Learning Slovak

We continue to meet with our Slovak tutor on Tuesday nights. She has been a real help and blessing and we have developed a nice friendship with her.

At the same time, I feel extremely stupid in this area of my life! Jason is much more oriented to learning languages than I am. He also seems to find the time to study more than I do, which is something I need to work on.

To give you an example of why I feel so challenged, the following is one Slovak word with all of its cases:

Singular:
chlap
chlapa
chlapovi
chlapa
chlapovi
chlapom

Plural:
chlapi
chlapov
chlapom
chlapov
chlapoch
chlapmi

So, what does this mean exactly? Well, there are six different cases. So, for each case you need to use the appropriate word. All of the above words refer to either a man or men (Sing. or Pl.) How you use the word in the sentence determines which ending you need to use.

Now add to this the fact that there are three genders - feminine, masculine, and neuter. And each gender has two categories - living and non-living. And those categories each have two sub-categories - hard ending and soft ending. This means there are twelve different patterns of case endings.

And determining gender is not always as simple as it seems. Slovak does not have articles, such as "a" and "the" so there are no clue words before the noun. Also, the word girl is actually in the neuter category. Figure that one out!

So needless to say, we often get the endings wrong. This is probably the biggest area in which we need to improve. When we write or say sentences this is usually what we get incorrect. Thankfully our tutor is very gracious in correcting us!

This glimpse into the Slovak language can give you a better idea of how to pray for us as we study through the week and meet for two hours on Tuesday nights.