STOP! HOSPITALITY AHEAD!

Unlike Ukrainian and Russian, Slovene and English have no history of turf rivalry. Slovenians unequipped with English are left out, less cosmopolitan, sometimes angry, sometimes sad, often the most needy. Sometimes their reactions to English being spoken among them are not as benign as one might hope.

The reality seems to be that Slovenia is very conflicted in its attitude to foreigners - both welcoming and freezing them out, courteous and helpful in person, but in their structural arrangements incompetent and xenophobic. The foreigner is both saviour and invader. "They will think you have come here to rescue them," the Complainant was once told.

Zoran Župevec, responding on Quora to the question "How difficult would it be to live in Ljubljana Slovenia speaking English but not knowing Slovenian yet?" explains there are:

"No problems, in Ljubljana almost everybody speaks English. This is one of the reasons many foreigners have trouble learning Slovenian, even if they want to. They have no chance to actually practice since at first hickup Slovenes switch to English."

"Even if they want to" - it doesn't sound as if Zoran thinks that's very likely.

Jože Marinček adds

"Slovenes know the odds of someone understanding (let alone speaking) a language of 2M speaker[s], so they are quick to communicate in whatever common language they can find. So in a daily interaction one would not expect any problems at all."

Another confidently asserts a geographical force of some kind:

"the closer to the center of Ljubljana you are, the easier it is to get by with English only," says Day Xenn. The Complainant lives 138 km away.

And married to a Slovene in LJ for 6 years, Anthony F Camilleri says your chances of employment are

"near zero"

and thinks that

"to this day my friends here put up with evenings in English just for my benefit."

So yes, the Slovenians have ways of congratulating themselves on their hospitality, and prostrating themselves before the world, both unfortunately completely inimical to the purported educative aims of ZJRS 13 and Treaty rights asserted by the Complainant.

Aims which would have to be realized, to stand even the remotest chance of creating conditions compatible with human dignity, in view of ZJRS 14.

It is some of the most unintentionally racist hospitality in the history of hospitality. And like much racism it is innocent of its ignorance, and supremely comfortable with its hypocrises. Any inconsistency which cannot be explained away can be blamed...on foreigners.

Overall the Quora respondents, while broadly agreeing with the above-quoted themes, skirt the issue of work (perhaps they are students or oligarchic offspring at leisure).

Their contributions betray no knowledge of any anti-foreigner lesiglation.

Their comments compile into a rather blithe acceptance of the situation as imperfect-but-well-watcha-gonna-do?

Obviously, what you are gonna do is what your Treaty obligations say you are gonna do. You can do something different now. Unless Slovenia's Slovene tutoring is 100% successful, and in fact compulsory, there will always be people unfairly excluded from the economy and all its dignity by ZJRS 14.

This is not to say the non-Slovene speaking businesses do not have a problem. They may do. However, customers who visit English-speaking firms do so voluntarily. Businesses can also choose their clients. If the ZZZS can demand Anglophones bring a translator, a private firm can too.

In any case, the Complainant's complaint holds precedence over the complaint - which would be a daily repeated one in Ptuj - that such-and-such a firm does not even speak Slovene.

It is obvious there can be no resolution to these demands if Slovenia is only devoting a few minutes a year to teaching Slovene. If the Complainant wants Slovenia to go faster, he has to take the country to Court, and wait for Slovenia to get its Slovene-teaching act together.

Which it obviously won't, ever.

In view of the huge demand for free English practice, a business selling advanced English, or a museum tour or intellectual property in English which deals with clients in English at reception is adding value, since the client is not paying to talk with the receptionist.

If their English is inadequate, they're in the wrong place for those things. Of course businesses aim to maximise to be all-inclusive, but running a language service doesn't mean you have to run a kindergarten.

A few of the Quora replies [15] mention foreign employees getting by. But no respondent mentions that it is actually against the law to meet Slovene clients, or advertise, publish, screen or broadcast in English only.

Would they have mentioned these anti-foreign-business laws, or the ZJRS 13 exhortation to bestow Slovene upon the populace, if they knew about them?

Slovenia's the most proficient emerging European country in English, says the 2018 English Proficiency Index. Globally, it ranked ninth.

"'Central Europe is becoming an increasingly attractive business hub, in part due to high levels of English proficiency and relatively low costs,' reads the report." [16]

This all sounds like great news for any English-speaking person setting up a business there.

But because this is illegal, all the hospitality is hollow. The welcome is a fake.

Is ZJRS 13 just a suggestion? Sadly, the hospitality is a good way of denying Slovenia's inability or unwillingness to obey its dictum.

They meant to do it, but they really couldn't. ZJRS 14 may be seen as an interventionist piece of legislation designed to create economic flow. In this it is believed to be an inflection at the wrong point of the economy.

It is short-term thinking and economically destructive because it prevents or reduces economic participation in the first place.

It is positioned somewhat meaninglessly somewhere near the boundary of a language spoken by 59% [16] of the population, propped up by a false equivalence. It is true they have learned English without going anywhere. The UK has not even taught these bossy Anglophones Slovene, and yet they come over here expecting English, goes this dog territory argument.

The supply and demand have not been matched. Slovenians think teaching Slovene is the worst job in the world, isn't worth it, and hardly know where to start. [80]

Although exclusion of a single individual can be and is anti-Treaty, the tinier the resources the State provides for the statutorily-stated aims of ZJRS 13 to be fulfilled, the more overtly discriminatory ZJRS 14 becomes.

The Complainant asserts that his very generous estimate of 0.021828473545247 seconds per pupil per teacher per week is squeaky tiny.