Slovak Alphabet And Spelling: #1 Explained In Easy Way

In this blog post, I will try to teach you Slovak Alphabet And Spelling in the most simple possible way. 

 

About The Slovak Language

Most of the people in Slovakia speak the Slovak language. Slovak is a member of the West Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages of the Indo-European language family. Slovak is related to Czech, Polish, and Russian. The Czech and Slovak languages are very much alike. These two languages are the most similar of all Slavic languages. 

Slovak was the official language in the Slovak lands in former Czechoslovakia. In addition, the Slovak language may be found in the records of Slovak communities in the United States and Canada or other areas settled by Slovak people. Its minority language in Hungary, Serbia, Ukraine, Croatia, and the diaspora’s language in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Britain, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Ukraine, USA…

Ljudovit Štur and Martin Hatala, who published the grammar of the Slovak language in the middle of that century, are most responsible for the standardization of the Slovak language, which began in the 19th century. Modern Slovak has three dialects: Eastern, Central, and Western. Speakers of all dialects of Slovak, and especially Western, have an excellent understanding of the Czech language.

 

Slovenská Abeceda (The Slovak Alphabet)

The Slovak alphabet is Latin, and it has 46 letters, which is the largest number of letters among all Slavic and European alphabets. Such a large number of letters in the Slovak alphabet exist thanks to the numerous diacritics above some letters. There are a total of four (ˇ, ‘, ¨, ˆ)

Let’s see how the Slovak alphabet looks like:

Lowercase Capitalization Spelling Pronunciation
(according to IPA)
Example in SlovakEnglish Translation
aAa/a/mamaa mother
áÁá/a:/ránomorning
äÄširoké e/ε/, (/æ/)päťfive
bB/b/sobotaSaturday
cC/t͡s/citróna lemon
čČčé/t͡ʃ/častime
dD/d/doma house
ď  Ďďé/ɟ/ďakujemthank you
dzDZdzé/d͡z/medzibetween
džé/d͡ʒ/džema jam, marmalade
eEe/ε /vedieťto know
éÉé/ε :/peknénice
fFef/f/farbaa color
g  G/g/garáža garage
hH/ɦ/hodinaa lesson
chCHchá/x/chlapeca boy
iIi/i/piťto drink
íÍí/i:/prosímplease
jJ/j/jesťto eat
k  K/k/knihaa book
lLel/l/malýlittle
ĺĹdlhé el/l:/stĺpa column
ľĽ/ʎ/ľadthe ice
mMem/m/muža man
nNen/n/nohaa foot
ňŇ/ɲ/skriňaa wardrobe
oOo/ɔ/oteca father
óÓó/ɔ:/filológa philologist
ôÔô/u̯ɔ /stôla table
p  P/p/pomoca help
qQkvé/kv/aquaan aqua, water
rRer/r/rodinathe family
ŕ  Ŕdlhé er/r:/vŕbaa willow
sSes/s/slovenskySlovak
šŠ/ʃ/šatythe clothes
tT/t/autoa car
ťŤťé/c/a camel
uUu/u/vérukaa hand
úÚú/u:/kúpiťto buy
v  Vv/v/vodaa water
wWdvojité vé/v/ wattwatt
xXiks/ks/taxia taxi
yYypsilon/i/syna son
ýÝdlhý ypsilon/i:/bývaťto live
zZ/z/jazyka language
žŽžé/ʒ/ženaa woman

As you probably noticed already, the Slovak alphabet uses several letters in addition to the 26 letters used in the English alphabet. These are á, ä, č, ď, é, í, ĺ, ľ, ň, ó, ô, ŕ, š, ť, ú, ý, ž. The letter combinations dz, dž, and ch are also considered as single letters, dz and dž are alphabetized after d, and ch is alphabetized after h. Letters q, w, and x are used only in words of foreign origin.

 

More About Slovak Alphabet

Modern Slovak spelling bears the most significant number of words between European languages ​​and written in Latin – 46 words. The Slovak alphabet boils a lot of characters and has a few specific words. Ľ / ľ i Ĺ / ĺ (L with a hook and L with a desní apostrophe) are used only in Slovak, the words Ď / ď and Ť / ť are used only in Slovak and Czech, and the Turkmen language is not used for 1995 / ta bi words were unique only in Slovak and Czech.

The visible representative of the sound of softwoods is interesting – usually, it has a “klinaski” view (ˇ), but code ď, ť, ľ i Ľ is different: Here we combine the apostrophe with the right side of the word. This is a pronounced difference. The sign is also a further hook. In the manuscript, the twig is the citizen of the hook at all positions. The words of the position will be given in Slovak and Czech, the distinction being relatively unknown in the Czech Republic and the result of the confusing substitutions (by honoring the unnecessary apostrophe) of the party’s code.

The two voices (ch, dz, dž) are deleted in separate words. But these are the words “weak” – in vertical, I write about two words, or in crosses “ch” we use one place until “dz” and “dž” sometimes use two places. As a big word, my words are written in two words – both big or first big and second small – CH i Ch, DZ and Dz te DŽ and Dž – depending on the next case.

 

Final Thoughts

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post and that learning this lesson about Slovak Alphabet wasn’t so hard for you. If you are visiting Slovakia, you should learn how to say “Ahoj” (Hi), Mám ťa rád (I like you), and act like a pro at night out. If you enjoy using language learning apps, Ling App offers some great stuff to use while learning basic phrases and words in Slovak.

One Response

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


The reCAPTCHA verification period has expired. Please reload the page.

What makes learning with Ling special

Interactive exercises

Improve your pronunciation by starting a conversation with our app’s interactive chatbot

Engaging activities

Practice your skills with mini-games and track your progress with fun quizzes

Mix of languages

Choose from over 60 languages, both big and small, and listen to audio from native speakers

Proven results

Backed by linguistic research, our learning methods can help you achieve fluency in record time