Slovene,
Slovenian, slovenski jezik, slovenščina.
Spoken natively in Slovenia,
Italy (in Friuli Venezia Giulia), Austria (in Carinthia and Styria), Hungary
(in Vas); emigrant communities in various countries.
Native speakers - 2.5 million.
Language family - Indo-European, Balto-Slavic,
Slavic, South Slavic, Western South Slavic, Slovene.
Dialects - Prekmurje dialect
Resian approx. 32 unstandardised dialects.
Writing system - Latin (Slovene
alphabet).
Slovene or Slovenian
(slovenski jezik or slovenščina, not to be confused with slovenčina,
the native name of Slovak) belongs to the group of South Slavic languages. It
is 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.
Standard Slovene
Standard Slovene is
the national standard language that was formed in the 18th century, mostly
based on Upper and Lower Carniolan dialect groups, the latter being a dialect
spoken by Primož Trubar. Since Prekmurje dialect has been omitted from the
formation of the standard that was finalized in the 19th and 20th centuries,
its speakers still feel disconnected from it and use the dialect more widely
than in other regions. In some regions of the Slovene Lands, where the
compulsory schooling was in German and Italian, i.e. in the Austrian state of
Carinthia and in case of the Slovene minority in Italy, the dialects are more
preserved. For example, Resian and Torre (Ter) dialects in the Italian Province
of Udine differ most from other Slovene dialects.
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).
Classification
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. Furthermore, Slovene shares certain linguistic characteristics with
the whole group of the South Slavic languages, including its Eastern subgroup
variants such as Bulgarian. 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. The Slovene language also has many commonalities with the West
Slavic languages.
History
Early history
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.
The Freising
Manuscripts are a record of a proto-Slovene language that was spoken in a much
larger territory than modern Slovene, which included most of the present-day
Austrian states of Carinthia and Styria, as well as East Tyrol, the Val
Pusteria in South Tyrol, and some areas of Upper and Lower Austria. By the 15th
century, most of the northern areas were gradually Germanized: the northern
border of the Slovene-speaking territory stabilized on the line going from
north of Klagenfurt to south of Villach and east of Hermagor in Carinthia,
while in Styria it was pretty much identical with the current
Austrian-Slovenian border. This linguistic border remained almost unchanged
until the late 19th century, when a second process of germanization took place,
mostly in Carinthia. Between the 9th and 12th century, proto-Slovene spread
into northern Istria and in the areas around Trieste.
During most of the
Middle Ages, Slovene was a vernacular language of the peasantry, although it
was also spoken in most of the towns on Slovene territory, mostly together with
German or Italian. Although during this time, German emerged as the spoken
language of the nobility, Slovene had some role in the courtly life of the
Carinthian, Carniolan and Styrian nobility, as well. This is proved by the
survival of certain ritual formulas in Slovene (such as the ritual installation
of the Dukes of Carinthia). The words "Buge waz primi, gralva Venus!"
("God be With You, Queen Venus!"), with which Bernhard von Spanheim
greeted the poet Ulrich von Liechtenstein upon his arrival to Carinthia in 1227
(or 1238), is another proof of some level of Slovene knowledge among high
nobility in the region.
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.
Recent history
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. 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.
Geographic distribution
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.
Dialects
Slovene is sometimes
characterized as the most diverse Slavic language in terms of dialects, with
different degrees of mutual intelligibility. Accounts of the number of dialects
range from as few as seven dialects, often considered dialect groups or dialect
bases that are further subdivided into as many as 50 dialects. Other sources
characterize the number of dialects as nine or eight. 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 odeja 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
phoneme set consisting of 21 consonants and 8 vowels, 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.
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]). /ʋ/ has several allophones depending on context:
- Before a vowel: [ʋ]
- At the end of a syllable 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-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 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.
Vocabulary
T-V distinction
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:
- 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 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.
Writing system
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 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet 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 /ɡəu/ ('naked') vs. gól /ɡol/('goal'),
- jêsen /'jɛsən/ ('ash (tree)') vs. jesén /jɛ'sen/ ('autumn'),
- kót /kot/ ('angle') vs. kot /kɔt/ ('as'),
- med /mɛt/ ('between') vs. méd /met/ ('honey'),
- pôl /pɔl/ ('half an hour before (the hour)') vs. pól /pol/ ('pole'),
- prècej /'pretsɛj/ ('at once', archaic) vs. precèj /prɛ'tsɛj/ ('a great deal (of)'),
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 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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