Slovenian
Slovenian belongs to the South Slavic group of the Indo-European family of
languages, a group which also includes Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian.
These languages form a continuum of mutually intelligible dialects, but the
two end points, Slovenian and Bulgarian, are not mutally intelligible. Slovenian
is the official language of the Republic of Slovenia, formerly a constituent
republic of Yugoslavia. It has about 2 million speakers there, and another 200,000
in Italy, the United States and elsewhere.There is extensive dialectal variation
with some problems of mutual comprehension among speakers of some variants,
but a literary dialect, based on the central dialects, is common to all, and
a spoken standard based on the literary dialect is becoming more widespread.
Slovenian is closely related to Serbo-Croatian, and has been heavily influenced
by it, but the Slovenians, who look upon their own language as a cultural icon
and national treasure, have been and are concerned about the impact of Serbo-Croatian
on their language. Debates about linguistic purity are still common and are
often aired in the public press. There is a Language Arbitration Tribunal which
advises the public mainly through articles in newspapers and periodicals on
the appropriate use of language.
Like Other Slavic languages, Slovenian is heavily inflected with 3 numbers,
6 cases and 3 genders. It has an adapted Latin-based alphabet that uses diacritics
to mark consonantal and vocalic distinctions.
Sources:
UCLA Language Materials Project
Independent Study Courses Available at UCSD:
Other Local Resources: