Slovenian language

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Classification and Geographical Localisation

Slovenian, or Slovene, language (= slovenski) jezik (Slovenian (slovenščina)) is the westernmost language in the South Slav branch of the Slavic languages group.

slovenščina nf
slovenski jezik nm
Language codes
SIL Code,
SLV		 ISO 639-1,
sl		 ISO 639-2,
slv
Preferred Character encodings / Writing codes
UTF-8 ISO 8859-2
(Latin-2)		 Unicode
Letters
Statistics
# of letters 25
# of vowels 5 in writing, 8 in speech
# of consonants 20
# of phonemes 29 (8+21)
# of grammatical numbers 3
# of cases 6
# of noun classes 3+plural form

The language is spoken by about 2.2 million people, the Slovenians living mostly in Central Europe in their native independent land Slovenia (1,727,360), plus the Slovenians in Venetian Slovenia (Beneška Slovenija) in Italy (100,000), in Austrian Carinthia (avstrijska Koroška) in Austria (50,000), in Croatian Istria (hrvaška Istra) in Croatia (25,000), in some southern parts of Hungary (6,000) and the Slovenians dispersed across Europe and all over the world (specially German Slovenians, American Slovenians, or even Kansas' Slovenians, Canadian Slovenians, Argentinian Slovenians, Australian Slovenians, South African Slovenians) (300,000). It is one of the rare Slavic languages that have preserved the dual grammatical number (like the Upper and Lower Sorbian language) and it has a very difficult noun case system.

English philologist David Crystal said in an interview in the summer of 2003 for the newspaper Delo the following about Slovenian: No, Slovenian is not condemned to death. At least not in the foreseeable future. The number of speakers, 2 million, is big. Welsh has merely 500,000 speakers. Statistically, spoken Slovenian with 2 million speakers comes into the upper 10 % of the world's languages. Most languages of the world have very few speakers. Two million is a nice number: magnificent, brilliant. One probably would think this number is not much. But from the point of view of the whole world, this number has its weight. On the other hand, a language is never self-sufficient. It can disappear even in just one generation ...

The English Name of the Language

There has been a controversy as per the use of the correct English adjective out of Slovenia (and hence that of Slovenes). Slovene on the whole seems to be the preferred British, and Slovenian the American term. While in the past, these two had distinct meanings, they are nowadays used interchangeably without regard to their former usage.

The scientific study of Slovene language is known as "slovenistika". A scientist performing such a study is named a "slovenist".

Origin of the language and writing

This section includes information on borrowings, orthography, the modern alphabet and computer writing.

The earliest manuscripts written in Slovene are the Brižinski spomeniki (Freising manuscripts or Freising monuments, German Freisinger Denkm�ler) found in the parchment manuscript miscellany, which in 1803 came from the Bavarian city of Freising (translated to Slovene in 1854 by Slovenian Slavist and grammarian Anton Janežič as Brizno, Brižnik or later adopted Brižinje, Brižine or Brižinj), where there was once a diocese, to the State Library in Munich. In this manuscript with a liturgic - homiletic content, three Slovene records were found 1807. This miscellany was probably an episcopal manual (pontificals) and Brižinski spomeniki in it were created between 972 and 1093, but most probably before 1000. The main support for this dating is the writing which was used in the centuries after Charlemagne and is named Caroline minuscule or Carolingian minuscule. ([1] [2] [3]).

This language was for a very long time a secondary language, the language of the masses in Slovenia during the period of the Austro-Hungarian empire until 1918, when the German language had primacy and for a short period during the World War II, when Slovenia was divided between the Fascist Italian and the Nazi German hegemony. Because of a strong germanization, the Slovenian language retains a lot of Germanisms, which are preserved in a special way for example: German das Polster (pillow (blazina)) in Slovenian colloquial language is spoken poušter and German der Schraubenzieher (screwdriver (izvijač)) in technical colloquial jargon is šrauf'ncigr or šrauf'nciger.

Slovenian uses a modified Latin alphabet and its modern alphabet consists of 25 unique small and unique 25 capital letters and thus one-letter characters:

a, b, c, č, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, š, t, u, v, z, ž,
A, B, C, Č, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, Š, T, U, V, Z, Ž.

This alphabet (abeceda) was derived in the mid 1840s from an arrangement of Croatian national regenerator and leader Ljudevit Gaj (1809 - 1872) for Croatians (alphabet called gajica or Croatian gajica, patterned on the Czech pattern of the 1830s). Before that Š was, for example, written as ∫, ∫∫ or ſ, Č as T∫CH, CZ, T∫CZ or TCZ, I sometimes as Y as a relict from now modern Russian 'yeri' Ы, J as Y, L as LL, V as W, Ž as ∫, ∫∫ or ∫z.

In the old alphabet used by most distinguished writers, "bohoričica", developed by Adam Bohorič, the characters č, š and ž would be spelt as zh, ∫h and sh respectively, whereas c, s and z would be spelt as z, ∫ and s. To remedy this, so that each vocal sound would have a written equivalent, Jernej Kopitar urged development of new alphabets.
In 1825, Franc Serafin Metelko proposed his version of the Slovenian alphabet, called "metelčica". However, it was banned in 1833 in favour of the bohoričica after the so-called Suit of the Letters (Črkarska pravda) (1830 - 1833), won by France Prešeren and Matija Čop. Another alphabet, "dajnčica", was developed by Peter Dajnko in 1824, which did not catch on as much as metelčica; it was banned in 1838. The reason for them being banned is because they mix Latin and Cyrillic characters, which was seen as a bad way to handle missing characters.
The gajica was adopted afterwards, however it still does not feature all characters the language has. In speech, there are 8 distinct vowels (a, wide e, narrow e, i, wide o, narrow o, u, schwa (e)), whereas in writing, there are only 5. Also, many consonants are pronounced differently depending on their position in between other characters (thus, the letter v has 3 different pronunciations), when there is only one written character.

There are 5 letters for vowels (A, E, I, O, U) and 20 for consonants. The Western Q, W, X, Y are excluded from the pure language, as are some Southern Slavic characters, Ć, DŽ, Đ, LJ, NJ, but in encyclopedia's and dictionary's listings they are used, because foreign Western proper nouns or toponyms are not translated in full, as they are in some other Slavic languages, such as partly in Russian or entirely in Serbian. Such an encyclopedic listing would have this modified Latin alphabet:

a, b, c, č, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, š, t, u, v, w, x, y, z, ž.

So Newton or Massachusetts remain the same and are not transformed in, for this language strange, Njutn or in Mesečusets. Other names from non-Latin languages are transcribed in similar fashion to that used by other European languages with some adaptations and unwritten rules. Japanese, Indian and Arabic names such as Kajibumi, Djacarta (Djakarta) and Jabar are transcribed as Kadžibumi, Džakarta and Džabar, where j is exchanged with ž. Diacritical marks from other foreign alphabets (e.g. �, &Aring, Æ, �, �, Ï, Ń, �, �, Ş, �) do not have influence on the alphabetical order either.

In the original ASCII frame of 1 to 126 characters we can find these examples of writing Slovenian text:

a, b, c, *c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, *s, t, u, v, z, *z
a, b, c, "c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, "s, t, u, v, z, "z
a, b, c, c(, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, s(, t, u, v, z, z(
a, b, c, c^, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, s^, t, u, v, z, z^

In TeX notation č, š, ž become \v c, \v s, \v z, \v{c}, \v{s}, \v{z} or in its macro versions also as above in ASCII frame "c, "s, "z or in other representations as \~, \{, \' for lower-case and \^, \[, \@ for upper-case, where a Slovenian hyphenization is rather different as within the plainTeX.

Many well known global placenames have their own special Slovenian names:

Countries (države)

Cities (mesta)

Oceans (oceani)
Seas (morja)
Lakes (jezera)
Rivers (reke)

So some names are quite different for sorting from what they are in English. The writing itself in its pure form does not use any other signs, except, for instance, additional accentual marks, when it is necessary to distinguish between similar words with a different meanings (e.g.:
  • g�l (naked) | g�l (goal),
  • j�sen (ash (tree)) | jes�n (autumn),
  • k�t (angle, corner) | kot (as, like),
  • k�zjak (goat's dung) | kozj�k (goat-shed),
  • m�d (between) | m�d (brass) | m�d (honey),
  • p�l (pole) | p�l (half (of)) | p�l (half past (the previous hour)),
  • pr�cej (at once) | prec�j (a great deal (of))),
  • rem� (draw) | r�mi (rummy (- a card game))).
Basically there are no definite or indefinite articles as in English are (a, the, to (with a verb)) or in German (der, die, das, ein, eine, ein). A whole verb or a noun is described without articles and the grammatical gender is found from the word's ending. It is enough to say barka (a /or the barge) (der Kahn), Noetova barka (a/ the Noah's ark) (die Arche Noahs) and the gender is known in this case to be feminine. In declensions, endings are normally changed. 2nd case: barke, 3rd case: barki, barko, pri barki and z barko for 6th case. If one would like, somehow, to distinguish between definiteness or indefiniteness of the article, one would say for the barge as (prav) tista barka (that (exact) barge) or for a barge as ena barka (one's barge). A gender can differ from ones of the other languages in many cases of course as in:
  • miza (a table) - feminine)(стол - masculine) (der Tisch- masculine),
  • stol (a chair) - masculine (стул - masculine) (der Stuhl- masculine).
The gender is very often the neuter:
  • gabrje (beech-forest) (or better hornbeam-forest) + singular noun ( грубовый лес - masculine) (der Wei�buchenbestand - masculine),
  • vrata (doors) + plural noun (дверь - feminine + plural noun) (die T�r - feminine).

Dialect (Narečje)

If you don't have a dialect, you don't have a language [An old saying]

There are at least 32 main dialects (narečje) dI and speeches (govor) sP of spoken Slovenian language. Main regional groups are:

  1. koroško (Carinthian),
  2. vzhodno (Eastern),
  3. severovzhodno (Northeastern),
  4. zahodno (Western),
  5. osrednje (Central),
  6. gorenjsko (of Upper Carniola),
  7. belokranjsko (of White Carniola),
  8. dolenjsko (of Lower Carniola),
  9. primorsko (Maritime).

There are also local groups and sub-groups sG as:

  1. banjško (sP),
  2. baško (sP),
  3. borjansko,
  4. bovško,
  5. briško,
  6. brkinsko (in Brkini)
  7. bržansko (in Bržanija in Trieste vicinity),
  8. celjsko (in Celje),
  9. cerkljansko (in Cerkljansko),
  10. činžaško,
  11. čiško,
  12. črnovrško,
  13. goričansko,
  14. gradiščansko,
  15. haloško (in Haloze),
  16. horjulsko (in Horjul),
  17. idrijsko (in Idrija),
  18. istrsko, (in Slovenian Istria),
  19. južno belokranjsko (sG)
  20. južno notranjsko (in south of Notranjsko),
  21. južno pohorsko (sG),
  22. kapleško,
  23. kobariško,
  24. kostelsko,
  25. kozjansko - bizeljsko,
  26. kozjaško (sP),
  27. kranjskogorsko (in Kranjska Gora) (sP),
  28. kraško (on Kras (the Karst)),
  29. laško (in Laško) (sP),
  30. logaško,
  31. lovrenško,
  32. ljubljansko (in Ljubljana),
  33. mariborsko (in Maribor),
  34. medijsko,
  35. mešano kočevsko (sP),
  36. mežiško (in Mežica),
  37. nadiško,
  38. notranjsko (in Notranjsko)
  39. obirsko,
  40. obsoško, (along river Soča)
  41. podjunsko (in Podjuna),
  42. pohorsko (on Pohorje),
  43. poljansko,
  44. posavsko,
  45. prekmursko (sG),
  46. prleško (in Prlekija),
  47. puščavsko,
  48. remšniško,
  49. rezijansko (in Rezija), Resianica,
  50. ribniško,
  51. rižansko (in Rižana) (sP),
  52. rožansko,
  53. savinjsko (in the valley of Savinja),
  54. sevniško - krško (sP),
  55. solčavsko (in Solčava) (sP),
  56. selško,
  57. severno belokranjsko (sG),
  58. severno pohorsko - remšniško,
  59. srednje beloknjanjsko (sG),
  60. srednje savinjsko (sG),
  61. srednje štajersko (sG),
  62. šavrinsko (sP),
  63. škofjeloško (in Škofja Loka),
  64. šokarsko,
  65. tersko,
  66. trbonsko,
  67. tolminsko (in Tolmin),
  68. trboveljsko (in Trbovlje),
  69. vrtojbensko (in Vrtojba),
  70. vzhodno dolenjsko (sG),
  71. vzhodno gorenjsko (sG),
  72. vzhodno prleško (sG),
  73. zagorsko - trboveljsko (sP),
  74. zasavsko,
  75. ziljsko,
  76. zgornje savinjsko (sG),

We can also talk about spoken American Slovenian, spoken by Slovenian emigrants in the USA (mostly in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois). For example they would usually say in broken Slovenian: Jez prihajam z-Amerik-e (I come from America). For the dialects from the Carinthian region it is known that they, more than in their deep structure, differ from each other in their vocal and lexical image; from literary language, however, they differ no more than the other marginal Slovenian dialects. That is why the dialects in elementary school can be some kind of natural transition towards literary language and written word. We can see the borders of Slovenian dialects on Fran Ramovš's Dialect Map ([4]).

Slovenians gained a national consciousness at the beginning of the 17th century and especially in the 19th century.

France Prešeren is one of the first modern poets of Slovenian literature.

Grammatical number (Slovnično število)

The Future Tense (Prihodnjik)

We shall use the Future Tense to demonstrate the usage of the Grammatical number in Slovene.

In the Slovenian language, the future tense is made by the verb to be in the future tense plus the past ('l') participle of the full lexical verb.

For example: the English table of I will see (Jaz bom videl), including gender for he (= on) and she (= ona) without it (= ono) can be transformed as:

Singular Plural Dual (Semi)
I will see We (all) will see We (both) will see
You will see You (all) will see You (both) will see
He will see/She will see They (all) will see They (both) will see

into the Slovenian table:

Singular +M/F gender Plural +M/F gender Dual +M/F gender
Jaz bom videl/Jaz bom videla Mi bomo videli/Me bomo videle Midva bova videla/Midve bova videli
Ti boš videl/Ti boš videla Vi boste videli/Ve boste videle Vidva bosta videla/Vidve bosta videli
On bo videl/Ona bo videla Oni bodo videli/One bodo videle Ona (or onadva) bosta bosta videla/Oni (or onidve) bosta videli

Not only does the language have singular and plural but also dual, which is rendered in English using the word both.

Dual is a feature of the Old Slavic language and from the Old Slavic language the dual has been transmitted to Slovenian. It is a number like singular and plural but it is only used for two subjects and objects. We have:

Ona sta (Both of them are -- two objects or subjects) [masculine gender]
Oni sta (Both of them are -- two objects or subjects) [feminine gender]
Oni so (All of them are -- more than two objects or subjects) [masculine gender]
One so (All of them are -- more than two objects or subjects) [feminine gender]

Dual is also preserved in gender, as the above example clearly shows.


Noun (Samostalnik)

Cases (Skloni)

The Noun can serve in terms of syntax as the subject or the object of a sentence. In Slovene, this is shown by cases. There are 6 cases in Slovene:

  1. the Nominative case (imenovalnik (nominativ))
  2. the Genitive case (rodilnik (genitiv))
  3. the Dative case (dajalnik (dativ))
  4. the Accusative case (tožilnik (akuzativ))
  5. the Locative case (mestnik (lokativ))
  6. the Instrumental case (orodnik (instrumental))

The Nominative case defines a subject of a sentence; all other cases define an object.

There are 10 distinct declensions in Slovene. These are the following, with their model noun inflected. Please note that there are many exceptions for each of the declensions.

Endings in the following tables are marked bold.

Feminine Declensions (Ženske sklanjatve)

First (Prva)

The model of this declension is lipa, lime (or linden) tree.

CASE Singular Dual Plural
1 lipa
 lipi
 lipe
2 lipe
 lip
 lip
3 lipi
 lipama
 lipam
4 lipo
 lipi
 lipe
5 (pri/o) lipi
 lipah
 lipah
6 (z) lipo
 lipama
 lipami

The notable exceptions to this model are nouns ending in -ev instead of -a in nominative singular (breskev (peach), lestev (ladder), žetev (harvest)), and the nouns gospa (lady, madam), hči (daughter) and mati (mother).

Some nouns, in addition to those ending in -ev, change their stem in the genitive of dual and plural. Namely, the schwa (-e-) (or -i- in front of -j-) is inserted. For example: vožnja (fare) - voženj, igra (game) - iger, ladja (ship) - ladij.

The main difference between femine declension in Slovene and in Russian language is in the 2. and 3. case. They are swaped in these two languages. For instance, incautious Russian who might well speak Slovene will usually say "dal sem mame" (correct "mami" (I gave to mum)) and "ni bilo mami" (correct "mame" (Mum wasn't there)) . The same is also with the fourth femine declension.

Second (Druga)

The model of this declension is perut, wing (of a bird).

CASE Singular Dual Plural
1 perut
 peruti peruti
2 peruti peruti peruti
3 peruti perutma perutim
4 perut peruti peruti
5 (pri/o) peruti perutih perutih
6 (s) perutjo perutma perutmi

Some nouns of the second feminine declension have special endings in instrumental of singular and dative of dual and plural, such as pesem (song) (s pesmijo; pesmima; pesmim).

Some one syllable nouns of this declension have special endings in dative and locative of dual and plural, such as stvar (thing) (Dative: stvarema, stvarem; Locative: pri stvarema, pri stvarem).

Some nouns have peculiarities in the stem upon inflexion, by omitting the schwa sound (e). Bolezen (illness, nominative singular) - bolezni (genitive singular).

The noun kri (blood) has in all cases but nominative and dative singular a different stem (krv-). Thus: kri - krvi - krvi - kri - pri krvi - s krvjo.

Third (Tretja)

The model of this declension is mami, mummy (an alias for 'mother').

CASE Singular Dual Plural
1 mami
 mami mami
2 mami mami mami
3 mami mami mami
4 mami mami mami
5 (pri/o) mami mami mami
6 (z) mami mami mami


Fourth (Četrta)

The model of this declension is dežurna, a person on-duty (this is an adjectival noun (posamostaljeni pridevnik), and also the pattern for declension of adjectives).

CASE Singular Dual Plural
1 dez<caron>urna
 dez<caron>urni
 dez<caron>urne
2 dez<caron>urne
 dez<caron>urnih
 dez<caron>urnih
3 dez<caron>urni
 dez<caron>urnima
 dez<caron>urnim
4 dez<caron>urno
 dez<caron>urni
 dez<caron>urne
5 (pri/o) dez<caron>urni
 dez<caron>urn'ih
 dez<caron>urnih
6 (z) dez<caron>urno
 dez<caron>urnima
 dez<caron>urnimi

The forms given here are used in the declension of all adjectives standing next to feminine nouns (of any declension), as well as for all adjectives acting as nouns. Province names also abide by this declension.

For example:

  1. lepa pisava (nice handwriting)
  2. dolga nit (long thread)
  3. gobčna Ines (garrulous Ines)
  4. Kranjska (= kranjska dežela, 'land of Kranj' - 'Carniola')
  5. ženska (female; this stands for ženska oseba, female person)


Masculine Declensions (Moške sklanjatve)

First (Prva)

The model of this declension is korak, step.

CASE Singular Dual Plural
1 korak
 koraka koraki
2 koraka korakov korakov
3 koraku korakoma korakom
4 korak koraka korake
5 (pri/o) koraku korakih korakih
6 (s) korakom korakoma koraki

Animate nouns (nouns that represent living beings) have a different ending in accusative singular (-a: fant (boy) - fanta). Some other, inanimate, nouns also adhere to this rule, and using this rule for all first masculine declension nouns is typical in language used by small children.

Nouns ending in C, Č, Ž, Š, J (to help with remembering: Cene čes<caron>nje z<caron>e s<caron>e je. = Literally: Cene cherries already still eats.) are subject to the so

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