Hey Lindsay! I am from Slovenia and it is so awesome that you came to visit our country. Here are a few things: 1. The word 'okus' actualy means flavor, and the word 'kepica' means a scoop. 2. 'Novo' actually is a word. We have 'nova' used for feminine nouns (ex. Nova majica- New shirt), 'nov' is used for masculine nouns (ex. Nov čevelj- New shoe.) and 'novo' is used for the neuter nouns (ex. Novo Mesto (a town in Slovenia)- New Town). We also have a feminine form in plural which is 'nove' (ex. Nove majice- New shirts) and a masculine form in plural as well which is 'novi' (ex. Novi čevlji- New shoes) 3. When speaking words which include 'j', you pronounce them as a 'y' (ex. Zajtrk (breakfast) is pronounced as zaytrk), also the words with 'c' aren't pronounced like 'k' (ex. kepica (scoop) is pronounced something like kepitsa) 4. Slovenia is divided into regions and somehow each region has it's own type of an accent. The region, closest to Italy has definitely some Italian pronounciation, we even use some italian words, but we change them a bit (ex. le scale (stairs)- škale (correct Slovenian form is 'stopnice')). I hope I helped you with anything and you should keep going with Slovenian, you are doing really good :)
In slavic languages the letter "j" is always pronounced like you would pronounce the letter "y". In Slovenia we would write York like Jork. Our letter "j" is the equivalent of your "y".
Hello, I am from Venezuela and I have one year living in Slovenia and for me, it`s very difficult language. First about the ending of the words is because you are using the grammar case or because you are using singular or plural (for two and more, which is different ending also / for me was very confuse jajaja). Now I just try to talk without thinking a lot about what grammar case I am using and is easier. Also in the Spanish language, we don`t have š, č and ž, so the pronunciations were crazy. Other things were female, male and neutral...and so on. I like a lot to live here, is a beautiful country and Ljubljana is a fairytale, I just love it, very clean city and the people are very nice and polite. I just to speak, read and understand very good Slovenian language and live here forever.
I literally lost my shit when you said you thought that 'VSTOPI' meant to STOP 😂😂😂 you gave me a great idea for a prank 😂 also, great to hear you like our little country 😊
Haha. Frizer may come from German into Slovenian, but it definitely comes from the French "friseur", "curler". Which is a word that is definitely not used anymore in French nowadays.
The Slovenian language is very codified, because through our history, we were constantly told by our italian and german/austrian neighbours, that our language is a primitive language, not advanced enough for poetry and literature, so we proved them wrong by making it really complicated (even most Slovenes have problems with the grammer - one of the most dreaded things in school).
Okus=flavor,taste kepica=scoop In Slovenia we usually buy icecram by half scoop, like half strawberry and half chocolate so at the end you usually get two scoops for the price of one.In this case they charge extra for every flavor that you add to one scoop :D
Hi Lindsay, nice video! I an expat living in Slovenia and I can tell you, the language can be pretty confusing at the beginning. Especially the DUAL which you where talking about. I just don't have the category in my brain to think of thing as TWO so it takes while to learn to use it :) Greetings from Slovenia!
In the coastal region, the dialect sound almost like Italian. Durring a wisit to Berlin few years back, a german girl started an argument with me about the dialect. It sounded so italian that she refused to belive it was slovenian - she thought we were mocking her and became really angry. The friend who is from the coast then finally managed to explain to her that it really was slovenian and not italian. The intonation of the dialect is totaly italian, but the word's arent (at least no all of them :-)). They sometimes get mocked in Slovenia for that reason. On the other hand, in the north of the country you would see much more german and austrian influences. There the dialects there are much more infected with german words or words apropriated from the german languge.
A bit of trivia: you can break down "vstopi" into "v" (eng. in) + "stopi" (eng. to step), therefore "vstopi" = step into, enter Though at first glance the word must seem really out of place on all the entrances :)
Happy that you enjoyed our country. :D Yea slovenian language has many rules. The country was formed in 1991, after Yugoslavia disintegrated. Even before Yugoslavia there were many wars here, and slovenia was devided beetween countrys that now surend it. Because of that nowdays we still have some words in diferent regions (parts of Slovenia) that sound like german, italian, hungarian, but trough time we changed them to fit our language. Like: plate is krožnik in slo. language, but in my region we mostly use the word: taler (Teller in german), vinegar = kis -> jesih (Essig), soap = milo -> žajfa (Seife)...same happend by italian border or hungarian border...What is funny about this, is that if two people from diferent end of Slovenia meet, they are forced to talk in strict slovenian language or they would not understand eachother.
You were not just hearing things... my friend who's from the UK also said that he could hear some of the Italian "rhythem" while listening to Slovenians speak
In Slovenia are many dialects, which sound very different. Almost all dialects dont have dual, just one or two. But important slovene writers were from there, in that way dual come in formal language. MESTO have more meanings. It could be PLACE. If has some words around has other meaning. Downtown, city center, old town, Or It could be a name of a town. Novo mesto is a town near Croatia. It means New town. It is a old town, which was known as Rudolfstat in german. Mesto is gender neutral and a lot of Slovenians get confused. The ending O usually is design for neutral. So the declination is mesto, mesta, mestu, mesto, pri mestu z mestom. Dual: dve mesti, dveh mest, dvema mestoma, dve mesti, pri dveh mestih z dvema mestoma. But the majority of Slovenian will saj insted dve mesti, dva mesta. like in plural. Dual is not so used in spoken language except when you want emphasize the number two, like two flavours. Dva okusa. If you would meet with two people, you can hear: we come here - Mi smo prišli insted (plural) of Midva sva prišla. The melody is different from other slavic language, so for them is hard to understand the words with different intonation. There are also false friends as the word UTRUJEN (m) UTRUJENA(f) (tired), the short version is TRUDEN/TRUDNA. But in Croatian word TRUDNA (f) means pregnant.
If you know german you know that the word slightly canges with the different cases too not only in plural and we in Slovenia have even more of those cases (6) where the words get different endings in different situations in the sentances. Like 1 kepica sladoleta would mean: 1 skoop of ice cream (and yeah we add the a for the male words, i or e for female words) well yeah it's kinda tricky to understand
Lovely video. A couple of things though: 1. The way you said "dober dan"(good day) it sounded like you were Czech or Slovak, we pronounce the r (as in read or revel) at the end. 2. The ending changing that you saw with "sladoled" (ice cream) is declination into different cases. Slovene has 6 cases to denote the grammatical function of a noun, adjective and a number of other words (but not verbs). 3. Matters with cases are further complicated by gender (male, female, neutral), dual (in addition to singular and plural), and the fact that cases enable a relative freedom in deciding the word order. For example: "Pobral sem kozarec z mize," and "Z mize sem pobral kozarec," and even "Sem z mize pobral kozarec," all mean exactly the same (I picked a glass of a table). 4. Throw in 3 (technically 4, we don't really use past perfect) tenses (past, present and future) and you've got your self maybe halfway trough Slovene. 5. Pronunciation can be difficult because same letters (in English, French, German ...) denote different sounds in Slovene. "K" and "C" don't sound the same; "k" sounds like it does in 'kill' or how 'c' sounds like in 'cats' and "c" sounds like 'ts' in 'cats'. "J" sounds like 'y' in 'why' or 'yes'. And don't even get me started on č, š, ž sounds (ch_arge, sh_in, vi_s_ion en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_alphabet). 5. A small matter of wide and narrow e (Ɛ, e) and o (Ɔ, o), plus the Ə (vowels). As I said, a lovely video and come back soon!
I've heard that too! It sounds like a really pretty lovechild of Russian (the extra usage of c,s, etc) and Italian (flow and character) so pretty to listen to!
I like this updated format on your "learning X in country Y" videos, I feel a bit smarter from watching it when you are reviewing things this way. It is also interesting how you study the morphology of these words, and also recycle knowledge from other languages to help you along with the way with getting a feel for the place. By the way, the word for hairdresser in Danish (which I am still currently strugging with) is "frisør", so I could also understand straight away that it was a slovenian hairdresser when you showed that picture!
true.. especially in Koper because it's so close to Italy. I live in Koper and we quite rarely use dual form. although in other cities they use it more often
I think that it is so cool, that you like our language😇, your pronounciation could use a little bit of work, but yeah Slovenian IS a really hard language to learnand I am actually surprised that you can speak that well😅congrats!😉
when you count stuff in slovenia 1 slodoled, 2 sladoleda, 3-4 sladoledi, 5+ sladoledov and then there is a diiffernet form for using the word one ice cream two ice cream 3+ ice cream sladoled sladoleda sladoledi sladoleda sladoledov sladoledov sladoledu sladoledoma sladoledom sladoled sladoleda sladolede o sladoledu o sladoledih o sladoledih z sladoledom z sladoledoma z sladoledi
The native speakers or learners do not really perceive that, but oh my gosh.. otrok, in the Czech language, which is my mother's tongue, doesn't mean child, but it's slave or serf. It might be like that because of history, I'm not really sure but for me, it sounds horrible.
Nova is new in feminine form. The world 'dress' has a feminine gender so a new dress would be 'nova obleka' A 'bike' is neuter so a new bike would be 'novo kolo'. A 'chair' is masculine so a new chair would be 'nov stol' English obviously does not have gender at all so this is probably hard to understand for a native english speaker. There are also cases (6 of them) which also influence the way a word is written (novemu, novega, novih etc.), and the numbers.
Hey Lindsay! I am from Slovenia and it is so awesome that you came to visit our country.
Here are a few things:
1. The word 'okus' actualy means flavor, and the word 'kepica' means a scoop.
2. 'Novo' actually is a word. We have 'nova' used for feminine nouns (ex. Nova majica- New shirt), 'nov' is used for masculine nouns (ex. Nov čevelj- New shoe.) and 'novo' is used for the neuter nouns (ex. Novo Mesto (a town in Slovenia)- New Town). We also have a feminine form in plural which is 'nove' (ex. Nove majice- New shirts) and a masculine form in plural as well which is 'novi' (ex. Novi čevlji- New shoes)
3. When speaking words which include 'j', you pronounce them as a 'y' (ex. Zajtrk (breakfast) is pronounced as zaytrk), also the words with 'c' aren't pronounced like 'k' (ex. kepica (scoop) is pronounced something like kepitsa)
4. Slovenia is divided into regions and somehow each region has it's own type of an accent. The region, closest to Italy has definitely some Italian pronounciation, we even use some italian words, but we change them a bit (ex. le scale (stairs)- škale (correct Slovenian form is 'stopnice')).
I hope I helped you with anything and you should keep going with Slovenian, you are doing really good :)
In slavic languages the letter "j" is always pronounced like you would pronounce the letter "y". In Slovenia we would write York like Jork. Our letter "j" is the equivalent of your "y".
its nice to see foreigners speak Slovene :) you were great !!!!
hahaha se strinjam...
i live in slovenia it's sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo cool
Hello, I am from Venezuela and I have one year living in Slovenia and for me, it`s very difficult language. First about the ending of the words is because you are using the grammar case or because you are using singular or plural (for two and more, which is different ending also / for me was very confuse jajaja). Now I just try to talk without thinking a lot about what grammar case I am using and is easier. Also in the Spanish language, we don`t have š, č and ž, so the pronunciations were crazy. Other things were female, male and neutral...and so on. I like a lot to live here, is a beautiful country and Ljubljana is a fairytale, I just love it, very clean city and the people are very nice and polite. I just to speak, read and understand very good Slovenian language and live here forever.
I literally lost my shit when you said you thought that 'VSTOPI' meant to STOP 😂😂😂 you gave me a great idea for a prank 😂 also, great to hear you like our little country 😊
Haha. Frizer may come from German into Slovenian, but it definitely comes from the French "friseur", "curler". Which is a word that is definitely not used anymore in French nowadays.
The Slovenian language is very codified, because through our history, we were constantly told by our italian and german/austrian neighbours, that our language is a primitive language, not advanced enough for poetry and literature, so we proved them wrong by making it really complicated (even most Slovenes have problems with the grammer - one of the most dreaded things in school).
Okus=flavor,taste
kepica=scoop
In Slovenia we usually buy icecram by half scoop, like half strawberry and half chocolate so at the end you usually get two scoops for the price of one.In this case they charge extra for every flavor that you add to one scoop :D
Hi Lindsay, nice video! I an expat living in Slovenia and I can tell you, the language can be pretty confusing at the beginning. Especially the DUAL which you where talking about. I just don't have the category in my brain to think of thing as TWO so it takes while to learn to use it :) Greetings from Slovenia!
Yea in some parts of Slovenia we speak slovenian and italian 😄 ... So yea we got that Italian rythm
It is always a nightmare for me to explain dual form to foreigners...nice video XD
stopiti=step
vstopiti=step in/enter
izstopiti=step out/exit
In the coastal region, the dialect sound almost like Italian. Durring a wisit to Berlin few years back, a german girl started an argument with me about the dialect. It sounded so italian that she refused to belive it was slovenian - she thought we were mocking her and became really angry. The friend who is from the coast then finally managed to explain to her that it really was slovenian and not italian. The intonation of the dialect is totaly italian, but the word's arent (at least no all of them :-)). They sometimes get mocked in Slovenia for that reason. On the other hand, in the north of the country you would see much more german and austrian influences. There the dialects there are much more infected with german words or words apropriated from the german languge.
Thanks for sharing your amazing experience. Have a wonderful day
A bit of trivia: you can break down "vstopi" into "v" (eng. in) + "stopi" (eng. to step), therefore "vstopi" = step into, enter
Though at first glance the word must seem really out of place on all the entrances :)
Happy that you enjoyed our country. :D Yea slovenian language has many rules. The country was formed in 1991, after Yugoslavia disintegrated. Even before Yugoslavia there were many wars here, and slovenia was devided beetween countrys that now surend it. Because of that nowdays we still have some words in diferent regions (parts of Slovenia) that sound like german, italian, hungarian, but trough time we changed them to fit our language. Like:
plate is krožnik in slo. language, but in my region we mostly use the word: taler (Teller in german), vinegar = kis -> jesih (Essig), soap = milo -> žajfa (Seife)...same happend by italian border or hungarian border...What is funny about this, is that if two people from diferent end of Slovenia meet, they are forced to talk in strict slovenian language or they would not understand eachother.
I enjoyed the whole Sherlock Holmes approach to Slovenian. Cheers!
Very nicely done video and gives me great advice for the future.
Slovenia is not eastern european...
You were not just hearing things... my friend who's from the UK also said that he could hear some of the Italian "rhythem" while listening to Slovenians speak
vstop realy means enter 😀
In Slovenia are many dialects, which sound very different. Almost all dialects dont have dual, just one or two. But important slovene writers were from there, in that way dual come in formal language. MESTO have more meanings. It could be PLACE. If has some words around has other meaning. Downtown, city center, old town, Or It could be a name of a town. Novo mesto is a town near Croatia. It means New town. It is a old town, which was known as Rudolfstat in german. Mesto is gender neutral and a lot of Slovenians get confused. The ending O usually is design for neutral. So the declination is mesto, mesta, mestu, mesto, pri mestu z mestom. Dual: dve mesti, dveh mest, dvema mestoma, dve mesti, pri dveh mestih z dvema mestoma. But the majority of Slovenian will saj insted dve mesti, dva mesta. like in plural. Dual is not so used in spoken language except when you want emphasize the number two, like two flavours. Dva okusa. If you would meet with two people, you can hear: we come here - Mi smo prišli insted (plural) of Midva sva prišla. The melody is different from other slavic language, so for them is hard to understand the words with different intonation. There are also false friends as the word UTRUJEN (m) UTRUJENA(f) (tired), the short version is TRUDEN/TRUDNA. But in Croatian word TRUDNA (f) means pregnant.
Thanks for visiting! :D
If you know german you know that the word slightly canges with the different cases too not only in plural and we in Slovenia have even more of those cases (6) where the words get different endings in different situations in the sentances. Like 1 kepica sladoleta would mean: 1 skoop of ice cream (and yeah we add the a for the male words, i or e for female words) well yeah it's kinda tricky to understand
Lovely video. A couple of things though:
1. The way you said "dober dan"(good day) it sounded like you were Czech or Slovak, we pronounce the r (as in read or revel) at the end.
2. The ending changing that you saw with "sladoled" (ice cream) is declination into different cases. Slovene has 6 cases to denote the grammatical function of a noun, adjective and a number of other words (but not verbs).
3. Matters with cases are further complicated by gender (male, female, neutral), dual (in addition to singular and plural), and the fact that cases enable a relative freedom in deciding the word order. For example: "Pobral sem kozarec z mize," and "Z mize sem pobral kozarec," and even "Sem z mize pobral kozarec," all mean exactly the same (I picked a glass of a table).
4. Throw in 3 (technically 4, we don't really use past perfect) tenses (past, present and future) and you've got your self maybe halfway trough Slovene.
5. Pronunciation can be difficult because same letters (in English, French, German ...) denote different sounds in Slovene. "K" and "C" don't sound the same; "k" sounds like it does in 'kill' or how 'c' sounds like in 'cats' and "c" sounds like 'ts' in 'cats'. "J" sounds like 'y' in 'why' or 'yes'. And don't even get me started on č, š, ž sounds (ch_arge, sh_in, vi_s_ion en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_alphabet).
5. A small matter of wide and narrow e (Ɛ, e) and o (Ɔ, o), plus the Ə (vowels).
As I said, a lovely video and come back soon!
Emona is old name for Ljubljana
I've had a similar confusion about the name and still do not know the answer. But thanks for coming to our region though :)
I've heard that too! It sounds like a really pretty lovechild of Russian (the extra usage of c,s, etc) and Italian (flow and character) so pretty to listen to!
Heyyy!!! I em from slovenia💛💛
okus = flavour
kepica = scoop :)
yes, there are cases!
I like this updated format on your "learning X in country Y" videos, I feel a bit smarter from watching it when you are reviewing things this way. It is also interesting how you study the morphology of these words, and also recycle knowledge from other languages to help you along with the way with getting a feel for the place. By the way, the word for hairdresser in Danish (which I am still currently strugging with) is "frisør", so I could also understand straight away that it was a slovenian hairdresser when you showed that picture!
In Slovenian language we pronouce the words as we read them.:)
it is amazing! thanks for sharing this, I am big fan of yours so continue to do this beautiful work. a lot of kisses and hugs from a fan :)))) :3
yes we Slovenes sure have a dual....... and genders offcourse..... it's really hard in school when you have to learn everything about it
About dual form when you say "you can use this different ending"..
Some simply use plural instead of dual, however that's grammatically incorrect. :P
true.. especially in Koper because it's so close to Italy. I live in Koper and we quite rarely use dual form. although in other cities they use it more often
da vidimo koliko znaš slovencko ce me razumes 👍malo vadi na izgovorjavi
I am fromSlovenia too.....Čav kakoste vsi?
yeah we have words that have 1st 2nd and 3rd i mean it is hard to explain we have word for 2 people 1 human and 3 people i dont know how to say it....
hvala thanks
Good to know
SLOVENIA.INFO is wonderful.
deferent types of wors are called sklanjanje
I think that it is so cool, that you like our language😇, your pronounciation could use a little bit of work, but yeah Slovenian IS a really hard language to learnand I am actually surprised that you can speak that well😅congrats!😉
Ko berem tole vidim, da je naš jezik res zakompliciran in težak :)
when you count stuff in slovenia 1 slodoled, 2 sladoleda, 3-4 sladoledi, 5+ sladoledov
and then there is a diiffernet form for using the word one ice cream two ice cream 3+ ice cream
sladoled sladoleda sladoledi
sladoleda sladoledov sladoledov
sladoledu sladoledoma sladoledom
sladoled sladoleda sladolede
o sladoledu o sladoledih o sladoledih
z sladoledom z sladoledoma z sladoledi
you were really good! just wanted to point out if a word ends in a "d" , it is pronounced as a "t" :D
sladoled = ice cream
something sladoleda = something of sladoled.
easy.
once again, knowledge of slovak language helps there
yey, i've got heart from you:) ! trivia: sladký = sweet (in slovak), led = ice (in czech)
l am from Slovenia
Okus means flavour :)
Živjo:)
I live in Slovenia
Zivjo jaz prihajam iz slovenije
okus =flavour
I'm from Slovenia
Slovene language is very difficult
doberdan kako si? do you know what I said?
Vstop is 2 words "combined":
V - IN
STOP - STEP
Like you can step in the bus...
Živijo
ja slovensko je govoriti težko
The native speakers or learners do not really perceive that, but oh my gosh.. otrok, in the Czech language, which is my mother's tongue, doesn't mean child, but it's slave or serf. It might be like that because of history, I'm not really sure but for me, it sounds horrible.
but you have words like:
gori: up
gori moutain
gori: fire
so its a toung bresker: gori na gori gori
i am slovenian
Nova is new in feminine form.
The world 'dress' has a feminine gender so a new dress would be 'nova obleka'
A 'bike' is neuter so a new bike would be 'novo kolo'.
A 'chair' is masculine so a new chair would be 'nov stol'
English obviously does not have gender at all so this is probably hard to understand for a native english speaker.
There are also cases (6 of them) which also influence the way a word is written (novemu, novega, novih etc.), and the numbers.
italian rythem-only in the part you were in
mesta- dvojina
Ice cream everywhere? And this a problem? ^_-
Jabolka is pronounced
Ya-bow-ka
I am from slovenia -_-
mesni burek xD
vrata=Doors
kaj=what
I live in Slovenija. TI NEZNAŽ GOVORITI SLOVENSKO
Lol izgovorjava
I live in Slovenia
Okus means flavour :)