Slovenian
Alternative name(s): Sloveens (nl), slovenšcina (sl), slovenska (sv)
Language family: Indo-European
Language group: Slavic
Geographical use: Slovenia, Austria (Karnten) and Italy
Information: There are around 2 million speakers.
Slovenian uses the Roman alphabet, completed with diacritical signs on three letters: c, š, _ that are pronounced as tsj, sj and zj.
The oldest surviving Slovenian text dates back to the year 1000. Slovenian has six cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental and locative – these last two are only used with prepositions). The vocative has disappeared. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verbs all have a distinction between male and female in the plural (eg. "bova delali v Ljubljani": "both of us (female) will work in Ljubljana "). There is also a neutral form.
Besides Sorbic, Slovenian is
the only language that still has dual. So in Slovenian people distinguish
1 thing - singular, 2 things - dual, 3 or more things - plural.
In the past centuries the verb conjugation has been simplified. There
are 7 to 8 major dialects and about 50 small dialects.
