Slovene phonology


This article is about the phonology and phonetics of the Slovene language.

Consonants

Slovene has 21 distinctive consonant phonemes.
All voiced obstruents are devoiced at the end of words unless immediately followed by a word beginning with a vowel or a voiced consonant. In consonant clusters, voicing distinction is neutralized and all consonants assimilate the voicing of the rightmost segment. In this context,, and may occur as voiced allophones of, and, respectively.
has several allophones depending on context.
The preposition v is always bound to the following word; however its phonetic realization follows the normal phonological rules for.
The sequences, and occur only before a vowel. Before a consonant or word-finally, they are reduced to, and respectively. This is reflected in the spelling in the case of, but not for and. The reduction of non-prevocalic and occurs in standard Slovene, but not for certain dialects, where speakers use and in this position instead.
Under certain circumstances, historical at the end of a syllable has become, the allophone of in that position. This change has occurred in the endings of all past participles. For many derivatives of words ending in that historically had, both and can be used, sometimes depending on the context it is being used in.

Vowels

Slovene has an eight-vowel system, in comparison to the five-vowel system of Serbo-Croatian.
FrontCentralBack
Close
Close-mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

Jurgec proposes the existence of a ninth vowel that in traditional pronunciation would rather be analyzed as a short. However, since the more recent studies indicate that native speakers don't actually phonemically distinguish long and short vowels yet the distinction between and is quite consistently perceived, and moreover there is a noticeable distinction in quality and a lesser distinction in quantity between these two vowels, there is reason to treat these two sounds as two different phonemes.
The near-open can only appear in the word-final stressed syllable before the syllable coda, as in čas 'time'. Due to the restrictions stated above, the open usually appears in its place in other declinational forms of the same word: časa, not, 'time '. The analysis as two different phonemes is also reinforced by the fact that in some words the phoneme appears in the very same position that would permit, leading to a phonemic contrast: pas, not, 'belt'.
Jurgec also states that in the tonemic varieties of the language, the near-open vowel can carry only the high tone, which is "parallel to the pattern for the ." He also notes that similarly to, the schwa likewise only appears in closed syllables, i.e. as the nucleus before the syllable coda. On the basis of these observations he concludes that the near-open vowel "behaves in a systematic way within the vowel system of Slovenian."
According to, is inserted epenthetically, and its distribution is fully predictable. He also says that "escriptions of schwa distribution are offer in lexical rather than grammatical terms. These were also based on historical data and did not consider actual speech of educated speakers in Ljubljana, nowadays considered standard."
The dialectal distribution of vs. and vs. is inconsistent with the distribution in Standard Slovene. This influences the way speakers of such dialects speak Standard Slovene.
Slovene has been traditionally described as distinguishing vowel length, which correlates with stress and is therefore discussed in the prosody section, below. The distinction between and, and between and is only made when they are stressed and long. When short or unstressed, they are not distinguished: short stressed variants are realized as open-mid, while the unstressed variants are, broadly speaking, true-mid vowels. In fact, however, the unstressed mid vowels have two realizations:
The unstressed mid vowels are never as close as the stressed close-mid vowels and never as open as the stressed open-mid vowels. However, report true-mid allophones of the close-mid vowels occurring in the sequences and, but only if a vowel does not follow within the same word. One could therefore argue that the unstressed mid vowels are simply allophones of the close-mid vowels, whereas the open-mid vowels do not occur in unstressed positions. Another argument for transcribing the unstressed mid vowels as is that these symbols are easier to write than.
In the colloquial spoken language, unstressed and most short stressed vowels tend to be reduced or elided. For example, kȕp >, právimo >.

Prosody

Slovene has free stress: stress can occur on any syllable and is not predictable. The same word can be stressed quite differently in different dialects. Most words have a single syllable that carries stress. Some compounds, but not all, have multiple stressed syllables, inherited from the parts that make up the compound. There are also a few small words and clitics, including prepositions, that have no inherent stress at all and attach prosodically to another word.

Vowel length

Slovene is traditionally analysed as having a distinction between long and short vowels. Stress and vowel length are closely intertwined:
Vowel length carries a low functional load: it is distinctive only in stressed final syllables, which can be either long or short. In other syllables, however, whether vowel length or stress, or both, are phonemic depends on the underlying phonological analysis. Generally speaking, stress and length co-occur in all but the final syllable, so one feature or the other is phonetically redundant in those words.
Recently, scholars have found that vowel length in standard Slovene is no longer distinctive, and that the only differences in vowel length are that the stressed vowels are longer than the unstressed ones, and that stressed open syllables are longer than stressed closed syllables. Stressed syllables are characterized by amplitude and pitch prominence.

Tone

The standard language has two varieties, tonemic and non-tonemic. Tonemic varieties distinguish between two tones or pitch contours on stressed syllables, while non-tonemic varieties do not make this distinction. The tonemic varieties are found north-south band of dialects in the center of the country. Dialects in the eastern and western part of Slovenia are non-tonemic. However, because the Slovenian capital city Ljubljana is located within the central tonemic dialect area, phonemic tone was included in the standard language, and in fact the tonemic variety is more prestigious and is universally used in formal TV and radio broadcasts.
The two tones are:
The exact distribution and phonetic realization of tonemes varies locally. In Standard Slovene, some words may have either an acute or circumflex tone, with the chosen tone differing by speaker. Unless otherwise noted, this article discusses the tonemes as they are realized in Standard Slovene spoken in Ljubljana.
Not all types of syllables have a distinction between the two tones:
This leads to the following possible combinations of tone, length and vowel quality:

The non-tonemic system is identical to the tonemic system above in terms of vowel length and stress, but lacks any phonemic tone. This means that, for those dialects, the first and second rows merge, as do the third and fourth. Similarly, for speakers who do not distinguish short and long vowels, the first and third rows merge, as do the second and fourth. An exception to this is the traditional, which does not merge with. Instead, the former is realized as.

Sample

The sample text is a reading of the first sentence of The North Wind and the Sun. The transcription is based on a recording of two speakers, a female and a male, from Ljubljana. It does not indicate tone.

Phonetic transcription

Orthographic version

Severni veter in sonce sta se prepirala, kateri od njiju je močnejši, ko je mimo prišel popotnik, zavit v topel plašč.
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