The author addresses Slovene-English language contact, both in the immigrant context & in Slovenia. The direct contact of Slovene & English in the case of Slovene Americans & Canadians is examined from two perspectives: social & cultural on the one hand & linguistic on the other. In the first part, I present the general linguistic situation in Cleveland (& to a minor extent in Washington, D.C. & Toronto), with emphasis on language maintenance & shift, the relationship between mother tongue preservation & ethnic awareness, & the impact of extralinguistic factors on selected aspects of the linguistic behavior of the participants in the study. I then compare the use of second person pronouns as terms of address & the use of speech acts such as compliments to determine the role of different cultural backgrounds in the speakers' linguistic choices. The linguistic part of the analysis focuses on borrowing & code switching, as well as on the influence of English on seemingly monolingual Slovene discourse, where the Slovene inflectional system in particular is being increasingly generalized, simplified & reduced, & Slovene word order is beginning to resemble that of English. Finally, the rapidly growing impact of English on Slovene in Slovenia on various linguistic levels from vocabulary to syntax & intercultural communication is discussed. References. Adapted from the source document