LESSON 1
Prva učna ura*
*učna ura, literally 'learning hour', is as closest a translation of 'lesson' as you can get in Slovene. Needless to say that I hate it, so I really won't translate lesson titles from hereon.
1.1. Distribution - Raz?irjenost
Slovene is a Southern Slavic language spoken by approximately two million people in Slovenia, and a few ethnic minorities in Italy, Austria and Hungary. (Considerable Slovene communities overseas appear in Argentina - from which both the current Slovenian Minister of Finance and the ex-archbishop of Ljubljana, who will become a Cardinal on Wednesday, hail - and the USA. Cleveland, Ohio, used to be called 'the second biggest Slovene city'. By Slovenes, of course.)
1.2. Phonology
Slovene has a more or less simple eight-vowel vowel system:
/a e E @ i o O u/
transliterated, rather confusingly for non-native speakers, as
<a e e e* i o o u>.
The 'narrow' mid vowels, /e o/, can be distinguished by placing an acute over them: <? ?>, while the 'wide' mid vowels /E O/ can be distinguished by a circumflex <? ?> when they appear in the middle of a word, and by a grave <? ?> when they appear at the end.*** Usually, however - and that means nearly always, except when ambiguity may arise - the diacritics are left out.
**/@/ and especially [@] being transliterated as <e> leads to some, well, funny situations. To take a recent Olympic example, the marvellous sport of Curling was, in all sensible Slovene newspapers, written kerling, which any sensible Slovene would read as [kErlink]. Glory to the ignorant.
***Well, not always. Most Slovene linguists claim that this is rather a short/long distinction (grave for short vowels, circumflex for long), but suffice to say that they themselves have great problems distinguishing between the two when asked to provide a phonetic transcription. Same goes for tonemic accent. (Rather comically, the book used by Slovene students in the first year of secondary school states that 'many world languages, even Chinese, distinguish different vowel tones'.)
In these lessons, I will alert you when caution of pronunciation is needed, especially with the almighty schwa.
Slovene has 20 consonant phonemes:
/p b t d k g f v ts) s z tS) S Z x m n l r j/
<p b t d k g f v c s z č ? ? h m n l r j/
Symbols that need to be especially noted are bolded.
Some (more or less) phonetical notes about consonant pronunciation:
1. /v/ is either [w], [W], [v] or [u_^], depending on the following sound. A general guideline should be to pronounce it as [w] at the end of a word and before consonants, and [v] before vowels.
ADDED: 2. /l/ is either [l] or [u_^], depending on the following sound. It should be pronounced as [u_^] at the end of a word and before /n/, and [l] before vowels and other consonants. However, these rules do not always apply. I'll try to indicate cases when they don't.
3. /r/ can be trilled or tapped; most people can trill it whenever they want to (for emphasis or anything else). When it occurs (orthographically) between two consonants (as in trg, vrt or prst), it is pronounced [@r].
4. When voiced non-sonorant consonants appear before unvoiced consonants or at the end of a word, they are pronounced unvoiced. Similarly, when unvoiced consonants appear before voiced non-sonorant consonants, they are pronounced voiced.
First of all, note that /tS)/ is pronounced [dZ)] before voiced consonants - similarly /ts)/ as [dz)] - and that phonemic /dZ)/ only appears in some loanwords (such as d?em 'jam, marmalade'). Also, the rule does not apply for the consonants /f v x/; note that /v/ is essentially a sonorant in Slovene (most sources of Slovene phonemics categorise it as such), and that /f/ does not have a pair because it is a 'loan-sound'.**** /x/, actually, is pronounced as [G] in appropriate environments, but the concept of a voiced velar fricative is very probably something much too complicated for people who write books on Slovene phonology.***** In short, it really isn't important.
****An interesting story here is the origin of the Slovene surname Leban - it derives from the name whose English cognate is Phillip, but since old Slovene had no /f/, the first syllable was simply omitted.
*****Experts for Slovene aren't really linguistical experts, actually, not even in something as simple as phonology. The other day I tried to explain the concept of the Arabic glottal stop being phonemic to my Slovene teacher, and it proved a more or less futile task. However, she corrects inaccurately pronounced /v/'s with terrifying strictness.
Also, note that stress is irregular in Slovene, so you just have to learn it. It mostly falls on the penultimate syllable; when it doesn't, I'll indicate it with an acute over the vowel, replaced with a circumflex if it is /E/ or /O/. (As an afterthought, I'll mark them with circumflexes when they are stressed, always.) (The only good thing about Slovene stress is that /e o/ [e o] are never non-stressed, which simplifies things. Somewhat. Some linguists also seem to claim that /@/ is never stressed, but you shouldn't believe them.)
And now, on to the serious stuff. We shall begin with something simple enough, which are Personal Pronouns.
1.3. Personal Pronouns - Osebni zaimki
Whether you are inclined to believe it or not, Slovene does have personal pronouns for more than two persons, and they aren't really all that hard. In this lesson, the nominative forms will be cited (the others will come in subsequent lessons, together with all the five (yes, five) other cases).
There are singular forms:
jaz - I
ti - you
?n/?na/?no - he/she/it
(There are three genders in Slovene, of course - masculine, feminine and neuter.)
And there are plural forms:
mi - we
vi - you (pl)
?ni/?ne/?na - they(masc)/they(fem)/they(neut)
And there are Dual forms:
midva/midve - we two
vidva/vidve - you two
?nadv?/?nidv?/?nidv? - they two
Note the masculine/feminine distinction in the first and second person dual, which is quite cool, and the masculine/feminine/neuter distinction in the third person dual, which is even cooler. (EDIT: I've only just realised that the secondary stress in the third person dual forms makes the final e's pronounced as [e], which shouldn't bother you. Primary stress is still on ?.)
Learn these pronouns, and learn them well! Once you get to know a bit more Slovene, you will learn that they are really not used all that much, but they are good to know.
1.4. Some Notes on the Dual - Nekaj pripomb o dvojini
The Dual is one of the perhaps most widely known, and arguably one of the most beautiful, features of Slovene.****** It occurs as a grammatical number everywhere a grammatical number should (in an IE language at least) - in nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Well, yes, it is difficult to grasp, but nothing beats the fact that your language distinguishes whether you were on a romantic dinner with just one person - or, well, several. ('We had a romantic dinner yesterday' is just too ambiguous, really...)
This lesson's Vocabulary includes personal pronouns and the following (colloquial) greetings:
?ivjo! (Hello!)
Adijo! (Goodbye!)
D?bro jutro! (Good morning!)
Dober dan! (Good day!) Note that the <e> in dober is a schwa. This is the most common greeting you'll hear, ofter contracted just to dan.
Dober več?r! (Good evening!)
And the following phrases:
Hvala. (thank [you])
Prosim. (please - in all senses of the word)
Ni za kaj. (you're welcome) Colloquially, you'll hear [ni za kE_"j].
In the next lesson, we will take a look at the multitude of different declensions nouns have, how to distinguish those same nouns' grammatical gender, and some basic verbs.
******It would be closely followed by the fact that there are bunch of different ways in which to curse your neighbour, including some neat non-subject ones.
(Sorry for the lack of the hačeks in the post title. It looks really horrible, but the other option (with codes) is even more horrible.)
I'm already looking forward to your next lesson but don't worry if it takes some time to make them as that usually improves quality.
I'll fix it.
And I'll second what Klaivas (I hope you dont mind me dropping those dashes in your nick, writing them in the middle of a sentence that feels too weird) said about the exercises, I like them too