Linguistic Analysis of Spoken Slovene by Holders and Speakers of Slovene as a Heritage Language in the Slovene Community in Toronto

Abstract

Holders of Slovene as a heritage language (representatives of the first generation) use Slovene as a heritage language both in everyday speech situations in the family environment and at cultural events within the community. These representatives are both speakers of dialects and the standard language of the time, as they used it more often in the Slovene environment until they moved to a new environment. Institutionalized community organization in this group of representatives contributed to the preservation of dialects in the new environment. Representatives from the same Slovenian areas founded societies, which connected them with the local dialect and customs from the place of origin. On the one hand, these speakers maintained their dialect, and at the same time, with their interlocutors from other dialect environments, they moved to a standard language, with the loss of certain dialectal characteristics.

Slovene was used by speakers of Slovene as a heritage language (representatives of the second generation) in childhood, especially within an organized community, within which they participated in various activities that contributed to increasing opportunities for the use of Slovene: Slovene school, church, choirs, drama and dance groups, scouts, etc. When they continued their education in high school and university, they lost contact with the community and consequently with the Slovene language. According to the characteristics of spoken Slovene, I divide this group of representatives into two subgroups, namely those in which only Slovene was used in the family environment, and those in which English was more frequently used in the family environment in addition to Slovene. Speakers who communicated only Slovene with their family members in the family environment until entering school showed a transfer of language at the level of the dialect from which their parents and grandparents came, and a rare occurrence of English interference, which occurs mainly on the morphological and verbal plane. In the second group of representatives, in which English was used in the family environment in addition to Slovene, the dialect system at the phonetic level is no longer as solid (mixing with standard language), and linguistic interference from English is reflected on all language levels. Today, these representatives use the Slovene language in the family environment when communicating with their parents, and in the community - in church ceremonies and at cultural events – when communicating with older members of the community, relatives and friends from Slovenia.