Esther Miles, member of the British-Slovene Society, learned Slovene in Slovenia. Below she tells how she did it.
This July, I took part in the University of Ljubljana’s Summer School funded by their scholarship for Slovene descendants, which the British Slovene Society very kindly endorsed. I was excited for the course, though a little nervous as I hadn’t learned much Slovene before.
However, I was quickly made to feel welcome on the course, placed in a beginner class where we started with the alphabet (abeceda). Both my morning and afternoon teachers, Lara and Iris, and all my classmates, were lovely. We balanced the fast-paced textbook with plenty of games, which could be simple (making statements about objects and answering “to je res” = “this is true”/ “to ni res” = “this is false”) but were very helpful for getting us to express ourselves only in Slovene and practice vocabulary. We also discussed Slovene culture, family stories, songs, and dialects. The organisers were very accommodating, helping students, including myself, to switch groups during the programme. My new classmates and teachers, Petra and Maja, were just as friendly.
Just as valuable as the language learning was the chance to meet people on the course and learn about their connections to Slovenia. It was especially interesting meeting fellow descendants of Slovenes from all parts of the world and hearing their family stories. Break times and our evening programme of activities brought us together from across classes and gave us a chance to explore Ljubljana together. Highlights included a screening of a Slovenian film, a trip to lake Bled and an evening of karaoke.
I was surprised by how much I had learned by the end of the 2 weeks – we covered 5 units, the present and past tenses, and 3 cases (and the dreaded dual!). After the programme, I could grasp parts of conversations around me. I even found I could understand some Croatian in Zagreb. The programme felt very worthwhile, not only for the fantastic teaching but also for the chance to learn more about Slovenia, meet others with an interest in the country and language, take part in a fun programme of activities, and build my own sense of what it means to be Slovene.
I hope to take part again, and encourage anyone who is interested to look into the programme. There are scholarships for both descendants and non-descendants, and courses year-round: https://centerslo.si/en/courses-for-adults/courses/summer-school/