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Welcome! On behalf of the Slovenian People I would like to say: we are very happy that you are interested in our language and we greatly appreciate it because we believe that learning a new language opens a whole new world and better understanding of the people and their culture. Who speaks Slovenian and where? - It is the national language of the Republic of Slovenia with around 2 million people - Slovenian minorities in Austria, Italy and Hungary - Slovenian immigrants in USA, Canada, South America and Australia Origins -Slovenian Language belongs to Slavic language family: * Southern Slavic: It is close to Croatian and Serbian language * Northern Slavic: It retained archaic proto-Slavic features and lexical characteristics like dual number and genitive case in the negative form which indicate a grater age and strong relationship to north Slavic type - There are from 50 and up to 200 dialects which also indicates its greater age - Some words come from Germanic tribes, Romans, Celtic tribes and some are even older: mama, baba Structure It is grammatically complex - it has: - 6 cases for nouns, adjectives and pronouns - 3 genders and four verb tenses - singular, plural and dual - special endings for gender, numbers and different classes of nouns Alphabet - It has 25 letters - Specialty: being s, c, z with a "little roof" - a small upside-down "v" on top of each, which indicates sh, ch, and zh sounds. |