Talk:Slovak language

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I am crying too Brion...

and also... who wrote that nonsense about Slovaks from the western part of the country often not being able to understand those in the east. If, as an foreigner, I have little difficulty in understanding Spisske or Vychodnarske dialects, I think that those not able to understand are really just unwilling to understand.

James

You do not know what you are talking about...It is impossible to understand many of the eastern dialects if you speak standard Slovak only - both phonetically and in terms of vocabulary. There is a special dictionary for Eastern Slovak dialects...Obviously, you did never hear true dialects, because few people are using them today. Juro 12:07, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I am crying

Removed the following non-information:

Slovak is believed to be harder to speak for non- Czech or non- Slovak.

-- Brion 18:05 Aug 15, 2002 (PDT)


I know German dialects very well (although, of course, not all of them) and they do not have different declension and conjunction (they are only - to put it simply - different, often very different, degrees of vocabulary "distortions") - and generally that`s what makes the main difference between two languages and two dialects (unless there is a very different vocabulary, or a severe political separation (eg. Noth and South Korean language or, in the past, the Netherlands and Germany)). Juro .... Waiting for a reaction by Rgrg...

I know very little about german dialects :-), everything of course depends on what you consider dialect (e.g. Lower Saxon is sometimes considered a separate language), but e.g. using only one past tense, no future tense and just three cases in Swiss german or Lower Saxon makes the differences in my eyes bigger than those between Czech and Slovak (loss of vocative in Slovak, some merging of cases in Czech, and different usage of participles). Of course, one has to agree with your description of when a language becomes a language.

And this has not much to do with mutual intelligibility, that depends mostly on similar vocabulary, then on similar phonology (or orthography for written languages), and grammar goes the last (unless you get familiar with the language, you are just guessing the part of speech values anyway). Rgrg

O.K. If the above is true, you know much more about the German dialects than me :). But still,in general, for me the distinction between laguage and dialect is the grammar, although I know that like most things in the world, its just a question of definition.

Another question: How "exactly" is a Language continuum defined (if there is an official definition at all)?. Above all, must there be a real "continuum"(i.e.gradual and continuous change)? Juro

Definition is vague and differs by authors, as everywhere in sociolinguistics :-) but more or less says that the "dialects" belonging to one "language" (note the quotes) have no clear boundary between them and the adjanced ones are "mutually intelligible", while the dialects from different parts of the spectrum can be radically different. The question of continuum is different according to language register, e.g. Czech and Slovak (if we deliberatly neglect transitional dialects into Russyn and Polish) form continuum on informal register, but when using formal, higher style register, there are three clearly separated language varietes: Literary Czech, Colloquial Czech and Standard Slovak, and using even higher, very formal register, the colloquial Czech stops being acceptable variant (of course, there is a continuum between different registers :-)). Nowadays, TV and school education are destroying the dialects and the language continuum stops being so prominent as in the past. rado 13:57, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Ïanà as a Slovak dialect?

There is an orphaned article in the Wikipedia, Ïanà, which is identified as a French-influenced dialect of Slovakian. As such, would it be appropriate to include a link to that article from the article on the Slovak language? I'm no linguist, so I am not sure. Kevyn 02:50, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] bogus?

I have a strong suspicion that Ïanà article is completely bogus. Why it is not impossible that such a language has been invented (however the date given puts it before the planned languages boom inspired by Esperanto), the sentence about existing speakers makes me highly suspicious.

OK, I've been had... ;-) So is there a category for best bogus Wikipedia entries? LOL Kevyn 07:51, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Now on VfD

Ïanà is now listed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion Kevyn 22:30, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • Ïanà has been deleted from Wikipedia, as per VfD. Kevyn 02:02, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Long "consonant" clusters

Isn't it true that in those long consonant clusters, what's really happening is that 'r' is functioning as a vowel? If that's true, we should explain it that way.

The text DOES say that (right at the beginning)...Juro 14:58, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)


[edit] re: this is necessary because there are pages on the web erroneously stating the opposite

Please, don't be "overdefensive". Many people are, especially when it comes down to a national or language feelings, but this does not belong to an encyclopedia. If there are web pages stating incorrect information, let them be. Overdefensiveness practically oozes through the whole article of Slovakia and Slovak language - the smallest hint that could be interpreted as lowering the status of Slovak(ia) is thoroughly analysed, explained, re-analysed, counterexamples are provided, just to defend Slovak(ia) from... whom? Class enemy? In my opinion, neither Slovakia nor Slovak language needs such a defence. And it is at the expense of simplicity and clarity. rado 14:10, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

(1) As an example, there is a seriously looking web page ( I do not remember which one) explicitely saying that the Slovak language arose from the Czech language (from Middle Czech as far as I remember). Moreover, I have read an English language book saying that Slovak arose from Polish (2) Is the sentence wrong? - no, Is it unclear - no?, Does it correct wrong information provided by other sources? - yes -> so where's the problem ?? (most of the last changes in the article are superfluous and too dificult for non-linguists - that's what should be changed, not that sentence), (3) actually this is not the matter at hand, but since you have opened this interesting question: the Slovak language needs much more help and defense then any Slovak in Slovakia (even the linguists) can imagine nowadays - but to find that out you would have to spend several years abroad (not in Czehia) and with foreign texts to see how catastrophic the situation is reagarding ANY information on Slovakia, regarding the teaching of the Slovak language compared to any other language in Central Europe, regarding anything...but as opposed to the Slovenes, absolutely nothing happens in this field with Slovaks (no wonder in a country unable to write - in the 21st century - at least one single big bilingual English dictionary) ...[In addition, my personal estimate is that the language will not really be used anymore in 100 years (in favour of the Czech and English language), so it actually needs defense, although that has not been the problem in this particular case] Juro 02:02, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

re: (1, 2) if we had to react to each and every page produced by numerous cranks on the internet, we'd be drowned soon. Just keep(verb in plural) the writing style neutral and informative, not defensive and corrective.
about the "linguistic stuff": this is an entry about a language and as such, it should be informative in that given field - just look at an average wikipedia article about mathematics and physics. Yes, there should be a short introduction for non-linguists, which is elaborated later on, and yes, it is missing from the article about Slovak language (or it is intermingled with the linguistic stuff), and that should be fixed (I might take a stab at it, once I have some free time on my hands... once...)
(3) I take the liberty to disagree :-). This might have been true 100 years ago, but certainly not anymore, and (barring any drastic sociopolitical changes such as WWIII) Slovak language will certainly be spoken and alive in another 100 years. Yes, people (USA&comp) are often misinformed, but let's face it, they do not care, and this is not going to change no matter what you write here. (Quick intermezzo check to see if we are better: without looking it up, what is the official language of Luxembourg?)
I have not spent years abroad, but I have been in several countries around, and the situation is not THAT bad. Of course, everything is relative. People (abroad) usually know about Slovakia more that Slovaks know about e.g. Lithuania (real life story - one of my best friends is a lithuanian living in Slovakia, so I know what I am talking about. How often people abroad assumed that your native language is Czech? Slovaks WAY TOO often think his native language is Russian. His country it almost constantly mistaken for Latvia). If you want to see languages that REALLY need defence, look at Sorbian(s), Rusyn or Kashubian, to mention just the close ones.

a) The text I have mentioned is an (allegedly) official serious text. b) It still holds that the statement is correct and represents useful information, thus there is no reason for deleting it c) I understand that you do not know how terrible the situation is, I had the same opinions like you here years ago (and that's somehow typically "Slovak"), but that is simply not true. Even in the neighbouring Austria Slovak virtually does not exist, compared even to Slovenian and other small languages - not the mention knowledge about Slovak history, literature from Slovakia etc... And just do not want to know what would be written about Slovakia in this and other wikipedias if I had not contributed here virtually all the basic articles and ... some other things I cannot mention here. d) The fact that people also do not know about Lithuania etc. is a typical irrational argument - that does not change anything regarding the situation of Slovakia. I did not say Slovakia was the only country in the world with such problems. Juro 22:26, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Slovak lyrics at Hey, Slavs

I've copied Slovak lyric to Hey, Slavs from the web [1]. It's all in ASCII; I corrected the ČŠŽ letters where I could guess them, but it needs a native speaker for other diacritics, as well as a thorough checking for correctness.

Additions to the article and/or comments are appreciated as well. Zocky 15:29, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My edits

I improved the IPA (or so I hope). As part of this, I stumbled over the fact that ď, ť, ň, ľ, which I would have expected to be palatalized based on other Slavic languages, were transcribed as fully palatal, while the descriptions in the text are more compatible with palatalized consonants. I removed this discrepancy by interpreting them all as palatalized. However, I have not heard enough spoken Slovak to be sure about this. If you are sure that I'm wrong, please edit that, but keep in mind that the Romance sounds written gn and gl in Italian are not [ɲ] and [ʎ] – instead they are [ɲj] and [ʎj]! (I should add some diacritic to the [j], but I can't find a suiting one.)

I changed the SAMPA to Kirshenbaum. The reasons for this are:

  • I thought the SAMPA symbol for [æ], [{], was messing up the table (the line for ä was not visible on the main page, even though it was there in the edit window). It turns out I was wrong, though... a } was missing in an IPA template.
  • I know Kirshenbaum better than SAMPA, so I can write more precisely in it.

Please feel free to change this back to SAMPA, to add SAMPA, or to simply remove both – after all IPA is enough by itself!

www.slavism.net does not exist. Someone please fix the link.

David Marjanović david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at 2005/9/28 00:38 CET-summertime

those are really considered palatals, not just palatalized consonants. The difference is of course very small, but is there, e.g. the Russian consonants sound (very slightly) differently. Anyway, this IPA table (made by me, sorry for the missing "}") is a very broad transcription (as the usage of /o/ instead of /ɔ/ and slashes suggest), so one can argue that in this context palatals vs. palatalized consonants are allophonic.... I have a rather detailed (printed) article here describing very narrow Slovak transcription, going into deep details including frequency analysis, and the author uses palatals - not palatalized consonants. BTW what lead you into changing /ʒ/ into /z̠/? rado 07:16, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
If you say the Russian ones are different, I'll change the Slovak ones to [ɟj cj λj ɲj], if you don't do it first.
I fixed the use of [e] and [o] – I've heard two Slovaks speak French, and both have trouble pronouncing [e] and [o], even though they are fluent in French.
[ʒ] is fine in a phonemic transcription, but the actual sound occurs in French (and English – pleasure, Asia) rather than any Slavic language I know of. [ʐ] would be better. I was picky in using [z̠]; this specifies what kind of "retroflex" it is. See Postalveolar consonant.
David 2005/9/29 1:17 CET-summertime
yes, Russian consonants are different, but only very slightly. Most "typical" pronunciation of slovak palatals can be considered as "extremely strongly" palatalized consonants, almost (and certainly allophonically) true palatals, and most correctly would be transcribed as [t̻ʲ³] [d̻ʲ³]... (or even palatals with decreased level of palatalization [cʲ⁻¹] [ɟʲ⁻¹]... )
Whew! Wow! Levels of palatalization! I didn't even know linguists had ever discussed this! OK, we surely don't need that kind of precision. I'll leave it to you to decide between palatalized and palatal spellings. Toss a coin if you need to. :-)
Slovak "ž" is more apical than laminal, unlike Polish, so the better transcription would be perhaps [ẓ]? or [ʒ̺]? Note that this discussion is already stressing my phonology knowledge to its limits :-)
Sorry. I was being unscientific. I simply assumed it was retracted like in Russian, Polish and Serbocroatian, but some other Wikipedia page says that of Czech is apical, so I had no basis for my inference. Plus, Safari doesn't correctly display the diacritic (it shows _ behind the letter). I'll change them to the general retroflex symbols. (There is so far no accepted IPA symbol for apical retroflexes, so that makes the choice easy.)
With vowels you are correct, [o] and [e] are inapropriate for slovak - but [ɛ] and [ɔ] are not quite correct either. I am reading here some articles proposing to transcribe it as [e̞] and [ɔ̝] (and other vowels as [ɐ̞] [u̞] [i̞]) as the "most precise"
Wow... I agree it isn't necessary to write this...
David 2005/11/19 13:20 CET
I've made the changes. I just wonder... are you sure about [f̬]? I can produce such a sound, but it's extremely odd. Do you just mean [v]?
David 13:44
But, we have to realize, that *this* kind of transcription alone is extremely confusing and useless for a casual reader. Perhaps there should be two tables, one with general broad (phonemic) transcription and one with precise (phonetic) narrow one.
rado 11:00, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hungarian "shepherd"

shepherd (sk: pastier, hu: pásztor)

I say that Romanian "păstor" would be a more likely etymology. bogdan | Talk 09:50, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

The list stems from experts. I "say" the Romanian word is derived from a Slavic word (if it means shepherd). What I mean is that external appearance is not enough for such speculations. You have to know where the word occured first, when it occured first, how it looked like historically etc. Juro 13:21, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

My dictionary says Romanian "păstor" is from Latin "pastor" (shepherd). You know, like in the New Testament: "ego sum pastor bonus" = "I am the good shepherd" [2] bogdan | Talk 13:31, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
I know, I meant the sentence rather as a joke...Now, seriously, unless you have a special reason to believe that the word is from Romanian (other than the appearance), I see these basic possibilities - it stems from a) Latin, b) Romanian, c) Slavic, d) Slavic and adapted to Latin/Romanian later. Having no Hungarian or other etymological dictionary here, I can only say that I would expect a) or b) if the word was rather "new", c) if it was rather "old" in the Hungarian language. I do not think that the authors of this wordlist have overseen that there is the Latin word "pastor". The only thing I can advise to you is to ask User:Adam78 to look into a Hungarian etym. dictionary. It is also possible of course that this is a disputed etymology. Juro 14:03, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
Maybe it came from Latin to Hungarian and from there to Slovak? Ultimately it's obviously Latin, but that doesn't necessarily mean the Slovak derivative isn't a Hungarian loan. Qırğız universitesi and Turkish üniversitesi are from Russian and French, respectively, even though both ultimately come from Latin universitas.
David (see above) 13:24

I'd say it came from Latin to Romanian, in the Antiquity (Roman conquests), and then was introduced to both Slovaks and Hungarians. Remember, the Romanians (Wallachians) taught the Slovaks all about sheep herding. Slovak bryndza originates from Romanian brânzǎ! Jancikotuc 14:08, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, I think, that it is quite possible, that the word shephard = pastier/pastor may be a common "Indo-european" word - which means, it is equally good a latin as also a slovak word. I don't speak Latin/Romanian, but I speak Slovak, and we have also a verb "pásť", which means "to shepherd" and it is related to the word pastier. JH from Slovakia

[edit] hey

i am just learning and it seems real fun

Just a question is slovak closer to russian or to serbo-croatian? - Lazar

Depends on how you define "closer". Grammar has probably the same "distance" from Russian and Serbocroatian, lexica is maybe a bit closer to serbocroatian, and pronunciation is closer to serbocroatian because of Russian polnoglasie. rado 07:37, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
And vocabulary is closer to Serbo-Croatian. Russian vocab is quite different from the rest of the Slavic languages because of the high number of russified French and German words. Jancikotuc 14:00, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
French words like frekvente? Oh wait, that's Slovak. This is all speculation anyway. They are about the same. In terms of pronunciation don't forget that serbocroatian has letters like ђ. -Iopq 09:26, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] trivia

What happened to the "trivia" section? Rmpfu89 17:05, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey, should i put there a statement that Slovak language, despite having far fewer speakers than, say, Turkish, Korean or Hebrew, has got more Wikipedia articles?? Please answer. Jancikotuc 15:43, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

You should not. Juro 15:59, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] There's an error in the Verbs section

Hi people, i've got a feeling that descriptions for the Gerund and the Present Participle are swapped. i'm not a linguist so i cannot modify it and vouch for the correctness, but i'm a native Slovak speaker and that's quite enough.

Yes, the gerund and the present participle are the same in English (A *sleeping* man. -- A man was lying there, *sleeping*.), but NOT in Slovak. That might be the cause of this error. Jancikotuc 13:34, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

There is no error in that part of the article.Juro 16:04, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

With the "small" detail that there is no gerund in Slovak... What is call gerund in the article is actually a transgressive. rado 17:15, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, i must disagree. If i get some linguist involved and they agree with me, i'll let you know... Jancikotuc 17:12, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Slovak spelling

Is biele read /biɛlɛ/ or /bjɛlɛ/ or /bʲɛlɛ/? -Iopq 09:30, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Number 3 (but all three are the same, actually, when you try to pronounce them). Juro 17:15, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it should be /bi̯ɛlɛ/ (Slovak does not have palatalized /b/), but since this is phonemic, not phonetic transcription, #2 is O.K. and #3 is acceptable. rado 18:20, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Ah, I thought the small symbol was an I; if it is a small palatalization-J from IPA, then #3 is wrong. Juro 20:00, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Moreover, #3 is Slovak spoken with a Russian accent and #1 with Hungarian :-) rado 22:24, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, maybe someone can incorporate non-syllabic vowels into the article? -Iopq 10:03, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
ia, ie, iu form diphthongs /i̯a/ /i̯ɛ/ /i̯u/ in native Slovak words, - it is already mentioned there (I wrote it some time ago :-)), however, the article itself is quite a mess, thanks to accumulated cruft over all the editions. rado 20:10, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Yet it's STILL unclear to me if uhlie is /uhli̯ɛ/ or /uhlʲi̯ɛ/ because it says nothing about what happens to the preceding consonant. According to the article, it should be palatalized - "ne, de, te, le, ni, di etc. are pronounced as if there were a caron above the consonant" but is that what happens? -Iopq 11:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
it should be /uɦli̯ɛ/, /l/ is not palatalized anymore in standard Slovak before "e" or "i" (however, it is palatalized in some dialects and in official prescribed language version). However, the consonants are traditionally not described as palatalized, but as true palatals, i.e. it would be /ʎ/in this case. I wrote the IPA table with palatals, but someone thought he knew better and re-wrote it with palatalized consonants, and I had no strength to fight :-) rado 17:15, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi, the article in Wikipedia says that "pekný" and "pekní" are read in the same way. As far as I know, there IS a little difference: "ý" does not soften the consonant "n", but "í" does. The same says my grammar that I have at home. Can a native-speaker verify this? Zyx, 7 Jan 2007

There is no difference, they are and have always been proncounced the same way, thy -í is only an orthographical rule to show it is a word in plural and thus an exception from the softening "rule". The article cannot contain the whole grammar and all exceptions, otherwise it would be endless. Juro 00:50, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] German pronunciation

Just to say that I've removed the reference to the German pronunciation of "ch" in ch – Scottish ch, for example in Loch Ness (like German ch in Bach, Russian х).

The Germans pronounce 'Bach' with an ach-Laut that is to say the voiceless velar fricative [x].

And so do Slovaks, what's the problem? -Iopq 07:24, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

The German 'ch' is not the same as the Czech and Slovak 'ch'.Sladek 14:47, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "pěkný" vs. "pěkní"

These are certainly not pronounced in the same way; "-ní" is /ɲi:/, but "-ný" is /ni:/, right? Sladek 15:11, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

You may have confused Slovak and Czech. The thing you wrote is true for Czech, not for Slovak. Slovak pekný (not pěkný – it is Czech) and pekní are both pronounced the same way: [pɛkniː]. --Pajast 15:32, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I see; thanks for that. Sladek 18:21, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

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