Slovenia at the Leipzig Book Fair

The Leipzig Book Fair, which takes place each spring, ended on Sunday with a record number of visitors and events. It is widely regarded as a "book fair for the public" and unlike the larger Frankfurt Book Fair, readings by authors are the focal point of the event. This year the spotlight was on Slovenia. Joachim Güntner learned something about the language of this small country: "The Slovenian language has survived three empires under which it was never the official language. It has been subjected to strong foreign influences the German language among others) yet has preserved its peculiarities. Like Russian, which has a 'small plural', Slovenian has the 'dual', a special grammatical form for saying 'we two' ('mi dva'). Does this make Slovenian a perfect language for lovers? According to Urska P. Cerne [translator and curator of the Slovenian contribution], Slovenian translators certainly have problems with 'anything that's impersonal', just as in German there are problems with conjunctive, passive and infinitive constructions."

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