| SLOVENIAN LANGUAGE
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SOME FACTS
Slovenian or Slovene language is one of
the Slavic languages. It is spoken by approximately
two million speakers worldwide, most of
whom live in Slovenia. It is one of the
few languages to have preserved the dual
grammatical number from Indo-European. Its
grammar is reputedly extremely complex and
the large number of named dialects compared
to the number of speakers indicates a large
amount of variation in the language.
History
The earliest known examples of a written
Slovenian dialect are from the Freising
manuscripts, known as the Brizinski spomeniki
in Slovenian, which have been dated to somewhere
between 972 and 1093, though these manuscipts
are more likely to be from before 1000 than
after it. These religious writings are the
earliest known occurrence of a Slavic language
being written using the Latin script. Moreover,
they are now said to be one of the oldest
existing manuscripts in any Slavic language.
The literary Slovenian emerged in the 16th
century thanks to the works of Reformation
activists Primoz Trubar, Adam Bohoric and
Jurij Dalmatin. During the period when present-day
Slovenia was part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, German was the language of the elite,
and Slovenian was the language of the common
people. During this time, German had a strong
impact on Slovenian, and many Germanisms
are preserved in contemporary colloquial
Slovenian. For example, in addition to the
native Slovenian word blazina ("pillow"),
the German word "Polster" is also
used in colloquial Many well known Slovenian
scientists before the 1920s also wrote in
foreign languages, mostly German, because
of the political situation in Europe.
During the period of Illyrism and Pan-Slavism,
some words crept into the language from
Serbo-Croatian, being used even by some
good authors, for example by Josip Jurcic,
who wrote Deseti brat (The Tenth Brother)
the first novel in Slovenian, published
in 1866; however, many Croatisms used by
such authors are entirely unfamiliar to
Slovenians, especially the younger generation.
Slovenian was also shunned for a period
during World War II when Slovenia was divided
between the Axis Powers of Fascist Italy,
the Nazi Germany and Hungary.
Following World War II, Slovenia became
part of the Socialist Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia. Slovenian was one of the official
languages of the federation, although in
practice, Serbo-Croatian was forcefully
put forward. Slovenia gained independence
in 1991 and Slovenian was made the official
language. It is also one of the official
languages of the European Union.
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