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Slovenian or '''Slovene''' (''slovenski jezik'' or ''slovenščina'') is an Indo-European Language that belongs to the family of South Slavic Languages . It is spoken by approximately 2 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia . Slovenian is one of the few languages to have preserved the Dual Grammatical Number from Proto-Indo-European . Also, Slovenian and Slovak are the two modern Slavic languages whose names for themselves literally mean "Slavic" (''slověnьskъ'' in old Slavonic). Slovenian is also one of the official languages of the European Union . HISTORY Early history Like all Slavic Languages , Slovenian traces its roots to the same proto-Slavic group of languages that produced Old Church Slavonic . The earliest known examples of a distinct, written Slovenian dialect are from the Freising Manuscripts , known as the ''Brižinski spomeniki'' in Slovenian; the consensus estimate of their age is between 972 and 1093 (most likely in the later years of the range). These religious writings are the earliest known occurrence of any Slavic language being written using the Latin script ( Carolingian Minuscule ). Moreover, they are among the oldest surviving manuscripts in any Slavic language. s before the 1920s also wrote in foreign languages, mostly German, the Lingua Franca of science at the time. The cultural movements of Illyrism and Pan-Slavism brought words from Serbo-Croatian into the language. For example, Josip Jurčič , who wrote the first Novel in Slovenian (''Deseti brat''/The Tenth Brother, published 1866 ) used Serbo-Croat words in his writing. Recent history During World War II , when Slovenia was divided between the Axis Powers of Fascist Italy , Nazi Germany , and Hungary , the occupying powers suppressed the Slovenian language. The Germans were particularly emphatic, issuing Propaganda suggesting that German-speaking Slovenes would be treated equally with native-born Germans. Following World War II, Slovenia became part of the Socialist Federal Republic Of Yugoslavia . Slovenian was one of the official languages of the federation, although in practice, Serbo-Croatian was forcefully put forward, again introducing Serbo-Croat elements into Slovenian. Slovenian has been used as official language in all areas of public life (including the army) only from 1991 when Slovenia gained independence. National independence has revitalized the language. It became one of the official languages of the European Union upon Slovenia's admission. Slovenians often assert that their language is endangered, despite the fact that it now has more speakers than at any point in its history. The British has merely 500,000 speakers. Statistically, spoken Slovenian with two million speakers comes into the upper 10 per cent 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 ..." NATURE OF THE LANGUAGE Slovenian belongs to the Western subgroup of the South Slavic Branch of Slavic Languages . Regulation Proper Slovenian orthography and grammar are sanctioned by the Orthographic Commission and the Fran Ramovš Institute of 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 proper Slovenian orthography (and to some extent also grammar) is Slovenski pravopis (''Slovenian Orthography''). The latest printed edition was published in 2001 (reprinted in 2003 with some corrections) and contains more than 130,000 entries. In 2003 , an electronic version was published. The official dictionary of modern Slovenian language, which is also prepared by SAZU, is called '''Slovar slovenskega knjižnega jezika''' (SSKJ; in English ''Dictionary of the Standard Slovenian Language''). It was published in five books by ''Državna založba Slovenije'' between the years 1970 in 1991 and contains more than 100,000 entries and sub-entries in which the stress, grammar marks, common associations of words and different qualificators are included. In the 1990s , an electronic version of the dictionary was published and is available online. Dialects ''Main article: Slovenian Dialects .'' Slovenian is a highly varied language with many Dialect s, with different grades of mutual intelligibility. Linguists agree that there are about 48 dialects. Literature Slovenians are said to be 'a nation of Poet s' due to their language. Poets France Prešeren and Edvard Kocbek and writer Ivan Cankar are three of the most prominent Slovenian authors, while Vladimir Bartol , Srečko Kosovel , Tomaž Šalamun , Boris Pahor , Drago Jančar and Aleš Debeljak are among the most famous. ''See Slovenian Literature , List Of Slovenian Language Poets .'' Name in English The terms ''Slovenian'' and ''Slovene'' refer to anything related to Slovenia and its inhabitants. Both have been used for a long time in English , and are comparable to the parallel short and long forms ''Serb/Serbian'' and ''Croat/Croatian''. A Slovenian Canadian scholar Edward Gobetz claims that the shorter form was carried over into English through French, once the language of diplomacy and that the longer form is the one naturally formed by native speakers of English. The shorter form is sometimes said to be prevalent in the United Kingdom and in Ireland and the longer form in the US, Canada, Australia. Others claim that the shorter form should be used as a noun (e.g., ''Slovenes'') and the longer form as an adjective (e.g., ''Slovenian people''). In practice, it is difficult to claim any such pattern. Although somewhat confusing, both terms are widely recognized and acceptable. GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION The language is spoken by about 2.2 million people - there is a table of distribution of Slovenians in the world in the article Slovenians . Slovenes live mainly in and South Africa ). PHONOLOGY Slovenian has a Phoneme set consisting of 21 Consonant s and 8 Vowel s. Vowels Older analysis of Slovenian 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 All Voiced Obstruent s are devoiced at the end of words unless immediately followed by a word beginning with a vowel or a voiced consonant. 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 . Prosody Slovenian uses Diacritic s or accent marks to denote what is called "dynamic accent" and tone. Standard Slovenian has two varieties, Tonal and non-tonal. Dynamic accent marks lexical stress in a word as well as vowel duration. Stress placement in Slovenian is predictable: 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 Slovenian writing system, dynamic accent marks may be placed on all vowels, as well as r (which is never syllabic in Standard Slovenian, but is used for schwa + r sequences, when in consonantal environment); for example, vrt (garden) stressed as ''vŕt''. Dynamic accentuation uses three diacritic marks: the acute ( ´ ) (long and narrow), the circumflex ( ^ ) (long and wide) and the grave ( ` ) (short and wide). 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 ( ̣ ). GRAMMAR See Also: Slovenian grammar VOCABULARY T-V distinction Slovenian uses, much like German or French , separate forms of 'you' for formal and informal situations. The archaic English thou can be translated as ''ti'' (used in common situations; that is, when speaking to one's peers or inferiors), and the archaic English '''ye''' as ''vi'' (used in formal situations; that is, when speaking to one's superiors, generally any adult with whom one does not have a relationship more evolved than a simple acquaintanceship, as well as all adults who are in a higher position at work, and so forth), which is the second-person plural form. See the section on grammar for details. Contrary to English thou and '''ye''', and as in French ''tu'' and ''vous'', ''ti'' and ''vi'' are widely used. There is a difference between formal and informal second person of plural in the form of the verb that follows or replaces the auxiliary ''vi'' (e.g. ''boste dela'''l(-a)''''', ''thou'' will work; informal) or verb in plural (''boste delal'''i''''', ''ye'' will work). Slovenian also has two special verbs to describe the use of ''ti'' and ''vi''. ''tikati'' means ''to refer to someone as "ti"'', i.e., to be on familiar terms with someone. ''vikati'' means ''to refer to someone as "vi"'', i.e., to be on formal terms with someone. For more information on formality and informality, refer to T-V Distinction . Foreign words Foreign words used in Slovenian are of various types depending on the assimilation they have undergone. The types are:
In essence there are no Definite or Indefinite Article s as in English (''a'', ''an'', ''the'') or 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 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 Declension s, endings are normally changed; see below. If one should like to somehow distinguish between definiteness or indefiniteness of the article, one would say for ''the barge'' as ''(prav/natanko/ravno) tista barka'' (''that (exact) barge'') or for ''a barge'' as ''neka/ena barka'' (''one barge''). Another solution is in the ending of the adjective acompanying the noun (''rdeči šotor'', exactly that red tent or for a special (red) type of tent) or (''rdeč šotor'', a red tent) Numbers Article about Slovenian Numerals WRITING SYSTEM This alphabet (''abeceda'') was derived in the mid 1840s from an arrangement of the Croatian national reviver and leader Ljudevit Gaj ( 1809 – 1872 ) for Croatians (alphabet called ''gajica'' or ''Croatian gajica'', patterned on the Czech pattern of the 1830s ). Before that was, for example, written as , or <ſ>, as , 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 meaning. Note that these are usually not written and the reader is expected to gather the meaning of the word from the context. For example: EXAMPLES Examples of the language in use are given at every topic in the Slovenian Grammar article. It should be noted, however, that pronunciation differs greatly from area to area, and to use literary language in any context except a public presentation or on a very formal occasion is looked strangely upon. REFERENCES
Language history Standard Slovenian language links
Slovenian as a second language
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