| Group | Slavic (with Russian, Bulgarian etc.), Western branch (with Czech, Polish, etc.) |
| Geography & History | Slovak has preserved many of the basic Slavic word roots and sounds of Common Slavic, the original language from which all the Slavic languages descended. Slovak developed as a national language in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, prompted by a rise in the Slovak people's awareness of their national identity and the accompanying need for education and literacy. Today it is the official language of the Slovak Republic. It is divided into three dialect areas: west, central, and east. |
| Phonetics | Slovak preserves the Common Slavic contrast between short and long vowels (referring to the length of the vowel's sound), with the long vowels represented in writing by an acute accent mark. Slovak also has developed a set of diphthongs (ia, ie, iu, ou, and uo) that function as long vowels. The sounds r and l function as either consonants or vowels; as vowels, they can be either long or short. Slovak shares with the Czech language the spelling of the consonants č, š, and ž, pronounced [ch], [sh], and [zh], respectively. The Slovak language has gained the soft dental consonants t', d', l', and ň, but it lacks a soft r existing in Czech. |
| Morphology | Compared with Czech, Slovak word structure has been simplified. The stress falls on the first syllable of a word. Slovak nouns have one of three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and six cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative). The vocative case has been virtually lost. Adjectives agree with nouns in gender, number (singular and plural), and case. Verbs have two tenses (past and present) and two aspects (perfective and imperfective), the latter indicating the duration of the verb's activity. Many verbs have an iterative form, which expresses repeated action. Slovak has a complex numeral system and a well-developed system of indefinite pronouns and adverbs. Slovak word order generally places the most informative elements at the end of a sentence, often violating the language's basic subject-verb-object sentence structure. |
| Lexicon | The lexicon is in general Common Slavic, with a few Hungarian elements. Some words were borrowed also from Czech, but they are not easy to identify for both language are very much alike. |
| Writing | Latin alphabet |
| Close Contacts | Slovak is most closely related to the Czech language, under the cultural influence of which it has developed through most of its history. |
| Sample | Bratislava je hlavné mesto Slovenskej republiky. V Bratislave
sídli Slovenská národná rada, vláda republiky a d'alšie centrálne
orgány. Bratislava leží pri Dunaji a rozprestiera sa na ploche okolo
400 kilometrov. Má dobrú polohu a vel'mi dobré podmiensky pre osídlenie.
Patrí medzi najteplejšie mestá Slovenskej republiky. Priemerná teplota
je oko desat' stupňov.
Bratislava is the main city of the Slovak Republic. In Bratislava, the Slovak National Assembly, the government of the Republic and other central bodies are situated. Bratislava lies by the Danube and occupies the square of about 400 km. Its situation is quite nice for a settlement by its conditions. It is one of the warment places in the Slovak Republic. The average temperature is about 10 degrees. |
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