Expert Says Slovenian Language Not Dying Out
Speaking on the occasion of International Mother Language Day (21 February), Marko Stabej from the Ljubljana Faculty of Arts said that Slovenian was far from being an endangered language and that in case it dies out within a few generations, it will do so along with most other Europe's languages.
A professor at the Faculty of Arts Slovenian language department, Stabej pointed out that an interesting, diverse and culturally and economically rich Slovenian environment was the key precondition for a future development of the Slovenian language.
The possibility of Slovenian dying out has been the subject of numerous expert debates, however the influence of other languages, especially of the globally increasingly dominant English language, by no means translates into a pending demise of Slovenian, Stabej said.
Statistical data supports this view, with Slovenian not belonging into the group of the world's "smallest languages". Only 5% of the world's languages have more than 2 million speakers, which puts Slovenian among the elite group of languages, more precisely on the 179th spot in terms of the number of speakers, the Statistics Office explained.
Stabej moreover pointed out that both national and European language policies are doing a relatively good job at ensuring a future life and development of Europe's languages.
As regards language policy in Slovenia, Stabej said it was "still excessively focused on the preservation and protection of Slovenian and devotes too little attention to equipping and offering it in the form of different language and translation tools, monolingual and bilingual e-dictionaries and terminological sources".
He highlighted as a very important segment in this respect the securing of quality courses for foreigners and emigrants who want to learn Slovenian.
While arguing that the use and integration of certain foreign expressions into Slovenian literature was not necessarily a bad thing, Stabej added that the ability of Slovenians to speak foreign languages was already an advantage.
"We can only really start appreciating our language and culture when contact with foreign speakers makes us reflect on what makes us special, what makes us different from everyone else. These contacts are becoming ever more frequent and this is also why there are more and more new speakers of Slovenian," Stabej said.
Slovenian has around 50 different dialects, which can be grouped in seven different dialect groups. In the 2002 census, 87.9% of the population stated Slovenian as their mother tongue.
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