Encyclopedia > Slovenian language
Slovenian language
Classification and spoken areas
Slovenian, or Slovene (which is rapidly becoming an archaic form) language (= slovenski) jezik (Slovenian (slovenščina)) is the westernmost language in the South Slav branch of the Slavic languages group.
The language is spoken by about 2.2 million people, the Slovenians who live 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 a recent interview for the newspaper Delo[?] about Slovenian: No, Slovenian is not convicted to death. At least not in a near future. The number of 2 million speakers is big. Welsh has just 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. You probably would think this number is not much. But from the point of the whole world, this number has its weight. On the other side about some language no one can be self-satisfied. A language can disappear in just one generation...
Origin of the language and writing, borrowings, orthography, modern writing, computer writing
The earliest manuscripts, written in Slovenian, are the Brižinski spomeniki (Freising manuscripts or Freising monuments, German Freisinger Denkmäler) found in the parchment manuscript miscellany, which in 1803 came from the Bavarian city of Freising[?] (translated to Slovenian 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 State library in Munich. In this manuscript with a liturgic - homiletic content they had found in 1807 three Slovenian records. 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] (http://www.uvi.si/eng/new/background-information/freising-manuscripts/) [2] (http://www.kortlandt.nl/editions/freis) [3] (http://www.thezaurus.com/sloveniana/freising_manuscripts.htm)).
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 1825 Franc Serafin Metelko proposed his version of Slovenian alphabet called "metelčica".
5 letters for vowels (A, E, I, O, U) and 20 for the rest consonants. The English and Western ones letters, 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.
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:
- Alžirija (Algeria),
- Avstralija (Australia),
- Avstrija (Austria),
- Azerbajdžan (Azerbaijan),
- Bangladeš (Bangladesh),
- Belgija (Belgium),
- Belorusija (Belarus),
- Bolgarija (Bulgaria),
- Brazilija (Brazil),
- Češka (Czech Republic),
- Čile (Chile),
- Danska (Denmark),
- Finska (Finland),
- Francija (France),
- Grčija (Greece),
- Hrvaška (Croatia),
- Italija (Italy),
- Jugoslavija (Yugoslavia),
- Južna Afrika (South Africa),
- Kitajska (China),
- Madžarska (Hungary),
- Nemčija (Germany),
- Nizozemska (Netherlands),
- Norveška (Norway),
- Portugalska (Portugal),
- Rusija (Russia),
- Španija (Spain),
- Švedska (Sweden),
- Turčija (Turkey),
- Združene države Amerike (United States of America).
Cities:
- Alžir (Algiers),
- Ašgabat (Ashgabat),
- Benetke (Venice),
- Bruselj (Brussels),
- Budimpešta (Budapest),
- Bukarešta (Bucharest),
- Celovec (Klagenfurt),
- Dušanbe (Dushanbe),
- Erevan (Yerevan),
- Firence (Florence),
- Gradec (Graz),
- Dunaj (Vienna),
- Jeruzalem (Jerusalem),
- Kinšasa (Kinshasa),
- Moskva (Moscow),
- Monakovo (Munich) (it is abandoning and replacing with the original name München),
- Pariz (Paris),
- Peking (Beijing),
- Praga (Prague),
- Pulj (Pula[?]),
- Rim, (Rome),
- Sofija, (Sofia),
- Trst (Trieste),
- Varšava (Warsaw).
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.:
- gòl (naked) | gól (goal),
- jèsen (ash (tree)) | jesèn (autumn),
- kót (angle, corner) | kot (as, like),
- kózjak (goat's dung) | kozják (goat-shed),
- mèd (between) | méd (brass) | méd (honey),
- pól (pole) | pól (half (of)) | pôl (half past (an hour)),
- prècej (at once) | precéj (a great deal (of))),
- remí (draw) | rémi (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 Noah) and the gender is known in this case to be feminine. In declension ending is ordinarily 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).
There are very often nouns in neuter gender) as in:
- gabrje (beech-forest) (or better hornbeam-forest) + singular noun ( грубовый лес - masculine) (der Weißbuchenbestand - masculine),
- vrata (doors) + plural noun (дверь - feminine + plural noun) (die Tür - 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:
- koroško (Carinthian),
- vzhodno (Eastern),
- severovzhodno (Northeastern),
- zahodno (Western),
- osrednje (Central),
- gorenjsko (of Upper Carniola),
- belokranjsko (of White Carniola),
- dolenjsko (of Lower Carniola),
- primorsko (Maritime).
There are also local groups and sub-groups sG as:
- banjško (sP),
- baško (sP),
- borjansko,
- bovško,
- briško,
- brkinsko (in Brkini)
- bržansko (in Bržanija in Trieste vicinity),
- celjsko (in Celje),
- cerkljansko (in Cerkljansko),
- činžaško,
- čiško,
- črnovrško,
- goričansko,
- gradiščansko,
- haloško (in Haloze),
- horjulsko (in Horjul),
- idrijsko (in Idrija),
- istrsko, (in Slovenian Istria),
- južno belokranjsko (sG)
- južno notranjsko (in south of Notranjsko),
- južno pohorsko (sG),
- kapleško,
- kobariško,
- kostelsko,
- kozjansko - bizeljsko,
- kozjaško (sP),
- kranjskogorsko (in Kranjska Gora) (sP),
- kraško (on Kras (the Karst)),
- laško (in Laško) (sP),
- logaško,
- lovrenško,
- ljubljansko (in Ljubljana),
- mariborsko (in Maribor),
- medijsko,
- mešano kočevsko (sP),
- mežiško (in Mežica),
- nadiško,
- notranjsko (in Notranjsko)
- obirsko,
- obsoško, (along river Soča)
- podjunsko (in Podjuna),
- pohorsko (on Pohorje),
- poljansko,
- posavsko,
- prekmursko (sG),
- prleško (in Prlekija),
- puščavsko,
- remšniško,
- rezijansko (in Rezija), Resianica[?],
- ribniško,
- rižansko (in Rižana) (sP),
- rožansko,
- savinjsko (in the valley of Savinja),
- sevniško - krško (sP),
- solčavsko (in Solčava) (sP),
- selško,
- severno belokranjsko (sG),
- severno pohorsko - remšniško,
- srednje beloknjanjsko (sG),
- srednje savinjsko (sG),
- srednje štajersko (sG),
- šavrinsko (sP),
- škofjeloško (in Škofja Loka),
- šokarsko,
- tersko,
- trbonsko,
- tolminsko (in Tolmin[?]),
- trboveljsko (in Trbovlje),
- vrtojbensko (in Vrtojba),
- vzhodno dolenjsko (sG),
- vzhodno gorenjsko (sG),
- vzhodno prleško (sG),
- zagorsko - trboveljsko (sP),
- zasavsko,
- ziljsko,
- 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] (http://nl.ijs.si/~stermole/Ramovs/RamovsL2)).
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)
In the Slovenian language the future tense is made by the verb to be in the future tense plus the past participle of the 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 |
from 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 certainly as the above example clearly shows.
Noun (Samostalnik)
Mass noun (Množinski samostalnik)
In the Slovenian language mass nouns can also be seen, similar to English mass nouns with some exceptions, shown below:
- voda (water),
- pohištvo (furniture),
- pesek, (sand),
- perilo, (laundry),
- znanje (knowledge) (singular), znanji (two 'knowledge(s)') (dual), znanja (three and more 'knowledge(s)') (plural).
Verb (Glagol)
Inperfectness and perfectness (Dovršnost in nedovršnost)
Verbs have, as in many languages, two main continuance forms:
- sedeti (to sit (to be sitting)) [inperfective verb (infinitive)]
- sesti (to sit down) [perfective verb (infinitive)]
Continuance is preserved in almost all tenses:
- (Jaz) sedim (I am sitting (I am being sitting ?)) [inperfective verb of present tense]
- 0 ? (I am sitting down ?) [perfective verb of present tense "transformed" to the past simple tense]
Note: The personal pronoun I (Jaz) can be, or better "must" be, omitted, because it is not used as frequently as in the English language. It is a regular form but doesn't sound quite right. Another fact is, from above example, the gender can be extract directly from such sentences as in English.
- sem sedél (I sat (I was being sitting ?)) [inperfective verb of past simple tense]
- sem sedéla (I sat ( ~ ?)) [inperfective verb of past simple tense [+feminine gender]]
--
- sem sédel (I sat down (0 ?)) [perfective verb of past simple tense]
- sem sédla (I sat down (0 ?)) [perfective verb of past simple tense [+feminine gender]]
Note: Gender can be seen.
- bom sedel (I will sit (I will be sitting ?))[inperfective verb of future (simple ?) tense]
- bom sedela ( ~ (~ ?)) [inperfective verb of future (simple) tense[+feminine gender]]
--
- se bom vsedel (I will sit down (I will be sitting)) [perfective verb of future (simple ?) tense]
- se bom vsedla ( ~ ( ~ )) [perfective verb of future (simple ?) tense [+feminine gender]]
Active and passive voice (Tvornik in trpnik)
The Slovenian language uses mostly the active voice. So, a typical English sentence, such as he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society, would be better as they elected him a fellow of the Royal Society. This is usually the main error when translating English text to Slovenian. It is also a problem when translating the other way.
Present participle
Past participle
Imperative (Velelnik)
Supine[?] (Namenilnik)
Adjective (Pridevnik)
Comparative[?] (Primernik)
Adverb (Prislov)
Pronoun (Zaimek)
Personal (Subjective) pronoun[?]
Numeral (Števnik)
Cardinal numeral[?] (Glavni števnik)
Ordinal numeral[?] (Vrstilni števnik)
Interjection (Medmet)
Sentence (Stavek)
Free sentence
- Včeraj sem šel domov (I went home last night) (or: Last night (I) went home)
- Danes prihajam domov (I am coming home today)
- Jutri bom šel od doma (I will leave home tomorrow)
Compound sentence
- Res me veseli, da si prišel (I am really glad you came)
- Da - tako je bilo, kakor praviš! (Yes - it was, as you say!)
Another beautiful example is first Prešeren's verse from his poem "Zdravljica" ("A toast") now Slovenian national anthem.
Incomplete sentence
This is a sentence which does not have a predicate.
- Rana ura zlata ura (Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise; The early bird catches the worm (literary Early hour golden hour))
Inserted sentence
- V tistih časih - bil sem še mlad in sem od sveta veliko pričakoval - sem lepega večera srečal starega berača in... (In those times - I was still young and I expected a lot from the world - I met an old beggar one fair evening and...)
Accompanying sentence
- "Dobro jutro!" je rekla Lojza ("Good morning! Aloysine said")
Clause (Stavčni člen)
In a sentence there may be only four main clauses:
- Marc L. Greenberg about Slovenian: http://www.ku.edu/~slavic/slovene.htm
- Some brief facts about Slovenian: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=SLV
- Slovenian for travelers: http://www.ijs.si/lit/slovene
- Slovenian declension (sklanjatev): http://www.amebis.si/sklanjanje/
- Slovenian Alphabet: http://www.ijs.si/slo-chset
- "Metelčica" - a Slovenian Alphabet in the 19th century: http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~ljubljan/metelcica
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