Slovak orthography


The first Slovak orthography was proposed by Anton Bernolák in his Dissertatio philologico-critica de litteris Slavorum, used in the six-volume Slovak-Czech-Latin-German-Hungarian Dictionary and used primarily by Slovak Catholics.
The standard orthography of the Slovak language is immediately based on the standard developed by Ľudovít Štúr in 1844 and reformed by Martin Hattala in 1851 with the agreement of Štúr. The then-current form of the central Slovak dialect was chosen as the standard. It uses the Latin script with small modifications that include the four diacritics placed above certain letters. After Hattala's reform, the standardized orthography remained mostly unchanged.

Alphabet

The Slovak alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Slovak language.
It has 46 letters which makes it the longest Slavic and European alphabet.
The 46 letters of the Slovak alphabet are:
LetterLetter name
A aá
Á ádlhé á
Ä äprehlasované á;
a s dvoma bodkami;
široké e
B bbé
C ccé
Č ččé
D ddé
Ď ďďé
Dz dzdzé
Dž dždžé
E eé
É édlhé é
F fef
G ggé
H hhá
Ch chchá
I ií
Í ídlhé í
J jjé
K kká
L lel
Ĺ ĺdlhé el
Ľ ľmäkké el
M mem
N nen
Ň ňeň
O oo
Ó óó
Ô ôô
P ppé
Q q1kvé
R rer
Ŕ ŕdlhé er
S ses
Š šeš
T tté
Ť ťmäkké té
U uu
Ú údlhé ú
V vvé
W w1dvojité vé
X x1iks
Y yypsilon
Ý ýdlhý ypsilon
Z zzet
Ž žžet

  1. The letters Q, W and X are only used in loanwords.

    Sound–spelling correspondences

GraphemeIPA Notes
b
c
č
d
ď
dz
dž
f
g
h
ch
j
k
lCan be syllabic.
ĺ
ľ
m
nBecomes before and.
ň
p
qOnly occurs in loanwords.
rCan be syllabic.
ŕ
s
š
t
ť
v
wOnly occurs in loanwords.
xOnly occurs in loanwords.
z
ž

Some additional notes include the following :
The primary principle of Slovak spelling is the phonemic principle. The secondary principle is the morphological principle: forms derived from the same stem are written in the same way even if they are pronounced differently. An example of this principle is the assimilation rule. The tertiary principle is the etymological principle, which can be seen in the use of i after certain consonants and of y after other consonants, although both i and y are pronounced the same way.
Finally, the rarely applied grammatical principle is present when, for example, the basic singular form and plural form of masculine adjectives are written differently with no difference in pronunciation.
Most foreign words receive Slovak spelling immediately or after some time. For example, "weekend" is spelled víkend, "software" - softvér, "gay" - gej, and "quality" is spelled kvalita. Personal and geographical names from other languages using Latin alphabets keep their original spelling unless a fully Slovak form of the name exists.
To accelerate writing, a rule has been introduced that the frequent character combinations ďe, ťe, ňe, ľe, ďi, ťi, ňi, ľi, ďí, ťí, ňí, ľí, ďie, ťie, ňie, ľie, ďia, ťia, ňia, ľia are written without a caron de, te, ne, le, di, ti, ni, li, dí, tí, ní, lí, die, tie, nie, lie, dia, tia, nia, lia. These combinations are usually pronounced as if a caron were found above the consonant. Some exceptions are as follows:
  1. foreign words
  2. the following words: ten, jeden, vtedy, teraz
  3. nominative masculine plural endings of pronouns and adjectives do not "soften" preceding n, d, t, l
  4. short e in adjectival endings, which is derived from long é shortened by the "rhythmical rule", does not "soften" preceding n, d, t, l
Slovak features some heterophonic homographs, the most common examples being krásne versus krásne .
The letter ľ is nowadays pronounced by many speakers, particularly from western Slovakia, as a non-palatalized l.
When a voiced obstruent is at the end of the word before a pause, it is pronounced as its voiceless counterpart. For example, pohyb is pronounced and prípad is pronounced.
When "v" is at the end of the syllable, it is pronounced as non-syllabic u, with the exception of the position before "n" or "ň". For example, kov , kravský , but povstať , because the "v" is not at the end of the syllable and hlavný because "v" stands before the "n".
The graphic group -ou is pronounced but is not considered a diphthong. Its phonemic interpretation is.
Consonant clusters containing both voiced and voiceless elements are entirely voiced if the last consonant is a voiced one, or voiceless if the last consonant is voiceless. For example, otázka is pronounced and vzchopiť sa is pronounced. This rule applies also over the word boundary. One example is as follows: prísť domov and viac jahôd . The voiced counterpart of "ch" is, and the unvoiced counterpart of "h" is.
One of the most important changes in Slovak orthography in the 20th century was in 1953 when s began to be written as z where pronounced in prefixes. The phonemic principle has been given priority over the etymological principle in this case.

Rhythmical rule

A long syllable cannot be followed by another long one within the same word. This rule has morphonemic implications for declension and conjugation. Several exceptions of this rule exist. It is typical of the literary Slovak language, and does not appear in Czech or in some Slovak dialects.

Diacritics

The acute mark indicates length. It may also appear above the consonants "l" and "r", indicating the long and sounds.
The circumflex exists only above the letter "o". It turns the o into a diphthong.
The umlaut is only used above the letter "a". It indicates a raised vowel, almost an "e", similar to German ä.
The caron indicates a change of alveolar fricatives into either post-alveolar or palatal consonants, in informal Slovak linguistics often called just "palatalization". Eight consonants can bear a caron. Not all "normal" consonants have a "caroned" counterpart:
The Slovak alphabet is available within the ISO/IEC 8859-2 “Latin-2” encoding, which generally supports Eastern European languages. All vowels, but none of the specific consonants are available within the “Latin-1” encoding, which generally supports only Western European languages.