Slovenian - a language for lovebirds
Thread poster: Paul Dixon
Paul Dixon
Paul Dixon  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 18:27
Portuguese to English
+ ...
Jul 7, 2010

Dober dan,

Please excuse me for writing in English, as I only know a few words of Slovenian.

I am a great admirer of the beauty of sLOVEnia and actually got as far as buying a phrase book in Slovene - however, the difficulty of the language was too much.

However, one thing that caught my eye was the fact that you have the dual form, which makes Slovene a very romantic language.

I have a posting on my blog (in English and Portuguese) about this
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Dober dan,

Please excuse me for writing in English, as I only know a few words of Slovenian.

I am a great admirer of the beauty of sLOVEnia and actually got as far as buying a phrase book in Slovene - however, the difficulty of the language was too much.

However, one thing that caught my eye was the fact that you have the dual form, which makes Slovene a very romantic language.

I have a posting on my blog (in English and Portuguese) about this issue:

http://paul-translator.blogspot.com/2010/06/romance-of-dual-form-o-romance-da-forma.html
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Ana Malovrh
Ana Malovrh  Identity Verified
Slovenia
Local time: 22:27
German to Slovenian
+ ...
A quotation :) Jul 7, 2010

As Slovenian poet Dane Zajc said:

»Mother and I are my first experience of duality. /…/ As though the two of us were alone in the world. /…/ Only later, father, brothers, both sisters cross the threshold into my memories; plurality enters, and with it, the world. /…/ There are many things I remember doing when I was a child. But my most vivid recollections are of things I did with another, in twos. /…/ A love poem in a foreign language remains alien to me unless I can disco
... See more
As Slovenian poet Dane Zajc said:

»Mother and I are my first experience of duality. /…/ As though the two of us were alone in the world. /…/ Only later, father, brothers, both sisters cross the threshold into my memories; plurality enters, and with it, the world. /…/ There are many things I remember doing when I was a child. But my most vivid recollections are of things I did with another, in twos. /…/ A love poem in a foreign language remains alien to me unless I can discover from the context that the lyrical plot unfolds in the dual. I can only »think« love in the dual. /…/ The singular is to the dual and to the plural as solitude (to be alone) is to trust, trustfulness and intimacy (to be two) and finally, to the world, which is plurality. The bridge which links the condition of being one (alone) with the condition to being in the world is that most enigmatic of bridges: being two« (Lenček).

I guess you already found out about the 6 noun cases. Although Polish has even 7 (The old Indo-European language had originally 8)!

I was interested in language history back when I was still a student and it is fascinating to me that the Indo-European language had dual, so basically all Indo-European languages had dual somewhere in the past. It is just that in Slovenian and some other languages like Sorbian it stayed preserved.


If you have any questions, feel free to write me an email.
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feet01
feet01
Local time: 22:27
singular, plural & dual Sep 16, 2011

GerSi wrote:
As Slovenian poet Dane Zajc said:

I can only »think« love in the dual. /…/ The singular is to the dual and to the plural as solitude (to be alone) is to trust, trustfulness and intimacy (to be two) and finally, to the world, which is plurality. The bridge which links the condition of being one (alone) with the condition to being in the world is that most enigmatic of bridges: being two« (Lenček).


That is said very beautifully!
Before, I thought that dual (as in Old Church Slavonic) is very complicated.

After I read this, I concluded:

I cannot express my love in dual
'Cause my language only has singular & plural...

(my language=Croatian)


[Edited at 2011-09-16 18:07 GMT]


 


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Slovenian - a language for lovebirds






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