Abstract This article addresses the issue of mother tongue retention in the Slovene Canadian community of Vancouver. A brief social and historical profile of the community is followed by a description of the general linguistic situation, based on the data collected through questionnaires and participant observation. The results show substantial intergenerational variation in terms of the immigrants’ language use and language attitudes and point in the direction of a relatively rapid shift from Slovene to English, but not to the weakening of their sense of ethnic identity. The focus then shifts to the linguistic aspects of Slovene-English language contact themselves. In addition to interference phenomena in the immigrants’ language such as borrowing from English and Slovene-English code switching, special attention is paid to the presence of dialect or standard features in their mother tongue. Lexis in particular is interesting as it shows traces of other languages. Next, we try to identify the most significant factors which affect the immigrants’ choice between Slovene and English in various contexts as well as their use of either dialect or standard in Slovene.

中文翻译：

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方言在斯洛文尼亚加拿大人母语保留中的作用：案例研究

摘要本文解决了温哥华斯洛文尼亚加拿大社区的母语保留问题。根据通过问卷调查和参与者观察收集到的数据，对社区进行简短的社会和历史介绍，然后对一般语言情况进行描述。结果表明，在移民的语言使用和语言态度方面，代际差异很大，并指出了从斯洛文尼亚到英语的相对较快转变的方向，而不是削弱了他们的种族认同感。然后，重点转移到斯洛文尼亚-英语语言联系的语言方面。除了移民语言的干扰现象（例如从英语和斯洛文尼亚语-英语代码转换中借用）之外，要特别注意母语中是否存在方言或标准功能。Lexis特别有趣，因为它显示了其他语言的痕迹。接下来，我们尝试找出影响移民在各种情况下在斯洛文尼亚语和英语之间的选择以及他们在斯洛文尼亚语中使用方言或标准的最重要因素。