da

In short

• ▶
  da

  so that

Why it looks that way

Slovenian "yes" is ja; da is the conjunction "that" and "so that" in one, and the verb after it stays in the present — no "would" form.

A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.

In a live sentence

A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.

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  Prišel sem, da ti pomagam

  I came so that I can help you

Nearby words: basic words

Yes, no, good, bad, very. The small change of a language — and no sentence assembles without it.

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  ja

  yes

  like "yah"
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  ne

  no

  The same word negates verbs: ne razumem, "I do not understand". It fuses with "be" and "have" into nisem and nimam.
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  dobro

  fine

  The standard full reply is Dobro sem, hvala — "I am fine, thank you".
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  slabo

  badly

  From slab, "weak". Say it about yourself when you feel under the weather.
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  odlično

  excellent

  č is "ch" as in "church": od-LEECH-noh
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  in

  and

  Not the short "i" of the neighboring languages — in is a small giveaway of Slovenian.
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  ampak

  but

  The conversational but. The bookish, sharper one is toda, and pa always lands as the second word: jaz pa ne.
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  lahko

  may (permission)

  Literally "easily". It does the job of "be able to": lahko grem, "I can go".
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  kilogram

  kilogram (unit)

  At the market people say the short kila: dve kili jabolk. Two kilograms take the dual: dva kilograma.
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  polovica

  half

  c is "ts": poh-LOH-vee-tsah

Test yourself

Five questions from the same set — “basic words”. Recalling a spelling from meaning is harder than knowing a familiar word on sight, and therefore more useful.

How not to forget this word

Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.

• This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many times
  Kim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
• Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many times
  Adesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
• An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many times
  Bertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.

Next

• Basic words11 words on the topic
• če — ifconjunction
• dokler — as long asconjunction
• ko že — sinceconjunction
• samo da — if onlyconjunction
• All Slovenian wordsIndex by topic