The Carnival of Aros February 2024: Personal Understanding of Romance and Marriage in Slovenia

This was written for the this month Carnival of Aros on the topic of The Meaning of “Romance” Across Time and Place. This month topic is open to anybody having some opinion on their region/language take on romance, regardless if they are on the aromantic spectrum. So if you have any ideas about it, I encourage you to write something for it.

My native language is Slovenian, and every other language I speak/read was acquired with explicit instruction - so I would not trust my intuition about these language is not biased. I am also not a linguist, so it is just a personal take on the use of the word.

The Use of Word

In Slovenian, we do use the word romance or at least the localised version of romantika. The use as the adjective is easy to think of: romantična večerja (romantic dinner), romantični razgled (the romantic view), romantično mesto (romantic city), romantični par (romantic pair), romantičen sončni zahod (romantic sunset).

But then for the romance novel, we use ljubezenski roman (love novel) instead.

From my point of view, the word has been used more in a sense of the specific atmosphere, then the romantic feeling. It is also used in the situation, when there is no context of the romantic relationships. For example on the siblings walk, one could comment on the view being romantic.

Or maybe my aromanticism just does not notice, how it relates to the romance? There is a chance, that I am missing some component here, that is obviously to the rest of people.

Still, I can take the dictionary entry for the word romántičen:

1. nanašajoč se na romantika 1: romantični pesniki / romantični nazori o poeziji; obnavljati nekatere romantične prvine v literaturi / romantična glasba / romantični zanos
2. pri katerem prevladujejo čustva, domišljija, nerazumsko doživljanje sveta: bil je mlad in romantičen; romantično dekle / ekspr. on je romantična narava // ki vsebuje, izraža čustva, domišljijo, nerazumsko doživljanje sveta: obhajale so ga romantične misli; romantično sanjarjenje // ki pri mišljenju, ravnanju ne upošteva dejstev, uresničljivih možnosti: romantični uporniki / ekspr. to so romantični načrti
3. nav. ekspr. ki vzbuja čustva, domišljijo, hrepenenje: romantičen zvok rogov; romantična pokrajina, slika; pot skozi zasnežen gozd je bila zelo romantična / romantičen prizor / romantična lepota // privlačen, zanimiv, poln skrivnosti: romantična dogodivščina, zgodba / romantično potepuško življenje / človek romantične zunanjosti ● ekspr. romantična ljubezen nežna, zelo čustvena; romantična obleka obleka z naborki, volani, čipkami ♦ lit. romantični realizem realistična književnost, ki vsebuje romantične elemente, značilnosti; romantična ironija besedna figura, s katero avtor v zgodbi nagovori bralca, izrazi svoje mnenje romántično prisl.: romantično se držati za roke; biti romantično razpoložen; sam.: na teh hišah je nekaj romantičnega

The (loose) translation of these points would be:

1. referring to the Romantic literature (romantic poets, romantic opinions about poetry, some romantic elements in literature, romantic music, romantic zeal)
2. with whom the emotions, imagination, irrational experience of the world are overrepresented (he was young and romantic, romantic girl, he had romantic nature,...)
   • expressed emotions, imagination, irrational experience of the world (he had romantic thoughts, romantic daydreaming)
   • does not take facts and practicality into account (romantic rebel, these are romantic plans)
3. evokes feelings, imagination, longing (romantic sound of horn, romantic scenery or image, path through the forest was romantic, romantic scene, romantic beauty)
   • attractive, interesting, full of secrets (romantic adventure or story, romantic vagabond life, a person with romantic look)
   • romantična ljubezen - soft, very emotional love; romantic dress - flounce dress, full of folds and lace
   • romantic realism - realist literature with romance elements; romantic irony - where the author is speaking directly to the reader to express their opinion; (as adverb) romantic (it is romantic to hold hands, be in romantic mode, there is something romantic on this houses)

In the English language, I mostly connect the word romance with the love and close relationships and with the feeling of falling in love. The check in two English dictionaries (Merriam Webster and Cambridge) made me realise, that it might be biased by what kind of English content am I consuming. Since they are other meaning of the word.

On the other hand, the image in my native language is that of a certain find of atmosphere, that exists outside of the specific human relationships.

I had a bit more problem trying to come up with the examples of the word romance used as the noun or a verb. The noun example, I eventually though about romanca. Which we use to indicate a short term romantic relationship between people. But even then, if there is cheating involved, we are much more likely to use ljubezenska afera (love affair) then romanca.

Now, if I only limit myself to the romantic love type of examples, the word we use instead of romance is ljubezen (love). It can be used to describe the media: ljubezenski roman (love novel), ljubezenski film (love movie). Or to describe the short-term romantic entanglement: ljubezenska afera (love affair).

If I take the example of the movie, that I recently watched La Passion de Dodin Bouffant (The Taste of Things). The Wikipedia calls it a romance drama, and the IMDB page talks about the romance. Yet the film festival page and cinema page talk about love instead. I find it interesting, that the later one first mention that this is a love letter to cooking, before mentioning the love story.

(It is also not what I would consider the standard romance in my country or what I am used from the English media. I am not sure how much of that is cultural and how much specific to that movie.)

The Marriage Traditions

When I was thinking about the topic, I was also thinking about the marriage traditions. Especially since I have somebody close to me marring this year.

Based on the English movies, the romance was supposed to be something, where people fall in love and then they marry in the happy celebration.

That is not the feeling, that I get from the weddings here. (Even if I try to avoid as many of them as I can) There are absolutely traditions still practiced, that try to show that marriage is the transaction? And even though I don't think people treat marriage as transaction, I am surprised they did not die out yet.

On the day of the wedding, before they marry, there is a šaranga (not sure how to translate this). It is organised by the people living near the two newlyweds. The main part of it is the negotiation for the price of the bride. And the money is then used for drinking. There are also tasks, that the future bride and groom have to do - like milking the cow for the bride and the sawing logs for the groom. I don't know of any instance, where the people would then not marry, but then why do this at all?

One I only heard about recently is also kolona (also not sure how to translate this). Might be a regional thing, instead of the nation-wide thing. (My country is 2 million people, so when I say region, I mean really, really small region on the world scale)

This one as least have a point. Since one does not want too many people on the wedding, all the people are invited about a week or two earlier, to go drinking at the place of living of the groom. They go from the house and house and they drink at every house. I think it is to celebrate it with the community?

It is also tradition for the hen party to have the future bride selling cookies and alcohol in the city. Because it apparently shows, that she could be useful?

Most of these traditions do not really make sense to me.

One thing that I have also noticed, that at least some people still get married because of children. I have a cousin, that moved their wedding to half a year earlier, so they could 'pretend' to not have had sex before marriage. So the people would not notice, that she was already pregnant, when getting married. And it is not the only example like that.

Though, it seems that at least some of these traditions are starting to disappear with my generation.

None of this would be the things, that I would describe as romantic. Even if people would still use the word romantic to describe the wedding.

The Meaning of Aromantic

I am not entirely sure, if there is a different understanding of aromantic in my language. As far as I noticed, we just use the translation of the word in our language, so aromantičnost.

The local aro/ace-spectrum group meets in the English language. It is hard to notice from these discussions, if there is a different understanding of the word here compared to the English-speaking regions. I did not notice any particular difference.

For one of the previous Carnival of Aros, I went through old Slovenian form for asexuality. One thing I noticed at the time was, how people were differentiating between romantic attraction and falling in love. I don't remember seeing this in the English-speaking discussion. I was not part of the community at the time, so I don't have more to offer.

I do use aro for describing myself in queer spaces and aromantična (aromantic) to describe myself to the non-queer people.

Now for the non-queer people I know, they use the aromantic as in 'not interested in romance'. And use asexsual as 'not interested in sex/not having sex'. I have more discussions of the later, since it is harder to accept for the people.

Based on the reactions I got from these people, one can live easily without romance. Not being interested in romance or not feeling romantic attraction does not mean live without marriage or children. It is like romantic attraction is not really needed for this. Since it will disappear eventually anyway.

They still consider their romantic feelings important, just not something needed to 'function normally'. Whatever this means to them.

This was some quick thoughts on the topic, since I am not sure how much time I will have this month and I wanted to submit something.