FEATURED NEOLOGISM:

An interesting neologism in Slovenian is ‘mlekomat’. It is a type of neologism that is called zloženka in the Slovenian language, cause it is created by using two words, mleko (milk) and avtomat (machine). It is used to describe a machine that sells milk, a bit similar to a coffee machine, etc. For m,e it’s very interesting and maybe even a bit weird, cause who is in such a desperate need for milk that they create a machine that works 24/7 and is usually placed somewhere in the city centre.
In the Slovenian dictionary, it is explained as ‘a machine that sells fresh milk’, the first one appeared in Slovenia in 2009, that’s when the neologism started its life. In the article about the first ‘mlekomat’ in Slovenia, the word appears between apostrophes (April 2009) https://web.archive.org/web/20100113161953/https://siol.net/slovenija/zanimivosti/2009/04/avtomat_za_prodajo_svezega_mleka.aspx
Later in September 2009, it no longer appears between apostrophes, so it indicates a quick blend into the language.

The neologism itself is not very complicated, but the interesting thing is how easily it came into use. In most Slavic languages we would just call it ‘machine for milk’ or something similar (it could be called, for example ‘avtomat za mleko’ in Slovenian) meanwhile Slovenian language has a lot of neologisms like that, for example ‘jajcemat’ – a machine that sells eggs, ‘paketomat’ – a place where you can collect your package.

Currently, I am a BA student in Slovenian Slavic Studies at the University of Warsaw with the main focus in Slovenian and Serbian language, with a strong interest in digital linguistics. My academic focus lies in ways we can include computational methods into exploration and usage of Slavic languages, especially when it comes to exploring how Large Language Models (LLMs) can be used to study and acknowledge the different varieties of Slovenian, for example unofficial language which is commonly used and dialects, that can differ a lot depending on the region of Slovenia. I have experience working with corpus linguistics tools such as Sketch Engine, AntConc and Voyant Tools. I am currently developing my skills in SQL and text analysis.