Hello,

I have a question that’s related to a word that I’ve only found in Slovenian. The word is “Isna” and it means “truth”.

I’m from South Serbia and my grandparents, who were village folk, used this word often. When I tried to Google the word I used latin script the first time and found [this](https://books.google.rs/books?id=VFp-DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA127&lpg=PA127&dq=%22isna%22+istina&source=bl&ots=Tets4tVM9i&sig=ACfU3U2mS-jYM_kBsZh8dH8HYiMO4I9BfA&hl=sr&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiVlKDRqev0AhUDRPEDHZ7uDL8Q6AF6BAgVEAM#v=onepage&q=isna&f=false). The book name is “Pripovedno izročilo Slovencev v Porabju” and if I’m understanding this correctly it means “Spoken tales of Slovenians from Porabje”.
I’ve only found it in South and East Serbia, the rest have more or less never heard of it.

I’ve also heard that there are some similarities between Torlakian (South Serbian) and Slovenian but nobody ever told me what they were, except the obvious “Idem si doma” which Im not even sure if Slovenians use it.

Is “isna” a common term? Have you ever heard if it? What do you think about all this?

Notice: *I’m not some “Greater Serbia” type of dude and I don’t think every South Slavic nation is Serbian. I just find connections between languages fun and fascinating.*

7 comments

  1. Never heard of it, but am not from Porabje

    Isna could just be a contraction of Istina.

    Ist’na

    Is’na

    Isna

  2. I’ve never heard isna in my entire life. Keep in mind, however, that northeastern dialects of Slovene are much much different from standard Slovene. Porabje slovene is even weireder than Prekmurje Slovene, but most people here never even heard it in real life because it only has a few hundred speakers left, most of whom live in Hungary and are usually pensioners.

  3. >I’m not some “Greater Serbia” type of dude and I don’t think every South Slavic nation is Serbian. I just find connections between languages fun and fascinating.

    No worries here, because we are are all Slavic and we came from the same tribe.

    Generally the expression Isna isn’t used in Slovenian language. But we are very dialect heavy. Spoken Slovene is considered to have at least 48 dialects [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_dialects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_dialects). For example if two people; one from the Primorska (seaside) and one from the Pomurje (near the HU border) would meet up and talked in a dialect heavy way, they wouldn’t necessarily understand eachother from the get-go.

    So it’s very plausible that some dialect from Porabje uses “Isna” Also isna sounds like the basis for “istina”.

  5. I had a few work obligations in that region and people spoke with me in standard slovenian. But when they switched and began to talk to each other, i didnt understand a single word.

    It was so bad that if I had a boyfriend from that region, and we were together on a walk when he’d met his friend.. They could talk how he cheated on me last week and I would just smile and nod..

    The whole Pomurje region accent is wildly different from standard slovenian. People from other part have difficulties understanding them. So the word isma may come from there, but is not commonly used.

  6. never hear people say it isna, usually it’s istina, but given that I can understand the 3 paragraphs linked probably just a minor variation, maybe some older people used to say it that way

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