On the decline 1: I asked my officemate about the Slovenian language today, and my worst fears were confirmed. They decline their nouns. Now, I sort of realized they did something to their nouns out of the ordinary, but it turns out it's full on declination. There are six forms of every noun, and there are four different female declinations, three male declinations, and two neuter declinations (if I recall the numbers correctly). That's at least 54 different noun forms (and I gather I'm missing quite a few). Why you would ever need to differentiate a direct object from a, like, slightly-out-of-the-way-but-it-will-get-you-there-faster-with-traffic object is beyond me. Although you probably do save on prepositions. And heaven knows English could use to lighten its prepositional load.
On the decline 2: As those of you who frequent gchat may know, it's been a week of some emotional turmoil for me, mostly related to my favorite Italian roommate and finding out things I both wish I didn't know and wish I'd known from the beginning. Stuff is about as resolved now as it's going to be, although we can't really go back (to earlier this week). Things were so lovely and relatively simple, but now our relationship is fraught.
"Fraught," by the way, is my new favorite word. Do you ever go through a period where a word you've known forever but only occasionally used starts seeming appropriate for every situation? I'll bet you do! (That, I'll have you know, was not in the least bit patronizing compared to the Sotomayor hearings, which from now on will be my standard for how patronizing I can be.) Everything these days seems "fraught." When my officemate told me that Slovenians have a very low bar for how much you can appropriately talk about your own accomplishments (she may have been subtly hinting that every time I mention my law school I sound like a douche), I described the American attitude toward bragging as "fraught." You don't want to be obnoxious, but you have the right to be somewhat proud, and people will care about your successes, so hiding them makes you look like you're either savoring your secret or fishing for compliments, and the very fact that you're agonizing about what level of revelation is appropriate probably means you think you're hot stuff, and that's worse than being insecure enough to talk about yourself constantly. See? It's fraught. It's like being "complicated," but expressly negative and without the whole Avril Lavigne connotation.
In any case, despite the fraught-ness Roberto and I headed to the castle yesterday for polka. Yes, that's right. The castle. For polka. It turned out to be this tiny lesson for tourists, so we sat at the cafe and watched. It was most entertaining. And the view from the castle was, of course, lovely and Alpy.
And Roberto and I are a somewhat lovely (if less Alpy) view ourselves.
Ah, me. Oh! And Roberto was recently featured (i.e., caught walking down the street) in Mobil, Slovenia's premier free car-interest magazine.
The fame is overwhelming.
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