The Slovene alphabet ( sl, slovenska abeceda, or ''slovenska gajica'' ) is an extension of the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
used to write
Slovene. The standard language uses a
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
which is a slight modification of the Croatian
Gaj's Latin alphabet
Gaj's Latin alphabet ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, Gajeva latinica, separator=" / ", Гајева латиница}, ), also known as ( sh-Cyrl, абецеда, ) or ( sh-Cyrl, гајица, link=no, ), is the form of the Latin script used for writing Serb ...
, consisting of 25 lower- and upper-case letters:
Characters
The following Latin letters are also found separately alphabetized in words of non-Slovene origin:
Ć (mehki č),
Đ (dže),
Q (ku),
W (dvojni ve),
X (iks), and
Y (ipsilon).
Diacritics
To compensate for the shortcomings of the standard orthography, Slovenian also uses standardized
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s or accent marks to denote
stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
,
vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, f ...
and
pitch accent
A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ( ...
, much like the closely related
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and ...
. However, as in Serbo-Croatian, use of such accent marks is restricted to dictionaries, language textbooks and linguistic publications. In normal writing, the diacritics are almost never used, except in a few minimal pairs where real ambiguity could arise.
Two different and mutually incompatible systems of diacritics are used. The first is the simpler non-tonemic system, which can be applied to all Slovene dialects. It is more widely used and is the standard representation in dictionaries such as SSKJ. The tonemic system also includes tone as part of the representation. However, neither system reliably distinguishes schwa /ə/ from the front mid-vowels, nor vocalised l /w/ from regular l /l/. Some sources write these as ''ə'' and ''ł'', respectively, but this is not as common.
Non-tonemic diacritics
In the non-tonemic system, the distinction between the two mid-vowels is indicated, as well as the placement of stress and length of vowels:
* Long stressed vowels are notated with an acute diacritic: ''á é í ó ú ŕ'' (IPA: /aː eː iː oː uː ər/).
* However, the rarer long stressed low-mid vowels /ɛː/ and /ɔː/ are notated with a circumflex: ''ê ô''.
* Short stressed vowels are notated with a grave: ''à è ì ò ù'' (IPA: /a ɛ i ɔ u/). Some systems may also include ''ə̀'' for /ə/.
Tonemic diacritics
The tonemic system uses the diacritics somewhat differently from the non-tonemic system. The high-mid vowels /eː/ and /oː/ are written ''ẹ ọ'' with a subscript dot, while the low-mid vowels /ɛː/ and /ɔː/ are written as plain ''e o''.
Pitch accent and length is indicated by four diacritical marks:
* The
acute
Acute may refer to:
Science and technology
* Acute angle
** Acute triangle
** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology
* Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset.
** Acute toxicity, the adverse eff ...
( ´ ) indicates long and low pitch: ''á é ẹ́ í ó ọ́ ú ŕ'' (IPA: /àː ɛ̀ː èː ìː ɔ̀ː òː ùː ə̀r/).
* The
inverted breve
Inverted breve or arch is a diacritical mark, shaped like the top half of a circle ( ̑ ), that is, like an upside-down breve (˘). It looks similar to the circumflex (ˆ), which has a sharp tip (''Â â Ê ê Î î Ô ô Û û''), whil ...
( ̑ ) indicates long and high pitch: ''ȃ ȇ ẹ̑ ȋ ȏ ọ̑ ȗ ȓ'' (IPA: /áː ɛ́ː éː íː ɔ́ː óː úː ə́r/).
* The
grave
A grave is a location where a dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as grave ...
( ` ) indicates short and low pitch. This occurs only on ''è'' (IPA: /ə̀/), optionally written as ''ə̀''.
* The
double grave
The double grave accent ( ̏ ) is a diacritic used in scholarly discussions of the Serbo-Croatian and sometimes Slovene languages. It is also used in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
In Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian, double grave accent is ...
( ̏ ) indicates short and high pitch: ''ȁ ȅ ȉ ȍ ȕ'' (IPA: á ɛ́ í ɔ́ ú). ''ȅ'' is also used for /ə́/, optionally written as ''ə̏''.
The schwa vowel /ə/ is written ambiguously as ''e'', but its accentuation will sometimes distinguish it: a long vowel mark can never appear on a schwa, while a grave accent can appear only on a schwa. Thus, only ''ȅ'' and unstressed ''e'' are truly ambiguous.
Others
The writing in its usual form uses additional accentual marks, which are used to disambiguate similar words with different meanings. For example:
*gòl (''naked'') , gól (''goal''),
*jêsen (''ash (tree)'') , jesén (''autumn''),
*kót (''angle'', ''corner'') , kot (''as'', ''like''),
*kózjak (''goat's dung'') , kozják (''goat-shed''),
*med (''between'') , méd (''brass'') , méd (''honey''),
*pól (''pole'') , pól (''half (of)'') , pôl (''expresses a half an hour before the given hour''),
*prècej (''at once'') , precéj (''a great deal (of)'')),
*remí (''draw'') , rémi (''rummy (- a card game)''),
*je (''he/she is'') , jé (''he/she eats'').
Foreign words
There are 5 letters for
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
s (a, e, i, o, u) and 20 for
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
s. The letters q, w, x, y are excluded from the standard spelling, as are some
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and ...
graphemes (ć, đ), however they are collated as independent letters in some encyclopedias and dictionary listings; foreign
proper noun
A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', ''Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...
s or
toponym
Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...
s are often not adapted to Slovene orthography as they are in some other Slavic languages, such as partly in
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
or entirely in the Serbian standard of Serbo-Croatian.
In addition, the graphemes ö and ü are used in certain non-standard dialect spellings (usually representing loanwords from German, Hungarian or Turkish) – for example, ''dödöli'' (Prekmurje potato dumplings) and ''
Danilo Türk
Danilo Türk (; born 19 February 1952) is a Slovenian diplomat, professor of international law, human rights expert, and political figure who served as President of Slovenia from 2007 to 2012. He was the first Slovene ambassador to the United Na ...
'' (a politician).
Encyclopedic listings (such as in the 2001 ''Slovenski pravopis'' and the 2006 ''Leksikon SOVA'') use this alphabet:
: a, b, c, č, ć, d, đ, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, š, t, u, v, w, x, y, z, ž.
Therefore, ''Newton'' and ''New York'' remain the same and are not transliterated to ''Njuton'' or ''Njujork''; transliterated forms would seem very odd to a Slovene. However, the unit of force is written as ''njuton'' as well as ''newton''. Some place names are transliterated (e.g. Philadelphia – Filadelfija; Hawaii – Havaji). Other names from non-Latin languages are transliterated in a fashion similar to that used by other European languages, albeit with some adaptations.
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
,
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
n and
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
names such as ''Kajibumi'', ''Jakarta'' and ''Jabar'' are written as ''Kadžibumi'', ''Džakarta'' and ''Džabar'', where j is replaced with dž. Except for ć and đ, graphemes with
diacritical marks
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
from other foreign alphabets (e.g., ä, å, æ, ç, ë, ï, ń, ö, ß, ş, ü) are not used as independent letters.
History
The modern alphabet (''abeceda'') was standardised in the mid-1840s from an arrangement of the
Croatian national reviver and leader
Ljudevit Gaj
Ljudevit Gaj (; born Ludwig Gay; hu, Gáj Lajos; 8 August 1809 – 20 April 1872) was a Croatian Linguistics, linguist, politician, journalist and writer. He was one of the central figures of the pan-Slavist Illyrian movement.
Biography
Origi ...
which would become the
Croatian alphabet
Croatian may refer to:
* Croatia
* Croatian language
* Croatian people
* Croatians (demonym)
See also
*
*
* Croatan (disambiguation)
* Croatia (disambiguation)
* Croatoan (disambiguation)
* Hrvatski (disambiguation)
* Hrvatsko (disambiguat ...
, and was in turn patterned on the
Czech alphabet
Czech orthography is a system of rules for proper formal writing (orthography) in Czech. The earliest form of separate Latin script specifically designed to suit Czech was devised by Czech theologian and church reformist Jan Hus, the namesake of ...
. Before the current alphabet became standard, š was, for example, written as ʃ, ʃʃ or ſ; č as tʃch, cz, tʃcz or tcz; i sometimes as y as a relic of the letter now rendered as Ы (''
yery
Yeru or Eru (Ы ы; italics: ), usually called Y in modern Russian or Yery or Ery historically and in modern Church Slavonic, is a letter in the Cyrillic script. It represents the close central unrounded vowel (more rear or upper than i) ...
'') in modern Russian; j as y; l as ll; v as w; ž as ʃ, ʃʃ or ʃz.
In the old alphabet used by most distinguished writers, the
Bohorič alphabet
The Bohorič alphabet ( sl, bohoričica) was an orthography used for Slovene between the 16th and 19th centuries.
Origins
Its name is derived from Adam Bohorič, who codified the alphabet in his book ''Articae Horulae Succisivae''. It was print ...
(''bohoričica''), developed by
Adam Bohorič
Adam Bohorič () ( – after 20 November 1598) was a Slovene Protestant preacher, teacher and author of the first grammar of Slovene.
Bohorič was born in the market town of Reichenburg in the Duchy of Styria (now Brestanica in Slov ...
, the characters č, š and ž would be spelt as zh, ſh and sh respectively, and c, s and z would be spelt as z, ſ and s respectively. To remedy this, so that there was a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters,
Jernej Kopitar
Jernej Kopitar, also known as Bartholomeus Kopitar (21 August 1780 – 11 August 1844), was a Slovene linguist and philologist working in Vienna. He also worked as the Imperial censor for Slovene literature in Vienna. He is perhaps best known ...
urged the development of a new alphabet.
In 1825,
Franc Serafin Metelko
Franc Serafin Metelko, also known as Fran Metelko (14 July 1789 – 27 December 1860) was a Slovene Roman Catholic priest, author, and philologist, best known for his proposal of a new script for the Slovene called the Metelko alphabet, which ...
proposed his version of the alphabet (the
Metelko alphabet The Metelko alphabet ( sl, metelčica) was a Slovene writing system developed by Franc Serafin Metelko. It was used by a small group of authors from 1825 to 1833 but it was never generally accepted.
Metelko introduced his alphabet in the book ...
, ''metelčica''). However, it was banned in 1833 in favour of the Bohorič alphabet after the so-called "Suit of the Letters" (''Črkarska pravda'') (1830–1833), which was won by
France Prešeren
France Prešeren () (2 or 3 December 1800 – 8 February 1849) was a 19th-century Romantic Slovene poet whose poems have been translated into many languages. and
Matija Čop
Matija Čop (; 26 January 1797 – 6 July 1835), also known in German as Matthias Tschop, was a Slovene linguist, polyglot, literary historian and critic.
Biography
Čop was born in the small northern Carniolan town of Žirovnica, in what ...
. Another alphabet, the
Dajnko alphabet (''dajnčica''), was developed by
Peter Dajnko
Peter Dajnko (23 April 1787 – 22 February 1873) was a Slovene priest, author, and linguist, known primarily as the inventor of the Dajnko alphabet ( sl, dajnčica), an innovative proposal for the Slovene alphabet. Dajnko was also a proficie ...
in 1824, but did not catch on as widely as the Metelko alphabet; it was banned in 1838 because it mixed Latin and Cyrillic characters, which was seen as a poor way to handle missing characters.
Gaj's Latin alphabet
Gaj's Latin alphabet ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, Gajeva latinica, separator=" / ", Гајева латиница}, ), also known as ( sh-Cyrl, абецеда, ) or ( sh-Cyrl, гајица, link=no, ), is the form of the Latin script used for writing Serb ...
(''gajica'') was adopted afterwards, although it still fails to distinguish all the phonemes of Slovene.
Computer encoding
The preferred
character encoding
Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to Graphics, graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of Language, human language, allowing them to be Data storage, stored, Data communication, transmi ...
s (writing codes) for Slovene texts are
UTF-8
UTF-8 is a variable-width encoding, variable-length character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode'' (or ''Universal Coded Character Set'') ''Transformation Format 8-bit'' ...
(
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
),
UTF-16
UTF-16 (16-bit computing, 16-bit Unicode Transformation Format) is a character encoding capable of encoding all 1,112,064 valid code points of Unicode (in fact this number of code points is dictated by the design of UTF-16). The encoding is variab ...
, and
ISO/IEC 8859-2 (Latin-2), which generally supports Central and Eastern European languages that are written in the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
.
In the original
ASCII
ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...
frame of 1 to 126 characters one can find these examples of writing text in Slovene:
: 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^
: a, b, c, cx, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, sx, t, u, v, z, zx
In
ISO/IEC 8859-1
ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998, ''Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in ...
(Latin-1) typical workarounds for missing characters Č (č), Š (š), and Ž (ž) can be C~ (c~), S~ (s~), Z~ (z~) or similar as for ASCII encoding.
For usage under
DOS
DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems.
DOS may also refer to:
Computing
* Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel
* Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...
and
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
also
code page
In computing, a code page is a character encoding and as such it is a specific association of a set of printable characters and control characters with unique numbers. Typically each number represents the binary value in a single byte. (In some co ...
s
852 and
Windows-1250
Windows-1250 is a code page used under Microsoft Windows to represent texts in Central European and Eastern European languages that use Latin script, such as Czech (which is its main user with half its use, though Czech has 96.6% use of UTF-8, and ...
respectively fully supported Slovene alphabet.
In
TeX
Tex may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname
* Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer Joseph Arrington Jr.
Entertainment
* ''Tex'', the Italian ...
notation, č, š and ž become \v c, \v s, \v z, \v, \v, \v or in their macro versions, "c, "s and "z, or in other representations as \~, \{, \' for lowercase and \^, \
, \@ for uppercase.
The IETF language tag">/nowiki>, \@ for uppercase.
The IETF language tags have assigned variants to the different orthographies of Slovene:
* (Bohoric alphabet)
* (Dajnko alphabet)
* (Metelko alphabet)
* (Standardized Resian orthography).
See also
*Gaj's Latin alphabet
Gaj's Latin alphabet ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, Gajeva latinica, separator=" / ", Гајева латиница}, ), also known as ( sh-Cyrl, абецеда, ) or ( sh-Cyrl, гајица, link=no, ), is the form of the Latin script used for writing Serb ...
* Slovenian braille
* Yugoslav manual alphabet
References
External links
Slovene alphabet and pronunciation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Slovene Alphabet
Latin alphabets