The Slovene Language

 When we volunteered to come on our mission, we signed up for a mission where no new language was required.  We were assured that we would always have translators available to help us when we need it.  We were, however, offered a chance to learn Croatian through the church's language program in Provo.  Almost all the instructors are BYU students who are "return missionaries" and learned the language while serving there.  Sadly, we were just in time for semester break and we were unable to connect with an instructor for more than an email or two.  So we didn't make much progress.

Now we are here and we have gotten along fairly well without speaking Croatian, nor Slovene, Serbian, Bosnian, nor whatever they speak in Montenegro (Serbian?).  However, you cannot live in a country without learning a little of it.  We know very well how to say Hello and Goodbye, Yes and No, and other simple things.

One of the things about the languages here (they are all related) is that they always pronounce every single letter in every word.  There are no silent e's here!  No slurring letters together until they disappear.  So that makes reading the words quite easy.  Simple rules.  Of course, nothing else about Slovene or Croatian is easy.  The structure and roots of these languages have no connection to the roots of English.  None whatever!

One aspect of it is that they do not quibble about putting a vowel between consonants.  In English we have some words with two consonants (for example "sting" has two pairs, st and ng) and we might have a few with three, but beyond that we just don't do it.  Slavic languages have three's everywhere, four is common, and it is not hard to find where there are five.  I don't know an example of having six or more, but it wouldn't surprise me if I did find one.

An example of five consonents without a vowel between them - from a Sunday School lesson.Skrbno starts with five consonents and finally ends with a vowel.

So, why does this interest me?  I don't know.  There is not good reason, it just does.

  I had my 72nd birthday yesterday.  I would just as soon let them slip by un-noticed, but I live with a pack of females and they make sure no birthday goes by without a fight.  So I caved in and let my wonderful wife make my favorite dinner.  We had a pork roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, peas, and applesauce.  For dessert we had a German chocolate cake.  It turns out that German chocolate is not available here, so Liz began to search for how to make it from things that are available here.  The first thing she found is German chocolate has nothing to do with Germany.  Here is the true story from the internet (so it must be true):

In 1852 Samuel German, an English American Baker who worked for Baker's Chocolate Company, created a new type of dark baking chocolate. German made a sweet baking chocolate which incorporated more sugar than the average semi-sweet baking chocolate.

He invented the chocolate and it was named after him.  Did he have any German roots?  Perhaps, or perhaps his ancestors had a speech impediment that made it sound like they were speaking English in German.  Who knows.

Whatever!  Liz found a way to simulate German Chocolate and made a wonderful cake.  She topped it with the traditional coconut frosting, which was also a problem.  We are used to American shredded coconut that is sweetened.  It is not available here.  Here, they have toasted coconut flakes, and they have dried, ground coconut with the consistency of granulated sugar.  We bought some of each, mixed them together and it turned out just fine.

We even had ice cream to go with it.  Of course, it is quite different than American ice cream, but we didn't even quibble about that.  It was vanilla, which was close enough.  But it was a little hard to find.  They are very fond of Neopolitan ice cream here and it takes up considerable space in the freezer section of the stores.  You can find it with vanilla and strawberry, or with vanilla and chocolate, or with all three, but you have to really search to find a container of simple vanilla ice cream.

We have completed two audits so far, both for branches in Slovenia, so they were done over Zoom, of course.  Tomorrow, I get audited by one of my auditing staff and I will be wearing my branch clerk hat.  Liz will be the Assistant Area Auditor and is supervising it.  I anticipate no problems.

That will leave us with just two more audits we will do ourselves, and we will have ten more to supervise.  Then we will review them all and sign off on them, and that will be it for another auditing cycle.