Slovene or Slovenian is a
South Slavic languageThe South Slavic languages comprise one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers...
spoken by approximately 2.5 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in
SloveniaSlovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
. It is the first language of about 1.85 million people and is one of the 23
official and working languagesThe languages of the European Union are languages used by people within the member states of the European Union. They include the twenty-three official languages of the European Union along with a range of others...
of the
European UnionThe European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
. Although Slovene is not an endangered language, its scope is shrinking considerably, especially in science and higher education.
Standard Slovene
Standard Slovene is the national
standard languageA standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...
that evolved on the basis of Central Slovene dialects in the 18th century and consolidated itself through the 19th and 20th centuries. While distinct regional
varietiesIn sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, accents, registers, styles or other sociolinguistic variation, as well as the standard variety itself...
descended from the older rural
dialectThe term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s still exist, the spoken and
written languageA written language is the representation of a language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will instinctively learn or create spoken or gestural languages....
is uniform and standardized. Some dialects differ considerably from the standard language in
phonologyPhonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
,
vocabularyA person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
and
grammarIn linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
. Though not facing imminent
extinctionAn extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers., or that is no longer in current use. Extinct languages are sometimes contrasted with dead languages, which are still known and used in special contexts in written form, but not as ordinary spoken languages for everyday communication...
, such dialects have been in decline during the past century, despite the fact that they are well researched and their use is not discouraged by the authorities. Although most dialects, especially in rural and mountainous regions, have retained their specific phonetic features, their vocabulary,
syntaxIn linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
and grammar have been strongly influenced by standard Slovene. Some dialects have been more successful in resisting the penetration of the standard language: most notably the
Prekmurje dialectPrekmurian, also known as the Pannonian-Slovene, East-Slovene, or Wendish , is the easternmost separate dialect of Slovene, spoken in the Prekmurje region of Slovenia and by the Hungarian Slovenes in Vas county in western Hungary...
, which is one of the few dialects in Slovenia still widely used by all strata of the population, and some Slovene dialects in the
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n state of
CarinthiaCarinthia is the southernmost Austrian state or Land. Situated within the Eastern Alps it is chiefly noted for its mountains and lakes.The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Austro-Bavarian group...
and in
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. The
ResianThe Resian dialect is a distinct dialect of Slovene spoken in the Resia Valley, Province of Udine, Italy, close to the border with Slovenia...
and Torre (Ter) dialects in the Italian
Province of UdineThe Province of Udine is a province in the autonomous Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of Italy, bordering Austria and Slovenia. Its capital is the city of Udine....
are the only Slovene dialects that have remained untouched by the influences of standard Slovene, to the extent that they are unintelligible to most Slovene speakers.
The distinctive characteristics of Slovene are dual grammatical number, two accentual norms, one characterized by
pitch accentPitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
, and abundant inflection (a trait shared with many Slavic languages). Although Slovene is basically a SVO language, word order is very flexible, often adjusted for emphasis or stylistic reasons. Slovene has a
T-V distinctionIn sociolinguistics, a T–V distinction is a contrast, within one language, between second-person pronouns that are specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....
: second-person plural forms are used for individuals as a sign of respect. Also, Slovene and
SlovakSlovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
are the two modern Slavic languages whose names for themselves literally mean "Slavic" (slověnьskъ in
old SlavonicOld Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek...
).
Classification
Slovene is an Indo-European language belonging to the Western subgroup of the
South SlavicThe South Slavic languages comprise one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers...
branch of the
Slavic languagesThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
, like
Serbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
. It is close to the
KajkavianThe Kajkavian dialect is one of the three main dialects of Croatian. It has low mutual intelligibility with the other two dialects, Štokavian and Čakavian. All three are named after their word for "what?", which in Kajkavian is kaj....
and
Čakavian dialectChakavian or Čakavian is a dialect of the Croatian language. The name stems from the word for "what?", which is "ča" in Čakavian...
s of (Serbo-)Croatian, but further from the
Štokavian dialectShtokavian or Štokavian is the prestige dialect of the Serbo-Croatian language, and the basis of its Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Montenegrin standards...
, the basis for the Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian standard languages. While Slovene is almost completely intelligible with Kajkavian Croatian dialects (especially the variant spoken in
Hrvatsko ZagorjeHrvatsko Zagorje is a region north of Zagreb, Croatia. It comprises the whole area north of Medvednica mountain up to Slovenia in the north and west, and up to the regions of Međimurje and Podravina in the north and east...
on the border with Slovenia),
mutual intelligibilityIn linguistics, mutual intelligibility is recognized as a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related languages can readily understand each other without intentional study or extraordinary effort...
with other variants of Serbo-Croatian is hindered by differences in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.
Early history
Like all
Slavic languagesThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
, Slovene traces its roots to the same proto-Slavic group of languages that produced
Old Church SlavonicOld Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek...
. The earliest known examples of a distinct, written Slovene dialect are from the
Freising ManuscriptsThe Freising Manuscripts are the first Latin-script continuous text in a Slavic language and the oldest document in Slovene.The monuments consisting of three texts in the oldest Slovene dialect were discovered bound into a Latin codex...
, known in Slovene as Brižinski spomeniki. The consensus estimate of their date of origin is between 972 and 1093 (most likely before 1000). These religious writings are among the oldest surviving manuscripts in any Slavic language.
Standard Slovene emerged in the second half of the 16th century thanks to the works of Slovene Lutheran authors, who were active during the
Protestant ReformationThe Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
. The most prominent authors from this period are
Primož TrubarPrimož Trubar or Primož Truber was a Slovene Protestant reformer, the founder and the first superintendent of the Protestant Church of the Slovene Lands, a consolidator of the Slovene language and the author of the first Slovene-language printed book...
, who wrote the first books in Slovene,
Adam BohoričAdam Bohorič was a Slovene Protestant preacher, teacher and author of the first grammar of Slovene.Bohorič was born in the market town of Rajhenburg in the Duchy of Styria, on the border between Lower Carniola and Lower Styria...
, the authors of the first Slovene grammar, and
Jurij DalmatinJurij Dalmatin was a Slovene Lutheran minister, writer and translator.Born in Krško in around 1546, Dalmatin became a preacher in Ljubljana in 1572. He was the author of several religious books, such as Karšanske lepe molitve , Ta kratki würtemberški katekizmus , and Agenda...
, who translated the entire
BibleThe Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
to Slovene.
From the high Middle Ages up to the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, in the territory of present day Slovenia,
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
was the language of the elite, and Slovene was the language of the common people. During this period, German had a strong impact on Slovene, and many
GermanismsGermanisation is both the spread of the German language, people and culture either by force or assimilation, and the adaptation of a foreign word to the German language in linguistics, much like the Romanisation of many languages which do not use the Latin alphabet...
are preserved in contemporary colloquial Slovene. Many Slovene
scientistA scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...
s before the 1920s also wrote in foreign languages, mostly German, which was the
lingua francaA lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
of science in all
Central EuropeCentral Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
at the time.
Recent history
During the rise of
Romantic NationalismRomantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs...
in the 19th century, the cultural movements of Illyrism and
Pan-SlavismPan-Slavism was a movement in the mid-19th century aimed at unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus was in the Balkans where the South Slavs had been ruled for centuries by other empires, Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Venice...
brought words from
Serbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
and
CzechCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
into standard Slovene, mostly to replace words previously borrowed from German. Most of these innovations have remained, although some were dropped in later development. In the second half of the 19th century, many nationalist authors made an abundant use of Serbo-Croatian words: among them were
Fran LevstikFran Levstik was a Slovene writer, political activist, playwright and critic. he was one of the most prominent exponents of the Young Slovene political movement.-Life and work:...
and
Josip JurčičJosip Jurčič was a Slovene writer and journalist. He was born in Muljava, Austrian Empire and died in Ljubljana, Austria-Hungary...
, who wrote the first novel in Slovene in 1866. This tendency was reversed in the
Fin de siècleFin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...
period by the first generation of modernist Slovene authors (most notably the writer
Ivan CankarIvan Cankar was a Slovene writer, playwright, essayist, poet and political activist. Together with Oton Župančič, Dragotin Kette, and Josip Murn, he is considered as the beginner of modernism in Slovene literature...
), who resorted to a more "pure" and simple language without excessive Serbo-Croatian borrowings. During the
Kingdom of YugoslaviaThe Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...
in the 1920s and 1930s, the influence of Serbo-Croatian increased again. This was opposed by the younger generations of Slovene authors and intellectuals; among the most fierce opponents of an excessive Serbo-Croatian influence on Slovene were the intellectuals around the leftist journal
SodobnostSodobnost is a Slovenian literary and cultural magazine, established in 1933. It is considered the oldest of currently existing literary magazines in Slovenia. Although Sodobnost has traditionally been a magazine focused on cultural and literary issues, it nowadays covers a wide range of current...
, as well as some younger Catholic activists and authors. After 1945, numerous Serbo-Croatian words that were used in the previous decades were dropped. This caused an interesting paradox that a Slovene text from the 1910s is frequently closer to modern Slovene than a text from the 1920s and 1930s.
Between 1920 and 1941, the official language of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was defined as "Serbian-Croatian-Slovene". In practice, Slovene was used in Slovenia, both in education and administration. Nevertheless, many state institutions only operated in Serbian, and a Slovene-Serbian bilingualism was applied in many spheres of public life in Slovenia. For examples, at the post offices, railways and in administrative offices, Serbian was used together with Slovene. However, state employees were expected to be able to speak Slovene in Slovenia, and in reality, Serbian had a very limited use in Slovenia.
During the same time, western Slovenia (the
Slovenian LittoralThe Slovenian Littoral is a historical region of Slovenia. Its name recalls the historical Habsburg crown land of the Austrian Littoral, of which the Slovenian Littoral was a part....
and the western districts of
Inner Carniola) were under Italian administration and submitted to a fierce and violent policy of Fascist Italianization; the same policy was applied to Slovene speakers in
Venetian SloveniaVenetian Slovenia is a small mountainous region in northeastern Italy . Most of the region is located in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, in the area between the towns of Cividale del Friuli, Tarcento and Gemona ....
,
GoriziaGorizia is a town and comune in northeastern Italy, in the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. It is located at the foot of the Julian Alps, bordering Slovenia. It is the capital of the Province of Gorizia, and it is a local center of tourism, industry, and commerce. Since 1947, a twin...
and
TriesteTrieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...
. Between 1923 and 1943, all public use of Slovene language in these territories was strictly prohibited, and Slovene language activists were persecuted by the state. After the
Carinthian PlebisciteThe Carinthian Plebiscite on 10 October 1920 determined the final southern border between the Republic of Austria and the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes after World War I.- History :...
of 1920, a less severe policy of Germanization took place in the Slovene-speaking areas of southern
CarinthiaCarinthia is the southernmost Austrian state or Land. Situated within the Eastern Alps it is chiefly noted for its mountains and lakes.The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Austro-Bavarian group...
which remained under Austrian administration. After the
AnschlussThe Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
of 1938, the use of Slovene was strictly forbidden in Carinthia, as well. This accelerated a process of
language shiftLanguage shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak...
in Carinthia, which continued throughout the second half of the 20th century: according to the Austro-Hungarian census of 1910, around 17% of inhabitants of Carinthia spoke Slovene in their daily communication; in 1951, this figure dropped under 10%, and by 2001 to a mere 2,8%.
During
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Slovenia was divided between the
Axis PowersThe Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
of
Fascist ItalyThe Kingdom of Italy was a state forged in 1861 by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which was its legal predecessor state...
,
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, and
HungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, and the occupying powers attempted to either discourage or entirely suppress the Slovene language.
Following World War II, Slovenia became part of the
Socialist Federal Republic of YugoslaviaThe Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
. Slovene was one of the official languages of the federation. On the territory of Slovenia, it was commonly used in almost all areas of public life. One important exception was the Yugoslav army where
Serbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
was used exclusively even in Slovenia. National independence has revitalized the language: since 1991, when Slovenia gained independence, Slovene has been used as an official language in all areas of public life. It also became one of the official languages of the European Union upon Slovenia's admission in 2004.
Geographic distribution
The language is spoken by about 2.5 million people, mainly in Slovenia, but also by Slovene national minorities in
Friuli-Venezia GiuliaFriuli–Venezia Giulia is one of the twenty regions of Italy, and one of five autonomous regions with special statute. The capital is Trieste. It has an area of 7,858 km² and about 1.2 million inhabitants. A natural opening to the sea for many Central European countries, the region is...
,
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
(around 90,000 in
Venetian SloveniaVenetian Slovenia is a small mountainous region in northeastern Italy . Most of the region is located in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, in the area between the towns of Cividale del Friuli, Tarcento and Gemona ....
, Resia Valley, Canale Valley,
Province of TriesteThe Province of Trieste is a province in the autonomous Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Trieste.It has an area of 212 km², and a total population of 236,520...
and in those municipalities of the
Province of GoriziaThe Province of Gorizia is a province in the autonomous Friuli–Venezia Giulia region of Italy.-Overview:Its capital is the city of Gorizia. It belonged to the Province of Udine between 1924 and 1927 and the communes of Sonzia, Plezzo, Bergogna, Caporetto, Tolmino, Circhina, Santa Lucia d'Isonzo,...
bordering with Slovenia), in southern
CarinthiaCarinthia is the southernmost Austrian state or Land. Situated within the Eastern Alps it is chiefly noted for its mountains and lakes.The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Austro-Bavarian group...
and some parts of
StyriaStyria is a state or Bundesland, located in the southeast of Austria. In area it is the second largest of the nine Austrian federated states, covering 16,401 km². It borders Slovenia as well as the other Austrian states of Upper Austria, Lower Austria, Salzburg, Burgenland, and Carinthia. ...
in
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
(25,000). It is also spoken in
CroatiaCroatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
, especially in
IstriaIstria , formerly Histria , is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Bay of Kvarner...
,
RijekaRijeka is the principal seaport and the third largest city in Croatia . It is located on Kvarner Bay, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea and has a population of 128,735 inhabitants...
and
ZagrebZagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
(11,800-13,100), in southwestern
HungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
(3-5,000), in
SerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
(5,000), and by the Slovene diaspora throughout
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and the rest of the world (around 300,000), particularly in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
,
CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
,
ArgentinaArgentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
,
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
.
Dialects
Slovene is the most diverse Slavic language in terms of dialects, with different degrees of mutual intelligibility. There are 46 distinct dialects, grouped in seven dialect groups. Although pronunciation differs greatly from area to area, those differences do not pose major obstacles to understanding. The standard language is mainly used in public presentations or on formal occasions.
The Prekmurian and
ResianThe Resian dialect is a distinct dialect of Slovene spoken in the Resia Valley, Province of Udine, Italy, close to the border with Slovenia...
dialects, being the furthest from the standard language, have been standardized. Speakers of those two dialects have considerable difficulties with being understood by speakers of other varieties of Slovene, needing
code-switchingIn linguistics, code-switching is the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals—people who speak more than one language—sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other...
to the Standard Slovene. Other dialects are mutually intelligible when speakers avoid the excessive usage of regionalisms.
Regionalisms are mostly limited to culinary and agricultural expressions, although there are many exceptions. Some loanwords have become so deeply rooted into the local language, that people have considerable difficulties in finding a standard expression for the dialectical term (for instance, kovter meaning
blanketA blanket is a type of bedding, generally speaking, a large piece of cloth, intended to keep the user warm, especially while sleeping. Blankets are distinguished from sheets by their thickness and purpose; the thickest sheet is still thinner than the lightest blanket. Blankets are generally used...
is prešita oddeja in Standard Slovene, but the latter term is never used in speech). Western dialects incorporate a great deal of calques and loanwords from Italian, while eastern dialects remain replete with remnants of the German reign. Usage of those words is considered bad style even in colloquial language and is discouraged since it hinders intelligibility among dialects.
Phonology
Slovene has a
phonemeIn a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
set consisting of 21
consonantIn articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
s and 8
vowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s, and practices reduction of unstressed vowels.
Vowels
Slovene has an eight-vowel system (/a/, /e/, /ɛ/, /ə/, /i/, /o/, /ɔ/, /u/) in comparison to the five-vowel system in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and Macedonian. Older analyses of Slovene concluded that it features phonemic vowel length, but more recent studies have rejected this statement for the majority of speakers. The current analysis is that stressed vowels are long while unstressed vowels are short. All vowels can be either stressed or unstressed. However, unstressed /e/ and /o/ are restricted to a few grammatical words like bo ('will'), an auxiliary verb for the future tense.
Consonants
Slovene has 21 distinctive consonant phonemes. Conditional allophones are shown in parentheses.
Slovenian consonants
| |
BilabialIn phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
|
Labio-
dentalIn phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
|
Dental |
Palato-
alveolar |
PalatalPalatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...
|
VelarVelars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
|
| Nasal A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
|
m |
|
n |
|
|
(ŋ) |
| Plosive |
p |
b |
|
t |
d |
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| Affricate Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...
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| Fricative Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
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| Approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...
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| Trill In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular....
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voicedVoice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...
obstruentAn obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract, such as [k], [d͡ʒ] and [f]. In phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes: obstruents and sonorants....
s are devoiced at the end of words unless immediately followed by a word beginning with a vowel or a voiced consonant. In consonant clusters, voicing distinction is neutralized and all consonants assimilate the voicing of the rightmost segment. In this context, [ɣ] and [d͡z] may occur as voiced allophones of /x/ and /t͡s/, respectively (e.g. vŕh drevésa [ʋrɣ dreˈʋesa]). /ʋ/ has several allophones depending on context:
- Before a vowel: [ʋ]
- At the end of a syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
or before a consonant: [u̯]
- At the beginning of a syllable behind a voiced consonant: [w]
- At the beginning of a syllable behind a voiceless consonant: [ʍ]
The preposition v is always bound to the following word; however its phonetic realization follows the normal phonological rules for /ʋ/.
Prosody
Like the closely related
Serbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
, Slovene uses
diacriticA diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s or accent marks to denote what is called "dynamic accent" and tone. However, as in Serbo-Croatian, use of such accent marks is restricted to language textbooks and linguistic publications. Standard Slovene has two varieties, tonal and non-tonal. The diacritics are almost never used in the written language, except in the few minimal pairs that are already mentioned.
Dynamic accent marks lexical stress in a word as well as vowel duration. Stress placement in Slovene is predictable compared to the East Slavic languages and Bulgarian: any long vowel is automatically stressed, and in words with no long vowels, the stress falls to the final syllable. The only exception is schwa, which is always short, and can be stressed in non-final position. Some compounds, but not all, have multiple stress. In the Slovene writing system, dynamic accent marks may be placed on all vowels, as well as /ɾ/ (which is never syllabic in Standard Slovene, but is used for schwa + r sequences, when in consonantal environment); for example, vrt ('garden') stressed as vŕt.
In short, stress can theoretically fall on any syllable. In practice, the second or third syllable from the end are commonly stressed.
Dynamic accentuation uses three diacritic marks: the acute ( ´ ) (long and narrow), the circumflex ( ^ ) (long and wide) and the grave ( ` ) (short and wide). All dialects of Slovene do use this type of accentuation, although the same word can be accented quite differently in different dialects.
Tonal accentuation uses four: the
acuteThe acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
( ´ ) (long and high), the
inverted breveInverted breve or arch is a diacritical mark ̑, shaped like the top half of a circle, that is, like an upside-down breve. It looks similar to the circumflex, but the circumflex has a sharp tip, whilst the inverted breve is rounded: compare  â Ê ê Î î Ô ô Û û with Ȃ ȃ Ȇ ȇ Ȋ ȋ Ȏ ȏ Ȗ ȗ ....
or the
circumflexThe circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
( ^ ) (long and low), the
graveThe grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...
( ` ) (short and high) and the double grave ( `` ) (short and low), marking the narrow
or with the dot below ( ̣ ). Eastern dialects of Slovene do not use tonal accentuation, posing many obstacles for speakers from this areas to mastering Standard Slovene in a way that is expected to be used in mass media.
T-V distinction
Slovene, like most other European languages, has a T-V distinctionIn sociolinguistics, a T–V distinction is a contrast, within one language, between second-person pronouns that are specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....
, or two forms of 'you' for formal and informal situations. Although informal address using the 2nd person singular ti form (known as tikanje) is officially limited to friends and family, talk among children, and addressing animals, it is increasingly used among the middle generation to signal a relaxed attitude or lifestyle instead of its polite or formal counterpart using the 2nd person plural vi form (known as vikanje).
An additional nonstandard but widespread use of a singular participle combined with a plural auxiliary verb (known as polvikanje) signals a somewhat more friendly and less formal attitude while maintaining politeness:
- Vi ga niste videli. ('You did not see him': both the auxiliary verb niste and the participle videli are plural masculine. Standard usage.)
- Vi ga niste videl/videla. ('You did not see him': the auxiliary verb niste is plural but the participle videl/videla is singular masculine/feminine. Nonstandard usage.)
The use of nonstandard forms (polvikanje) might be frowned upon by many people and should never be used in a formal setting.
The use of the 3rd person plural oni ('they') form (known as onikanje in both direct address and indirect reference) as an ultra-polite form is now archaic or dialectal; it is associated with servant-master relationships in older literature, the child-parent relationship in certain conservative rural communities, and parishioner-priest relationships.
Foreign words
Foreign words used in Slovene are of various types depending on the assimilation they have undergone. The types are:
- sposojenka (loan word) fully assimilated; e.g. pica ('pizza').
- tujka (foreign word) partly assimilated, either in writing and syntax and/or in pronunciation; e.g. jazz, wiki.
- polcitatna beseda ali besedna zveza (half-quoted word or phrase) partly assimilated, either in writing and syntax and/or in pronunciation; e.g. Shakespeare, but Shakespearja in genitive case.
- citatna beseda ali besedna zveza (quoted word or phrase) kept as in original, although pronunciation may be altered to fit into speech flow; e.g. first lady in all cases.
Articles
There are no definiteDefinite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...
or indefinite articles as in English (a, an, the) or GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
(der, die, das, ein, eine). A whole verb or a noun is described without articles and the grammatical genderGrammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
is found from the word's termination. It is enough to say barka (a or the barge), Noetova barka ('Noah's ark'). The gender is known in this case to be feminine. In declensionIn linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
s, endings are normally changed; see below. If one should like to somehow distinguish between definiteness or indefiniteness of a noun, one would say (prav/natanko/ravno) tista barka ('that (exact) barge') for "the barge" and neka/ena barka ('one barge') for "a barge".
Definiteness of a noun phrase can also be discernible through the ending of the accompanying adjective. One should say rdeči šotor ([exactly that] red tent) or rdeč šotor ([a] red tent). This difference is observable only for masculine nouns in nominative or accusative case. Because of the lack of article in Slovene and audibly insignificant difference between the masculine adjective forms, most dialects do not distinguish between definite and indefinite variants of the adjective, leading to hypercorrectionIn linguistics or usage, hypercorrection is a non-standard usage that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of grammar or a usage prescription...
when speakers try to use Standard Slovenian.
Writing system
This alphabet was derived in the mid 1840s from the system created by CroatianistCroatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
Ljudevit GajLjudevit Gaj was a Croatian linguist, politician, journalist and writer. He was one of the central figures of the Croatian national reformation, also known as the Illyrian Movement.-Origin:...
. Intended for Serbo-Croatian languageSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
(in all its varieties), it was patterned on the CzechCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
pattern of the 1830s. Before that /s/ was, for example, written as ⟨
{{No footnotes|date=April 2009}}
{{South Slavic languages sidebar}}
Slovene or Slovenian (slovenski jezik or slovenščina, not to be confused with slovenčina, the native name of SlovakSlovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
) is a South Slavic languageThe South Slavic languages comprise one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers...
spoken by approximately 2.5 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in SloveniaSlovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
. It is the first language of about 1.85 million people and is one of the 23 official and working languagesThe languages of the European Union are languages used by people within the member states of the European Union. They include the twenty-three official languages of the European Union along with a range of others...
of the European UnionThe European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
. Although Slovene is not an endangered language, its scope is shrinking considerably, especially in science and higher education.
Standard Slovene
Standard Slovene is the national standard languageA standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...
that evolved on the basis of Central Slovene dialects in the 18th century and consolidated itself through the 19th and 20th centuries. While distinct regional varietiesIn sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, accents, registers, styles or other sociolinguistic variation, as well as the standard variety itself...
descended from the older rural dialectThe term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s still exist, the spoken and written languageA written language is the representation of a language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will instinctively learn or create spoken or gestural languages....
is uniform and standardized. Some dialects differ considerably from the standard language in phonologyPhonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
, vocabularyA person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
and grammarIn linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
. Though not facing imminent extinctionAn extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers., or that is no longer in current use. Extinct languages are sometimes contrasted with dead languages, which are still known and used in special contexts in written form, but not as ordinary spoken languages for everyday communication...
, such dialects have been in decline during the past century, despite the fact that they are well researched and their use is not discouraged by the authorities. Although most dialects, especially in rural and mountainous regions, have retained their specific phonetic features, their vocabulary, syntaxIn linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
and grammar have been strongly influenced by standard Slovene. Some dialects have been more successful in resisting the penetration of the standard language: most notably the Prekmurje dialectPrekmurian, also known as the Pannonian-Slovene, East-Slovene, or Wendish , is the easternmost separate dialect of Slovene, spoken in the Prekmurje region of Slovenia and by the Hungarian Slovenes in Vas county in western Hungary...
, which is one of the few dialects in Slovenia still widely used by all strata of the population, and some Slovene dialects in the AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n state of CarinthiaCarinthia is the southernmost Austrian state or Land. Situated within the Eastern Alps it is chiefly noted for its mountains and lakes.The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Austro-Bavarian group...
and in ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. The ResianThe Resian dialect is a distinct dialect of Slovene spoken in the Resia Valley, Province of Udine, Italy, close to the border with Slovenia...
and Torre (Ter) dialects in the Italian Province of UdineThe Province of Udine is a province in the autonomous Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of Italy, bordering Austria and Slovenia. Its capital is the city of Udine....
are the only Slovene dialects that have remained untouched by the influences of standard Slovene, to the extent that they are unintelligible to most Slovene speakers.
The distinctive characteristics of Slovene are dual grammatical number, two accentual norms, one characterized by pitch accentPitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
, and abundant inflection (a trait shared with many Slavic languages). Although Slovene is basically a SVO language, word order is very flexible, often adjusted for emphasis or stylistic reasons. Slovene has a T-V distinctionIn sociolinguistics, a T–V distinction is a contrast, within one language, between second-person pronouns that are specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....
: second-person plural forms are used for individuals as a sign of respect. Also, Slovene and SlovakSlovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
are the two modern Slavic languages whose names for themselves literally mean "Slavic" (slověnьskъ in old SlavonicOld Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek...
).
Classification
Slovene is an Indo-European language belonging to the Western subgroup of the South SlavicThe South Slavic languages comprise one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers...
branch of the Slavic languagesThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
, like Serbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
. It is close to the KajkavianThe Kajkavian dialect is one of the three main dialects of Croatian. It has low mutual intelligibility with the other two dialects, Štokavian and Čakavian. All three are named after their word for "what?", which in Kajkavian is kaj....
and Čakavian dialectChakavian or Čakavian is a dialect of the Croatian language. The name stems from the word for "what?", which is "ča" in Čakavian...
s of (Serbo-)Croatian, but further from the Štokavian dialectShtokavian or Štokavian is the prestige dialect of the Serbo-Croatian language, and the basis of its Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Montenegrin standards...
, the basis for the Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian standard languages. While Slovene is almost completely intelligible with Kajkavian Croatian dialects (especially the variant spoken in Hrvatsko ZagorjeHrvatsko Zagorje is a region north of Zagreb, Croatia. It comprises the whole area north of Medvednica mountain up to Slovenia in the north and west, and up to the regions of Međimurje and Podravina in the north and east...
on the border with Slovenia), mutual intelligibilityIn linguistics, mutual intelligibility is recognized as a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related languages can readily understand each other without intentional study or extraordinary effort...
with other variants of Serbo-Croatian is hindered by differences in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.
Early history
Like all Slavic languagesThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
, Slovene traces its roots to the same proto-Slavic group of languages that produced Old Church SlavonicOld Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek...
. The earliest known examples of a distinct, written Slovene dialect are from the Freising ManuscriptsThe Freising Manuscripts are the first Latin-script continuous text in a Slavic language and the oldest document in Slovene.The monuments consisting of three texts in the oldest Slovene dialect were discovered bound into a Latin codex...
, known in Slovene as Brižinski spomeniki. The consensus estimate of their date of origin is between 972 and 1093 (most likely before 1000). These religious writings are among the oldest surviving manuscripts in any Slavic language.
Standard Slovene emerged in the second half of the 16th century thanks to the works of Slovene Lutheran authors, who were active during the Protestant ReformationThe Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
. The most prominent authors from this period are Primož TrubarPrimož Trubar or Primož Truber was a Slovene Protestant reformer, the founder and the first superintendent of the Protestant Church of the Slovene Lands, a consolidator of the Slovene language and the author of the first Slovene-language printed book...
, who wrote the first books in Slovene, Adam BohoričAdam Bohorič was a Slovene Protestant preacher, teacher and author of the first grammar of Slovene.Bohorič was born in the market town of Rajhenburg in the Duchy of Styria, on the border between Lower Carniola and Lower Styria...
, the authors of the first Slovene grammar, and Jurij DalmatinJurij Dalmatin was a Slovene Lutheran minister, writer and translator.Born in Krško in around 1546, Dalmatin became a preacher in Ljubljana in 1572. He was the author of several religious books, such as Karšanske lepe molitve , Ta kratki würtemberški katekizmus , and Agenda...
, who translated the entire BibleThe Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
to Slovene.
From the high Middle Ages up to the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, in the territory of present day Slovenia, GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
was the language of the elite, and Slovene was the language of the common people. During this period, German had a strong impact on Slovene, and many GermanismsGermanisation is both the spread of the German language, people and culture either by force or assimilation, and the adaptation of a foreign word to the German language in linguistics, much like the Romanisation of many languages which do not use the Latin alphabet...
are preserved in contemporary colloquial Slovene. Many Slovene scientistA scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...
s before the 1920s also wrote in foreign languages, mostly German, which was the lingua francaA lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
of science in all Central EuropeCentral Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
at the time.
Recent history
During the rise of Romantic NationalismRomantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs...
in the 19th century, the cultural movements of Illyrism and Pan-SlavismPan-Slavism was a movement in the mid-19th century aimed at unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus was in the Balkans where the South Slavs had been ruled for centuries by other empires, Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Venice...
brought words from Serbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
and CzechCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
into standard Slovene, mostly to replace words previously borrowed from German. Most of these innovations have remained, although some were dropped in later development. In the second half of the 19th century, many nationalist authors made an abundant use of Serbo-Croatian words: among them were Fran LevstikFran Levstik was a Slovene writer, political activist, playwright and critic. he was one of the most prominent exponents of the Young Slovene political movement.-Life and work:...
and Josip JurčičJosip Jurčič was a Slovene writer and journalist. He was born in Muljava, Austrian Empire and died in Ljubljana, Austria-Hungary...
, who wrote the first novel in Slovene in 1866. This tendency was reversed in the Fin de siècleFin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...
period by the first generation of modernist Slovene authors (most notably the writer Ivan CankarIvan Cankar was a Slovene writer, playwright, essayist, poet and political activist. Together with Oton Župančič, Dragotin Kette, and Josip Murn, he is considered as the beginner of modernism in Slovene literature...
), who resorted to a more "pure" and simple language without excessive Serbo-Croatian borrowings. During the Kingdom of YugoslaviaThe Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...
in the 1920s and 1930s, the influence of Serbo-Croatian increased again. This was opposed by the younger generations of Slovene authors and intellectuals; among the most fierce opponents of an excessive Serbo-Croatian influence on Slovene were the intellectuals around the leftist journal SodobnostSodobnost is a Slovenian literary and cultural magazine, established in 1933. It is considered the oldest of currently existing literary magazines in Slovenia. Although Sodobnost has traditionally been a magazine focused on cultural and literary issues, it nowadays covers a wide range of current...
, as well as some younger Catholic activists and authors. After 1945, numerous Serbo-Croatian words that were used in the previous decades were dropped. This caused an interesting paradox that a Slovene text from the 1910s is frequently closer to modern Slovene than a text from the 1920s and 1930s.
Between 1920 and 1941, the official language of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was defined as "Serbian-Croatian-Slovene". In practice, Slovene was used in Slovenia, both in education and administration. Nevertheless, many state institutions only operated in Serbian, and a Slovene-Serbian bilingualism was applied in many spheres of public life in Slovenia. For examples, at the post offices, railways and in administrative offices, Serbian was used together with Slovene. However, state employees were expected to be able to speak Slovene in Slovenia, and in reality, Serbian had a very limited use in Slovenia.
During the same time, western Slovenia (the Slovenian LittoralThe Slovenian Littoral is a historical region of Slovenia. Its name recalls the historical Habsburg crown land of the Austrian Littoral, of which the Slovenian Littoral was a part....
and the western districts of Inner Carniola) were under Italian administration and submitted to a fierce and violent policy of Fascist Italianization; the same policy was applied to Slovene speakers in Venetian SloveniaVenetian Slovenia is a small mountainous region in northeastern Italy . Most of the region is located in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, in the area between the towns of Cividale del Friuli, Tarcento and Gemona ....
, GoriziaGorizia is a town and comune in northeastern Italy, in the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. It is located at the foot of the Julian Alps, bordering Slovenia. It is the capital of the Province of Gorizia, and it is a local center of tourism, industry, and commerce. Since 1947, a twin...
and TriesteTrieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...
. Between 1923 and 1943, all public use of Slovene language in these territories was strictly prohibited, and Slovene language activists were persecuted by the state. After the Carinthian PlebisciteThe Carinthian Plebiscite on 10 October 1920 determined the final southern border between the Republic of Austria and the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes after World War I.- History :...
of 1920, a less severe policy of Germanization took place in the Slovene-speaking areas of southern CarinthiaCarinthia is the southernmost Austrian state or Land. Situated within the Eastern Alps it is chiefly noted for its mountains and lakes.The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Austro-Bavarian group...
which remained under Austrian administration. After the AnschlussThe Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
of 1938, the use of Slovene was strictly forbidden in Carinthia, as well. This accelerated a process of language shiftLanguage shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak...
in Carinthia, which continued throughout the second half of the 20th century: according to the Austro-Hungarian census of 1910, around 17% of inhabitants of Carinthia spoke Slovene in their daily communication; in 1951, this figure dropped under 10%, and by 2001 to a mere 2,8%.
During World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Slovenia was divided between the Axis PowersThe Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
of Fascist ItalyThe Kingdom of Italy was a state forged in 1861 by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which was its legal predecessor state...
, Nazi GermanyNazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, and HungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, and the occupying powers attempted to either discourage or entirely suppress the Slovene language.
Following World War II, Slovenia became part of the Socialist Federal Republic of YugoslaviaThe Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
. Slovene was one of the official languages of the federation. On the territory of Slovenia, it was commonly used in almost all areas of public life. One important exception was the Yugoslav army where Serbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
was used exclusively even in Slovenia. National independence has revitalized the language: since 1991, when Slovenia gained independence, Slovene has been used as an official language in all areas of public life. It also became one of the official languages of the European Union upon Slovenia's admission in 2004.
Geographic distribution
The language is spoken by about 2.5 million people, mainly in Slovenia, but also by Slovene national minorities in Friuli-Venezia GiuliaFriuli–Venezia Giulia is one of the twenty regions of Italy, and one of five autonomous regions with special statute. The capital is Trieste. It has an area of 7,858 km² and about 1.2 million inhabitants. A natural opening to the sea for many Central European countries, the region is...
, ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
(around 90,000 in Venetian SloveniaVenetian Slovenia is a small mountainous region in northeastern Italy . Most of the region is located in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, in the area between the towns of Cividale del Friuli, Tarcento and Gemona ....
, Resia Valley, Canale Valley, Province of TriesteThe Province of Trieste is a province in the autonomous Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Trieste.It has an area of 212 km², and a total population of 236,520...
and in those municipalities of the Province of GoriziaThe Province of Gorizia is a province in the autonomous Friuli–Venezia Giulia region of Italy.-Overview:Its capital is the city of Gorizia. It belonged to the Province of Udine between 1924 and 1927 and the communes of Sonzia, Plezzo, Bergogna, Caporetto, Tolmino, Circhina, Santa Lucia d'Isonzo,...
bordering with Slovenia), in southern CarinthiaCarinthia is the southernmost Austrian state or Land. Situated within the Eastern Alps it is chiefly noted for its mountains and lakes.The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Austro-Bavarian group...
and some parts of StyriaStyria is a state or Bundesland, located in the southeast of Austria. In area it is the second largest of the nine Austrian federated states, covering 16,401 km². It borders Slovenia as well as the other Austrian states of Upper Austria, Lower Austria, Salzburg, Burgenland, and Carinthia. ...
in AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
(25,000). It is also spoken in CroatiaCroatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
, especially in IstriaIstria , formerly Histria , is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Bay of Kvarner...
, RijekaRijeka is the principal seaport and the third largest city in Croatia . It is located on Kvarner Bay, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea and has a population of 128,735 inhabitants...
and ZagrebZagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
(11,800-13,100), in southwestern HungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
(3-5,000), in SerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
(5,000), and by the Slovene diaspora throughout EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and the rest of the world (around 300,000), particularly in the United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, ArgentinaArgentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
.
Dialects
{{Main|Slovene dialects}}
Slovene is the most diverse Slavic language in terms of dialects, with different degrees of mutual intelligibility. There are 46 distinct dialects, grouped in seven dialect groups. Although pronunciation differs greatly from area to area, those differences do not pose major obstacles to understanding. The standard language is mainly used in public presentations or on formal occasions.
The Prekmurian and ResianThe Resian dialect is a distinct dialect of Slovene spoken in the Resia Valley, Province of Udine, Italy, close to the border with Slovenia...
dialects, being the furthest from the standard language, have been standardized. Speakers of those two dialects have considerable difficulties with being understood by speakers of other varieties of Slovene, needing code-switchingIn linguistics, code-switching is the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals—people who speak more than one language—sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other...
to the Standard Slovene. Other dialects are mutually intelligible when speakers avoid the excessive usage of regionalisms.
Regionalisms are mostly limited to culinary and agricultural expressions, although there are many exceptions. Some loanwords have become so deeply rooted into the local language, that people have considerable difficulties in finding a standard expression for the dialectical term (for instance, kovter meaning blanketA blanket is a type of bedding, generally speaking, a large piece of cloth, intended to keep the user warm, especially while sleeping. Blankets are distinguished from sheets by their thickness and purpose; the thickest sheet is still thinner than the lightest blanket. Blankets are generally used...
is prešita oddeja in Standard Slovene, but the latter term is never used in speech). Western dialects incorporate a great deal of calques and loanwords from Italian, while eastern dialects remain replete with remnants of the German reign. Usage of those words is considered bad style even in colloquial language and is discouraged since it hinders intelligibility among dialects.
Phonology
Slovene has a phonemeIn a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
set consisting of 21 consonantIn articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
s and 8 vowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s, and practices reduction of unstressed vowels.
Vowels
Slovene has an eight-vowel system (/a/, /e/, /ɛ/, /ə/, /i/, /o/, /ɔ/, /u/) in comparison to the five-vowel system in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and Macedonian. Older analyses of Slovene concluded that it features phonemic vowel length, but more recent studies have rejected this statement for the majority of speakers. The current analysis is that stressed vowels are long while unstressed vowels are short. All vowels can be either stressed or unstressed. However, unstressed /e/ and /o/ are restricted to a few grammatical words like bo ('will'), an auxiliary verb for the future tense.
Consonants
Slovene has 21 distinctive consonant phonemes. Conditional allophones are shown in parentheses.
Slovenian consonants
| |
BilabialIn phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
|
Labio-
dentalIn phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
|
Dental |
Palato-
alveolar |
PalatalPalatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...
|
VelarVelars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
|
| Nasal A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
|
m |
|
n |
|
|
(ŋ) |
| Plosive |
p |
b |
|
t |
d |
|
|
k |
ɡ |
| Affricate Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...
|
|
|
t͡s |
(d͡z) |
t͡ʃ |
d͡ʒ |
|
|
| Fricative Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
|
|
f |
v |
s |
z |
ʃ |
ʒ |
|
x |
(ɣ) |
| Approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...
|
|
ʋ |
l |
|
j |
|
| Trill In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular....
|
|
|
r |
|
|
|
All voicedVoice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...
obstruentAn obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract, such as [k], [d͡ʒ] and [f]. In phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes: obstruents and sonorants....
s are devoiced at the end of words unless immediately followed by a word beginning with a vowel or a voiced consonant. In consonant clusters, voicing distinction is neutralized and all consonants assimilate the voicing of the rightmost segment. In this context, [ɣ] and [d͡z] may occur as voiced allophones of /x/ and /t͡s/, respectively (e.g. vŕh drevésa [ʋrɣ dreˈʋesa]). /ʋ/ has several allophones depending on context:
- Before a vowel: [ʋ]
- At the end of a syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
or before a consonant: [u̯]
- At the beginning of a syllable behind a voiced consonant: [w]
- At the beginning of a syllable behind a voiceless consonant: [ʍ]
The preposition v is always bound to the following word; however its phonetic realization follows the normal phonological rules for /ʋ/.
Prosody
Like the closely related Serbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
, Slovene uses diacriticA diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s or accent marks to denote what is called "dynamic accent" and tone. However, as in Serbo-Croatian, use of such accent marks is restricted to language textbooks and linguistic publications. Standard Slovene has two varieties, tonal and non-tonal. The diacritics are almost never used in the written language, except in the few minimal pairs that are already mentioned.
Dynamic accent marks lexical stress in a word as well as vowel duration. Stress placement in Slovene is predictable compared to the East Slavic languages and Bulgarian: any long vowel is automatically stressed, and in words with no long vowels, the stress falls to the final syllable. The only exception is schwa, which is always short, and can be stressed in non-final position. Some compounds, but not all, have multiple stress. In the Slovene writing system, dynamic accent marks may be placed on all vowels, as well as /ɾ/ (which is never syllabic in Standard Slovene, but is used for schwa + r sequences, when in consonantal environment); for example, vrt ('garden') stressed as vŕt.
In short, stress can theoretically fall on any syllable. In practice, the second or third syllable from the end are commonly stressed.
Dynamic accentuation uses three diacritic marks: the acute ( ´ ) (long and narrow), the circumflex ( ^ ) (long and wide) and the grave ( ` ) (short and wide). All dialects of Slovene do use this type of accentuation, although the same word can be accented quite differently in different dialects.
Tonal accentuation uses four: the acuteThe acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
( ´ ) (long and high), the inverted breveInverted breve or arch is a diacritical mark ̑, shaped like the top half of a circle, that is, like an upside-down breve. It looks similar to the circumflex, but the circumflex has a sharp tip, whilst the inverted breve is rounded: compare  â Ê ê Î î Ô ô Û û with Ȃ ȃ Ȇ ȇ Ȋ ȋ Ȏ ȏ Ȗ ȗ ....
({{Unicode| ̑ }}) or the circumflexThe circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
( ^ ) (long and low), the graveThe grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...
( ` ) (short and high) and the double grave ( `` ) (short and low), marking the narrow or with the dot below ( ̣ ). Eastern dialects of Slovene do not use tonal accentuation, posing many obstacles for speakers from this areas to mastering Standard Slovene in a way that is expected to be used in mass media.
T-V distinction
Slovene, like most other European languages, has a T-V distinctionIn sociolinguistics, a T–V distinction is a contrast, within one language, between second-person pronouns that are specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....
, or two forms of 'you' for formal and informal situations. Although informal address using the 2nd person singular ti form (known as tikanje) is officially limited to friends and family, talk among children, and addressing animals, it is increasingly used among the middle generation to signal a relaxed attitude or lifestyle instead of its polite or formal counterpart using the 2nd person plural vi form (known as vikanje).
An additional nonstandard but widespread use of a singular participle combined with a plural auxiliary verb (known as polvikanje) signals a somewhat more friendly and less formal attitude while maintaining politeness:
- Vi ga niste videli. ('You did not see him': both the auxiliary verb niste and the participle videli are plural masculine. Standard usage.)
- Vi ga niste videl/videla. ('You did not see him': the auxiliary verb niste is plural but the participle videl/videla is singular masculine/feminine. Nonstandard usage.)
The use of nonstandard forms (polvikanje) might be frowned upon by many people and should never be used in a formal setting.
The use of the 3rd person plural oni ('they') form (known as onikanje in both direct address and indirect reference) as an ultra-polite form is now archaic or dialectal; it is associated with servant-master relationships in older literature, the child-parent relationship in certain conservative rural communities, and parishioner-priest relationships.
Foreign words
Foreign words used in Slovene are of various types depending on the assimilation they have undergone. The types are:
- sposojenka (loan word){{ndash}} fully assimilated; e.g. pica ('pizza').
- tujka (foreign word){{ndash}} partly assimilated, either in writing and syntax and/or in pronunciation; e.g. jazz, wiki.
- polcitatna beseda ali besedna zveza (half-quoted word or phrase) {{ndash}} partly assimilated, either in writing and syntax and/or in pronunciation; e.g. Shakespeare, but Shakespearja in genitive case.
- citatna beseda ali besedna zveza (quoted word or phrase){{ndash}} kept as in original, although pronunciation may be altered to fit into speech flow; e.g. first lady in all cases.
Articles
There are no definiteDefinite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...
or indefinite articles as in English (a, an, the) or GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
(der, die, das, ein, eine). A whole verb or a noun is described without articles and the grammatical genderGrammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
is found from the word's termination. It is enough to say barka (a or the barge), Noetova barka ('Noah's ark'). The gender is known in this case to be feminine. In declensionIn linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
s, endings are normally changed; see below. If one should like to somehow distinguish between definiteness or indefiniteness of a noun, one would say (prav/natanko/ravno) tista barka ('that (exact) barge') for "the barge" and neka/ena barka ('one barge') for "a barge".
Definiteness of a noun phrase can also be discernible through the ending of the accompanying adjective. One should say rdeči šotor ([exactly that] red tent) or rdeč šotor ([a] red tent). This difference is observable only for masculine nouns in nominative or accusative case. Because of the lack of article in Slovene and audibly insignificant difference between the masculine adjective forms, most dialects do not distinguish between definite and indefinite variants of the adjective, leading to hypercorrectionIn linguistics or usage, hypercorrection is a non-standard usage that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of grammar or a usage prescription...
when speakers try to use Standard Slovenian.
Writing system
{{Main|Slovene alphabet}}
{{See also|Bohorič alphabet|Metelko alphabet|Dajnko alphabet}}
This alphabet ({{lang-sl|abeceda}}) was derived in the mid 1840s from the system created by CroatianistCroatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
Ljudevit GajLjudevit Gaj was a Croatian linguist, politician, journalist and writer. He was one of the central figures of the Croatian national reformation, also known as the Illyrian Movement.-Origin:...
. Intended for Serbo-Croatian languageSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
(in all its varieties), it was patterned on the CzechCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
pattern of the 1830s. Before that /s/ was, for example, written as ⟨
{{No footnotes|date=April 2009}}
{{South Slavic languages sidebar}}
Slovene or Slovenian (slovenski jezik or slovenščina, not to be confused with slovenčina, the native name of SlovakSlovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
) is a South Slavic languageThe South Slavic languages comprise one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers...
spoken by approximately 2.5 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in SloveniaSlovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
. It is the first language of about 1.85 million people and is one of the 23 official and working languagesThe languages of the European Union are languages used by people within the member states of the European Union. They include the twenty-three official languages of the European Union along with a range of others...
of the European UnionThe European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
. Although Slovene is not an endangered language, its scope is shrinking considerably, especially in science and higher education.
Standard Slovene
Standard Slovene is the national standard languageA standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...
that evolved on the basis of Central Slovene dialects in the 18th century and consolidated itself through the 19th and 20th centuries. While distinct regional varietiesIn sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, accents, registers, styles or other sociolinguistic variation, as well as the standard variety itself...
descended from the older rural dialectThe term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s still exist, the spoken and written languageA written language is the representation of a language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will instinctively learn or create spoken or gestural languages....
is uniform and standardized. Some dialects differ considerably from the standard language in phonologyPhonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
, vocabularyA person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
and grammarIn linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
. Though not facing imminent extinctionAn extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers., or that is no longer in current use. Extinct languages are sometimes contrasted with dead languages, which are still known and used in special contexts in written form, but not as ordinary spoken languages for everyday communication...
, such dialects have been in decline during the past century, despite the fact that they are well researched and their use is not discouraged by the authorities. Although most dialects, especially in rural and mountainous regions, have retained their specific phonetic features, their vocabulary, syntaxIn linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
and grammar have been strongly influenced by standard Slovene. Some dialects have been more successful in resisting the penetration of the standard language: most notably the Prekmurje dialectPrekmurian, also known as the Pannonian-Slovene, East-Slovene, or Wendish , is the easternmost separate dialect of Slovene, spoken in the Prekmurje region of Slovenia and by the Hungarian Slovenes in Vas county in western Hungary...
, which is one of the few dialects in Slovenia still widely used by all strata of the population, and some Slovene dialects in the AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n state of CarinthiaCarinthia is the southernmost Austrian state or Land. Situated within the Eastern Alps it is chiefly noted for its mountains and lakes.The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Austro-Bavarian group...
and in ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. The ResianThe Resian dialect is a distinct dialect of Slovene spoken in the Resia Valley, Province of Udine, Italy, close to the border with Slovenia...
and Torre (Ter) dialects in the Italian Province of UdineThe Province of Udine is a province in the autonomous Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of Italy, bordering Austria and Slovenia. Its capital is the city of Udine....
are the only Slovene dialects that have remained untouched by the influences of standard Slovene, to the extent that they are unintelligible to most Slovene speakers.
The distinctive characteristics of Slovene are dual grammatical number, two accentual norms, one characterized by pitch accentPitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
, and abundant inflection (a trait shared with many Slavic languages). Although Slovene is basically a SVO language, word order is very flexible, often adjusted for emphasis or stylistic reasons. Slovene has a T-V distinctionIn sociolinguistics, a T–V distinction is a contrast, within one language, between second-person pronouns that are specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....
: second-person plural forms are used for individuals as a sign of respect. Also, Slovene and SlovakSlovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
are the two modern Slavic languages whose names for themselves literally mean "Slavic" (slověnьskъ in old SlavonicOld Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek...
).
Classification
Slovene is an Indo-European language belonging to the Western subgroup of the South SlavicThe South Slavic languages comprise one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers...
branch of the Slavic languagesThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
, like Serbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
. It is close to the KajkavianThe Kajkavian dialect is one of the three main dialects of Croatian. It has low mutual intelligibility with the other two dialects, Štokavian and Čakavian. All three are named after their word for "what?", which in Kajkavian is kaj....
and Čakavian dialectChakavian or Čakavian is a dialect of the Croatian language. The name stems from the word for "what?", which is "ča" in Čakavian...
s of (Serbo-)Croatian, but further from the Štokavian dialectShtokavian or Štokavian is the prestige dialect of the Serbo-Croatian language, and the basis of its Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Montenegrin standards...
, the basis for the Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian standard languages. While Slovene is almost completely intelligible with Kajkavian Croatian dialects (especially the variant spoken in Hrvatsko ZagorjeHrvatsko Zagorje is a region north of Zagreb, Croatia. It comprises the whole area north of Medvednica mountain up to Slovenia in the north and west, and up to the regions of Međimurje and Podravina in the north and east...
on the border with Slovenia), mutual intelligibilityIn linguistics, mutual intelligibility is recognized as a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related languages can readily understand each other without intentional study or extraordinary effort...
with other variants of Serbo-Croatian is hindered by differences in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.
Early history
Like all Slavic languagesThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
, Slovene traces its roots to the same proto-Slavic group of languages that produced Old Church SlavonicOld Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek...
. The earliest known examples of a distinct, written Slovene dialect are from the Freising ManuscriptsThe Freising Manuscripts are the first Latin-script continuous text in a Slavic language and the oldest document in Slovene.The monuments consisting of three texts in the oldest Slovene dialect were discovered bound into a Latin codex...
, known in Slovene as Brižinski spomeniki. The consensus estimate of their date of origin is between 972 and 1093 (most likely before 1000). These religious writings are among the oldest surviving manuscripts in any Slavic language.
Standard Slovene emerged in the second half of the 16th century thanks to the works of Slovene Lutheran authors, who were active during the Protestant ReformationThe Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
. The most prominent authors from this period are Primož TrubarPrimož Trubar or Primož Truber was a Slovene Protestant reformer, the founder and the first superintendent of the Protestant Church of the Slovene Lands, a consolidator of the Slovene language and the author of the first Slovene-language printed book...
, who wrote the first books in Slovene, Adam BohoričAdam Bohorič was a Slovene Protestant preacher, teacher and author of the first grammar of Slovene.Bohorič was born in the market town of Rajhenburg in the Duchy of Styria, on the border between Lower Carniola and Lower Styria...
, the authors of the first Slovene grammar, and Jurij DalmatinJurij Dalmatin was a Slovene Lutheran minister, writer and translator.Born in Krško in around 1546, Dalmatin became a preacher in Ljubljana in 1572. He was the author of several religious books, such as Karšanske lepe molitve , Ta kratki würtemberški katekizmus , and Agenda...
, who translated the entire BibleThe Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
to Slovene.
From the high Middle Ages up to the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, in the territory of present day Slovenia, GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
was the language of the elite, and Slovene was the language of the common people. During this period, German had a strong impact on Slovene, and many GermanismsGermanisation is both the spread of the German language, people and culture either by force or assimilation, and the adaptation of a foreign word to the German language in linguistics, much like the Romanisation of many languages which do not use the Latin alphabet...
are preserved in contemporary colloquial Slovene. Many Slovene scientistA scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...
s before the 1920s also wrote in foreign languages, mostly German, which was the lingua francaA lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
of science in all Central EuropeCentral Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
at the time.
Recent history
During the rise of Romantic NationalismRomantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs...
in the 19th century, the cultural movements of Illyrism and Pan-SlavismPan-Slavism was a movement in the mid-19th century aimed at unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus was in the Balkans where the South Slavs had been ruled for centuries by other empires, Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Venice...
brought words from Serbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
and CzechCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
into standard Slovene, mostly to replace words previously borrowed from German. Most of these innovations have remained, although some were dropped in later development. In the second half of the 19th century, many nationalist authors made an abundant use of Serbo-Croatian words: among them were Fran LevstikFran Levstik was a Slovene writer, political activist, playwright and critic. he was one of the most prominent exponents of the Young Slovene political movement.-Life and work:...
and Josip JurčičJosip Jurčič was a Slovene writer and journalist. He was born in Muljava, Austrian Empire and died in Ljubljana, Austria-Hungary...
, who wrote the first novel in Slovene in 1866. This tendency was reversed in the Fin de siècleFin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...
period by the first generation of modernist Slovene authors (most notably the writer Ivan CankarIvan Cankar was a Slovene writer, playwright, essayist, poet and political activist. Together with Oton Župančič, Dragotin Kette, and Josip Murn, he is considered as the beginner of modernism in Slovene literature...
), who resorted to a more "pure" and simple language without excessive Serbo-Croatian borrowings. During the Kingdom of YugoslaviaThe Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...
in the 1920s and 1930s, the influence of Serbo-Croatian increased again. This was opposed by the younger generations of Slovene authors and intellectuals; among the most fierce opponents of an excessive Serbo-Croatian influence on Slovene were the intellectuals around the leftist journal SodobnostSodobnost is a Slovenian literary and cultural magazine, established in 1933. It is considered the oldest of currently existing literary magazines in Slovenia. Although Sodobnost has traditionally been a magazine focused on cultural and literary issues, it nowadays covers a wide range of current...
, as well as some younger Catholic activists and authors. After 1945, numerous Serbo-Croatian words that were used in the previous decades were dropped. This caused an interesting paradox that a Slovene text from the 1910s is frequently closer to modern Slovene than a text from the 1920s and 1930s.
Between 1920 and 1941, the official language of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was defined as "Serbian-Croatian-Slovene". In practice, Slovene was used in Slovenia, both in education and administration. Nevertheless, many state institutions only operated in Serbian, and a Slovene-Serbian bilingualism was applied in many spheres of public life in Slovenia. For examples, at the post offices, railways and in administrative offices, Serbian was used together with Slovene. However, state employees were expected to be able to speak Slovene in Slovenia, and in reality, Serbian had a very limited use in Slovenia.
During the same time, western Slovenia (the Slovenian LittoralThe Slovenian Littoral is a historical region of Slovenia. Its name recalls the historical Habsburg crown land of the Austrian Littoral, of which the Slovenian Littoral was a part....
and the western districts of Inner Carniola) were under Italian administration and submitted to a fierce and violent policy of Fascist Italianization; the same policy was applied to Slovene speakers in Venetian SloveniaVenetian Slovenia is a small mountainous region in northeastern Italy . Most of the region is located in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, in the area between the towns of Cividale del Friuli, Tarcento and Gemona ....
, GoriziaGorizia is a town and comune in northeastern Italy, in the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. It is located at the foot of the Julian Alps, bordering Slovenia. It is the capital of the Province of Gorizia, and it is a local center of tourism, industry, and commerce. Since 1947, a twin...
and TriesteTrieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...
. Between 1923 and 1943, all public use of Slovene language in these territories was strictly prohibited, and Slovene language activists were persecuted by the state. After the Carinthian PlebisciteThe Carinthian Plebiscite on 10 October 1920 determined the final southern border between the Republic of Austria and the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes after World War I.- History :...
of 1920, a less severe policy of Germanization took place in the Slovene-speaking areas of southern CarinthiaCarinthia is the southernmost Austrian state or Land. Situated within the Eastern Alps it is chiefly noted for its mountains and lakes.The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Austro-Bavarian group...
which remained under Austrian administration. After the AnschlussThe Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
of 1938, the use of Slovene was strictly forbidden in Carinthia, as well. This accelerated a process of language shiftLanguage shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak...
in Carinthia, which continued throughout the second half of the 20th century: according to the Austro-Hungarian census of 1910, around 17% of inhabitants of Carinthia spoke Slovene in their daily communication; in 1951, this figure dropped under 10%, and by 2001 to a mere 2,8%.
During World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Slovenia was divided between the Axis PowersThe Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
of Fascist ItalyThe Kingdom of Italy was a state forged in 1861 by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which was its legal predecessor state...
, Nazi GermanyNazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, and HungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, and the occupying powers attempted to either discourage or entirely suppress the Slovene language.
Following World War II, Slovenia became part of the Socialist Federal Republic of YugoslaviaThe Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
. Slovene was one of the official languages of the federation. On the territory of Slovenia, it was commonly used in almost all areas of public life. One important exception was the Yugoslav army where Serbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
was used exclusively even in Slovenia. National independence has revitalized the language: since 1991, when Slovenia gained independence, Slovene has been used as an official language in all areas of public life. It also became one of the official languages of the European Union upon Slovenia's admission in 2004.
Geographic distribution
The language is spoken by about 2.5 million people, mainly in Slovenia, but also by Slovene national minorities in Friuli-Venezia GiuliaFriuli–Venezia Giulia is one of the twenty regions of Italy, and one of five autonomous regions with special statute. The capital is Trieste. It has an area of 7,858 km² and about 1.2 million inhabitants. A natural opening to the sea for many Central European countries, the region is...
, ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
(around 90,000 in Venetian SloveniaVenetian Slovenia is a small mountainous region in northeastern Italy . Most of the region is located in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, in the area between the towns of Cividale del Friuli, Tarcento and Gemona ....
, Resia Valley, Canale Valley, Province of TriesteThe Province of Trieste is a province in the autonomous Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Trieste.It has an area of 212 km², and a total population of 236,520...
and in those municipalities of the Province of GoriziaThe Province of Gorizia is a province in the autonomous Friuli–Venezia Giulia region of Italy.-Overview:Its capital is the city of Gorizia. It belonged to the Province of Udine between 1924 and 1927 and the communes of Sonzia, Plezzo, Bergogna, Caporetto, Tolmino, Circhina, Santa Lucia d'Isonzo,...
bordering with Slovenia), in southern CarinthiaCarinthia is the southernmost Austrian state or Land. Situated within the Eastern Alps it is chiefly noted for its mountains and lakes.The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Austro-Bavarian group...
and some parts of StyriaStyria is a state or Bundesland, located in the southeast of Austria. In area it is the second largest of the nine Austrian federated states, covering 16,401 km². It borders Slovenia as well as the other Austrian states of Upper Austria, Lower Austria, Salzburg, Burgenland, and Carinthia. ...
in AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
(25,000). It is also spoken in CroatiaCroatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
, especially in IstriaIstria , formerly Histria , is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Bay of Kvarner...
, RijekaRijeka is the principal seaport and the third largest city in Croatia . It is located on Kvarner Bay, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea and has a population of 128,735 inhabitants...
and ZagrebZagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
(11,800-13,100), in southwestern HungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
(3-5,000), in SerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
(5,000), and by the Slovene diaspora throughout EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and the rest of the world (around 300,000), particularly in the United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, ArgentinaArgentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
.
Dialects
{{Main|Slovene dialects}}
Slovene is the most diverse Slavic language in terms of dialects, with different degrees of mutual intelligibility. There are 46 distinct dialects, grouped in seven dialect groups. Although pronunciation differs greatly from area to area, those differences do not pose major obstacles to understanding. The standard language is mainly used in public presentations or on formal occasions.
The Prekmurian and ResianThe Resian dialect is a distinct dialect of Slovene spoken in the Resia Valley, Province of Udine, Italy, close to the border with Slovenia...
dialects, being the furthest from the standard language, have been standardized. Speakers of those two dialects have considerable difficulties with being understood by speakers of other varieties of Slovene, needing code-switchingIn linguistics, code-switching is the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals—people who speak more than one language—sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other...
to the Standard Slovene. Other dialects are mutually intelligible when speakers avoid the excessive usage of regionalisms.
Regionalisms are mostly limited to culinary and agricultural expressions, although there are many exceptions. Some loanwords have become so deeply rooted into the local language, that people have considerable difficulties in finding a standard expression for the dialectical term (for instance, kovter meaning blanketA blanket is a type of bedding, generally speaking, a large piece of cloth, intended to keep the user warm, especially while sleeping. Blankets are distinguished from sheets by their thickness and purpose; the thickest sheet is still thinner than the lightest blanket. Blankets are generally used...
is prešita oddeja in Standard Slovene, but the latter term is never used in speech). Western dialects incorporate a great deal of calques and loanwords from Italian, while eastern dialects remain replete with remnants of the German reign. Usage of those words is considered bad style even in colloquial language and is discouraged since it hinders intelligibility among dialects.
Phonology
Slovene has a phonemeIn a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
set consisting of 21 consonantIn articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
s and 8 vowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s, and practices reduction of unstressed vowels.
Vowels
Slovene has an eight-vowel system (/a/, /e/, /ɛ/, /ə/, /i/, /o/, /ɔ/, /u/) in comparison to the five-vowel system in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and Macedonian. Older analyses of Slovene concluded that it features phonemic vowel length, but more recent studies have rejected this statement for the majority of speakers. The current analysis is that stressed vowels are long while unstressed vowels are short. All vowels can be either stressed or unstressed. However, unstressed /e/ and /o/ are restricted to a few grammatical words like bo ('will'), an auxiliary verb for the future tense.
Consonants
Slovene has 21 distinctive consonant phonemes. Conditional allophones are shown in parentheses.
Slovenian consonants
| |
BilabialIn phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
|
Labio-
dentalIn phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
|
Dental |
Palato-
alveolar |
PalatalPalatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...
|
VelarVelars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
|
| Nasal A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
|
m |
|
n |
|
|
(ŋ) |
| Plosive |
p |
b |
|
t |
d |
|
|
k |
ɡ |
| Affricate Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...
|
|
|
t͡s |
(d͡z) |
t͡ʃ |
d͡ʒ |
|
|
| Fricative Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
|
|
f |
v |
s |
z |
ʃ |
ʒ |
|
x |
(ɣ) |
| Approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...
|
|
ʋ |
l |
|
j |
|
| Trill In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular....
|
|
|
r |
|
|
|
All voicedVoice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...
obstruentAn obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract, such as [k], [d͡ʒ] and [f]. In phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes: obstruents and sonorants....
s are devoiced at the end of words unless immediately followed by a word beginning with a vowel or a voiced consonant. In consonant clusters, voicing distinction is neutralized and all consonants assimilate the voicing of the rightmost segment. In this context, [ɣ] and [d͡z] may occur as voiced allophones of /x/ and /t͡s/, respectively (e.g. vŕh drevésa [ʋrɣ dreˈʋesa]). /ʋ/ has several allophones depending on context:
- Before a vowel: [ʋ]
- At the end of a syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
or before a consonant: [u̯]
- At the beginning of a syllable behind a voiced consonant: [w]
- At the beginning of a syllable behind a voiceless consonant: [ʍ]
The preposition v is always bound to the following word; however its phonetic realization follows the normal phonological rules for /ʋ/.
Prosody
Like the closely related Serbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
, Slovene uses diacriticA diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s or accent marks to denote what is called "dynamic accent" and tone. However, as in Serbo-Croatian, use of such accent marks is restricted to language textbooks and linguistic publications. Standard Slovene has two varieties, tonal and non-tonal. The diacritics are almost never used in the written language, except in the few minimal pairs that are already mentioned.
Dynamic accent marks lexical stress in a word as well as vowel duration. Stress placement in Slovene is predictable compared to the East Slavic languages and Bulgarian: any long vowel is automatically stressed, and in words with no long vowels, the stress falls to the final syllable. The only exception is schwa, which is always short, and can be stressed in non-final position. Some compounds, but not all, have multiple stress. In the Slovene writing system, dynamic accent marks may be placed on all vowels, as well as /ɾ/ (which is never syllabic in Standard Slovene, but is used for schwa + r sequences, when in consonantal environment); for example, vrt ('garden') stressed as vŕt.
In short, stress can theoretically fall on any syllable. In practice, the second or third syllable from the end are commonly stressed.
Dynamic accentuation uses three diacritic marks: the acute ( ´ ) (long and narrow), the circumflex ( ^ ) (long and wide) and the grave ( ` ) (short and wide). All dialects of Slovene do use this type of accentuation, although the same word can be accented quite differently in different dialects.
Tonal accentuation uses four: the acuteThe acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
( ´ ) (long and high), the inverted breveInverted breve or arch is a diacritical mark ̑, shaped like the top half of a circle, that is, like an upside-down breve. It looks similar to the circumflex, but the circumflex has a sharp tip, whilst the inverted breve is rounded: compare  â Ê ê Î î Ô ô Û û with Ȃ ȃ Ȇ ȇ Ȋ ȋ Ȏ ȏ Ȗ ȗ ....
({{Unicode| ̑ }}) or the circumflexThe circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
( ^ ) (long and low), the graveThe grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...
( ` ) (short and high) and the double grave ( `` ) (short and low), marking the narrow or with the dot below ( ̣ ). Eastern dialects of Slovene do not use tonal accentuation, posing many obstacles for speakers from this areas to mastering Standard Slovene in a way that is expected to be used in mass media.
T-V distinction
Slovene, like most other European languages, has a T-V distinctionIn sociolinguistics, a T–V distinction is a contrast, within one language, between second-person pronouns that are specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....
, or two forms of 'you' for formal and informal situations. Although informal address using the 2nd person singular ti form (known as tikanje) is officially limited to friends and family, talk among children, and addressing animals, it is increasingly used among the middle generation to signal a relaxed attitude or lifestyle instead of its polite or formal counterpart using the 2nd person plural vi form (known as vikanje).
An additional nonstandard but widespread use of a singular participle combined with a plural auxiliary verb (known as polvikanje) signals a somewhat more friendly and less formal attitude while maintaining politeness:
- Vi ga niste videli. ('You did not see him': both the auxiliary verb niste and the participle videli are plural masculine. Standard usage.)
- Vi ga niste videl/videla. ('You did not see him': the auxiliary verb niste is plural but the participle videl/videla is singular masculine/feminine. Nonstandard usage.)
The use of nonstandard forms (polvikanje) might be frowned upon by many people and should never be used in a formal setting.
The use of the 3rd person plural oni ('they') form (known as onikanje in both direct address and indirect reference) as an ultra-polite form is now archaic or dialectal; it is associated with servant-master relationships in older literature, the child-parent relationship in certain conservative rural communities, and parishioner-priest relationships.
Foreign words
Foreign words used in Slovene are of various types depending on the assimilation they have undergone. The types are:
- sposojenka (loan word){{ndash}} fully assimilated; e.g. pica ('pizza').
- tujka (foreign word){{ndash}} partly assimilated, either in writing and syntax and/or in pronunciation; e.g. jazz, wiki.
- polcitatna beseda ali besedna zveza (half-quoted word or phrase) {{ndash}} partly assimilated, either in writing and syntax and/or in pronunciation; e.g. Shakespeare, but Shakespearja in genitive case.
- citatna beseda ali besedna zveza (quoted word or phrase){{ndash}} kept as in original, although pronunciation may be altered to fit into speech flow; e.g. first lady in all cases.
Articles
There are no definiteDefinite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...
or indefinite articles as in English (a, an, the) or GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
(der, die, das, ein, eine). A whole verb or a noun is described without articles and the grammatical genderGrammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
is found from the word's termination. It is enough to say barka (a or the barge), Noetova barka ('Noah's ark'). The gender is known in this case to be feminine. In declensionIn linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
s, endings are normally changed; see below. If one should like to somehow distinguish between definiteness or indefiniteness of a noun, one would say (prav/natanko/ravno) tista barka ('that (exact) barge') for "the barge" and neka/ena barka ('one barge') for "a barge".
Definiteness of a noun phrase can also be discernible through the ending of the accompanying adjective. One should say rdeči šotor ([exactly that] red tent) or rdeč šotor ([a] red tent). This difference is observable only for masculine nouns in nominative or accusative case. Because of the lack of article in Slovene and audibly insignificant difference between the masculine adjective forms, most dialects do not distinguish between definite and indefinite variants of the adjective, leading to hypercorrectionIn linguistics or usage, hypercorrection is a non-standard usage that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of grammar or a usage prescription...
when speakers try to use Standard Slovenian.
Writing system
{{Main|Slovene alphabet}}
{{See also|Bohorič alphabet|Metelko alphabet|Dajnko alphabet}}
This alphabet ({{lang-sl|abeceda}}) was derived in the mid 1840s from the system created by CroatianistCroatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
Ljudevit GajLjudevit Gaj was a Croatian linguist, politician, journalist and writer. He was one of the central figures of the Croatian national reformation, also known as the Illyrian Movement.-Origin:...
. Intended for Serbo-Croatian languageSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
(in all its varieties), it was patterned on the CzechCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
pattern of the 1830s. Before that /s/ was, for example, written as ⟨{{unicodeEsh is a character used in conjunction with the Latin Alphabet. Its lowercase form is similar to an italic long s ſ or an integral sign ∫; in 1928 the Africa Alphabet borrowed the Greek letter sigma for the uppercase form , but more recently the African reference alphabet discontinued it, using...
, ⟨{{unicode|ʃʃ}}⟩ or ⟨ſ⟩The long, medial or descending s is a form of the minuscule letter s formerly used where s occurred in the middle or at the beginning of a word, for example "ſinfulneſs" . The modern letterform was called the terminal, round, or short s.-History:The long s is derived from the old Roman cursive...
; /tʃ/ as ⟨{{unicode|tʃch}}, ⟨cz⟩, ⟨{{unicode|tʃcz}}⟩ or ⟨tcz⟩; /i/ sometimes as ⟨y⟩ as a relic from now modern Russian yery ⟨ы⟩Yery or Yeru is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. It represents the phoneme after non-palatalised consonants in the Belarusian and Russian alphabets...
{{Clarify|date=February 2010}}; /j/ as ⟨y⟩; /l/ as ⟨ll⟩; /ʋ/ as ⟨w⟩; /ʒ/ as ⟨{{unicode|ʃ}}⟩, ⟨{{unicode|ʃʃ}}⟩ or ⟨{{unicode|ʃz}}⟩.
The writing itself in its pure form does not use any letters beyond the basic Latin setThe International Organization for Standardization basic Latin alphabet consists of the following 26 letters:By the 1960s it became apparent to the computer and telecommunications industries in the First World that a non-proprietary method of encoding characters was needed...
plus ⟨č⟩, ⟨š⟩, and ⟨ž⟩, except optional diacritics when it is necessary to distinguish between similar words with a different meaning. Note that these are usually not written and the reader is expected to gather the meaning of the word from the context. When diacritics are not used, the orthography underdifferentiates the phonemes /e/, /ɛ/ and /ə/, which are all written ⟨e⟩, and the phonemes /ɔ/ and /o/, which are both written ⟨o⟩. For example:
- gòl ('naked') vs. gól ('goal'),
- jêsen ('ash (tree)') vs. jesén ('autumn'),
- kót ('angle') vs. kot ('as'),
- med ('between') vs. méd ('honey'),
- pôl ('expresses a half an hour before the given hour') vs. pól ('pole'),
- prècej ('at once', archaic) vs. precèj ('a great deal (of)'),
| letter | phoneme | first letter in a word | word pronunciation |
| A (a) |
/a/ |
abecéda ('alphabet') |
[abɛtsed̪a] |
| B (b) |
/b/ |
beséda ('word') |
[bɛsed̪a] |
| C (c) |
/t͡s/ |
cvét ('bloom') |
[tsʋet̪] |
| Č (č) |
/t͡ʃ/ |
časopís ('newspaper') |
[tʃasɔpis] |
| D (d) |
/d/ |
dánes ('today') |
[d̪anəs] |
| E (e) |
/e/, /ɛ/, /ə/ |
sédem ('seven'), rêči ('to say'), sem ('I am') |
[sedəm], [rɛtʃi], [səm] |
| F (f) |
/f/ |
fànt ('boy') |
[fan̪t̪] |
| G (g) |
/ɡ/ |
grad ('castle') |
[ɡrad] |
| H (h) |
/x/ |
híša ('house') |
[xiʃa] |
| I (i) |
/i/ |
iméti ('to have') |
[imeti] |
| J (j) |
/j/ |
jábolko ('apple') |
[jabɔlkɔ] |
| K (k) |
/k/ |
kmèt ('peasant') |
[kmɛt̪] |
| L (l) |
/l/ |
ljubézen ('love') |
[ljubezɛn] |
| M (m) |
/m/ |
mísliti ('to think') |
[mislit̪i] |
| N (n) |
/n/ |
novíce ('news') |
[nɔʋitsɛ] |
| O (o) |
/ɔ/, /o/ |
ôkno ('window'), ópica ('monkey) |
[ɔkno], [opitsa] |
| P (p) |
/p/ |
pomóč ('help') |
[pɔmotʃ] |
| R (r) |
/r/ |
rokenról ('rock'n'roll') |
[rɔkenrɔl] |
| S (s) |
/s/ |
svét ('world') |
[sʋet] |
| Š (š) |
/ʃ/ |
šóla ('school') |
[ʃola] |
| T (t) |
/t/ |
tip ('type') |
[t̪ip] |
| U (u) |
/u/ |
ùlica ('street') |
[ulitsa] |
| V (v) |
/ʋ/ |
vôda ('water') |
[ʋɔda] |
| Z (z) |
/z/ |
zrélo ('mature') |
[zrelo] |
| Ž (ž) |
/ʒ/ |
življênje ('life') |
[ʒiuljɛnjɛ] |
Regulation
Standard Slovene spelling and grammar are defined by the Orthographic Committee and the Fran Ramovš Institute of the Slovenian Language, which are both part of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and ArtsThe Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts is the national academy of Slovenia, which encompasses science and the arts and brings together the top Slovene researchers and artists as members of the academy....
(Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, SAZU). The newest reference book of standard Slovene spelling (and to some extent also grammar) is the Slovenski pravopis (SP2001; Slovene Normative Guide). The latest printed edition was published in 2001 (reprinted in 2003 with some corrections) and contains more than 130,000 dictionary entries. In 2003, an electronic version was published.
The official dictionary of modern Slovene, which was also prepared by SAZU, is Slovar slovenskega knjižnega jezika (SSKJ; Standard Slovene Dictionary). It was published in five volumes by Državna Založba Slovenije between 1970 in 1991 and contains more than 100,000 entries and subentries with accentuation, part-of-speech labels, common collocations, and various qualifiers. In the 1990s, an electronic version of the dictionary was published and it is available online.
The SAZU considers SP2001 to be the normative source on Slovenian language. When dictionary entries in SP2001 and SSKJ differ, the SP2001 entry takes precedence.
External links
{{InterWiki|code=sl}}
{{WikisourceWiki|code=sl}}
{{Wikibooks|Slovene}}
Corpora
Dictionaries
{{Slavic languages}}
{{Official EU languages}}
{{Commons category|Slovenian language|Slovene language}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Slovene Language}}