| Slovene/Slovenian | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| slovenski jezik, slovenščina | ||||
| Pronunciation | [sloˈʋenski ˈjɛzik], [sloˈʋenʃtʃina] | |||
| Spoken in | Slovenia Italy (in Friuli Venezia Giulia) Austria (in Carinthia and Styria) Hungary (in Vas) and emigrant groups in various countries |
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| Region | Central Southern and Southeastern Europe | |||
| Native speakers | 2.5 million[1] (date missing) | |||
| Language family |
Indo-European
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| Dialects |
approx. 32 unstandardised dialects
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| Writing system | Latin alphabet (Slovene variant) | |||
| Official status | ||||
| Official language in | Slovenia European Union Regional or local official language in: Austria Hungary Italy |
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| Regulated by | Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-1 | sl | |||
| ISO 639-2 | slv | |||
| ISO 639-3 | slv | |||
| Linguasphere | 53-AAA-f (51 varieties) | |||
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Slovene-speaking areas
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Slovene or Slovenian (slovenski jezik or slovenščina, not to be confused with slovenčina, the native name of Slovak) is a South Slavic language spoken by approximately 2.5 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia. It is the first language of about 1.85 million people and is one of the 23 official and working languages of the European Union.
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Standard Slovene is the national standard language 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 varieties descended from the older rural dialects still exist, the spoken and written language is uniform and standardized. Some dialects differ considerably from the standard language in phonology, vocabulary and grammar. Though not facing imminent extinction, 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, syntax 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 dialect, which is one of the few dialects in Slovenia still widely used by all strata of the population, and some Slovene dialects in the Austrian state of Carinthia and in Italy. The Resian and Torre (Ter) dialects in the Italian Province 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 accent, 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 distinction: second-person plural forms are used for individuals as a sign of respect. Also, Slovene and Slovak are the two modern Slavic languages whose names for themselves literally mean "Slavic" (slověnьskъ in old Slavonic).
Slovene is an Indo-European language belonging to the Western subgroup of the South Slavic branch of the Slavic languages, like Serbian and Croatian. It is close to the Kajkavian and Čakavian dialects of Croatian, but further from the Štokavian dialect, the basis for the Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian standard languages.[2] While Slovene is almost completely intelligible with Kajkavian Croatian dialects (especially the variant spoken in Hrvatsko Zagorje on the border with Slovenia), mutual intelligibility with other variants of Croatian is hindered by differences in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.
Like all Slavic languages, Slovene traces its roots to the same proto-Slavic group of languages that produced Old Church Slavonic. The earliest known examples of a distinct, written Slovene dialect are from the Freising Manuscripts, 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 Reformation. The most prominent authors from this period are Primož Trubar, who wrote the first books in Slovene, Adam Bohorič, the authors of the first Slovene grammar, and Jurij Dalmatin, who translated the entire Bible 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, German 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 Germanisms are preserved in contemporary colloquial Slovene. Many Slovene scientists before the 1920s also wrote in foreign languages, mostly German, which was the lingua franca of science in all Central Europe at the time.
During the rise of Romantic Nationalism in the 19th century, the cultural movements of Illyrism and Pan-Slavism brought words from Serbo-Croatian and Czech 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 Levstik and Josip Jurčič, who wrote the first novel in Slovene in 1866. This tendency was reversed in the Fin de siècle period by the first generation of modernist Slovene authors (most notably the writer Ivan Cankar), who resorted to a more "pure" and simple language without excessive Croatian borrowings. During the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the 1920s and 1930s, the influence of Croatian increased again. This was opposed by the younger generations of Slovene authors and intellectuals; among the most fierce opponents of an excessive Croatian influence on Slovene were the intellectuals around the leftist journal Sodobnost, as well as some younger Catholic activists and authors. After 1945, numerous 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 Littoral and the western districts of Inner Carniola) was under Italian administration and submitted to a fierce and violent policy of Fascist Italianization; the same policy was applied to Slovene speakers in Venetian Slovenia, Gorizia and Trieste. 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 Plebiscite of 1920, a less severe policy of Germanization took place in the Slovene-speaking areas of southern Carinthia which remained under Austrian administration. After the Anschluss of 1938, the use of Slovene was strictly forbidden in Carinthia, as well. This accelerated a process of language shift 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 II, Slovenia was divided between the Axis Powers of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Hungary, 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 Yugoslavia. 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 Serbian 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.
Janez Dular, a prominent Slovenian linguist, commented in February 2010 that although Slovene is not an endangered language, its scope has been shrinking, especially in science and higher education.[3][4] Joža Mahnič, a literary historian and the then president of Slovenska matica, expressed in February 2008 the opinion that Slovene is a language rich enough to express everything using it, including the most sophisticated and specialised texts.[5]
The language is spoken by about 2.5 million people, mainly in Slovenia, but also by Slovene national minorities in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy (around 90,000 in Venetian Slovenia, Resia Valley, Canale Valley, Province of Trieste and in those municipalities of the Province of Gorizia bordering with Slovenia), in southern Carinthia and some parts of Styria in Austria (25,000). It is also spoken in Croatia, especially in Istria, Rijeka and Zagreb (11,800-13,100), in southwestern Hungary (3-5,000), in Serbia (5,000), and by the Slovene diaspora throughout Europe and the rest of the world (around 300,000), particularly in the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia and South Africa.[2]
Slovene is sometimes characterized as the most diverse Slavic language in terms of dialects,[6] with different degrees of mutual intelligibility. Accounts of the number of dialects range from as few as seven[7][8][9] dialects, often considered dialect groups or dialect bases that are further subdivided into as many as 50 dialects.[10] Other sources characterize the number of dialects as nine[11] or eight.[12] 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 Prekmurje and Resian 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-switching 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 blanket 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.
Slovene has a phoneme set consisting of 21 consonants and 8 vowels, and practices reduction of unstressed 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.
Slovene has 21 distinctive consonant phonemes. Conditional allophones are shown in parentheses.
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Dental | Palato- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | (ŋ) | |||||||||
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | k | ɡ | ||||||
| Affricate | t͡s | (d͡z) | t͡ʃ | d͡ʒ | ||||||||
| Fricative | f | v | s | z | ʃ | ʒ | x | (ɣ) | ||||
| Approximant | ʋ | l | j | |||||||||
| Trill | r | |||||||||||
All voiced obstruents 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]).[14] /ʋ/ has several allophones depending on context:
The preposition v is always bound to the following word; however its phonetic realization follows the normal phonological rules for /ʋ/.
Like the closely related Serbo-Croatian, Slovene uses diacritics 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 is 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 acute ( ´ ) (long and high), the inverted breve ( ̑ ) or the circumflex ( ^ ) (long and low), the grave ( ` ) (short and high) and the double grave ( `` ) (short and low), marking the narrow <e> or <o> 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.
Slovene, like most other European languages, has a T-V distinction, 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:
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 used in Slovene are of various types depending on the assimilation they have undergone. The types are:
There are no definite or indefinite articles as in English (a, an, the) or German (der, die, das, ein, eine). A whole verb or a noun is described without articles and the grammatical gender 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 declensions, 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 hypercorrection when speakers try to use Standard Slovenian.[15]
This alphabet (Slovene: abeceda) was derived in the mid 1840s from the system created by Croatianist Ljudevit Gaj. Intended for Serbo-Croatian language (in all its varieties), it was patterned on the Czech pattern of the 1830s. Before that /s/ was, for example, written as ⟨ʃ⟩, ⟨ʃʃ⟩ or ⟨ſ⟩; /tʃ/ as ⟨tʃch, ⟨cz⟩, ⟨tʃcz⟩ or ⟨tcz⟩; /i/ sometimes as ⟨y⟩ as a relic from now modern Russian yery ⟨ы⟩ ; /j/ as ⟨y⟩; /l/ as ⟨ll⟩; /ʋ/ as ⟨w⟩; /ʒ/ as ⟨ʃ⟩, ⟨ʃʃ⟩ or ⟨ʃz⟩.
The writing itself in its pure form does not use any letters beyond the basic Latin set 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:
| 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] |
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 Arts (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.
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