Slovak language

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Template otherTemplate:Main other Slovak (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell; endonym: or ), is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script. It is part of the Indo-European language family, and is one of the Slavic languages, which are part of the larger Balto-Slavic branch. Spoken by approximately 5 million people as a native language, primarily ethnic Slovaks, it serves as the official language of Slovakia and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union.

Slovak is closely related to Czech, to the point of very high mutual intelligibility, as well as to Polish. Like other Slavic languages, Slovak is a fusional language with a complex system of morphology and relatively flexible word order. Its vocabulary has been extensively influenced by Latin and German, as well as other Slavic languages.

History

The Czech–Slovak group developed within West Slavic in the high medieval period, and the standardization of Czech and Slovak within the Czech–Slovak dialect continuum emerged in the early modern period. In the later mid-19th century, the modern Slovak alphabet and written standard became codified by Ľudovít Štúr and reformed by Martin Hattala. The Moravian dialects spoken in the western part of the country along the border with the Czech Republic are also sometimes classified as Slovak, although some of their western variants are closer to Czech; they nonetheless form the bridge dialects between the two languages.

Geographic distribution and status

Slovak language is primarily spoken in Slovakia. The country's constitution declared it the official language of the state (štátny jazyk):

(1) Na území Slovenskej republiky je štátnym jazykom slovenský jazyk. (2) Používanie iných jazykov než štátneho jazyka v úradnom styku ustanoví zákon.

(1) The Slovak language is the official language on the territory of the Slovak Republic. (2) The use of languages other than the official language in official communication shall be laid down by law.

Constitution of Slovakia, Article 6.

Beside that, national minorities and ethnic groups also have explicit permission to use their distinct languages. Slovakia is a country with established Language policy concerning its official language.

Regulation

Standard Slovak () is defined by an Act of Parliament on the State Language of the Slovak Republic (language law). According to this law, the Ministry of Culture approves and publishes the codified form of Slovak based on the judgment of specialised Slovak linguistic institutes and specialists in the area of the state language. This is traditionally the Ľudovít Štúr Institute of Linguistics, which is part of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. In practice, the Ministry of Culture publishes a document that specifies authoritative reference books for standard Slovak usage, which is called the codification handbook (). The current regulations were published on 15 March 2021. There are four such publications:

• '', 2013; (orthographic rules)
• '', 2020; (dictionary)
• '', 2009; (pronunciation)
• '', 1966; (morphology)

Slovak speakers are also found in the Slovak diaspora in the United States, the Czech Republic, Argentina, Serbia, Ireland, Romania, Poland, Canada, Hungary, Germany, Croatia, Israel, the United Kingdom, Australia, Austria, Ukraine, Norway, and other countries to a lesser extent.

Slovak language is one of the official languages of Autonomous Province of Vojvodina.

File:Vojvodina slovak map.png

Official usage of Slovak in Vojvodina, Serbia

Slovak language high schools abroad

• Budapest, 'Szlovák Tanítási Nyelvű Óvoda, Általános Iskola, Gimnázium és Kollégium'
• Békéscsaba, 'Szlovák Gimnázium, Általános Iskola, Óvoda és Kollégium'
• Bački Petrovac, 'Ján Kollár Gymnasium and Students' Home'
• Kovačica, 'Gimnazija Mihailo Pupin'
• Nădlac, 'Liceul Teoretic Jozef Gregor Tajovský'

Dialects

File:Slovak Dialects EN.jpg

Slovak dialects

File:Mother tongue ratio in Slovakia districts 2021.svg

Linguistic structure of Slovakia in 2021

There are many Slovak dialects, which are divided into the following four basic groups:

• Western Slovak dialects (Trenčín, Trnava, Nitra, Záhorie)
• Central Slovak dialects (in Liptov, Orava, Turiec, Tekov, Hont, Novohrad, Gemer and around Zvolen.)
• Eastern Slovak dialects (in Spiš, Šariš, Zemplín and Abov)
• Lowland (dolnozemské) Slovak dialects (outside Slovakia in the Pannonian Plain in Serbian Vojvodina, and in southeastern Hungary, western Romania, and the Croatian part of Syrmia)

The fourth group of dialects is often not considered a separate group, but a subgroup of Central and Western Slovak dialects (see e.g. Štolc, 1968), but it is currently undergoing changes due to contact with surrounding languages (Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, and Hungarian) and long-time geographical separation from Slovakia (see the studies in Zborník Spolku vojvodinských slovakistov, e.g. Dudok, 1993).

The dialect groups differ mostly in phonology, vocabulary, and tonal inflection. Syntactic differences are minor. Central Slovak forms the basis of the present-day standard language. Not all dialects are fully mutually intelligible. It may be difficult for an inhabitant of the western Slovakia to understand a dialect from eastern Slovakia and the other way around.

The dialects are fragmented geographically, separated by numerous mountain ranges. The first three groups already existed in the 10th century. All of them are spoken by the Slovaks outside Slovakia, and central and western dialects form the basis of the lowland dialects (see above).

The western dialects contain features common with the Moravian dialects in the Czech Republic, the southern central dialects contain a few features common with South Slavic languages, and the eastern dialects a few features common with Polish and the East Slavonic languages (cf. Štolc, 1994). Lowland dialects share some words and areal features with the languages surrounding them (Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, and Romanian).

Phonology

Slovak contains 15 vowel phonemes (11 monophthongs and four diphthongs) and 29 consonants.

Slovak vowel phonemes

	Front		Back
	short	long	short	long
Close	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Mid	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)
Open	()		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Diphthongs

The phoneme /æ/ is marginal and often merges with /e/; the two are normally only distinguished in higher registers.Template:Sfnp

Vowel length is phonemic in Slovak and both short and long vowels have the same quality.Template:Sfnp In addition, Slovak, unlike Czech, employs a "rhythmic law" which forbids two long vowels from following one another within the same word. In such cases the second vowel is shortened. For example, adding the locative plural ending to the root creates , not . This law also applies to diphthongs; for example, the adjective meaning "white" is , not (compare Czech ).

Slovak consonant phonemesTemplate:Sfnp

			Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal			Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Plosive		voiceless	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA linkTemplate:Sfnp	Template:IPA link
		voiced	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA linkTemplate:Sfnp	Template:IPA link
Affricate		voiceless		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
		voiced		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Fricative		voiceless	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
		voiced		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link			Template:IPA link
Approximant	plain		Template:IPA link			Template:IPA link
	lateral	short		Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
		geminated		Template:IPA link
Trill		short		Template:IPA link
		geminated		Template:IPA link

Slovak has final devoicing; when a voiced consonant () is at the end of a word before a pause, it is devoiced to its voiceless counterpart (, respectively). For example, is pronounced and is pronounced .

Consonant clusters containing both voiced and voiceless elements are entirely voiced if the last consonant is a voiced one, or voiceless if the last consonant is voiceless. For example, is pronounced and is pronounced . This rule applies also over the word boundary. For example, (to come home) and (more strawberries). The voiced counterpart of "" is , and the unvoiced counterpart of "" is .

Orthography

Slovak uses the Latin script with small modifications that include the four diacritics (ˇ, ´, ¨, ˆ) placed above certain letters ()

Italic letters (Q and W) are used in loanwords and foreign names.

The primary principle of Slovak spelling is the phonemic principle. The secondary principle is the morphological principle: forms derived from the same stem are written in the same way even if they are pronounced differently. An example of this principle is the assimilation rule (see below). The tertiary principle is the etymological principle, which can be seen in the use of i after certain consonants and of y after other consonants, although both i and y are usually pronounced the same way.

Finally, the rarely applied grammatical principle occurs when, for example, the basic singular form and plural form of masculine adjectives are written differently with no difference in pronunciation (e.g. = nice – singular versus = nice – plural). Such spellings are most often remnants of differences in pronunciation that were present in Proto-Slavic (in Polish, where the vowel merger did not occur, and and in Czech and are pronounced differently).

Most loanwords from foreign languages are respelt using Slovak principles either immediately or later. For example, "weekend" is spelled , "software" – , "gay" – (both not exclusively)Template:Clarify, and "quality" is spelled . Personal and geographical names from other languages using Latin alphabets keep their original spelling unless a Slovak exonym exists (e.g. for "London").

Slovak features some heterophonic homographs (words with identical spelling but different pronunciation and meaning), the most common examples being (beautiful) versus (beautifully).

Grammar

Syntax

The main features of Slovak syntax are as follows:

• The verb (predicate) agrees in person and number with its subject.

Some examples include the following:

. (The+singer+feminine suffix is+singing.)

(, where -∅ is (the empty) third-person-singular ending)

. (Singer+feminine suffix +plural suffix are+singing.)

(; is a third-person-plural ending, and /j/ is a hiatus sound)

. (We the+singer+feminine suffix +plural suffix are+singing.)

(, where is the first-person-plural ending)

and so forth.

• Adjectives, pronouns and numerals agree in person, gender and case with the noun to which they refer.
• Adjectives precede their noun. Botanic or zoological terms are exceptions (e.g. , literally "cat wild", ) as is the naming of Holy Spirit () in a majority of churches.

Word order in Slovak is relatively free, since strong inflection enables the identification of grammatical roles (subject, object, predicate, etc.) regardless of word placement. This relatively free word order allows the use of word order to convey topic and emphasis.

Some examples are as follows:

. = That big man is opening a store there today. ( = that; = big; = man; = there; = today; = opens; = store) – The word order does not emphasize any specific detail, just general information.

. = That big man is today opening a store there. – This word order emphasizes the place ( = there).

. = Today over there a store is being opened by that big man. – This word order focuses on the person who is opening the store ( = that; = big; = man).

. = The store over there is today being opened by that big man. – Depending on the intonation the focus can be either on the store itself or on the person.

The unmarked order is subject–verb–object. Variation in word order is generally possible, but word order is not completely free. In the above example, the noun phrase cannot be split up, so that the following combinations are not possible:

.

. ...

And the following sentence is stylistically infelicitous:

. (Only possible in a poem or other forms of artistic style.)

The regular variants are as follows:

Morphology

Articles

Slovak, like every major Slavic language other than Bulgarian and Macedonian, does not have articles. The demonstrative pronoun in masculine form (that one) or in feminine and in neuter respectively, may be used in front of the noun in situations where definiteness must be made explicit.

Nouns, adjectives, pronouns

Slovak nouns are inflected for case and number. There are six cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, and instrumental. The vocative is purely optional and most of the time unmarked. It is used mainly in spoken language and in some fixed expressions: mum (nominative) vs. mum! (vocative), , dad (N) vs. , dad! (V), Mr., sir vs. sir (when addressing someone e.g. in the street). There are two numbers: singular and plural. Nouns have inherent gender. There are three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Adjectives and pronouns must agree with nouns in case, number, and gender.

Numerals

The numerals 0–10 have unique forms, with numerals 1–4 requiring specific gendered representations. Numerals 11–19 are formed by adding to the end of each numeral. The suffix is used to create numerals 20, 30 and 40; for numerals 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90, is used. Compound numerals (21, 1054) are combinations of these words formed in the same order as their mathematical symbol is written (e.g. 21 = , literally "twenty-one").

The numerals are as follows:

1–10		11–20		10–100
1	(number, masculine), (neuter), ) (feminine)	11		10
2	(number, masculine inanimate), (neuter, feminine), (masculine animate)	12		20
3	(number, neuter, masculine inanimate, feminine), (masculine animate)	13		30
4	(number, neuter, masculine inanimate, feminine), (masculine animate)	14		40
5		15		50
6		16		60
7		17		70
8		18		80
9		19		90
10		20		100

Some higher numbers: (200) , (300) , (400) štyristo, (900) , (1,000) , (1,100) , (2,000) , (100,000) , (200,000) , (1,000,000) , (1,000,000,000) .

Counted nouns have two forms. The most common form is the plural genitive (e.g. = five houses or = one hundred two women), while the plural form of the noun when counting the amounts of 2–4, etc., is usually the nominative form without counting (e.g. = two houses or = two women) but gender rules do apply in many cases.

Verbs

Verbs have three major conjugations. Three persons and two numbers (singular and plural) are distinguished. Subject personal pronouns are omitted unless they are emphatic.

• Some imperfective verbs are created from the stems of perfective verbs to denote repeated or habitual actions. These are considered separate lexemes. One example is as follows: to hide (perfective) = , to hide (habitual) = .
• Historically, two past tense forms were utilized. Both are formed analytically. The second of these, equivalent to the pluperfect, is not widely used in the modern language, being rather considered archaic. Examples for two related verbs are as follows:

(I hid / I have hidden); (I had hidden)

.

• One future tense exists. For imperfective verbs, it is formed analytically; for perfective verbs, it is identical to the present tense. Some examples are as follows:

• Two conditional forms exist. Both are formed analytically from the past tense:

(I would hide), (I would have hidden)

• The passive voice is formed either as in English (copula + passive participle) or using the reflexive pronoun 'sa':

• The passive participle (= ~ed (one), the "third form") is formed using the suffixes - / - / -:

• The active present participle (= ~ing (one)) is formed using the suffixes - / - / -

• The transgressive (=(while/by) ...ing) is formed using the suffixes - / - / -.Template:Clarify

(by hiding (perfective))

((while/during) hiding)

• The active past participle (= ~ing (in the past)) was formerly formed using the suffix -, but is no longer used.
• The gerund (= the (process of) ...ing) is formed using the suffix -:

Conjugations

Several conjugation paradigms exist as follows:

-type verbs (Class I)

, to call	Singular	Plural	Past tense (masculine – feminine – neuter)
1st person			– –
2nd person
3rd person

-type verbs (Class I) + rhythmical rule

, to live, dwell, but not exist	Singular	Plural	Past tense
1st person			– –
2nd person
3rd person

-type verbs (Class I) (soft stem)

, to return or (mostly in slang) to vomit	Singular	Plural	Past tense
1st person			– –
2nd person
3rd person

-type verbs (Class V)

, to do, work	Singular	Plural	Past tense
1st person			– –
2nd person
3rd person

-type verbs (Class V) + rhythmical rule

, to return	Singular	Plural	Past tense
1st person			– –
2nd person
3rd person

-type verbs (Class IV) (-)

, to buy	Singular	Plural	Past tense
1st person			– –
2nd person
3rd person

-type verbs (Class IV) (-, typically preceded by a consonant)

, to forget	Singular	Plural	Past tense
1st person			– –
2nd person
3rd person

-type verbs (Class V)

, to see	Singular	Plural	Past tense
1st person			– –
2nd person
3rd person

-type verbs (Class III) (-, typically preceded by a vowel)

, to spend, miss	Singular	Plural	Past tense
1st person			– –
2nd person
3rd person

-type verbs (Class III) (-, -, -)

, to carry	Singular	Plural	Past tense
1st person			– –
2nd person
3rd person

-type verbs (Class II) (-)

, to carry (be fat)	Singular	Plural	Past tense
1st person			– –
2nd person
3rd person

Irregular verbs

	, to be	, to eat	, to know
1st singular
2nd singular
3rd singular
1st plural
2nd plural
3rd plural
Past tense	, ,	, ,	, ,

Adverbs

Adverbs are formed by replacing the adjectival ending with the ending - or - / -. Sometimes both - and - are possible. Examples include the following:

(high) – (highly)

(nice) – (nicely)

(friendly) – (in a friendly manner)

(fast) – (quickly)

The comparative of adverbs is formed by replacing the adjectival ending with a comparative/superlative ending - or -, whence the superlative is formed with the prefix naj-. Examples include the following:

(fast) – (faster) – (fastest): (quickly) – (more quickly) – (most quickly)

Prepositions

Each preposition is associated with one or more grammatical cases. The noun governed by a preposition must agree with the preposition in the given context. The preposition always calls for the genitive case, but some prepositions such as can call for different cases depending on the intended sense of the preposition.

from friends = (genitive case of )

around the square = (locative case of )

up to the square = (accusative case of )

Vocabulary

Slovak is a descendant of Proto-Slavic, itself a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is closely related to the other West Slavic languages, primarily to Czech and Polish. Czech also influenced the language in its later development. The highest number of borrowings in the old Slovak vocabulary come from Latin, German, Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Greek (in that order). Recently, it is also influenced by English.

Czech

Although most dialects of Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible (see Comparison of Slovak and Czech), eastern Slovak dialects are less intelligible to speakers of Czech and closer to Polish and East Slavic, and contact between speakers of Czech and speakers of the eastern dialects is limited.

Since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia it has been permitted to use Czech in TV broadcasting and during court proceedings (Administration Procedure Act 99/1963 Zb.). From 1999 to August 2009, the Minority Language Act 184/1999 Z.z., in its section (§) 6, contained the variously interpreted unclear provision saying that "When applying this act, it holds that the use of the Czech language fulfills the requirement of fundamental intelligibility with the state language"; the state language is Slovak and the Minority Language Act basically refers to municipalities with more than 20% ethnic minority population (no such Czech municipalities are found in Slovakia). Since 1 September 2009 (due to an amendment to the State Language Act 270/1995 Z.z.) a language "fundamentally intelligible with the state language" (i.e. the Czech language) may be used in contact with state offices and bodies by its native speakers, and documents written in it and issued by bodies in the Czech Republic are officially accepted. Regardless of its official status, Czech is used commonly both in Slovak mass media and in daily communication by Czech natives as an equal language.

Czech and Slovak have a long history of interaction and mutual influence well before the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, a state which existed until 1993. Literary Slovak shares significant orthographic features with Czech, as well as technical and professional terminology dating from the Czechoslovak period, but phonetic, grammatical, and vocabulary differences do exist.

Other Slavic languages

Slavic language varieties are relatively closely related, and have had a large degree of mutual influence, due to the complicated ethnopolitical history of their historic ranges. This is reflected in the many features Slovak shares with neighboring language varieties. Standard Slovak shares high degrees of mutual intelligibility with many Slavic varieties. Despite this closeness to other Slavic varieties, significant variation exists among Slovak dialects. In particular, eastern varieties differ significantly from the standard language, which is based on central and western varieties.

Eastern Slovak dialects have the greatest degree of mutual intelligibility with Polish of all the Slovak dialects, followed by Rusyn, but both Eastern Slovak and Rusyn lack familiar technical terminology and upper register expressions. Polish and Sorbian also differ quite considerably from Czech and Slovak in upper registers, but non-technical and lower register speech is readily intelligible. Some mutual intelligibility occurs with spoken Rusyn, Ukrainian, and even Russian (in this order), as their orthographies are based on the Cyrillic script.

English	Slovak	Czech	Polish	Rusyn	Ukrainian	Belarusian	Serbo-Croatian	Bulgarian	Slovenian
to buy				(Template:Transliteration)	(Template:Transliteration)	(Template:Transliteration)		(Template:Transliteration)
Welcome				(Template:Transliteration)	(Template:Transliteration)	(Template:Transliteration)		(Template:Transliteration)
morning				(Template:Transliteration)	(Template:Transliteration)	(Template:Transliteration)		(Template:Transliteration)
Thank you				(Template:Transliteration)	(Template:Transliteration)	(Template:Transliteration)		(Template:Transliteration)
How are you?			? (colloquially "")	(Template:Transliteration)	(Template:Transliteration)	(Template:Transliteration)		(Template:Transliteration)
					(Template:Transliteration)	(Template:Transliteration)

Latin

• : (stick)
• : (monastery)
• : (church)
• : (shirt)
• : (blot, stain)
• : (school)
• : (cupboard)
• : (title)

English

Sports:

• : to do sports
• : sport
• : football (Association football; it can also mean American football, especially when specified as )
• : offside
• : out (football)
• : hockey
• : body check (hockey)

Food:

• : ham & eggs
• : ketchup

Clothing:

• : jeans
• : leggings
• : sweater
• : tennis shoes

Exclamations:

• : fine
• : super
• : OK

German

Nouns:

• : (rubbish)
• : (guild)
• : (goal/target)
• : (tin)
• : (blanket)
• : (wire)
• : (coat-of-arms, from "to inherit")
• : (falsity)
• : (color)
• : (carnival)
• : (viola)
• : (bottle)
• : (load)
• : (count)
• : (hook)
• : (helmet)
• : (hand plane)
• : (funfair)
• : (dumpling)
• : (coin)
• : (verdict)
• : (stocking)
• : (sheet metal)
• : (shelf)
• : (backpack)
• : (pipe)
• : (knight)
• : (mine shaft)
• : (roof shingle)
• : (cord)
• : (purse)
• : (topic)
• : (bathtub)
• : (Christmas)
• : (flake)
• : (cesspit)

Verbs:

• : (to study (as in, to major in))
• : (to wish)
  • Note: colloquially, the standard term in Slovak is

Greetings:

is commonly used as a greeting or upon parting in Slovak-speaking regions and some German-speaking regions, particularly Austria. is also commonly used upon parting in these regions. Both and are used in colloquial, informal conversation.

Hungarian

Hungarians and Slovaks have had language interaction ever since the settlement of Hungarians in the Carpathian area. Hungarians also adopted many words from various Slavic languages related to agriculture and administration, and a number of Hungarian loanwords are found in Slovak. Some examples are as follows:

• "wicker whip": Slovak (the standard name for "whip" is and , itself originating from Turkish , usually means only one particular type of it—the "wicker whip") – Hungarian ;
• "dragon/kite": Slovak (rather rare, is far more common in this meaning; often means only "kite", especially a small one that is flown for fun and this term is far more common than in this meaning; for the "dragon kite", the term is still used almost exclusively)Template:Clarify – Hungarian .
• "rumour": Slovak , Hungarian ;
• "camel": Slovak , Hungarian ;
• "ditch": Slovak , Hungarian ;
• "glass": Slovak , Hungarian ;

Sample text

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Slovak (latin script):

Všetci ľudia sa rodia slobodní a rovní v dôstojnosti aj právach. Sú obdarení rozumom a svedomím a majú sa k sebe správať v duchu bratstva.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

See also

• Slovak orthography
• Slovak phonology
• Slovak declension
• List of language regulators for a list of languages with a regulated standard variety

External links

• Ľ. Štúr Institute of Linguistics – Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Slovak National Corpus
• Slovak Monolingual Dictionaries
• Slovake.eu – Online Language Course
• Online Translation Dictionaries
• E-Slovak – Online Language Course
• Slovak Language Lessons for Beginners