# Slovenian: where Germanic, Romance and Slavic meet



## ByteofKnowledge

I spent some time in Slovenia in the 90s on various short trips and I enjoyed trying my hand at some tourist Slovenian. I also bought some CDs of local bands.

One thing that surprised me was that a few words seem to sit right on the fence between the Germanic, Slavic and Romance languages, mainly thanks to the Slovenian accent.

Example:

beer (English)
piva (Slovenian)
bier (German)
birra (Italian)

Pronunciation of the German in Austria is more likely to be like "bee-ya".

Slovenian I found turned P into almost a B sound, and lost the V into obscurity. So the word piva sounds more like what I described above for "Alpine German". Which of course sounds very similar to the Italian "birra".

Are there any other examples someone with knowledge of the three languages could describe? Obviously beer has the connection as it's a fairly old word. Any others?


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## skye

Pivo is standard Slovene, pir/per is colloquial. Probably taken from German. In various Slovene dialects you can find borrowings from German. Some of them are the same in all dialects, some of them are specific to certain dialects, some of them are slightly different in different dialects. I don't know which version you heard. The word you heard doesn't sound very familiar to me. Something like pi-ah or bi-ah if I understood correctly. 

If I remember it right we were told in phonetcis class that the Slovene p is pronounced with less force than the English p (but it's been years since then). Maybe that is why it reminded you of b. Or perhaps there are some dialects where they say b instead of p in the word pivo, but I haven't heard that yet.


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## sokol

as for 'piva', ByteofKnowledge probably means the genitive or plural of 'pivo' (or was it plural? dva pive - tri piva? don't know if I've got it right, my Slovenian sadly is growing worse by the year, I wasn't in Slovenia since ten years now ...)

well, however: 'pivo' is not specifically slovene but more generally speaking _slavic _- whereas German 'Bier' (in Austria this is pronounced [bia] with the vowels forming a diphthong stressed on 'i') is derived from Old Germanic; the connection is an old indoeuropean one (so there is an ethymological connection - I think; I'm not absolutely sure)

as for the pronunciation: Slovene (and Slavic, for that matter) B D G of course are voiced whereas Austrian B D G are very pronounced voiceless although not aspirated (with Carinthian dialects being the exception - there you can hear clearly voiced plosives, obviously under the influence of the formerly mainly Slovene population in Southern Carinthia nowadays predominately assimilated to German)
'pir' or 'per' on the other hand clearly is loaned from German (here you see that to an Austrian B there will correspond a Slovenian P: which is absolutely logical as Slavic P T K are voiceless, non-aspirated plosives - phonetically identical to Austrian B D G)

generally speaking: there are lots of German, Italian and Serbo-Croatian loans in Slovene, especially in informal speech as there is considerable purism to preserve the Slovene standard language as it is: usually this purism is argued historically, as Slovene was under constant thread for centuries (from German and Italian on the one hand and, later, Serbo-Croatian on the other one, and nowadays of course there's purism against English loans, too): although I am personally not great on purism I certainly have respect for the Slovene position considering this issue and therefore won't argue about that one ;-)

_Cheers, Herman
_
[BTW, my mother tongue's Austrian German, but I haven't any roots in Carinthia, I'm from Upper Austria living now in Vienna - this FYI, skye, as the situation of the Slovene minority is still a big issue between Slovenia and Carinthia - but not for the 'rest' of Austria, I might add: most Austrians would very much welcome more rights for the Slovenes, except some concervatives outside Carinthia and a considerable greater number of people inside Carinthia; I did study Slovenian for 2 years in Graz and spent 2 months in Ljubljana - I am a linguist and did indoeuropean studies too, although I then did specialise in sociolinguistics]


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## skye

I thought ByteofKnowledge was probably referring to an inflected form of the word pivo with piva, but it wasn't the main point of the question, so I didn't pay much attention to it.

I can't tell why p and b sound similar in Slovene to ByteofKnowledge, since they don't sound the same to me, and I would never use b instead of p in the word pivo. 

I also don't know why ByteofKnowledge finds that v is lost or muffled in pronunciation in the word pivo, I have never noticed it. (Actually I rarely hear anyone say pivo around here, most people I know say pir or per, but that depends on the region.) 

I think that these sound qualities are probably more likely to be characteristics of Slovene rather than have something to do with influences from neighbouring languages. Sounds and pronunciation are supposed to be the most persistant characteristics of a language after all, unlike words, which are more easily borrowed. 

It may have something to do with different qualities of these consonants in different languages, so I suggested that explanation in my post above. I know I often mishear sounds when I just start to learn a language. 

@sokol: I heard that the number of children in bilingual kindergartens in Carinthia has increased in recent years, so maybe the people in Carinthia themselves don't see this as such a big problem any more? I'm not an expert in this field either, but I got this impression from the media here.


edit: I guess my first post was a bit confusing. Trying to write everything in a couple of sentences.


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## sokol

skye said:


> I can't tell why p and b sound similar in Slovene to ByteofKnowledge, since they don't sound the same to me, and I would never use b instead of p in the word pivo.


 I could offer an explanation: in English, although B D G sometimes are voiced, the main difference between B D G ('soft', voiced plosives) and P T K ('hard', voiceless plosives) - or: the 'marking' difference - is more the aspiration of P T K rather than the voicing, meaning: voicing may not occur and nevertheless you may identify B D G without trouble in English, but if you do not aspirate P T K you hear them as B D G except in certain contexts (I won't elaborate on that one, it's off topic here)

it was the same for me when I began to study Slovenian: it was rather difficult for me to learn pronouncing voiced B D G which is very important in Slavic and Romanic languages as supposedly P T K shouldn't be aspirated in these languages (they sometimes are, to an extent, but if they are the aspiration is only secondary, the voicing is the main thing ;-)

in my dialect (as in most Austrian dialects, Carinthian excepted) we only have voiceless, non-aspirated B D G which would sound like Slovene P T K and on the other hand, voiceless, aspirated K (aspirated T P would occur sometimes but as loaned phonetics from the German standard language, this is not 'proper' dialect)


skye said:


> I also don't know why ByteofKnowledge finds that v is lost or muffled in pronunciation in the word pivo, I have never noticed it.


me neither! it's straight 'pivo' everywhere (with P certainly not aspirated ;-)



skye said:


> @sokol: I heard that the number of children in bilingual kindergartens in Carinthia has increased in recent years, so maybe the people in Carinthia themselves don't see this as such a big problem any more? I'm not an expert in this field either, but I got this impression from the media here.



this, indeed, is the case: an increasing proportion of the Carinthian population nowadays do not have any problems whatsoever with Slovenians living in their country (as do most Austrians outside Carinthia), but of course there's still an Anti-Slovenian 'hard core' fraction which has considerable political influence inside Carinthia (so I do hope that the situation will relax in a few years)


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## _Tasha_

CDs of local bands are really not the best way of detailed studying of Slovene language. Of course, it also depends what genre of music it is, but the songs tend to be in a dialect. Slovenia has more than 50 different dialects, and trust me when I say that it is really hard to speak proper standard Slovene. However, the problem usually lies in the pronunciation of vowels, not consonants, so I don't really understand the problem ByteoKnowledge is having with 'pivo'.

Sokol, you are absolutely right about Slovenia's tendency to purism in standard language. And looking back through history, as a student of Slovene I agree with Slovene linguists on this one. The most important figures in Slovenia's history were poets and writers (Trubar, Prešeren, ...). Slovene word has embodied our national consciousness through centuries. I also see our standard language as a compromise between dialects. As such, it should be pure of as much loanwords from English, German, Italian and Serbo-Coratian (that are frequently found in dialects) as possible.


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## sokol

Tasha,

I did and occasionally still do listen to Slovene pop music, especially punk rock. My favourite is Jani Kovalčič, which by the way would be more filed as songwriter here in Austria, but categories seem to be a little bit different in Slovenia. I did learn a lot of Jani's songs, if you know what I mean. ;-)

As for purism, I certainly wouldn't meddle with the language politics of Slovenia for their language: it's their choice to decide. And it is rather typical for smaller languages to be more puristic than for stronger ones. Nevertheless, I am no big purist and I think that sometimes a little bit less of purism wouldn't hurt, but as I've already said, that is for each nation to decide on it's own.

Similarly to Slovenia, by the way, is the situation in Finland where too the standard language really is not what the people speak like, not even in the capital, not even the middle class. And it is rather similar here in Austria (although the situation of Austria is a little bit more complicated and off topic here anyway).

Cheers, Herman


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## OBrasilo

The word _pivo_ originated in the Czech language, where _pívo_ originally meant simply _a drink_, and only later it began to be used in reference to the now well-known light alcoholic drink (beer).
The German word _Bier_, as well, as the English word _beer_, most probably originated in Latin, most probably also meaning simply _a drink_, similar to the original Czech _pívo_, and I think the expression, whatever it was, for _a drink_, originated from Latin _bibere_, which means _to drink_ (_aquam bibere_ or something means _to drink water_).
The word could even be a cognate with Italian _bibita_ (meaning _a drink_), that converted to initial _bibira _(let's suppose that was an existing form) through rhotacism, just like the Germanic-originated word _sud_ (meaning _south_) in Spanish became _sur_, and in Portuguese even _sul_. Then, the second _b_ in _bibira_ became aspirated, and the word thus became _bi'ira_, simply losing the ending _-a_ in German/Old Germanic, and changing the _-i'ir-_ to _-irr_- in Italian.
Please note, that the last two paragraphs are only my supposition, which might be even wrong.


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## Hal1fax

ByteofKnowledge said:


> I spent some time in Slovenia in the 90s on various short trips and I enjoyed trying my hand at some tourist Slovenian. I also bought some CDs of local bands.
> 
> One thing that surprised me was that a few words seem to sit right on the fence between the Germanic, Slavic and Romance languages, mainly thanks to the Slovenian accent.
> 
> Example:
> 
> beer (English)
> piva (Slovenian)
> bier (German)
> birra (Italian)
> 
> Pronunciation of the German in Austria is more likely to be like "bee-ya".
> 
> Slovenian I found turned P into almost a B sound, and lost the V into obscurity. So the word piva sounds more like what I described above for "Alpine German". Which of course sounds very similar to the Italian "birra".
> 
> Are there any other examples someone with knowledge of the three languages could describe? Obviously beer has the connection as it's a fairly old word. Any others?


 

I think that is a very farfetched assumption....and the fact that the vast majority of Slavic languages use the word piwo/pivo for beer makes the theory a little less likely, it is not because Slovenia is close to Austria...if that was the implication


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## _Tasha_

Simply checking Slovenian etymological dictionary wouldn't be such a bad idea.  And I might just do that, because I really don't think there is any tight relationship between Slovenian "pivo" and Italian "birra" or German "bier".


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## ByteofKnowledge

_Tasha_ said:


> CDs of local bands are really not the best way of detailed studying of Slovene language.




Yeah I said I studied Slovenian by ordering a bunch of CDs, right.

Actually my judgement is slightly clouded. I mean, look at the word I introduced to this conversation. It's the word I heard the most during my time in Slovenia...

Interesting topic, and I don't mind being corrected. It was a bit of a long shot but then Slavic and Germanic languages are fairly far removed these days so it was worth a try. Excuse my ignorance as a mere linguaphile rather than a linguist.


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## jazyk

I think pivo (and orthographical variations thereof) is derived from pit' (and varitations thereof) meaning to drink and birra (and variations thereof) comes from bibere (and variations thereof) also meaning to drink.


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## Viperski

ByteofKnowledge said:


> I spent some time in Slovenia in the 90s on various short trips and I enjoyed trying my hand at some tourist Slovenian. I also bought some CDs of local bands.
> 
> One thing that surprised me was that a few words seem to sit right on the fence between the Germanic, Slavic and Romance languages, mainly thanks to the Slovenian accent.
> 
> Example:
> 
> beer (English)
> piva (Slovenian)
> bier (German)
> birra (Italian)
> 
> Pronunciation of the German in Austria is more likely to be like "bee-ya".
> 
> Slovenian I found turned P into almost a B sound, and lost the V into obscurity. So the word piva sounds more like what I described above for "Alpine German". Which of course sounds very similar to the Italian "birra".
> 
> Are there any other examples someone with knowledge of the three languages could describe? Obviously beer has the connection as it's a fairly old word. Any others?


 
Any others?
well let's try
I think those archaick words are still similiar for all indoeuropean lenguages:
(polish - english)
"_nos" - _nose
_"woda" - _water"
"_brat" - _brother"
_"siostra" - _sister
_"dwa" - _two
_"trzy" _- tri


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## _Tasha_

According to Slovenian etymological dictionary by Marko Snoj, Slovenian word "pivo" is a loanword (19th century) from Czech and it truely does come from the verb "piti" ("pit" in Czech), which means to drink. The verb "piti" is an old Slavic verb, that's why most of the present Slavic countries use it. In short, standard Slovenian "pivo" has no connection to German "Bier". However, the dialectal form of "pivo", which is "pir", derives from Bavarian German "Pier". Bavarian "Pier" and standard German "Bier" derive from old German "bior". Now, there are two etymological possibilities of "Bier". One is Latin "bibere" as was metioned so many times before, and the second one is a relation to the German word "brauen", which means to brew (the beer).


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