Društvo Slovenski Dom - Toronto - Slovenian Home Association

You are embarking on one of the most amusing and challenging tasks ANYONE ever undertakes to do.

The fact is, it is actually one of the first things EVERYONE does in the course of growing up - acquiring a language.  If you are using this web site and have come to this page it is quite likely, though not certain, that the first language you acquired is English and, by now, you will have heard English spoken with a foreign accent.  That is because when someone whose FIRST language was not English, speaks English, that person uses the sounds, rhythm and sentence melody of their FIRST language instead of the sounds, rhythm and sentence melody of standard English.  It is exceedingly rare, well nigh impossible, to find someone who can speak more than one language free of accent from their first.

Different people react differently to a foreign accent.  Some find it amusing, others pleasant, yet others unpleasant or irritating.  Whatever the situation, the stronger the accent, the harder and more attentively one must listen to understand what is being said.

Not surprisingly, the sounds of your first language seem, indeed FEEL, like totally "natural" sounds and one has a tendency to substitute them for the sounds of the language being learned whose "natural" sounds seem, and indeed FEEL, odd.  However they are not truly odd, they are just different.

Language starts with speech - composed of sounds.  A child learns to speak before it learns to read or write.  In general, people speak more than they read or write.  So in learning Slovenian let us begin by concentrating on the sounds of Slovenian compared to those of English (For reference purposes, hereinafter English shall be used to mean Toronto based Canadian English usage and pronunciation).

May you have the perseverence and stamina to achieve the degree of success in this endeavour you hope for.

This course uses as a template and guide "Slovenian Language Manual -  Učebnik slovenskega jezika, Volume I - Prva knjiga" by Milena Gobetz and Breda Loncar, Slovenian Research Centre of America Inc., 1976 (with verbal permission from SRCA, 2010).

For issues of grammar and syntax the author has used "Slovene, A Comprehensive Grammar" by Peter Herrity, Routledge, 2000.

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