Slovak - The Language That Overwhelms Me

Image by Marek Bennett

"Ako sa máš?"

I love to hear my dad speak in his native language. He has several friends with whom he communicates via Skype, and so I sometimes get to hear them speak. 

It is really a neat language, that Slovak, but as an adult, it quite overwhelms me with just the slight inclination to learn the language. Those Slavic languages are difficult, although probably not as difficult as learning an entire new alphabet like some languages.

Interestingly enough, about 5 million people speak Slovak in Slovakia and abroad...hopefully I will make 5 million and 1 someday as it is on my bucket list to learn the language.

But where to start? I have done a beginner search on the best places to learn the language but I need to dig into the research a little bit more.

If anybody has suggestions on the best method for learning a new language, let me know!

Until the next time, Dovidenia.

My Favorite Slovak Folk Song

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One of my favorite songs that my dad used to sing to us was "Prsi Prsi" which is about the rain. Several mornings ago when I woke up to the rain, my thoughts went to this song. My dad and I still whistle the song together in a little duet, like he used to do on the violin when he was younger.

Prší, prší, len sa leje, nezatváraj milá dvere.
Milá má, duša má, nezatváraj pred nama.
Keď som išiel od Aničky, štrngali mi podkovičky,
štrngali, brngali, sivé očká plakali.

Raining, raining, it is raining heavily, my beloved don’t close the door.
My beloved, my soul, don’t close it in front of us.
When I went from Ann, horseshoe was making sounds,
it was making sounds and gray eyes wept.

Sivé očká, čo plačete, veď mi moje nebudete,
Budete iného, šuhajíčka švárneho.

Gray eyes why do you weep, you will not be mine;
You will belong to someone else, to a smug boy.

Slovak is such a beautiful language, I regret not learning it when I was younger. It's on the bucket list, for sure. Hopefully I can get to that soon. In the meantime, I will just sing like I know the words.

The Search Begins...

It has been on my "to-do" list to build my family tree and see how far back I could go. 

All I can say is that it has been interesting...and disappointing...at the same time.

My maternal side of the family I could go back relatively far, but on my paternal side I feel like I constantly hitting dead ends. My dad came over to this country, so I am first generation American on his side. My maternal grandmother came over from the former Yugoslavia when she was six and my maternal grandfather's parents came over from there as well. So I am fairly close to my European roots. 

I ended up purchasing the expensive and hopefully well-worth it subscription to Ancestry.com. But I soon found that I didn't get as far as I had expected to, unfortunately. But I still search on. 

Good thing Ancestry.com has forums where people ask about certain surnames. There I discovered a great site that has several resources for people with relatives from Slovakia: http://www.iabsi.com/gen/public/ Good thing I like to search and I didn't just stop at my dead-end in Ancestry.com I found a wealth of information on this site, which led me to yet another site, https://familysearch.org/ where I found even more information. 

I will keep searching and learning. Hopefully the road blocks I hit will soon be cleared.

Happy hunting, Michelle!