Europe has always been a place of various language contacts. Language contacts can be observed as features in several areas. Primarily in lexical elements as well as at all levels of speech. Multilingualism represents a prerequisite for language contacts. Europe has had quite a chequered history, particularly after the formation of national states, when it comes to the attempts to develop and understand multilingualism. The inception of national states facilitated the death of multilingualism (cf. Gogolin 1994). Prejudice and fear of multilingualism that emanates from Europe's past has been accompanied by more or less prominent language purism. Alas, prejudice and fear of multilingualism is still detectable throughout Europe. Nevertheless, neither prejudice nor fear could contain the processes of borrowing words and structures between European languages. Today, the languages of Europe paint a multi-coloured picture. Traditional language contact can be observed in indigenous speech communities on one hand, while multicultural communities, which have formed in individual countries throughout recent decades, can be observed on the other. Many possibilities for language-contact-related research are cropping up both in Europe and outside of the European realm. These possibilities concern individual languages, individual phenomena, and new perspectives that originate through various linguistic theories and concepts (such as the theory of grammaticalization, functional grammar, newer theories on language change etc.). The present monograph outlines the basic notions from the field of language contact linguistics. The selection of the highlighted notions is limited based on the research possibilities available throughout the respective research spaces of Slovakia, Austria, and Slovenia. The monograph represents a means of orientation for further research as well as for relevant doctoral studies in the field of language contact. Several featured notions also touch upon the fields of multilingualism and psycholinguistics. The concepts of multilingualism and language contact are closely linked. Therefore, new findings about multilingualism, and particularly the concept of functional multilingualism, open up new possibilities for research and establishing connections with psycholinguistic topics. The notions featured in the monograph are treated from the following aspects: subject matter; origin and progress of research; concepts and focal points; terminology-related problems; and research selection according to the authors' assessments.
COBISS.SI-ID: 21526024
The monograph deals with the problem of emigration during the inter-wars period (1918–1941) from the then Venezia Giulia. The monograph brings innovations especially in the approach, which tackles the problem: instead of dealing with the problem from established perspectives, where the Slovene emigration of that time is interpreted exclusively as an escape from fascist repression and economic slowdown of the region. The author pays special attention to the causes of emigration at the level of village communities as well as at the level of functioning of families and households affected by the decision to leave home. To study the process of decision making on emigration by individuals, the author used the emigrant correspondence and interviews. The author took into account both sides of the experience, emigration from home as well as immigration and integration into Argentine society. The author has always tried to distance himself from the rigid models of the interpretation of migration; i.e. he stressed the atypical reasons to explain the departure, and importance of subjective factors and their mutual ties at the level of kinship and village communities, when he explained the integration into Argentine society.
COBISS.SI-ID: 265951744
The article discusses various ways in which Slovene and English function within the physical and virtual spaces of today's world. On the one hand English has undergone a process of differentiation into numerous mother tongue varieties, on the other we are witnessing tendencies toward its renewed homogenization in the role of a universal means of international communication. Special emphasis is placed on the influence of Global English on Slovene as well as on possible developmental trends.
COBISS.SI-ID: 21065736
The paper presents the history of the Slovene ethnic territory and Slovene emigration to the USA in the period from the World War II until today. It describes the size of the Slovene immigrant communities in the United States, development of their organizations after World War II and modes of acculturation of the Slovene community. Also the political activities in the new country on the issues of their old country politics, especially during the World War II and in the period of Slovene independence movements, political participation in the new "homeland" and their contribution to the development of American society during this period are described.
COBISS.SI-ID: 19674376
This paper deals with the topic of Slovene National Homes in the USA. There are a number of reasons why they were built and why it’s an important topic for Slovene immigrant historian. The first is that in the United States before World War I there lived more than 180,000 immigrants and their children who claimed Slovene as their mother tongue, and that they already at that time started to build Slovene National Homes. The second is that there are quite a few US data on these homes in the US in different historical periods and that the history of some of the national home has been processed in the context of research of some of the “Slovene settlements.” All of this allows a comparison of the extent to which on the one hand Slovene National Homes’ impact on the gradual transformation of the Slovene community in the US to the typical immigrant community of American Slovenes and later from the 1950s onwards to the community of Slovene Americans and on the other hand, how much this transformation influenced and affected the development and daily operation of Slovene national homes in the US.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1376133