SLOVENE LANGUAGE. Slovene, the most westerly lan guage of the South Slavonic branch, is quite distinct from Slovak, which is spoken principally in the state of Slovakia and belongs to the Western branch. The Slovenes inhabit those districts of Yugoslavia which border on Austria and Italy; the capital of their territory is Ljubljana (German form, Laibach), in the province of Carniola. Outside the borders of Yugoslavia, the language is spoken in the neighbourhood of Trieste, in the villages round Klagenfurt, the capital town of the Austrian province of Carin thia, and by colonists in North America and elsewhere.
Slovene is most closely allied to Serbo-Croat. The Croat dialect round Zagreb, which, like literary Slovene, uses kaj for "what," whereas literary Serbo-Croat has sto, is in this and in other features, phonetic, morphological and lexicographical, a transition speech uniting the extreme ends of the kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The only traces now left of the linguistic ties which must have once united Slovene with West Slavonic are found in the preservation by certain Carinthian or Hungarian Slovene dialects of Common Slav tl and dl (which everywhere else in South Slavonic have become 1), in the survival of a prefix vy- and in the development of the semivowels into e.
The phonetic feature which distinguishes Slovene from every other Slavonic language, is the change of C.S. g to o. The treat ment of C.S. tj and dj, which become e" and j, is also characteristic but is not isolated, as the change of tj to e is also the normal but quite independent development in Russian, whilst j from dj oc curs in the dialect of Serbo-Croat. The two half-vowels n and i which only in long accented syllables become a, normally develop into the mixed vowel a always written e, except in purely philological works, thus being indistinguishable from the e's de rived from C.S. e and e. Except in Carinthia, which in this as in numerous other respects goes entirely its own way, C.S. é gen erally has become a closed e.
There are numerous other vowel changes, particularly in un accented syllables, but their existence would not be suspected by casual examination of a Slovene literary text, as the orthography is conservative and consequently unphonetic. There are, for in stance, at least four distinct e and o sounds to be kept apart in pronunciation. The distinction of intonation, which is a feature of Serbo-Croat, has been preserved in Slovene also, but the innovations made by each language have been so different that the results seldom agree. There are considerable variations in Slovene itself as to which syllable receives the accent, but there is less divergence with regard to the nature of the accent : short syllables allow one intonation, while long syllables have two (a rising and a falling).
The grammatical system presents certain archaisms : thus the dual has been kept in nouns and verbs, and the supine has not been ousted by the competition of the infinitive.
The vocabulary and style of the literary language are typically Slavonic and show little admixture—such few loans as occur being chiefly from Russian, Czech and Serb ; but owing to the age-long subjection of the Slovene people the spoken dialects have been much more seriously affected by German, Italian and Hungarian, and in some border dialects (e.g., Carinthian) there is a danger that Slovene may degenerate into a jargon.
Although the dialectical variations are much more considerable than in the other languages, it is possible to distinguish two main groups: the more important is the South-western, which includes the lowland (dolenjski) dialect of Carniola—used by Primus Trubar, the creator of the Slovene literary language. The North eastern group includes some of the dialects of Carinthia and of the districts beyond the river Mur, and for philological reasons is of high importance.
The spelling in current use is modelled on Czech, but among the Slovenes of Hungary, where the literary use of the dialect was to some extent encouraged for religious purposes, the Hun garian system prevailed.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. most complete dictionary is that of Mr. PieterBibliography. most complete dictionary is that of Mr. Pieter- snik (Slovensko-nem:ski slovar, Ljubljana, 2 vols., 1894-95) which marks the quality and intonation of the vowels. There are numerous smaller dictionaries (Slovene-French, St.-Italian, St.-Czech, etc.), but none has as yet appeared in which the Slovene words are translated into English. Grammars—The Historical Grammar of the Slovene Language (in Slovene) by F. Ramov'g (Part II. on the consonants has so far appeared ; Ljubljana, 1924) will be a monumental work when completed. A useful small work (in Slovene) is A. Breznik's Nov. Gram. for Middle Schools (Prevalje, 1921). Philological works —The Casopis za slov. jezik, knjiievnost in zgodovino (Periodical for Slov. Lang., Lit. and History, Ljubljana, 1920, seq.) is the chief review. Surveys of works on Slovene are issued with every number of the Revue des Etudes slaves (Paris). The Jezikoslovni Spisi (Philological Essays) of A. Breznik (Ljubljana, 1916-19) are valuable. Les formes du duel en Slovene and the accompanying Atlas Linguistique, by L. Tesniere (Paris, 1925) cover entirely new ground for any Slav language. Literature—"A Survey of Modern Slovene Literature" (Slavonic Review, vol. vi., pp. 618-634, 1928), by J. Vidmar, deals with the greatest names of the last hundred years.