The language is one of the more complex areas of human communication. The problem of the recent era is that globalisation is making us adopt names from the place where the thing with that name originates. There is not other word for prekmurska gibanica, because prekmurska gibanica (think cake) originates from Prekmurje (a part of Slovenia) and that`s it. No sensible Englishman is going to go and translate it into “overmura moving cake” (a direct translation, old joke).

However, in the vice-versa situation, we see that Slovenes are annoyed by the word…blog. Which is an abbreviation of the word web-log. Now, the first translations were eager to include the word “dnevnik“, since the word “log” is usually used in that sense. However, dnevnik is composed out of the word DAN (day) and indicates that blogs should be written daily. Which, clearly, they are not.

The problem is that the Slovene language has fallen behind on the subject of internet and computers. We thought (as mentioned in previous post) that we had time and that the whole thing would cool off. It did not. So we found ourselves with a predicament of having to do a rush-job translating each and every word and trying to keep them in the vicinity of normality. We failed. Once the word is out and people are using it, there is no way back. That ship has sailed. And no Jonas and his merry men are going to change that.

It`s so funny since at the word blog, they should come up with a neologism, a completely new and artificial word and stop hugging that precious “dnevnik” so much. Anyone can add a letter to a word and say “Hey! Mine is better than yours!

That is not how it`s done.

The thing is, blogs are so new and so out of this world in Slovenia, that we should let the word stick. We should let things be. Blog does not sound as foreign as weblog, it has no foreign letters or characters and even the name for the person that does the blogging or the verb for the action of blogging itself sounds…well…normal. Changing blog into spletni dnevnik can and will bring silly words to life. Think of a photoblog. Spletnifotodnevnik? Broke your tongue, did you? Compare spletnifotodnevnik to fotoblog. No need to tell me who is the winner of that race. And what about a person who writes a blog? Dnevnikar? Spletni dnevnikar? Dnevnikaš? Pisec dnevnika? All those names are silly. Why? Because nobody uses them and because they bring nothing new and fresh into our language. They just add a suffix or a prefix to the word dnevnik and that`s it. Adding a suffix or a prefix to an old word sucks cocks. Because it is still an old word…in fancy wrapping. And that`s like saying blogs are something old in new wrappings. Which is not true, I don`t care how long the personal webpages have existed. Personal webpage next to a todays blog is like the first mercedes car next to a Ford KA. Sure they both have wheels and travel on road…but that`s where the comparison stops.

So please, no more of this x-dnevnik nonsense. Let blog be!

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