use a disproportioned number of borrowings from standard Italian, which is BTW much higher than the number of words borrowed from the neighbouring Italian dialects. (if you listen to the lyrics of Iztok Mlakar's songs, you'll see what I mean)
Posted by: Luka at December 13, 2005 11:48 PM
Oops, sorry, I thought the first one didn't get posted...
Posted by: Luka at December 13, 2005 11:48 PM
Another thing connected to the issue. Quite funny, check it out in my blog:
http://www.delo.si/blog/dexter/index.php?BLOG_PATH=259,1196
Posted by: Luka at December 13, 2005 11:53 PM
Jesus tits, 36 comments on the topic of linguistics, perhaps it is true that it runs in our genes. Linguistics, that is. Personally, I wouldn't mind if Slovenes were world renown as cunning linguists.
Posted by: crni at December 14, 2005 12:04 AM
put that into lonely planet. "The average slovene is a warm-hearted, friendly fellow, who will most likely speak at least one foreign language. Don't bring this up, however, unless you have plenty of time on your hand, or don't mind going deeply into the subject of linguistics. It is a little known fact that teh slovenes are fervent linguists and will discuss teh subject at great lenghts if provoked to do so."
Posted by: Cornelius at December 14, 2005 12:19 AM
Luka: Ah of course, a is missing ("asočacjon"). Well, I asked a colleague here in Ljubljana: 'A maš hamer za posodit?'(Could you lend me a hammer?), and he looked me as if I wanted to borrow an American jeep... (He uses the word 'kladvo').
Posted by: Nik at December 14, 2005 12:36 AM
As i see my poor english made me look like a fool.. I never said that resian is an italian dialect. I said that Udine and Trieste dialects are italian dialects and that resian is not so far from them even if it BELONGS to slovene. And also that resian is greatly influenced by italian language as Luka said in his post, for political, geographical and social reasons. I think it was clear.
Secondly, furlan (friulano in italian), being it a dialect or a language, belongs to italian the same. P.P.P. (Pier Paolo Pasolini) was an italian poet who wrote a lot of stuff in furlan, i can tell you i understand it pretty easily and i'm not from Friuli at all.
As for the signs issue: i know some regions in italy have bilingual status (friuli included) but having bilingual signs is different than having them written only in a foreign language or in a dialect. For a simple matter of democracy: if i go to valresia i require all the signs to be in italian, cos i'm still in italian territory.
For peter zrinski: there's no need to offend...i think we are here just to discuss. If in your opinion i was wrong, there are different ways to say that, more respectful ways!
Posted by: michele at December 14, 2005 10:28 AM
Hey! My grandma is trying to make Baraga a saint!
Posted by: somebody at December 14, 2005 11:37 AM
I thought I was respectful enough by omitting the letters and including just the stars.
Ok..so now you have cleared that up. But by the way you wrote it sure seemed like the words of a typical italian chauvanist. And let me tell you..I am growing increasingly tired of both italian ones (chauvanist that is) and their austrian counterparts.
Vidna Domovina both in Italy and Austria! :o)
Posted by: Peter Zrinski at December 14, 2005 01:05 PM
Italian chauvinists??? Please tell me where have you found them! Maybe you confuse us with france or maybe austria people!
Anyway, i'm glad now that my thought is clear since i really care about linguistic issues.
"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"...you know, it's always a good advice to follow! Please don't tell me that slovenians are not chauvinists about ex-yugoslavia "brothers"!
I think everyone is proud of his country cos it's natural, i think i didn't disrespect slovenia or any other country, if i did, please forgive me.
Ciao Ciao!Posted by: michele at December 14, 2005 02:54 PM
To MIchele:
"Italian chauvinists??? Please tell me where have you found them!" There's a little town called Trieste ...
Anyway, you're right, in other parts of Friuli things are getting better: Beneška Slovenija got bilingual signs (although no public schools in Slovene yet), and even Tarvisio in Valcanale (that has a mayor from AN!). But still, a lot of anti-slovenian chauvinism remains, expecially towards local Slovenians, the ones who are "cittadini italiani e se non vogliono parlare italiano che si trasferiscano oltre il confine..."
However, you're right: we, too, are no saints. Let's say that everyone will try to do its best.
Stammi bene!
Posted by: Luka at December 14, 2005 03:23 PM
I agree with you luka but i don't understand if you wanted a only-slovene public school for slovene community in friuli. I'd disagree on that because, even if the community is strong and important, you are on italian territory and you must learn italian, you must have signs in italian language, everything concerned public life needs to have an italian version. If you, luka, didn't mean that, i agree totally with you: bilinguism is a good way to improve integration.
I think cultural differences must be respected at least since you get money (and a lot) from persons you didn't speak the same language with. I just want an italian to be at his ease in every spot of his country . And it's not a small issue. I don't know for friuli but trentino and val d'aosta receive very large contributions from Rome and they usually treat italians really bad (i can confirm on that more than once).
Ciao a tutti!
Posted by: michele at December 14, 2005 03:59 PM
Michele:
That's more a technicality: Slovenes in Gorizia/Gorica and Trst/Trieste have only Slovene-language schools with Italian as an obligatory subject (as do german-speking people from Alto Adige). The same goes for Italians on the Slovenian Coast. On the other hand, Hungarians in Slovenia have bilingual schools- but they are obligatory for the Slovene-speaking population on the territory as well. Slovenes in Carinthia (Austria) have bilingual schools, but they are not obligatory etc.
You see, there are a lot of solutions. However, the SLovenes from Udine Province don't have any!! (Just a private bilingual institute in S.Pietro/Špietar). Now, I've heard they teach some dialect and local SLovene culture in the local SLovene schools (even in Valtorre). At least something. A big progress from, say, 20 years ago, when the official stand of the authorities was "non c'è nessuna minoranza slovena nella Provincia di Udine". (They must have copied from here :))
And check out this link: http://www.gfbv.it/3dossier/lingue.html
Take care!
P.S. I don't think Slovenes in FVG will ever get the chance to "treat Italians very bad". Even if they would, the Slovenes from UD-province wouldn't (they-ve always been loyal IT citizens). Though I'm not sure for the Slovenes in Trieste and Gorizia :) ...
Posted by: somebody at December 14, 2005 04:44 PM
I almost forgot:
For all of you who believe in the respect of minorities and cultural understanding, sign the petition submitted by the Carinthian assotiation Sichtbare Heimat/Vida domovina (Visible Homeland), - on the section "Mach auch mit/Sodeluj tudi ti":
http://www.heimat-domovina.at/index.php/mitglied/
Posted by: Luka at December 14, 2005 05:09 PM
Check out this page (might clear a lot of Serbian vs. Croatian language bull...it):
http://sh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Narjecja.jpg
Posted by: Luka at December 14, 2005 06:07 PM
Luka, you have all my respect! Your words are clean and i have really appreciated them.
I don't know what belonging to a minority means, and i bet it's hard to get your culture discriminated, but i often hear opinions about italy in bolzano or aosta that make me shiver
You say that in friuli it's better, actually you wrote that slovenian minority is still discriminated in some areas, and i'm really sorry for that. I'd never like it to be so, i just think that even if you are a minority you should have respect of the country you are living in.
I'd really like our cultures could live together and make integration a mean of development.
P.S. You speak perfect italian, where do you come from?
Posted by: michele at December 14, 2005 09:53 PM
Hehe, great post, and also very much in the context, because i was just learning for my exam of slovenian language tommorow. I was reading about the development of the language itself and how it slowly but persistently evolved into the beautiful form that it is today.
Posted by: majk at December 14, 2005 11:02 PM
</i>
Here's trying to close that italics down! Let's see if it works... will someone think of the children?
Posted by: Carlitos Yoder at December 15, 2005 04:17 PM
Here's another song sung in the rezian, a nice old ditty, Da göra ta škarbinina updated by the SLO band katalena.
Posted by: Bob at December 16, 2005 01:41 AM
AZ2SI: Another thing that has interested me is the presence of some forms
transitional to West Slavic in a few Slovene dialects, particularly
some Carinthian ones. Apparently, they tend to use the West Slavic
prefix vy- instead of -iz ("vyhod" instead of "izhod),
I was browsing a little through Fran Ramovš: "Kratka zgodovina
slovenskega jezika" (1935). He mentions that, yes, for those Carinthian
dialects that lie in Austria (Zilja, Podjuna). He says this is no sign
of any contacts between Slovenes and other west Slavic peoples
and that that prefix was common in ur-slavic dialects
(praslovanščina). Again because these dialects were mostly isolated
from the rest (Karavanke), they were conservative and the new
developments in other Slovene dialects didn't influence them. (I never
heard of such prefix in spoken word though, this is pure theory to me).
BTW: The Ramovš dialectal map has a little error: West
part of Pohorje, somewhere from that big turn of Drava river to the
left should belong to Carinthian dialects (just like in the northern
side of Drava - Kozjak. And the dialect is also the same, Ramovš calls
it 'Remšniško". One typical expression would be "Či kaga dama",
with heavy accent on both first 'a' sounds in both words, and there
first 'a' sounds are very prolonged, longer that usual long vowels. The
meaning is "Ni nikogar doma".
In modern literature (Toporišič) this is correct.
Posted by: Nik at December 16, 2005 11:49 AM
To Nik:
The Ramovš map (the one shown above) is incorrect in many other parts, too. In Istria, for example, on the Karts etc. It's understandable, since he was the first scholar to study the matter at such extent and depth. Therefor, the current map is a little different.
About western Slavic resiuum in Slovenian. In Goriška Brda, there's a village called Vipolže. An incredibly west-slavic name!! Vy-polže (out of the field; and, really, it stands on the edge of the plain that is extending towards Italy).
Posted by: Luka at December 16, 2005 04:23 PM
- are you sure that the scool in S.Pietro is still private?
- Friulian v. Italian: as you can see here, Friulian is more closely related to French and Spanish (among others) than Italian
Posted by: ipe at December 22, 2005 07:29 PM
Ipe:
Actually, I don't know ... now that you've reminded me, I think there's a provision in the Global Law for Slovenes in Italy about the school in Špeter Slovenov; but I, really, don't know if it has been fullfilled or (as so most of them) still not yet.
About Friulian: the link is interesting, but I think it's a little obsolete. In old times, in fact, they thought French and Friulian were strongly related, because they both share a phonetic peculiarity not to be found in any other Romance language: the palatalization before the initial /a/: "chamin" in Fr., but "camino" in It. and Sp., and again "cjamin" in Friulian. This was misinterpreted as a common characteristic (even by the great linguist Ascoli from Gorizia/Gorica). It's clear, however, that the Friulian palatalization is MUCH younger than the French one and thus historically completely unrelated. (Here, again, Slovenian came as decisive in the proving process: the Slovenian borrowings from Friulian (as "kamin", "hlače", the dialectal karstic "kandrega") prove that the palatalization was not present when Slovenians borrowed the word; otherwise they'd sound as "kjamin" or "čamin", "hjače" or "jače" or even "čače", "kjandrega" or "čandrega").
Sorry, I'm (also) a linguist ;-) . It's just stronger than me...
Posted by: Luka at December 22, 2005 09:14 PM
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