Several webloggers, including Jane Finch of The Daily Rant, have linked to a story about how the State Department mistakenly listed Slovenia as a U.S. ally in the war against Iraq. No one seems to have mentioned that Slovakia, unlike Slovenia, is a member of the 'Coalition of the Willing' and has sent chemical warfare troops to the Persian Gulf -- for defensive purposes only, I trust.
I hope the idiot bureaucrat who didn't know the difference between Slovakia and Slovenia never finds out that there's also a province in the same region called Slavonia: that might cause a total mental meltdown. (Hint: the K is the clue. The one that used to be part of Czechoslovakia is Slovakia, while Slovenia and Slavonia used to be part of Yugoslavia, and Slavonia is still a part of Croatia.) I wonder if 'Hesiod' works for the State Department: that would explain a lot about him, and it. I won't give him another link, but he seems to think there's a country called 'Solvenia'.
Posted by Dr. Weevil at March 28, 2003 11:58 PMWhat's really annoying is that both Slovenian and Slovakian call themselves slovensky, so if you see a dictionary in the library reference section titled Slovensko-Bla Bla-Slovensko Somethingorother, you have to do some serious detective work if you want to know which it is (like open it and look for Ljubljana or Bratislava on the title page). Unless you already know whether Bla is the Slovenian or Slovakian term for the Other Language, in which case you're probably Slovenian or Slovakian. I know, I know, it doesn't bother you and you never thought the subject would come up. But where else am I going to get the chance to bitch about it?
Posted by: language hat on April 1, 2003 03:28 PMI once read somewhere that Slovakians and Slovenians were originally the same tribe, but got cut in half by the Austrians or the Hungarians or both some time in the Middle Ages. My now-irretrievable source said that the languages have since developed separately, and become assimilated to their nearest Slavic neighbors, so that Slovenian is now more like Serbo-Croatian and Slovakian more like Czech, but they were originally the same language. I don't know whether that's true, but it sounds plausible.
Posted by: Dr. Weevil on April 1, 2003 11:59 PMSolvenia is the magic kingdom where parents dealing with their children's homework may locate the answers to the logic problems.
Posted by: C. W. on April 2, 2003 11:47 AMwhat does this mean
Ime najljubše živali?
what does this mean:
Ime najljubše živali?
It means as much as: "The name of your favourite pet"
Posted by: Slovene dude on May 23, 2004 07:37 PM