Talk:Slovene language/Archive 1

This language

I just didn't understand the following at all.

One of the characteristics of this language is the future tense where we have

bom bos bo bomo boste bodo plus past participle.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Larry Sanger (talk • contribs) 20:05, 14 September 2001 (UTC)

"Dual" is a concept unfamiliar to speakers of English and most Western European languages - you need to explain that one with lots of examples!

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i always thought that no Slavic language still had "dual" numbers. In Polish we have few archaical remnants in few proverbs and in some sentences (madrej glowie dosc dwie slowie, instead of: madrej glowie dosc dwa slowa as it should be in modern usage and similar...). Very interesting.

And i actually understand examples :) video is "i see", right? [[szopen]]

Upha. It is very challeging for me to explain my own native language here but I have to keep in mind I am not strictly speaking some grammarian, linguist; philologist or Slovenist ? (= slovenist) - an expert for Slovenistics ? (= slovenistika). Yes szopen you have understand that correctly but unfortunately this particular case was written uncorectly. Let me show. It is simple. That particular verb (= glagol) previous written as absurd in Slovene video (= to see) must be written (On je) videl (= (He) saw). Verb to see is videti and thus it is the "word" all should search in Slovene dictionary of literary (written) language of any kind. My reference for this is Slovar slovenskega knjižnega jezika -a very thick book unbearable even for Slovenes because of its weight, ha, ha. Its computer version 1.0 is more preferable for comp users. This book was written with a great deal of help from computational scientist Primož Jakopin who had recently made his doctor's degree on subjects of the similar field. By his own in early 1980-ies he made some programmes mainly with and on ATARI computers - which made creation of such huge work possible. Authors had also rejected the project to be done with TeX posibilities. So video is like we would depravated say, (or better write) to syea or something like that.

Another back question goes to Derek Ross. What have you changed in your last edition of main article with spelling. I think Slovene spelling is very tuff subject to explain for an average speaker to non - Slovene beginner. Main differents goes to the famouos, let us say anti ASCII leters Č, Š and Ž. Some briefly for these characters write: "C, "S, "Z. In TeX for example is another muddle. According to original Knuth's notation it should be roughly written as \v{c}, \v{s}, \v{z}. I use up to now the oldfashioned and very bad notation based on old DOS and early Windows applications Slavic ASCII characters adopted in Former Yugoslavia as ^, [, @ for capitals (initials)and ~, {, ` for small letters, thus across TeX macro we get weird \^, \[, \@ and \~, \{, \`. This is absolutely bad acceptance for TeX but we won't get into details here. I'll just write that we fall into TeX's proper problems (i.e. math mode and of course the Knuth's 'theory' of hyphenization). These kind of questions are usually solved by TeXCeH a Slovene TeX users group, but they mainly deal with LaTeX which is not bijective to TeX.

So spelling would be treated soon. //Hey XJ look up more carefully spelling not pronunciation. My mistake but let it stay because spelling and pronunciation are somehow conected. I'll give here some example how to pronounce those three Letters Ch, Sh, Zh.

čok (almost like chalk, meaning tree-stump)

šok (almost like shock, meaning of course shock)

žolč (almost like coach if we swap [/kouch/] to [/jouch/] meaning strangely gall) Lep pozdrav (Nice greetings) Rastafire 4 Tuesday (2002.02.28) (0)

videti and videl are even more familiar (widzieć, widział) than video... And Szok and Żółć are almost the same. Problems with TeX are it seems also quite similar. Rastafire, if Slovene is name for your nation, then how you call all Slavs? I mean, Slovene sounds almost like Slowianie... [[szopen]]

Simple. We call them Slovani, singular Slovan. I wasn't aware of such similarities beetwen Polish and Slovene language. I know a lot (for me perhaps at most) similarities with plain and pure Russian language. If they use other alphabet, it does not make any difference to me. We are neighbouring to Croatia and I think with this statement I can open some serious debate which language is the most similar to Slovene one. All would say that Croatian language and Serbian language - sometimes both called together as Serbo-Croatian language are, Bosnian language. Some say that this language is Bulgarian language, or Czech language and for Slovenes harder Slovak language. There are a lot of similarities of course with Macedonian language, but let my statement ramains. (Don't kill me for nothing because of that]]. I can't comprehend Polish alphabet too. Can you give us the whole one? In Slovene language there are 25 unique letters and thus characters, but in computers' world it's a little bit different. Let me write

A,B,C,Č,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,R,S,Š,T,U,V,Z,Ž.

(Western ones Q,W,X,Y are excluded, some Southern Slavic characters too Ć,Đ, but in our encyclopedia's we use them all. This goes to Zundark's strict demand to use here only and only English sorting what in the end makes a lot of sence. We small nations respect the greater ones and it should be vice versa. So you can imagine Slovene programmers to implement even some easy and standard sorting methods. Dear Polish M8 I am also interested in Russian influence (bad or good) to Polish nation. Živjo (Bye)
--XJam 4 Tuesday (2002.02.28) (1st ed.)

Polish alphabet : A Ą B C Ć D E Ę F G H I J K L Ł M N Ń O Ó P R S Ś T U W X Y Z Ż Ź

In fact i very often heard and read that X isn't part of Polish alphabet, but it is used very widely. We don't use Q or V, except for foreign words. Ą, Ę are nasal vowels, sometimes degenerating into simple om and en, ó is the same as u, and Ć,Ś and Ń are sof C,S and N. Ł is like w in english wood. Ż is like Zh, ź is soft Z. Of course we have also ch, sz, cz, rz to denote some sounds: ch is the same as h (this is purely historical difference, once they were pronounced differently) rz is like ż (again, historical difference), sz like sh, cz like ch in english. When we want to have some fun from foreigner, we ask him to repeat suchą szosą Sasza szedł or Nie pieprz Pietrze wieprza pieprzem, or, the best, w Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie. No one Westerner is able to pronounce that :)

I guess all Slavic languages are more or less comprehensible. I remember when i was in Czech as a kid, i could easily communicate with Czechs. Except, of course, that i have to hold my laugh :). And, interestingly, one of Arabs i know told me once that he wasn;t able once to tell difference between French, Polish and other European languages...

In Russian influence, i guess you mean linguistic: well, we had it a lot. They are called rusycyzmy and are words and order of words in sentence etc, and they are generally discouraged (heh, i came from city where having a good mark from Russian was generally considered bad idea).

Anyway, Wikipedia policy is against chats on talk pages, so i suppose we would have to end it :-(. Trzymaj sie cieplo (keep warm (or something like that)), szopen

Hey man. VERY VERY VERY VERY INTERESTING. Thank you very much. This is more than just pure chat for me. I meant all kind of Russian influence but thanks anyway. Try the same to say this from Slovene: Klop pod kopljo again very fast. It's hard to say even for us, ha, ha. Polish rusycyzmy is Slovene rusizem, and plural rusizmi. Is singular in Polish as rusycyz(e)m, correct? Spasibo
--XJam 4 Tuesday (2002.02.28) (2st ed.)

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To Primož

Yes Primož, I do not want to be a hairsplitter, but I had really found the mixed terms "Freising manuscripts" (which is OK) and "wrong" term "Freisinger monuments" (German - English mixture). You can check this strange statements (navedbe) all around. But I can spare you that time. This was not my typo mistake, so I'll leave what you had corrected. As we all know, English speaking people sometimes use dirrect German phrases as f.l.a.k., Gauss Einsatz, and so on. Best regard. -- XJamRastafire 08:02 Jul 26, 2002 (PDT)

To user:Damian Yerrick QUOTE Western proper nouns or toponyms are not translated in full, as they are in Slavic languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet, such as Russian or Serbian./QUOTE -- Good guess, but sorry, look at the http://www.vets.edu.yu/im/htm/Radionica/Matematicari/Njutn.htm or http://www.medijaklub.cg.yu/kultura/arhiva/11-00/7-11.htm for example of "Njutn". Not only Cyrillic-script Serbian, but Croatian, Bosnian etc. So I changed this paragraph. user:Vassili Nikolaev

Yes, Vassili a good point. And let us clear this a bit more. Your first and second URL are all written and come from a Serbian 'teritory'. It shows off. Croats and Bosnians use strictly Western names. This is in fact somekind of an agreement and I think Damian is not right. Your restoration is therefore correct. I've seen a lot of text continuing both - names in written form and in original form (e.g. Njutn (Newton)), but I've seen even more texts without both forms. For instance I have one good Serbian university textbook from the astronomy, written in Latin, but without original Western names for astronomers. I can't get a full help from its index because I still don't know for some astronomers stated there. Serbs usually say: Pisi kao sto govoris (Write as you speak). Croats could decide to write as Serbs - but obviously they didn't. You can compare these two further Serbian and Croatian URLs -- XJamRastafire 11:14 Aug 27, 2002 (PDT)

To XJamRastafire. Thanks for explanation, I was not sure about Bosnain and Croatian, now I know that only Serbian change original Western names. I think this is because Cyrillic is considered a main Serbian script and Latin script just follows Cyrillic spelling. user:Vassili Nikolaev

I guess - but I am not 100 % shure. We should ask one fully expert of Serbo-Croatian language. Does Russians always change Western names when they write in original alphabet? I know they sometimes write in Latin (specially on the web) - but if I am honest I can't read that, if I don't endeavour myself. I do believe that Slovenes might write as Russians do, if they had decided long ago and vice versa. Cheers. -- XJamRastafire 11:45 Aug 27, 2002 (PDT)

To XJamRastafire No, the general practice is to preserve original Latin spelling for the names originated from Latin-script languages. The problem here is that Russians unfrotunately often don't know and don't care about original spelling, using transliterartion form Russian instead. That's why Nyuton or Njuton sometimes can be found on Russian web-pages. User:Vassili Nikolaev 12:18 Aug 27, 2002 (PDT)

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This article is full of factual information, but isn't it way to long and detailed for an encyclopedia article about a relatively minor language? Shoudln't it be on a web site somewhere? Zocky 13:21 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

Nah, it just needs some reorganization. Wikipedia has no size limits. --Eloquence

Well, we can't put everything into it, can we? At least move most of the stuff to another article and just leave "what slovene is" in this one. Zocky 13:32 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

It's not really that long -- cf. long pages. But if you want to move some stuff, just go ahead. --Eloquence

This article is still in a phase of formation, so whether it is long or not, it is hard to say for now. Yes, the language is minor according to its speakers, although even this is not true. This language is among the 10 % of the world's populations as English and Welsh philologist David Crystal recently said. Its organization is mentioned for example as some others articles about languages (see for example Hebrew language). In this stage everything is still in one layer -- but this will change soon... I like it very much anyway. --XJamRastafire 14:50 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

editing

I have edited the section on the history of Slovenian. I took out a lot of (confusing) prose about the details of Freising manuscripts because they belong on that page, not here. I removed the David Crystal quote as it didn't seem to provide any useful information that isn't already elsewhere on the page or Wikipedia, and it seemed POV. I instead added a paragraph about the status of the language since Slovenian independence. I'm not certain if it's entirely correct, so please feel free to fix anything wrong with it. Also, since I found much of the section difficult to understand, I'm not sure that my treatment of German borrowings is correct. I think the section overall is certainly clearer, but if there are any errors, please fix them, but try not to just revert to the previous content as it was not written clearly. I also changed the name of the section to conform to Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages. I am hoping to fix the rest of the sections soon, as they too suffer from a lack of clarity and organization. Nohat 23:01, 2004 Mar 17 (UTC)

status

I think Slovene has no official status in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Slovene was only officially recognized by Italy as one of the minoritary languages with la legge n. 482 del 15 dicembre 1999 and given privileges with la legge 38/2001 di tutela della minoranza slovena. Boraczek 10:12, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

phoneme

In my opinion dž is a phoneme in Slovene. It's distinct from č (a minimal pair džem : čem). And it has different pronunciation than d-ž (like in podžupan) even though I don't know if there are any minimal pairs. It's very rare in Slovene and probably it only occurs in loanwords, but there's no reason to exclude it from the list of Slovenian phonemes. Boraczek 11:20, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

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Yes, it only exists in loan words because it isn't a part of the language. It is the same as the southern slavic "đ", it is only written as "dž" because of lack of the letter. It's very much like writing a german name with an "ü" down using an "i". Another example would be names being written down in german using "ü" in Austria-Hungary because they had no more appropriate letter to assign. That's for example why the current president's last name is Türk instead of Turk, while the actual sound is more of a very strong "u", or something between a "u" and an "o". The same thing still keeps happening in Slovenia, like with the term "borovo gostüvanje", while it would actually be better written down as "gostuovanje" or "gostouovanje"(but still not very accurate). The same way "dž" is a different sound than "đ", but was simply used to write it down. If a word like "džungla" is written down in a slovene form, instead of the original "jungle", that doesn't make the sound slovene, just like writing down "Washington" as "Uošington" or "Vašington" and pronouncing it the american way wouldn't make the "w" slovene. I do however aggree that "đž" in words transcribed in this way usually can't be pronounced in any other way than "đ". Generally if the origin isn't slovene, it isn't considered a slovene sound. But I'm no linguist so let's wait for someone more fit to anwser this to come along. Regards =) 195.210.248.41 (talk) 16:26, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

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Pupils in primary school are taught, that Slovene language uses 29 phonemes and 25 letters. The phonems that lack their own letters are "dž", "wide e", "wide o" and schwa. "dž" is certainly a Slovene phoneme, appearing in words like ENAČBA (ČB is read as DŽ). I should know, I passed my matura a few years ago. :)--92.37.77.14 (talk) 12:24, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

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yup, "dž" IS a slovenian phonem, it only does not have its own letter —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.153.35.53 (talk) 09:46, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

accentual norms

The term "accentual norms" is used in the first paragraph. I don't know what this means, and this seems to be the only article in the whole of wikipedia that uses the term. Is there perhaps another term we could use, or could someone please create a new entry for it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.111.98.14 (talk) 01:15, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Slovenian translations of section headings

What purpose do they serve? None of the other language articles have them, and as far I can tell they're basically just a almost-completely-useless set of Slovenian words that have been added to the article. I'm not sure that there is any value at all in knowing how to say "geographic distribution" in Slovenian to someone who is just getting an overview of the language. I'd say delete them, as they add basically useless clutter to the article. Nohat 22:22, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

We have it on Belarusian language, but only in grammar-specific part, e.g. noun (nazounik) and pronoun (zajmiennik). --rydel 03:07, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK, well after over a month without objection, I removed them. Nohat 03:59, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

New template

New template has been created (copied from Commons): {{template:Slovenian flag}}. It appears like this: {{Slovenian flag}}. It works also by using:

• template:Slovene
  
• template:Slovenian
  
• template:Slovene flag.
  

Cheers! --Eleassar777 17:03, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Basic phonology

I removed the following addition to the "Sounds"-section.

Basic comparison of English and Slovenian consonants

Only three characters in Slovenian alphabet can not be found in English alphabet as well. They are all consonants with the following pronounciations.

• Č (č) - pronounced like ch in China,
• Š (š) - pronounced like sh in hush,
• Ž (ž) - pronounced like s in leisure.

Some characters that can be pronounced in different ways in English, however in Slovenian have standard pronounciations.

• C (c) - pronounced like ts in cats,
• E (e) - pronounced like e in bed,
• G (g) - pronounced like g in god,
• H (h) - pronounced like h in honey,
• I (i) - pronounced like ee in bee,
• J (j) - pronounced like y in yard (notice that sound j from jazz has to be written with the sequence of two characters dž in Slovenian, therefore džez),

A table of IPA with (mostly) phonemes is as basic as you can get. IPA is quite unambiguous for encyclopedic purposes and in those cases where it isn't, it should be supplemented with sound files, not written language and comparisons with English which can never be particularly satisfactory. The section above is based on the assumption that written language is the norm on which pronunciation is based on. A description of the phonology of a language can certainly use orthography of the language in examples, but it should not be an attempt at a letter-to-sound list. That should be covered under "Writing system" (and it already is).

Peter ^Isotalo 11:45, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Dialect section

Could someone write something a bit more neutral about Slovene dialects? No serious linguists actually tally dialects, since these can vary not just from one region to another, but usually from one village to another, which might as well bring the number up into the hundreds or even thousands. There should be a description of the major dialect groups instead. Also, please try to avoid the overt bragging about how much more diverse Slovene is compared to "other languages". My guess is that it's hardly more varied than most languages, and if it is, it needs to be referenced and explained in a neutral fashion.

Peter ^Isotalo 14:56, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Your guess is wrong. I did not write the section on dialects, but I challenge you to find another language nearly as varied. http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/profiles/profs03.htm (compare this profile to those of other languages) BT2 16:45, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

How can I possibly verify that no other language is more varied unless I check every single language in the world? The link you provided states that it is pretty varied, but it doesn't go nearly as far as the overt bragging in the dialect section. I reworded now and I'm hoping for more facts and fewer peacock terms.

Peter ^Isotalo 11:09, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Question

Could a Slovenian speaker tell me what the reflexes of the Proto-Slavonic "tj" and "dj" are in Slovenian? For example the Proto-Slavonic "tj" in /svetja/ (candle) gives ʃt in Old Ch. Sl. and Bulgarian (sveʃta and sveʃt), tʲʆ in Russian (svetʲʆa), ʨ in Serbian (sveʨa in Serbo-Croatian, etc. Pls, answer here or on my talk page, thank you very much! VMORO 23:30, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

It is tʃ <sveča>. Semprio 11:22, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Consonant list

I don't understand the purpose of listing allophones (such as [F]) in the table of consonants. If they should be included (even in brackets), why aren't they listed on pages of other languages? It is, I believe, unnecessary and confusing. Also, as a native speaker of Slovene, I know that the /r/ I pronounce is a trill, not a tap, even in non-sonorant environments. What's more, I don't think that dental articulation needs to be marked in phonetic transcription... /t/, /d/, and even /n/ are dental in Slovene in all cases... I will edit the page so that it looks better to me. If anyone has any counter-arguments, please list them. Semprio 11:32, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Semprio, please refer to proper linguistic literature when editing phonology sections. Preferably material written by trained phoneticians. The Slovenian /r/ is analyzed as a tap by a Slovenian phonetician in the IPA handbook. What are you comparing your own pronunciation with?

Peter ^Isotalo 14:10, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I rewrote most of the sounds section and removed almost all of the old material, which was quite incomprehensible, even for someone with an avid interest in phonetics. All the additions are based on the Slovenian entry in the IPA handbook.

Peter ^Isotalo 14:47, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Slovenian as a second language

Added a link to "Slovenian Language and Culture Lessons in Switzerland and Austria". These are organised by the Slovenian education ministry and officially recognised by the Swiss authorities. I believe there are similar programmes running in other parts of the world. I thought the link might be useful to potential learners of the language (as I am) and that it fitted best in this section. Forgive me if I was mistaken. ralphb.

Found & added links for Slovenian language resources in Australia and USA also. Likely similar resources in Hungary and Italy are probably beyond my googling abilities. ralphb. 13:46, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Sposojenka and tujka

Hi, I'm writing an article about mercury (the element), which had first been translated in French as hydrargyre then later as vif-argent (quicksilver). These two word means exactly the same thing, but one with Latin etymology and the second with French one.

I see the same kind of distinction than between sposojenka and tujka, but I can't find a Wikipedia entry for foreign word. Do you know of such a dual process of assimiliation in English? Especially, are there different names for different degree of adoption? Reply to David Latapie 10:02, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Try this for size: loanword. Btw, I think this would also be the more apropriate term to use in the article. Being a Slovene native speaker, I can see why somebody would want to use the term "foreign word", but I don't think it works that way in English.--213.172.246.40 23:20, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

See also calque. 惑乱 分からん 01:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Geographic names

Why do we need so many examples of geographic names? We should remember that Wikipedia is not a dictionary. IMO, we should use them only to illustrate some general principles. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 13:59, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, I moved names from a Slovenian alphabet, even less appropriate place for them. But I agree. --AndrejJ 18:49, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Now I have been bold and have removed them entirely. As I said, we're not a dictionary and I don't see any need for them. Here is the content: [1].

Slovenian is not a south slavic language - of course it is

I must remind you that Slovenian is not a south slavic language but a western one. It belongs to the same group as Clovak and Czech. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.81.246.92 (talk)

I must remind you that this is not true. It's South Slavic all right. --romanm (talk) 12:42, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I must disagree. First, slovak and slovenian lanugages have much more in common than slovenian and south slavic lanugages like Croation or Macedonian.

Second, if one would study the history of Central Europe, it would become clear that the Slavs that inhabited the teritory of todays Austria, Slovenia and Slovakia were the same group and that Croatians were another tribe, coming from other teritories.

I've added a few words on this to the page, with a reference to an instructive book review which reveals interesting facts about Slovene. I recommend the review to anyone who is interested, but let me add a few points here. Everyone will be aware that all these supposedly scientific and objective questions of classification are highly political throughout the Slav language area, and always have been - probably always will be. This is principally due to the principle that language=nation=right to your own country, which leads to much confused analysis. But the case of Slovene is unusual. There is self-evidently a sharp underlying division between Slovene and Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Serbian etc., masked as this may be by loan-words and by the effects of Tito's project in Yugoslavia, but the natural-seeming re-classification of the language as West Slavic (Czech or Slovak speakers can get by quite comfortably in Slovene, whereas Croatian or Bulgarian or whatever is much more distant for them) lacks an overall justification in terms of historical explanation. The three Slovenian authors in the book that is reviewed in the link I have added have come up with an ingenious and rather convincing alternative theory - namely, that the Slovenes are survivors of the 'Veneti' recorded in Roman and arguably also Greek texts since fairly remote antiquity - and a key argument is that this accounts for the deep dialect divisions, a feature of languages which have been established in the same place for thousands of years (Welsh, say, or Chinese). The account given by the traditional analysis fails to account for this. There is more suggestive material, but there is no point me going into that here.

- I note that someone has simply removed my edits to the main page, without however giving any explanation or response to the points made above. Simply repeating that Slovenian is a South Slavic language when there are clearly questions to be answered about this classification seems wrong to me.

Please prove your statements by linguistic [jezikoslovni] sources und sign it so we'll know who you are. I think there is much evidence that Croatian (and Serbian) are much closer to Slovene than Czech or Slovak (concerning grammer, words, and so on). Please note that there are even intermediate dialects between Slovene and Croatian (in Western Croatia) called Kajkavian_dialect (hr:Kajkavski). -- PhJ 10:44, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Nearly all reputable scholarship on the Slavonic languages classifies Slovenian as a South Slavonic language. The only significant disagreement is whether it was always a South Slavonic language, or was first a West Slavonic language pulled into the southern dialect continuum after the arrival of the Magyars in Pannonia. Wikipedia does not rely on the personal investigations of its editors; all content much be sourced from published scholarship. Your entire discussion above violates WP:NOR and uses the Talk page as a general discussion forum. I'd ask you to remove it. CRCulver 17:21, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

That makes sense: S. was first a West Slavonic language pulled into and mixed with the southern dialect after the arrival of the Magyars in Pannonia... I wasn't aware that I misused or violated etc. I removed my lay investigation.RH 19:03, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Common phrases

I think we should remove common phrases. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 18:38, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

As there has been no opposition I've removed common phrases now. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 09:50, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Slovenian literature

On one occasion Count A. Auersperg (Anastasius Grün) entered the diet of Carniola carrying the whole corpus of Slovenian literature under his arm to provide evidence that the Slovenian language could in his view not be substituted for German as a medium of higher education

... I'm assuming there is a point in stating this? TomorrowTime 09:17, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Palatalization in Slovenian

Is a consonant before j or i palatalized? The page Ljubljana gives [ljub'ljʌna], but the sound file sounds like [lʲub'lʲʌna], exactly the same as the corresponding Russian pronunciation. -Iopq 12:03, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

There is misspelling in IPA pronunciation, correct is [ʎub'ʎʌna] or ['ʎubʎʌna].

This is not true. Ljubljana is pronounced as [ljub'ljana] in terms of phonology at least (also note the vowel quality). Slovenian [l] before of front vowels is only slightly palatalized and there are minimal pairs like [polja] `field, genitive singular' ([pol] `field, genitive plural') and [pola] `pole, genitive singular'. This clearly shows that there is no palatal lateral in Slovenian. Please, look at the available literature before making such claims. -Alpha1979 07:43, 29 September 2007 (CET)

Contradiction

The vowels section says that vowel length is non-contrastive and dependent on stress placement, whereas the Prosody section claims the exact opposite. I understand there may be some controversy on that point, but anyway citations would come in handy. Edricson 13:44, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Consonants

I have added sounds ʎ (lj) and ɲ (nj) to consonant list. Question is about ŋ (ng)/(nk) sound (as in English bank, Latvian banka), as I'm Latvian I don't know is it represented in Slovenian. Slovenian phonetics is much like Latvian. I think that Slovenians could take from Latvian ļ and ņ characters to represent digraphs lj and nj, which fit more to Internet style not for handwriting. For example, Ļubļana (Ljubljana). Roberts7 11:28, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I would agree that this consonants appear, though the pronunciation of lj seems to be slightly different than lj in Croatian. Nj exists in words like Kranj, konj... someone would need to check a source for the correct IPA sounds, I am not really sure at the moment. But for the alphabet, we are perfectly fine with the present one and additional letters would just make a mess :-) --Tone 15:39, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I think all of the sounds (namely the ʎ, the ɲ and the dz) ought to be deleted. The ʎ and ɲ are positional allophones of l and n, respectivelly. The dz is merely a voiced variation of ts. I can't think of any examples of minimal pairs of these and I have never seen them described as separate phonemes in any source. When I saw them listed as phonemes I was shocked. The description on the top clearly says that there are 21 consonantal sounds in Slovene, but in the chart there are 24. How can one distinguish what are phonemes and what are allophones? Next to that, if allophones are to be added to the article (clearly noted as such, though!), the list is far from complete. You have posed a question about the ŋ. It is always written like an n, but only appears before velar consonants (k, g and h). It is not considered to be a separate phoneme. But if one wants allophones in the charts, one has to add them. The same goes for ɱ, appearing only before labio-dental consonants (simfonija). Somewhere on this page I also noted the dispute about dʒ being a separate phoneme. We were taught in school that it indeed is one. My school education is also the main support for all of my arguments - the consonantal phonemes are, they said, p t k ts tʃ f s ʃ h b d g z ʒ dʒ m n r l v j. As soon as I register I will delete these additions to the inventary. And about your proposals to change our alphabet - I don't like it. As I have stated, the sounds in question are not phonemes but rather consonant clusters. Next to that, it would be hard to make people write that way. And even more, if we ought to have new symbols for non-phonemes, why don't you Latvians use a special symbol for the ŋ in "banka"? :) Perhaps I seemed a bit harsh in this reply, so I would like to add it was not meant like that. Have a pleasant day! Aljoša Avani 01:16, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

There, deleted the /ʎ/, the /ɲ/ and the /dz/ for reasons stated above. If anyone disagrees, they are welcome to put it back, but please state your reason. A pleasant day! Aljoša Avani 01:54, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

According to Slovenski pravopis (last edition), /ɲ/ and /dz/ are present in Slovenian language. However, the book also states that ʎ is never used. So I am putting the first two back. Thank you for pointing out the error. --Tone 08:32, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

This is not true! Slovenski pravopis (SP) says that the nasal is only palatalized (nʲ) rather than palatal (ɲ). However, the former is only a variant (of /n/ in certain positions) and is mainly absent from contemporary standard Slovenian (it is a very marked dialectal feature). As regards [dz], it is only a positional variant of /ts/, the same way as [ɣ] is to /x/. More accurately, as regards [dz] and [dʒ], the jury is still out, since they appear contrastively only in loanwords. Also, SP is not really a good source for phonology, try something more specialized. -Alpha1979 07:52, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move --Lox (t,c) 09:13, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

---

Slovenian language → Slovene language — All major dictionaries give preference to Slovene language. See [2]. —Eleassar ^{my talk} 16:07, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Support. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 16:14, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
• Support. "Slovenian" refers strictly to a national of Slovenia, not necessarily to the ethnic group or its attributes. (cf. Kazakh language, Slovak language). — AjaxSmack 04:30, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
• Support. --Jalen (talk) 07:55, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Flagicons in the infobox

In order to prevent an edit war I am starting a section on here so we can discuss the merits of having flagicons in the infobox. I removed[3] the flagicons added recently[4] by User:XJamRastafire but was later reverted by him[5] with no explanation of why they would be needed.

My rationale is the flagicons add nothing of encyclopedic value because the name of the country is next to the flag. They are merely being used as decoration therefore not being helpful to the reader, so they should be removed from the infobox. I'm kindly asking XJamRastafire to provide a rationale for why the flagicons belong in the infobox. I am also going to ask for a third opinion at the appropriate talk pages. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 13:00, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Third opinion on flagicons

I am responding to a request for a third opinion.

Because this issue is within the scope of WikiProject Languages, I recommend asking for input to resolve this on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages. — Athaenara ✉ 14:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

My argument for change was that some language infoboxes contain flags (see for example Finnish language, Karelian language and for partly usage English language). I have informed Eleassar in his talk page for my changes and reverts. He had reverted this article and also made changes in Finnish and Karelian languages (flags were added by 84.251.73.218 ([6]) and Flrn ([7]). Currently Czech, Danish, Faroese, Greek, Hebrew, Luxembourgish, Maltese, Norwegian, Romanian, Slovak, Swahili have flag(s) in infoboxes. Flags are in general 'always' merely decorations, so it is a question if they should be used anyhow. --xJaM (talk) 13:55, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Hm, I see that Eleassar had also removed flags from some other articles about languages: (last revision for English is this), Bengali, Chinese, Dutch, Estonian, Hindi, Hindustani, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Marathi, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Vietnamese. So, to repeat - my arguments for including flagicons into article for Slovene language were/are quite strong, since they were already widely used. Therefore I am kindly asking him to revert his recent actions until consensus is reached. Turkish language is also btw a featured article.

I'm reverting Eleassar's edits. If it's true that they add "add nothing of encyclopedic value" for the instances of language infoboxes, then it's true of all uses of flag icons. We have a clear consensus that flag icons are appropriate. Moreover, there's nothing in WP:FLAG that says we shouldn't use flags in this context. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:31, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad I've managed to provoke at least some discussion about this. Anyway, I don't agree with your claim on "clear consensus". First, it seems this question has just never been discussed previously. Second, Wikipedia:FLAGS#Appropriate use exactly specifies when may the flagicons be used: 1) navigation in long lists or tables of countries, 2) in a table or infobox to save space and avoid repeating the country name; 3) articles about international sporting events. Which of these options is relevant here? In my opinion, none of them. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 16:45, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

That WP:FLAGS exists shows that we have some sort of consensus that we can, in some instances, use flag icons (that's what I was referring to). I see the first sentence of Wikipedia:FLAGS#Appropriate use as detailing why it's appropriate in this case:

"They can aid navigation in long lists or tables of countries as many readers can more quickly scan a series of flag icons due to the visual differences between flags. However, since not all readers can do this, the flags should be accompanied with country names."

Granted, some languages don't have long lists and the cutoff point between "long" and "not long" is perhaps subjective but the icons don't add confusion in any case and don't infringe on encyclopedic value. 19:11, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

If a consesus for using flag icons in language infoboxes will be reached, I guess this should be stated somewhere in WP:FLAG. Eleassar, there is a difference between making constructive contributions (or provoking to discuss certain issues) and acting on your own. Aeusoes1 had to revert your self-will revisions. Until we reach "clear consensus", please revert your revision also in this article. I don't know why do you almost always have to provoke or to be against something. --xJaM (talk) 12:32, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, some languages have long lists of countries and the icons may help. However, the majority of languages are spoken in one or at most a small number of countries and don't have long lists. In these cases, the icons are only decorative and distracting - not in line with Wikipedia:MOSFLAG#Help the reader rather than decorate. By the way, is there a specific reason for them to be used only with the "official language in" parameter? (example) --Eleassar ^{my talk} 16:57, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

P.S. ad xJaM:

Don't forget it's an open question whether Aeusoes1 really had to revert anything. You should also know that I've posted a question about flagicons on several talk pages before doing anything; unfortunately, no one replied till I changed the articles as it seemed and for the most part still seems correct to me. So, there are two guidelines - WP:BOLD and WP:AGF - for you to read before accusing me of being nonconstructive. I'm also concerned about your last sentence. Such hasty generalizations about a contributor are uncivil - I kindly recommend you to avoid them. On the other side, it's my right to oppose things I find ridiculous.

In any case, could you please comment on content, not on the contributor? Thanks for doing so. This talk page is meant to be used for discussion of the article on Slovene language, not on contributors and what they have done or not. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 13:50, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

How is it that the flag icons are helpful for, say Russian language but "decorative and distracting" for Slovene? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:53, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

That's what you say - your appealing to the first sentence of Wikipedia:FLAGS#Appropriate use (long lists) and then saying "some languages don't have long lists". I've removed them in both cases. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 19:02, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

No, that's what you say: "Yes, some languages have long lists of countries and the icons may help" but for languages with short lists, "the icons are only decorative and distracting". How is this so? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:40, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion, that's pretty obvious - with long lists many readers can more quickly scan a series of flag icons - if you need additional explanation, ask an expert in psychology which I'm not. If you disagree, I don't object to removing the icons from all language infoboxes. If you think they should stay in all of them - they're simply much more distracting than helping navigation with shorter lists - the discussion has stalled and we should ask for wider community input. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 06:18, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with you that it's helpful for the long lists but I don't agree that it's "only decorative and distracting" for short lists. That's not obvious to me at all and you haven't really explained how this is so. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 08:16, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

They just draw too much attention to allow the user to read the text undisturbed while being redundant at the same time. In fact, it's up to you to show that they're not "only decorative and distracting". --Eleassar. ^{my talk} 08:26, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Neither redunancy nor "undisturbed" reading are not relevant issues as both are technically true for the long lists. The flags are just as helpful in the short lists as they are for the long lists. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 08:33, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

What? First, I don't understand your first sentence - could you rephrase it? Second, you have not proven your second sentence. According to WP:FLAGS, that's not true as it makes a difference between long and short lists. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 08:37, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

You said "They just draw too much attention to allow the user to read the text undisturbed". This is an odd assertion as the text being read is two or three words. If this is true of the short lists, it's also true of the long lists.

You said that the flags are redundant. Again, this is true of the long lists as well.

While I don't see where WP:FLAGS mentions small lists at all, I can revise my second sentence: The flags are just helpful in both the short lists and the long lists. i.e. they are not unhelpful in the short lists, even if they are more helpful in the long lists. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 08:46, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion, implicitly supported by WP:FLAGS in "They can aid navigation in long lists or tables of countries", the benefit of easier navigation is larger than the cost of redundancy and distraction only for long lists. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 08:52, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, I disagree. Though I think other voices should chime in here. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 09:17, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

What exactly do you disagree with? Do you agree or disagree that WP:FLAGS implicitly supports my position? Otherwise, it would not say "long lists or tables of countries", but rather simply "lists or tables". --Eleassar ^{my talk} 09:23, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

"they can aid navigation in long lists" does not mean "they can't aid in navigation in short lists." I also disagree with your other statement. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 10:11, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, it implies that (or at least they're more distracting than helpful with short lists). Otherwise, why not simply "lists or tables" instead of "long lists or tables"? --Eleassar ^{my talk} 10:15, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

If this helps, flags do not represent countries only, for example, Russian is an official language of UN and IAEA as well as of some countries. IMO, flags look nice in the list and I don't find any paragraph in the MOS that would contradict the use in this case. --Tone 11:12, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

MoS says "they can aid navigation in long lists" implying that with short lists, they're more distracting than helpful. I still request the answer to my question: why not simply "lists or tables" instead of "long lists or tables"? I won't object to including flags to language infoboxes if that's what the majority prefers, but only if the MoS is updated first. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 11:26, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

So it's only the word long that is problematic. Well, have a look at it this way: if a list is long, flags help navigation. If the list is short, the flags are there because they are on the long lists as well and we don't want to have two different standards. Would that make sense? --Tone 11:32, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'll survive - although the vast majority of cases are spoken only in one or a small number of countries (e.g. Icelandic) and it's better without icons. Just make sure then all the languages are treated the same (I mean also e.g. German and other language that don't have them yet). You should also decide whether they're to be used only with the 'nation' (current standard) or also with the 'states' parameter and why so. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 11:47, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Hm, second thoughts... actually, the flags should be used at the countries, where the language has an official status (or at least regional). In this case, Slovenian, Austrian, Italian and Hungarian flag (maybe Croatian as well, I am not sure what is the present status of the minority, there have been some changes recently). But not for all the countries the language is spoken in. For example, USA flag doesn't really fit in Icelandic. --Tone 12:05, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

An open question is also, why do you, Eleassar, had to revert all those articles after you haven't got any replies. Normal practise would be to leave articles as they were (including this one about Slovene language), and then start any conversations - so that's why I've said you're acting self-willed - and please do not hide behind patronage of any kind and say that someone is uncivil. I know quite well how wikipedia works. I have reverted 3 articles and I left you a notice in your talk page, so do not say I didn't give any explanations. But obviously this is not enough. What do you want more? I am kindly asking you for the third time to revert your changes in this article. I also have a right to defend something I find is reasonable. If you're concerned about my sentences, I am concerned about your actions and contributions. My additions of flag icons to some language info boxes was also WP:AGF. I am discussing about the issue, but you've started accusing me that I haven't given any explanations at all. And as I've said, I believe that this issue is not problematic, since there was already a practice of including flagicons to info boxes. But the final solution, if any, should be given probably at WikiProject Languages. At least for the sake of the same treatment. --xJaM (talk) 14:49, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

XJamRastafire, I've discussed Eleassar's procedures with him on his talk page. If you'd like to add anything there, that's probably the better place to do it so this discussion doesn't get too cluttered. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:04, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I've posted this before I've seen your discussion on his talk. No, for now I don't want to add nothing more. --xJaM (talk) 18:11, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree that in this case, the flag icons add no navigational or encyclopedic value whatsoever. WP:FLAGS specifies that flag icons may be used in lists "provided that citizenship, nationality or jurisdiction is intimately tied to the topic at hand, such as comparison of global economic data or reporting of international sporting event results, and cannot be expressed better with text." That is certainly not the case here. I believe Eleassar's opinion in more in line with the intentions of WP:FLAGS. Kaldari (talk) 15:37, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 16:17, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I am also here responding to the link on WT:FLAG#Third_opinion_needed_at_Talk:Slovene_language.23Flagicons_in_the_infobox. I think the icons deserve to be there for several reasons:

1. Slovakian and Slovenian themes can be confused with one another easily by outsiders, e.g., "Slovak" in Slovak is "slovenčina" & "Slovene" in Slovene is "slovenščina", a one-letter difference in a blend that non-Slavs find difficult, but their flags differ by a crucifix and a mountain, for one.
2. Images can be easily turned off when they are distracting (Firefox: Tools Menu / Options... / Content Tab / Load images automatically checkbox; MSIE: Tools Menu / Internet Options... / Advanced Tab / Multimedia Settings / Show-pictures-ON checkbox)
3. Flags help visually break up strings of text that defy conventional sentence formatting; they become necessary after around the fifth item.

These ambiguities in the MOS are starting to waste valuable editing time in unnecessary arguments. Is anyone interested in voting on a few sample boundaries and fixing the new standard for a three-month temporary stint? :)--Thecurran (talk) 16:49, 17 June 2008 (UTC) In addition, linguistic boundaries are core definition of ethnic identity. That combined with a defined national boundary and a section on which countries legally operate in the language leaves "citizenship, nationality," and "jurisdiction" quite "intimately tied to the topic at hand", perhaps moreso than a sporting group that is allowed to hire foreigners. :)--Thecurran (talk) 16:55, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure, I'll vote. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:04, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I also think that mentioned usage for reporting sport event has less value than linguistic boundaries of which Thecurran is talking about. I also guess we might find some other examples for possible confusions, not just for Slovak and Slovene language. --xJaM (talk) 17:16, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I can understand this for the countries where this is a language of majority (like Slovene in Slovenia). But what about Hungary, Italy or even Serbia? Could someone please explain to me how can the Hungarian or Serbian flag be intimately linked to Slovene language (or vice versa)? In addition, if it's the confusion of names Slovenia and Slovakia that determines the use of flagicons, perhaps we should add a flagicon to all appearances of these two names.. Just kidding. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 17:23, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Look. As it is wriiten momentarily: Slovene - spoken in: Slovenia, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Croatia and emigrant groups in various countries. If you look to geographical distribution there is quite well written that 5,000 speakers speak Slovene in Serbia. So, here's intimate linkage to Slovene language in Serbia for instance. Of course, because there are a lot of Slovene Americans, which still speak Slovene, we should also add a flagicon for United States. According to 2000 US Census 176,691 Americans were of Slovene origin, and if we assume 1/10 of them to speak Slovene, we have 17,000 speakers. --xJaM (talk) 17:56, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm very reluctant to force the lists to mention only where the "majority" of people speak the language. A place where 30% of the population speaks the language is still worthy of mention. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:45, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

!!!There is now a discussion on WT:FLAG#Language_infobox_icons, where anyone involved here is invited to state their opinions surrounding WP:FLAG with regard to this issue. :)--Thecurran (talk) 17:52, 18 June 2008 (UTC)