that's interesting. my mother's native language was serbo-croatian, just like melania's. i never knew how close it was to russian until gorbachev came to visit our local university and gave an important speech. my mother and i were listening to it live on television when the sound cut out for the simultaneous translator. my mum calmly began translating for me and when the sound came back on, she and the translator were in the middle of speaking the same word. i was really surprised 1) to find out my mother had this skill, and 2) that serbo-croatian was not so different from russian. and for those who would say slovenian is so widely different from either of those, it's not.