On December 10, 2021, the Faculty of Philology of the University of Banja Luka hosted an international scientific conference entitled Slovenians in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 20th and 21st century: Linguistic, Cultural and Economic Issues and Interconnectedness.
Lecturers from Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina spoke about the descendants of Slovenian emigrants and the preservation of the Slovenian language in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The conference was part of a bilateral project funded by the Public Research Agency of the Republic of Slovenia. The project, which aims to learn more about the emigration of Slovenians to Bosnia and Herzegovina, began with a conference in Banja Luka and will end in 2023 with a conference in Ljubljana.
The project is led by Marijanca Ajša Vižintin, PhD, from the Institute for Slovenian Emigration and Migration of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and Biljana Babić, PhD, from the Faculty of Philology, University of Banja Luka. The participants of the conference were greeted at the beginning by Dalibor Kesić, PhD, from the University of Banja Luka, Igor Kotjelnikov from the Ministry of Education and Culture of Republika Srpska, representative of the Association of Slovenians Triglav Nataša Kajmaković and project managers Biljana Babić, PhD, and Marianca Ajša Vižintin, PhD. A student of the Banja Luka Music School delighted us with his music on the accordion.
The programme was divided into three parts. In the first, Marianca Ajša Vižintin, PhD, presented migration from Slovenia to Bosnia and Herzegovina and social networking. Many do not know that Slovenians went to Bosnia and Herzegovina for seasonal work in the middle of the 19th century. Dragomir Kozomara, PhD, and Dijana Crnjak, PhD, described the phonetic characteristics of the speech of the Slovenian population in the vicinity of Banja Luka. They researched in Slatina and pointed out the importance of Slovenians who started settling in these places a hundred years ago. Ljiljana Potkonjak Panić, MSc, and Anđela Babić reviewed the Banja Luka press between the two world wars and looked for texts about famous Slovenians. Biljana Babić, PhD, wrote the titles of books in Slovenian and translations from Slovenian from the electronic catalogue of the National and University Library of the Republic of Srpska. She also highlighted bilingual and multilingual books. The Association of Slovenians Triglav Banja Luka was mentioned as an important publisher of works by Slovenian authors in Slovenian and Serbian.
The second part of the programme was intended for additional classes in Slovenian, and the third in Slovenian at foreign universities. The conference was a hybrid, some speakers spoke live, others recorded their contribution. Eva Jurman from the Institute for Education of the Republic of Slovenia presented the importance of supply teaching lessons of the Slovenian language, Barbara Hanuš, MSc, who taught in Bosnia and Herzegovina for nine years, showed materials and forms of encouraging students to read. Also Boris Kern, PhD, spoke about interesting materials and textbooks for learning Slovenian as a second and foreign language, and described the state and perspectives of teaching Slovenian at foreign universities. Janja Vollmaier Lubej, PhD, lecturer of the Slovenian language at the University of Banja Luka, presented her work. The lectureship has been open since the 2018/2019 school year as an elective and optional subject, and interest in learning the Slovenian language is great.
The conference ended with a lecture by Jernej Mlekuž, PhD. He interestingly titled his contribution Brotherhood and ...: plum brandy and banal nationalism in socialist Yugoslavia. There are many more areas worth exploring, and the bilateral project is an opportunity to share experiences and new forms of networking.
Barbara Hanuš
Translation Ana Marjanović
