:: wikimiki.org ::

Danube

Danube

: For other uses of "Danube", see Danube (disambiguation). The Danube (Donau in German; Dunaj in Slovak; Duna in Hungarian; Dunav in Croatian; Дунав/Dunav in Serbian; Дунав in Bulgarian; Dunăre in Romanian; Дунай (Dunay) in Ukrainian; Danuvius in Latin) is Europe's second-longest river (after the Volga). It rises in the Black Forest in Germany as two smaller rivers – the Brigach and the Breg – which join at Donaueschingen, and it is from here that it is known as the Danube, flowing south-eastwards for a distance of some 2850 km (1771 miles) before emptying into the Black Sea via the Danube Delta in Romania. The Danube has been an important international waterway for centuries, as it remains today. Known to history as one of the long-standing frontiers of the Roman Empire, the river flows through – or forms a part of the borders of – ten countries: Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine. The Danube flows through the following large cities:
- Ulm - Germany
- Ingolstadt - Germany
- Regensburg - Germany, capital of Upper Palatinate
- Passau - Germany
- Linz - Austria
- Vienna - capital of Austria, where the Danube floodplain is called the Lobau
- Bratislava - capital of Slovakia
- Budapest - capital of Hungary
- Novi Sad - capital of the Serbian province of Vojvodina
- Belgrade - capital of Serbia
- Ruse - Bulgaria
- Brăila - Romania
- Galaţi - Romania
- Tulcea - Romania

Tributaries

The Danube's tributary rivers reach into seven other countries. Some Danubian tributaries are important rivers in their own right, navigable by barges and river boats of shallow draught. Ordered from source to mouth, the main tributaries are: :Iller - Lech - Regen (entering at Regensburg) - Isar - Inn (entering at Passau) - Enns - Morava - Leitha - Váh (entering at Komárno) - Hron - Ipel - Sió - Drava - Tisza - Sava (entering at Belgrade) - Velika Morava - Caraş - Jiu - Iskar - Olt - Vedea - Argeş - Ialomiţa - Siret - Prut

Modern navigation

The Danube is navigable by ocean ships from the Black Sea to Brăila, in Romania and by river ships to Kelheim; smaller craft can navigate further upstream to Ulm, in Germany. About 60 of its tributaries are also navigable. See Danube-Black Sea Canal. Since the construction of the German Rhine-Main-Danube Canal in 1992, the river has been part of a trans-European waterway from Rotterdam on the North Sea to Sulina on the Black Sea (3500 km). In 1994 the Danube was declared one of ten Pan-European transport corridors, routes in Central and Eastern Europe that required major investment over the following ten to fifteen years. The amount of goods transported on the Danube increased to about 100 million tons in 1987. In 1999, transport on the river was made difficult by the NATO bombing of 3 bridges in Serbia and Montenegro. The clearance of the debris was finished in 2002. The temporary pontoon bridge that hampered navigation was finally removed in 2005. At the Iron Gate, the Danube flows through a gorge that forms part of the boundary between Serbia and Romania; it contains two hydroelectric dams, Đerdap I and Đerdap II. The gorge lies between Romania in the north and Serbia in the south. The Danube-Black Sea Canal shortens the distance to the Black Sea by 400 km and another canal in Romania, the Danube-Bucharest Canal (60% finished) is supposed to link Danube to Bucharest. In Serbia and Montenegro there is Dunav-Tisa-Dunav channel as well. Tisa

The Danube delta

:Main article Danube Delta. The Danube Delta has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1991. Its wetlands (on the Ramsar list of wetlands of international importance) support vast flocks of migratory birds, including the endangered Pygmy Cormorant (Phalacrocorax pygmaeus). Rival canalization and drainage scheme threaten the delta: see Bastroe Channel.

Geology

Although the headwaters of the Danube are relatively small today, geologically, the Danube is much older than the Rhine, with which its catchment area competes in today's southern Germany. This has a few interesting geological complications. Since the Rhine is the only river rising in the Alps mountains which flows north towards the North Sea, an invisible line divides large parts of southern Germany, which is sometimes referred to as the European Watershed. However, before the last ice age in the Pleistocene, the Rhine started at the southwestern tip of the Black Forest, while the waters from the Alps that today feed the Rhine were carried east by the so-called Urdonau (original Danube). Parts of this ancient river's bed, which was much larger than today's Danube, can still be seen in (now waterless) canyons in today's landscape of the Swabian Alb. After the Upper Rhine Valley had been eroded, most waters from the Alps changed their direction and began feeding the Rhine. Today's upper Danube is but a meek reflection of the ancient one. Since the Swabian Alb is largely shaped of porous limestone, and since the Rhine's level is much lower than the Danube's, today subsurface rivers carry much water from the Danube to the Rhine. On many days in the summer, when the Danube carries little water, it completely oozes away noisily into these underground channels at two locations in the Swabian Alp, which are referred to as the Donauversickerung (Danube Sink). Most of this water resurfaces only 12 km south at the Aachtopf, Germany's wellspring with the highest flow, an average of 8,000 liters per second, north of Lake Constance - thus feeding the Rhine. The European Water Divide thus in fact only applies for those waters that pass beyond this point, and only during the days of the year when the Danube carries enough water to survive the sink holes in the Donauversickerung. Since this enormous amount of underground water erodes much of its surrounding limestone, it is estimated that the Danube upper course will one day disappear entirely in favor of the Rhine, an event called stream capturing. stream capturing in Bavaria.]]

Human history

The Danube basin contains sites of the earliest human cultures: the Danubian Neolithic cultures include the Linear Pottery Cultures of the mid-Danube basin (see also Linear Ceramic culture) The Vucedol culture of the third millennium BC is famous for their ceramics. Later, many sites of the Vinca culture are sited along the Danube.

Cultural significance

Vinca culture, the Danube separates Hungary from Slovakia.]] The Danube is mentioned in the title of a famous waltz by Austrian composer Johann Strauss, An der schönen, blauen Donau (By the Beautiful Blue Danube). Another famous waltz about the Danube is The Waves of the Danube (Romanian: Valurile Dunării) by the Romanian composer Ion Ivanovici (1845-1902), and the work took the audience by storm when performed at the 1889 Paris Exposition. The German tradition of landscape painting, the Danube school, was developed in the Danube valley in the 16th century. The most famous book describing the Danube ought to be Claudio Magris's masterpiece Danube (ISBN 1860468233).

Economics of the Danube

Drinking Water

Along its path, the Danube is a source of drinking water for about ten million people. In Baden-Württemberg, Germany, almost thirty percent (As of 2004) of the water for the area between Stuttgart, Bad Mergentheim, Aalen and the Alb-Donau-Kreis comes from purified water of the Danube. Other cities like Ulm and Passau also use some water from the Danube. In Austria and Hungary, most water comes from ground and spring sources, and only in rare cases is water from the Danube used. Most states find also to difficult to clean the water because of extensive pollution; only parts of Romania where the water is cleaner still use a lot of drinking water from the Danube.

Navigation and transport

As "Corridor VII" of the European Union, the Danube is an important transport route. Since the opening of the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal, the river connects the Black Sea with the industrial centres of Western Europe and with the Port of Rotterdam. The waterway is designed for large scale inland vessels (110 by 11,45 meters) but it can carry much larger vessels on most of it's course. The Danube has been partly canalized in Germany (5 locks) and Austria (10 Locks). Further plans to build a number of new locks in order to improve navigation have been blocked by environmentalists, in spite of the general consensus about the positive effects of inland waterway transport in comparison with road and rail. Downstream from the Freudenau Locks in Vienna, canalization of the Danube was limited to the Gabcikovo dam and locks near Bratislawa and the two double Iron Gate locks in the border stretch of the Danube between Serbia and Rumania. These locks have larger dimensions (similar to the locks in the Russian Volga river, some 300 by over 30 meters). Downstream of the Iron Gate, the river is free flowing all the way to the Black Sea, a distance of more than 860 kilometers. The Danube connects with the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal at Kelheim, and with the Wiener Donaukanal in Vienna. Apart from a couple of secundary navigable branches, the only major navigable rivers linked to the Danube are the Drava, Sava and Tisza. In Serbia, a canal network also connects to the river; the network, known as the Duna-Tisza-Duna canals, links sections downstream and upstream of the Tisza mouth with this tributary of the Danube. (Source: [http://www.noordersoft.com/indexen.html NoorderSoft Waterways Database)]

Fishing

The importance of fishing on the Danube, which used to be critical in the Middle Ages, has declined dramatically. Some fishermen are still active at certain points on the river, and the Danube Delta still has an important industry.

Tourism

There are many important tourist and natural spots along the Danube, including the Wachau valley, the Nationalpark Donau-Auen in Austria, the Naturpark Obere Donau in Germany, Iron Gates (Danube Gorge) and Danube Delta in Romania.

Notes

¹ Length from the source of the Breg. ² Source of the Breg.

External links

- [http://www.showcaves.com/english/de/karst/Donauversickerung.html Danube Sink]
- [http://www.showcaves.com/english/de/springs/Aach.html Aachtopf spring]
- [http://www.deltadunarii.ro The Danube Delta]
- Danube Basin [http://www.panda.org/graphics/fw-rivers/maps/DANUBE%20MAP.gif Map (GIF - 257 KB)], [http://pdf.wri.org/watersheds_2000/watersheds_europe_p2_38.pdf Map+info, PDF]
- [http://www.danubecooperation.org Danube Portal]
- [http://www.theister.com 'The Ister': A 2840km documentary film journey up the Danube]
- [http://www.danube-river.org The Danube / Danube Tourist Commission | A River's lure]
- [http://dbridges.fw.hu DANUBE-BRIDGES | Hungarian] [http://orsova.xhost.ro/ Historical images of Orsova and Danube river] Category:Rivers of Slovakia Category:Rivers of Hungary Category:Rivers of Croatia Category:Rivers of Serbia and Montenegro Category:Rivers of Bulgaria Category:Rivers of Romania Category:Geography of Serbia Category:Geography of Vojvodina Category:Bačka Category:Banat Category:Srem/Srijem Category:Rivers of Germany Category:Rivers of Austria als:Donau ko:다뉴브 강 ja:ドナウ川

Danube (disambiguation)

Danube may refer to:
- The Danube River
- Danube, New York
- Danube, Minnesota
- The Danube class starship from the Star Trek universe
- A station on the Paris Métro
- The Blue Danube, a famous waltz composed by Johann Strauss the younger in 1867
- Blue Danube, the first operational British nuclear weapon

Slovak language

The Slovak language (slovenčina, slovenský jazyk) is an Indo-European language, more precisely a West Slavic language (together with mainly the Czech, Polish, and Sorbian languages). Slovak is especially close to Czech, speakers of both languages usually understand each other well. People born after circa 1985 may have difficulty grasping the few words that differ significantly, or understanding fast spoken language. Slovak is spoken in Slovakia (by 5 million people), the United States (500,000, emigrants), the Czech Republic (320,000, due to former Czechoslovakia), Hungary (110,000, ancient ethnic minority), Northern Serbia and Montenegro-Vojvodina (60,000, descendants of earlier settlers during the Habsburg rule), Romania (22,000, ancient ethnic minority), Poland (20,000), Canada (20,000, emigrants), Australia (emigrants), Austria, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Croatia (5,000) and some other countries. The correct American English adjective for the language, people, and culture of Slovakia is 'Slovak;' Slovak belongs to the 'Slavic' group of languages. British usage sometimes employs 'Slovakian' for the American 'Slovak' and uses 'Slavonic' where the American usage is 'Slavic'.

Alphabet

A technical note for users of the English wikipedia: All Slovak vowels, but no Slovak-specific consonants (that is no č, ď, ľ, ĺ, ň, ŕ, š, ť, ž) are available within the Latin-1 encoding. The Slovak language uses a modified Roman (Latin) alphabet. Modified means that it uses four types of diacritical marks (ˇ, ´, ¨, ^; see Pronunciation) placed above some letters. The lexicographic ordering of the Slovak alphabet is very similar to the English alphabet: A B C D DZ E F G H CH I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z. The complete alphabet, however, allows for characters with diacritics (the character with diacritics always comes after the same character without diacritics) and is as follows: a á ä b c č d ď dz dž e é f g h ch i í j k l ĺ ľ m n ň o ó ô p q r ŕ s š t ť u ú v w x y ý z ž. Note that dz, dž and ch are considered single letters and that ch follows the h (not the c). The letters "q", "w" are only used in loan words, never in native or naturalized Slovak words. The names of the letters (like in English ey, bee, cee, dee …) are: a (á), á (dlhé á), á s dvoma bodkami, bé, cé, čé, dé, ďé, dzé, džé, e (é), é (dlhé é), ef, gé, há, chá, i (í), í (dlhé í), jé, ká, el, eľ, dlhé el, em, en, eň, o (ó), ó (dlhé ó), ó s vokáňom, pé, kvé, er, dlhé er, eš, té, ťé, u (ú), ú (dlhé ú), vé, dvojité vé, iks, ypsilon (ý), dlhé ý, zet, žet (for pronunciation see below) The characters are divided as follows:
- Vowels are: a á ä e é i í o ó y ý u ú.
- Diphthongs are: ia, ie, iu, ô.
- Consonants are: b c č d ď dz dž f g h ch j k l ľ ĺ m n ň p q r ŕ s š t ť v w x z ž. The consonants r, l, ŕ, ĺ are considered vowels in some cases (see Pronunciation).

Pronunciation and spelling

The Slovak language has distinctive palatalization. The accent (stress) in standard language is always on the first syllable of a word (or on the preceding preposition, see below). It is however different in some dialects. The eastern dialects, for example, have penultimate stress, which does not contribute to their intelligibility with standard Slovak. Some of the north-central dialects have a weak stress on the first syllable, which becomes stronger and "moves" to the penultima in some kinds of sentences. The stress is weaker than the English or German or Russian accent, but stronger than the French one. Monosyllabic conjunctions, monosyllabic short personal pronouns and auxiliary verb forms of the verb byť (to be) are, as a rule, not stressed. Prepositions are pronounced together with the following word, unless the words are long (four syllables or more) or the preposition stands at the very beginning of a sentence. The acute mark (in Slovak "dĺžeň", that is prolongation mark) indicates the long pronunciation of the character below it, for example í = approximately ii . The acute can be above all vowels and only above the 2 consonants "l" and "r" (strictly speaking, the r and l are called vowels then, because in Slovak r and l can function either as a vowel (long or short)—a so-called syllabic r, l—or as a consonant). Long vowels are about two times longer than corresponding normal (that is short) vowels, the long l or r should have an even longer pronunciation. Note that the acute mark has nothing to do with accent in the Slovak language. The circumflex ("vokáň") exists only above the letter "o" (and turns the o into a diphthong – see below). The diaresis (umlaut, "dve bodky" = two dots) is only used above the letter "a" (and turns the a into e – see below). The caron (in Slovak "mäkčeň", that is palatalization mark or softening mark) indicates either palatalization or change of alveolar fricatives into post-alveolar, in informal Slovak linguistics often called just "palatalization". Only 8 consonants can bear a caron, that is not all "normal" consonants have a "carroned" counterpart:
- In printed texts, the caron is printed in two forms: (1) č, dž, š, ž and (2) ľ,ď,ť (looking more like an apostrophe), but this is just a convention. In handwritten texts, it always takes the form (1).
- Phonetically, there are two forms of "palatalization": ľ,ň,ď,ť are palatalized consonants, while the č, dž, š, ž are postalveolar fricatives.
- To accelerate writing, a rule has been introduced that the frequent character combinations ňe, ďe, ťe, ľe, ňi, ďi, ťi, ľi, ňí, ďí, ťí, ľí must be written ne, de, te, le, ni, di, ti, li, ní, dí, tí, lí (that is without the caron). In other words ne, de, te, le, ni, di etc. are pronounced as if there were a caron above the consonant. There are, however, exceptions to this rule: :# foreign words (for example telefón is pronounced with a hard t and a hard l) :# the following old Slavic words: ten (that), jeden (one), vtedy (then) are pronounced with hard t and d :# nominative masculine plural endings of pronouns and adjectives do not "soften" preceding n, d, t, l (for example tí odvážni mladí muži , the/those brave young men) :# short e in adjectival endings that is, actually (morphonemically), long é shortened by the "rhythmical rule" (see below) does not "soften" preceding n, d, t, l (for example krásne stromy , beautiful trees, c.f. zelené stromy , green trees)
- ľ is pronounced nowadays by many speakers, esp. from western Slovakia, as a non-palatalized l, esp. in li and le where the caron is not written. The officially correct pronunciation of li and le as palatalized is already frequently perceived as marked (either as a trait of middle and eastern dialect, or as a feature of language zealots). (A similar tendency occurs in yeista Spanish, where however the palatal ll is pronounced like English j instead of l.) In addition, the following rules hold: # When a voiced consonant having a voiceless correspondent (that is b, d, ď, dz, dž, g, h, z, ž) stands at the end of the word before a pause, it is pronounced as a voiceless consonant (that is p, t, ť, c, č, k, ch, s, š, respectively), for example pohyb is pronounced , prípad is pronounced # When "v" stands at the end of the syllable, it is pronounced as non-syllabic u (bilabial approximant ), with the exception of the position before "n" or "ň", for example, kov (metal), kravský (cow - adjective), but povstať (uprise) because the v is not at the end of the syllable (po-vstať), hlavný because "v" stands before "n" here # The assimilation rule: When voiced consonant(s) having a voiceless correspondent and voiceless consonant(s) meet in the word, all consonants of the group are pronounced as voiced if the last consonant is a voiced one, or as voiceless if the last consonant is a voiceless one, for example otázka is pronounced , vzchopiť sa is pronounced . This rule applies also over the word boundary, for example prísť domov (to come home), viac jahôd (more strawberries). The voiced counterpart of "ch" is . # The rhythmical rule: A long syllable (that is a syllable containing á, é, í, ý, ó, ú, ŕ, ĺ, ia, ie, iu, ô) cannot be followed by another long syllable in the same word, that is the following syllable must be made short (in writing and pronunciation) (this rule has implications for the formation, declension (for example žen-ám but tráv-am) and conjugation (for example nos-ím but súd-im) of words; there are several exceptions to this rule; this rule is typical of the literary Slovak language (not existing in the closely related Czech, or some Slovak dialects).

Official transcriptions

Slovak linguists do not usually use IPA for phonetic transcription (neither for the Slovak language, nor for other common languages), but rather their own system based on the Slovak alphabet. In the following table, pronunciation of each grapheme is given in this system as well as in IPA and Kirshenbaum. Some additional notes (transcriptions in IPA unless otherwise stated):
- Pronunciation of ä as [æ] is already archaic (or dialectical) but still considered correct by some linguistic authorities; the other standard pronunciation today is .
- r and l can be syllabic phonemes and , which leads to words like vlk (wolf), prst (finger), štvrť (quarter), krk (neck).
- ch, normally the unvoiced [x], can have the voiced as an allophone as a result of phonetic assimilation.
- The sound group or graphemic group -ou (at the end of words) is pronounced but is not considered a separate diphthong, nor grapheme respectively (unlike ch, dz, dž). Its phonemic interpretation is /ov/.
- ia, ie, iu form diphthongs in native Slovak words, but glides in foreign and loan words.
- m has the allophone in front of the labiodental fricatives /f/ and /v/.
- n in front of (post)alveoral fricatives has an allophone written as in Slovak phonemic transcription; this is, however, an allophone of /n/.
- n can be [ŋ] in front of the velar plosives /k/ and /g/.
- f can be voiced as a result of phonetic assimilation.

Intuitive transcription for English speakers

Following list shows approximate pronunciation for English speakers: The values of the characters b, d, f, h, l, k, m, n, p, x are approximately equal to their English counterparts. The vowel combinations ia, ie, iu, ô [pronounced appr. like uo] are diphthongs, that is both elements are pronounced "together" the first element is almost a Slovak j for ia, ie, and iu and almost an English w for ô.
- a – approx. u in cut
- á – approx. a in father (long a)
- ä – e in set (or in archaic pronunciation like a in fat)
- c – ts in its
- č – approx. ch in child
- ď – approx. British d in during, dew
- dz – approx. d+z (voiced c; like the Italian zz in organizzare)
- dž – j in John (voiced č)
- e – e in set
- é – ai in fair (long e)
- g – g in go
- ch – Scottish ch, for example in Loch Ness (approx. like German ch, Russian x)
- i – i in sit
- í – ee in need (long i)
- j – y in yes
- ľ – approx. l in lurid (like gli... in Italian or ll in non-yeista Spanish)
- ĺ – approx. "lll"
- ň – approx. n in new (like French or Italian gn or Spanish ñ)
- o – o in odd
- ó – aw in saw, a in ball (long o)
- r – "rolled r" like in Italian, Scottish, Bavarian (and like a Spanish r that is not before a vowel and not at the beginning of the word, for example in color)
- ŕ – approx. Spanish rr in Zorro)
- s – s in save
- š – approx. sh in she
- ť – approx. t in tutor
- ô – approx. wo in wonder (or like Italian uo in buono)
- q – qu is like Slovak kv; q does not occur elsewhere
- u – u in put
- ú – oo in choose (long u)
- v – v in very (but at the end of the syllable approx. as w in window, see above)
- y – like Slovak i
- ý – like Slovak í (long y)
- z – z in zone
- ž – s in pleasure (like French j in journal or g in général)
- w – like Slovak v

Orthography

The primary principle of Slovak spelling is the phonetic principle (that is "Write as you hear") – as opposed to the English spelling where the etymological principle is primary. The secondary principle is the morphological principle (that is all forms derived from the same stem are written the same way even if they are pronounced differently in reality) – the main example is the assimilation rule (see Pronunciation). 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. And finally there is the rarely applied grammatical principle, under which, for example, there is a difference in writing (but not in the pronunciation) between the basic singular and plural form of masculine adjectives, for example pekný (nice – sg.) vs pekní (nice – pl.). Most foreign words receive Slovak spelling immediately or after some time, for example "weekend" is víkend, "software" is softvér (but some 15-years-ago spelled the English way), and "quality" is spelled kvalita. However, personal and geographical names from other languages using Latin alphabets keep their original spelling, unless there is a fully Slovak form for the name (for example Londýn for "London"). Slovak orthography has changed many times. One of the most important changes was after World War II when s began to be written as z where pronounced as [z], for example smluva into zmluva, sväz into zväz.

Syntax

The main features of Slovak syntax are:
- The verb (predicate) agrees in person and number with its subject – just like for example in German, Slavic and Romance languages, for example: :Speváčka spieva. (The+woman+singer is+singing.) :(Speváčk-a spieva-0, where -0 is a third person singular ending) :Speváčky spievajú. (The+woman+singers are+singing.) :(Speváčk-y spieva-j-ú, where -ú is a third person plural ending, -j- is a hiatus sound) :My speváčky spievame. (We the+woman+singers are+singing.) :(My speváčk-y spieva-me, where -me is the first person plural ending) :and so forth.
- An adjective, pronoun and partly also a numeral agrees in person, gender and case with the noun it refers to (see Slovak declension) – just like in most Slavic languages.
- An adjective always precedes the corresponding noun – as in English, unlike in Polish and Romance languages. Botanic or zoological terms are exceptions (for example, mačka divá, literally "cat wild", Felis silvestris). The word order is relatively free (unlike in English or French), because – as opposed to English – the strong inflection of the words enables to identify the role of a word (subject, object, predicate, etc.) regardless of its placement within the sentence. The relatively free word order enables the Slovaks (just like other Slavs) to use the word order to convey information on which information is considered most important or new: Constituents with old information precede constituents with new information, or those that carry most emphasis. Examples: :Ten veľký človek tam dnes otvára obchod. = The big man opens a store there today. (Ten = The; veľky´ = big; človek = man; tam = there; dnes = today; otvára = opens; obchod = store) :Ten veľký človek dnes otvára obchod tam. = It is there that the big man opens a store today. :Dnes tam otvára obchod ten veľký človek. = It is the big man who opens a store there today. :Obchod tam dnes otvára ten veľký človek. = As for the store, it is opened there by the big man. However, the normal order is Subject-Verb-Object (as in English) and the word order is not completely arbitrary. For example, in the above example, the following combinations are not possible: :Ten otvára veľký človek tam dnes obchod. :Obchod človek tam ten veľký dnes otvára. ... And the following, for instance, are not likely to occur: :Otvára ten veľký človek tam dnes obchod. :Obchod ten veľký človek dnes tam otvára. ...

Morphology

Articles (Členy):

There are no articles in the Slovak language. If it is really necessary to emphasize that the thing that one is talking about was already mentioned, the demonstrative pronoun ten (fem: tá, neuter: to) can be used in front of the noun.

Numerals (Číslovky)

The basic formation of Slovak numerals is like in English: There are special words for 0-19 and for 20, 30 . . . 90, 100, 1000 etc. and the compound numerals (21, 1054) are simply combinations of these special words formed in the same order as their mathematical symbol is written (for example 21 = dvadsaťjeden (that is literally „twentyone“)). The numerals are: (1) jeden, (2) dva, (3) tri, (4) štyri, (5) päť, (6) šesť, (7) sedem, (8) osem, (9) deväť, (10) desať, (11) jedenásť, (12) dvanásť, (13) trinásť, (14) štrnásť, (15) pätnásť, (16) šestnásť, (17) sedemnásť, (18) osemnásť, (19) devätnásť, (20) dvadsať, (21) dvadsaťjeden . . . ., (30) tridsať, (31) tridsaťjeden . . . (40) štyridsať, . . . (50) päťdesiat, . . . (60) šesťdesiat, . . . (70) sedemdesiat, . . . (80) osemdesiat, . . . (90) deväťdesiat, . . . (100) sto, (101) stojeden, . . . . (200) dvesto, . . . (300) tristo, . . . (900)deväťsto, . . . (1,000) tisíc, . . . (1,100) tisícsto, . . . (2,000) dvetisíc, . . (100,000) stotisíc, . . . (1,000,000) milión, . . . See also: Slovak declension

Verbs (Slovesá)

- Verbs have three major conjugations distinguishing 3 persons and 2 numbers (singular and plural) – just like in English. There are several conjugation paradigms- like in most European languages. Here is the conjugation of some randomly chosen verbs (the forms are given in the order: I – you (sg) – he/she/it – we – you (pl) – they ): :to be (byť): som – si –je –sme –ste- sú :to have (mať): mám – máš –má –máme –máte –majú :to work (pracovať): pracujem – pracuješ –pracuje –pracujeme- pracujete – pracujú :to carry (niesť) nesiem – nesieš –nesie –nesieme – nesiete – nesú :to hide (skryť): skryjem – skryješ –skryje –skryjeme – skryjete - skryjú
- Subject personal pronouns are often omitted unless they are emphatic - like in Italian or Spanish, unlike in Russian or English.
- The infinitive always ends in -ť (see for example the above examples).
- The English continuous form (that is to be . . . ing) is expressed by a change in the stem of the verb or by removing the prefix (note however that this statement is a strong simplification). The non-continuous version is called a perfective verb and the continuous version an imperfective verb. Example: :to hide = skryť, to be hiding = skrývať
- There are only two past tenses. Both are formed analytically. The latter, however, is not used in the modern language and is considered dated and/or grammatically incorrect. Examples for two verbs (note that the continuous form is considered a separate verb in Slavic languages): :skryť (to hide) : skryl som (I hid / I have hid); bol som skryl (I had hid) :skrývať (to be hiding): skrýval som (I was hiding); bol som skrýval (I had been hiding)
- There is only one future tense. For imperfective verbs, it is formed analytically, for perfective verbs it is identical with the present tense. Examples: :skryť (to hide) : skryjem (I will hide / I will have hid) :skrývať (to be hiding) : budem skrývať (I will be hiding)
- There are two conditional forms. Both are formed analytically from the past tense: :skryť (to hide) : skryl by som (I would hide), bol by som skryl (I would have hid) :skrývať (to be hiding) : skrýval by som (I would be hiding), bol by som skrýval (I would have been hiding)
- The passive voice is formed either like in English (to be + past participle) or like in Romance languages (using the reflexive pronoun 'sa'): :skryť (to hide): je skrytý (he is hid); sa skryje (he is hid) :skrývať (to be hiding): je skrývaný (he is being hid); sa skrýva (he is being hid)
- The active present participle (=which is ...ing) is formed using the suffixes –úci/ -iaci / - aci :skryť (to hide) : skryjúci (which is hiding) :skrývať (to be hiding): skrývajúci (which is being hiding)
- The gerund (=by/when ...ing) is formed using the suffixes –úc / -uc / –iac/-ac :skryť (to hide): skryjúc (by/when hiding) :skrývať (to be hiding): skrývajúc (by/when being hiding)
- The active past participle (= which was ...ing) was formerly formed using the suffix –vší, but is no longer used.
- The passive participle (= ...ed (adj.)) is formed using the suffixes -ný / -tý / -ený: :skryť (to hide): skrytý (hid) :skrývať (to be hiding): skrývaný (being hid)
- The 'verbal noun' (= the ...ing) is formed using the suffix –ie: :skryť (to hide): skrytie (the hiding) :skrývať (to be hiding): skrývanie (the continuous hiding)

Adverbs (Príslovky)

Adverbs are usually formed by replacing the adjectival ending with the ending –o or sometimes –e / -y(sometimes both –o an d-e are possible). Examples: :vysoký (high) – vysoko (highly) :pekný (nice) – pekne (nicely) :priateľský (friendly) – priateľsky (in a friendly manner) :rýchly (fast) – rýchlo / rýchle (quickly) The comparative/superlative of adverbs is formed by replacing the adjective comparative/superlative ending - (ej)ší by the ending –(ej)šie. Examples: :rýchly (fast)– rýchlejší (faster) – najrýchlejší (fastest):rýchlo (quickly) – rýchlejšie (more quickly) – najrýchlejšie (most quickly)

Prepositions (Predložky)

They are used like in English, except that, in addition, each single preposition is associated with a particular grammatical case and the noun following the preposition must take the ending of the case required by the preposition. Example: :from friends = od priateľov (priateľov is the genitive case of priatelia, because the preposition od (=from) always calls for its objects to be in the genitive case)

Conjunctions (Spojky), Particles (Častice), Interjections (Citoslovce)

They work more or less like in the English language. Note: The Slovak (and Czech) definition of particles has been taken from Russian linguistics. Although the English linguists subsume them under the conjunctions, interjections and other word types, they nevertheless work like in English. Examples of particles as they are understood by Slovak linguists are the English words (the text in the brackets gives a sentence as an example): Well (, what will we do?), yes, anyway, obviously, above all, not ...at all, And ( what do you think?), But ( that is impossible!), so (, that's it!), hardly, really, most importantly, also, (what) the hell (is he doing?), actually, please, even, in sum, believe it or not, maybe, unfortunately, of course, I wonder where (you have been), in one word ...

Vocabulary

History

See: History of the Slovak language

Relationships to other languages

The Slovak language arose directly from the Proto-Slavic language independently of other Slavic languages (see History). The present-day Slovak language is closely related to the other west Slavic languages. Some observers compare the difference between Slovak and Czech to that between Italian and Spanish. Others prefer to compare it to the differences between Scandinavian languages, or between German dialects or differences between English and Scots language. Generally, it can be said that while the vocabulary (especially the professional one) is quite similar, and the used spelling almost the same, the declension, conjugation and pronunciation are different. Nowadays the Czechs and the Slovaks have more common words due to their long historic coexistence especially within the now-defunct country of Czechoslovakia. The Slovak is related to Czech especially in written form (because the Slovak literary language spelling has been inspired by the Czech spelling), but differs from it both phonetically and grammatically. However, the Slovak did not arise from the Czech language (neither from the Old nor from the Middle Czech) and the Czech language started to penetrate to Slovakia only in the 14th century. Adult educated Slovaks are able to understand Czech and to some extent Polish and Sorbian without a translator. In general, it can be stated that during the existence of Czechoslovakia (and especially of a common television), the spoken language has taken over many Czech words, idioms and some features of the syntax, and lost many typical Slovak expressions in turn. The future development after the split of Czechoslovakia (1993) remains to be seen, because close cultural and educational contacts did not disappear. Nowadays the ability to completely understand Czech, however, seems to disappear with a part of the youngest generation (and this is definitively the case with the Czech children in the opposite direction). Basically, the standard Slovak is mutually intelligible with Czech (a bit more with literary Czech than with colloquial) and shares much of professional terminology with it, eastern Slovak dialects are mutually intelligible with standard Slovak, but less with Czech, the Rusyn language is mutually intelligible with eastern Slovak dialects (but both lack professional terminology and higher style expressions). The Polish language and Sorbian languages are somewhat intelligible to both Slovak and Czech, but they have different professional terminology and higher style expressions - the more you keep your language style low and simple, the better you are understood. The Slovak standard language holds a central position among Slavic languages: It has common features with:
- the Czech language [western neighbor of Slovakia]
- the Polish language [northern neighbor of Slovakia], for example the use of the prefix pre-, use of the consonant dz, and some vocabulary (teraz, pivnica)
- South Slavic languages (especially Slovene and Croatian); this connection is due to the fact that the territory of present-day Hungary was inhabited by the Sloviene (see Great Moravia) before the Hungarians settled there in the 10th century, thus bringing about the rise of the Slovaks and Slovenians and of the corresponding languages
- East Slavic languages [eastern neighbors of Slovakia; a Ruthenian/Ukrainian minority lives in northern eastern Slovakia] This central position makes it relatively easy for other Slavs to understand Slovak and vice-versa. Thus, Slovak provides a good starting point from which to branch off to any additional Slavic language. Note however that the above only holds for the standard (that is northern central Slovak) language, not necessarily for the dialects (see Dialects). Slovak is not related to the (non-Slavic, non-Indoeuropean) Hungarian language. It borrowed words from Hungarian in the past as a result of being part of Hungary from the 11th century to 1918, but only a very low number of them is still used in literary language today. Traces of Hungarian loanwords remain in some dialects; they are usually words with a very specific meaning. On the contrary, according to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Hungarian language borrowed some 1200 words from the Slovak language (and 1000 from other Slavic languages), especially in the 10th century, when the nomadic Hungarians settled in present-day Hungary and had to take over basic vocabulary necessary for a civilized life (for example the words for: table (sk: stôl, hu: asztal), window (sk: oblok, hu: ablak), male sheep, brother (sk: brat, hu: barát), dear, dinner (sk: obed, hu: ebéd), supper, street (sk: ulica, hu: utca), book, coat (sk, hu: kabát), pub, cherry, basket, key, Wednesday (sk: streda, hu: szerda), Thursday, Friday, German, shepherd (sk: pastier, hu: pásztor), prince, king (sk: kráľ, hu: király), servant, Christian, pagant, angel, miller (sk: mlynár, hu: molnár), smith sk: kováč, hu: kovács, county, county border, county leader...)

Differences between the Slovak and Czech languages

Linguistically, the Czech and Slovak languages form a language continuum, eastern Slovak dialects then blend into the Rusyn language. Czech exists in two different forms (excluding the Moravian dialects): literary Czech and colloquial Czech. Standard Slovak language is closer to literary Czech, especially in phonology and morphology. The differences between parts of the vocabulary of some Slovak dialects are rather big, comparable to the differences between standard Slovak and Czech. The description below sums the main differences between standard Slovak and Czech.
- Slovak graphemes that do not exist in the Czech language are ä, ľ, ĺ, ŕ and ô (see Pronunciation). Czech graphemes that do not exist in the Slovak language are: ě, ř and ů.
- Slovak has the following phonemes which Czech does not have: /ʎ/, /rː/, /lː/, /æ/ (this one only in higher-style standard Slovak, or some dialects), and the diphtongs /i̯a/, /i̯ɛ/, /i̯u/, /u̯o/; and on the contrary, Czech has /r̝/.
- Czech uses peculiar pitch contour, not present in Slovak (or Moravian dialects).
- The Slovak, unlike Czech, uses palatalization more frequently (that is, is phonetically "softer")
- The phonetic assimilation and a kind of "liaison" are much stronger in the Slovak language
- The Slovak grammar:
- is somewhat simpler (that is more regular) than Czech literary language grammar, since the present-day Slovak language standard has been codified only in the 19th century. However the colloquial Czech makes some more simplifications, especially merging case suffixes.
- has different declension and conjugation endings and paradigms
- has 6 morphological cases (see Slovak declension) - the vocative (officially not considered a separate grammatical case anymore) is almost lost, while the Czech vocative is well alive
- Basic Slovak vocabulary is partly different, partly identical, partly very similar to the Czech language, and a few (almost) identical words have different meaning. The differences are mostly of simple historical origin (for example the word hej mentioned below was used in Great Moravia). As for professional terminology, except for biology (esp. all names of animals and plants), the Czech terminology was mostly taken over (in Slovakized form) for practical reasons. The Czech-Slovak Dictionary of Different Terms (1989, Prague) contains some 11.000 entries (without professional terminology):
- Examples of basic different words are: to speak (SK hovoriť – CZ mluvit), yeah (SK hej – CZ jo), if (SK ak – CZ jestli, jestliže, -li), Good bye (SK Dovidenia – CZ Nashledanou), January (SK január – CZ leden), cat (SK mačka – CZ kočka), to kiss (SK bozkať – CZ líbat), now (SK teraz – CZ teď, nyní), goods (SK tovar – CZ zboží) and so forth.
- Examples of typical small differences: endings (SK -cia, -dlo, -ť, -om – CZ -c(i)e, -tko, -t, -em), expressions (SK treba, možno – CZ je třeba, je možné / je možno), prepositions (SK na – CZ k, pro) . . .
- Examples of words with different meanings : SK topiť (to melt) – CZ topit (to heat), SK horký (bitter) – CZ horký (hot) . . .
- The Czech language has no equivalents for many Slovak words and vice versa. Examples of no Czech equivalents: prepositions (popod, ponad, sponad. . . ), verbs (ľúbiť, povynechávať, skackať, siakať,. . . ), nouns (kúrňava, kaštieľ, hoľa, grúň). . ., pronouns (dakto, voľakto, henten,. . . ) etc.
- The Czech language does not have the Rhythmical Rule (see Pronunciation)
- Slovak uses the passive voice formed like in English less than the Czech, and prefers the passive voice formed using the reflexive pronoun sa (like in Romance languages) instead
- Slovak has hundreds of dialects, while in the Czech Republic, many dialects have disappeared, especially in the Bohemian part of the Czech Republic.

Dialects

The spoken Slovak language consists of a large number of dialects that can be divided in three basic groups:
- Eastern Slovak dialects (in Spis, Saris, Zemplin and Abov)
- Central Slovak dialects (in Liptov, Orava, Turiec, Tekov, Hont, Novohrad, Gemer and the historic Zvolen county)
- Western Slovak dialects (in remaining Slovakia) For an external map see [http://www.pitt.edu/~armata/dialects.htm here]. They differ mostly in phonology, inflection and vocabulary. The differences in syntax are minor. Modified Central Slovak forms the basis of the present-day standard language. Not all dialects are fully mutually intelligible. The differences between some Slovak dialects make it for example often impossible for an inhabitant of the Slovak capital Bratislava (in western Slovakia) to understand a person from eastern Slovakia. Also, at the dialect level, only some dialects of western Slovak can be considered fully mutually intelligible with the Czech language, with which Slovak borders in the west. The dialects are fragmented geographically, separated by numerous mountain ranges (Slovakia is a mountainous country). The above three groups already existed in the 10th century. All the three dialect groups are also spoken by the Slovaks living outside Slovakia (in Hungary, Serbia, Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria and elsewhere). The western dialects contain many features common with the Moravian dialects in the Czech Republic, the southern central dialects contain a few features common with South Slavic languages, and the eastern dialects a few features common with Polish and the East Slavonic languages. However, historically, Slovak dialects arose as varieties of the autonomous Slovak language and they arose neither from the Czech, nor from the Polish, nor from the Ukrainian language.

Trivia

Some interesting information:
- the longest more-or-less "normal" word that can be formed is "najneobpoľnohospodárovateľnejšieho" (or "najneobpoľnohospodárovateľnejšiemu"), (the first one is the accusative and imperfective aspect of the expression "the least farmable")
- the longest consonant cluster is found in the compound word "štvrťvzžblnknutie", it is however rather artificial. But compounds like "štvrťprst", "štvrťžblnknutie" and similar sound natural. Longest frequent consonant cluster found in Slovak National Corpus seems to be in word "štvrťstoročný" and derivates.
- the most frequent words found in Slovak National Corpus are these: a (and), v (in), sa (oneself- reflexive pronoun), na (on/at), je (is), že (,that), s (with), o (about), z (from), aj (also), to (it), do (into), ako (as/like)
- the most frequent verbs are byť (to be), mať (to have), môcť (can), povedať (to say)
- Slovak for "no" is nie , Slovak for "yes" is áno (it is funny that Korean for "no" is 아니오 /anio/, Korean for "yes" is 녜 .)

External links

- [http://korpus.juls.savba.sk/ Slovak National Corpus]
- [http://kssj.juls.savba.sk/ Official www page of Short Dictionary of Slovak Language]
- [http://www.slovak.com/language/ Introduction To Slovak Language]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/translation/Slovak/ Dictionary] with Slovak - English Translations from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition
- [http://www.slovnik.org/ Russian-Slovak-Russian Dictionary, language reference and forum]
- [http://www.slavism.com/slovak/abc.htm Slovak Alphabet and Pronunciation]
- [http://www.angelfire.com/sk3/quality/Slovak_declension.html Detailed Slovak Declension]
- [http://www.worldlanguage.com/Languages/Slovak.htm Slovak Language: From Children's Books to Word Processing Software]
- [http://www.forma.sk/onlines/slex/index.asp Monolingual Slovak Dictionary Online]
- [http://www.otpalca.sk/ English-Slovak-English Dictionary]
- [http://www.cassovia.sk/dict.php3?fr=an&sl= Slovak-English-Slovak Dictionary]
- [http://www.languages-on-the-web.com/links/link-slovak.htm Languages-on-the-Web Best Slovak Links]
- [http://www.bratislavaguide.com/ Few basic tips on speaking Slovak]
- [http://www.learnslovak.com/ Slovak language courses online]
- [http://www.pitt.edu/~armata/dialects.htm Map of Slovak Dialects] Category:West Slavic languages Category:Languages of Slovakia Category:Languages of Vojvodina Category:Languages of Hungary ko:슬로바키아어 ja:スロバキア語

Croatian language

The Croatian language is a language of the western group of South Slavic languages which is used primarily by the Croats. It is one of the standard versions of the Central-South Slavic diasystem. Croatian is based on the Štokavian dialect (with some influence from Čakavian and Kajkavian) and written with the Latin alphabet. The modern Croatian standard language is a continuous outgrowth of more than nine hundred years of literature written in a mixture of Croatian Church Slavonic and the vernacular language. If we narrow out the subject, Croatian Church Slavonic had been abandoned by the mid-1400s, and Croatian "purely" vernacular literature has been in existence for more than five centuries — a story of remarkable linguistic continuity with only a few shock points.

Early development

The beginning of the Croatian written language can be traced to the 9th century, when Old Church Slavonic was adopted as the language of the liturgy. This language was gradually adapted to non-liturgical purposes and became known as the Croatian version of Old Slavonic. The two variants of the language, liturgical and non-liturgical, continued to be a part of the Glagolitic service as late as the mid-9th century. Until the end of the 11th century, Croatian medieval texts were written in three scripts: Latin, Glagolitic, and Croatian Cyrillic (bosančica), and also in three languages: Croatian, Latin and Old Slavonic. The latter developed into what is referred to as the Croatian variant of Church Slavonic between the 12th and 16th centuries. Church Slavonic Church Slavonic The most important early monument of Croatian literacy is the Baška tablet from the late 11th century. It is a large stone tablet found in the small church of St. Lucy on the Croatian island of Krk, containing text written mostly in čakavian, today a dialect of Croatian, and in Croatian Glagolitic script. It is also important in the history of the nation as it mentions Zvonimir, the king of Croatia at the time. However, the luxurious and ornate representative texts of Croatian Church Slavonic belong to the later era, when they coexisted with the Croatian vernacular literature. The most notable are the "Missal of Duke Novak" from the Lika region in northwestern Croatia (1368), "Evangel from Reims" (1395, named after the town of its final destination), "Missal of Duke Hrvoje" from Bosnia and Split in Dalmatia (1404) and the first printed book in Croatian language (1483). Also, during the 13th century Croatian vernacular texts began to appear, the most important among them being "Istrian land survey", 1275 and "The Vinodol Codex", 1288., both in the Čakavian dialect. The Štokavian dialect literature, based almost exclusively on Čakavian original texts of religious provenance (missals, breviaries, prayer books) appeared almost a century later. The most important purely Štokavian vernacular text is Vatican Croatian Prayer Book (ca. 1400). Vatican Croatian Prayer Book Both the language used in legal texts and that used in Glagolitic literature gradually came under the influence of the vernacular, which considerably affected its phonological, morphological and lexical systems. From the 14th and the 15th centuries, both secular and religious songs at church festivals were composed in the vernacular. lexical Writers of early Croatian religious poetry (začinjavci), translators and editors gradually introduced the vernacular into their works. These začinjavci were the forerunners of the rich literary production of the 15th and 16th centuries. The language of religious poems, translations, miracle and morality plays contributed to the popular character of medieval Croatian literature.

Modern language and standardisation

Although the first purely vernacular texts in a Croatian distinctly different from Church Slavonic date back to the 13th century, it was in the 14th and 15th centuries that the modern Croatian language emerged (recorded in texts as Vatican Croatian prayer book from 1400.) in the form (morphology, phonology and syntax) that only slightly differs from contemporary Croatian standard language. standard language The standardization of Croatian language can be traced back to the first Croatian dictionary (Faust Vrančić: Dictionarium quinque nobilissimarum Europae linguarum—Latinae, Italicae, Germanicae, Dalmatiae et Ungaricae, Venice 1595) and first Croatian grammar (Bartul Kašić: Institutionum linguae illyricae libri duo, Rome 1604). Interestingly enough, the language of Jesuit Kašić's translation of the Bible (Old and New Testament, 1622-1636; unpublished until 2000) in the Croatian štokavian-ijekavian dialect (the ornate style of the Dubrovnik Renaissance literature) is as close to the contemporary standard Croatian language (problems of orthography apart) as are French of Montaigne's "Essays" or King James Bible English to their respective successors—modern standard languages. This period, sometimes called "Baroque Slavism" was crucial in formation of literary idiom that was to become Croatian standard language—the 17th century witnessed flowering in three fields that shaped modern Croatian:
- One was the linguistic works of Jesuit philologists Kašić and Mikalja;
- the other energetic literary activity of Bosnian Franciscan Matija Divković, whose Counter-Reformation writings (popular tales from the Bible, sermons and polemics) were widespread among Croats both in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia;
- and, last but not least, in aesthetically refined poetry of Ivan Gundulić from Dubrovnik. This "triple achievement" of Baroque Slavism in first half of the 17th century laid the firm foundation upon which later Illyrian movement completed the work of language standardisation. : See also: Croatian-language grammar books, Croatian dictionaries

Illyrian period

But, due to the unique Croat linguistic situation, formal shaping of Croatian standard language was a process that took almost four centuries to complete: Croatian is a three dialects tongue (a somewhat simplistic way to distinguish between dialects is to refer to the pronoun what, which is ča, kaj, što in, respectively, čakavian, kajkavian and štokavian dialects) and three scripts language (Glagolitic, Croatian/Western/Bosnian Cyrillic and Latin script, with Latin script as the ultimate winner). The final obstacle to the unified Croatian literary language (based on celebrated vernacular Croatian Troubadour, Renaissance and Baroque -- acronym TRB) literature (ca. 1490 to ca. 1670) from Dalmatia, Dubrovnik and Boka Kotorska was surmounted by Croatian national awakener Ljudevit Gaj's standardization of Latin scriptory norm in 1830–1850s. Gaj and his Illyrian movement (centred in kajkavian-speaking Croatia's capital Zagreb) were, however, important more politically than linguistically. They "chose" štokavian dialect because they didn't have any other realistic option—štokavian, or, more precisely, neoštokavian (a version of štokavian which emerged in the 15th/16th century) was the major Croatian literary tongue from 1700s on. The 19th century linguists and lexicographers' main concern was to achieve a more consistent and unified scriptory norm and orthography; an effort followed by peculiar Croatian linguistic characteristics which may be humorously described as "passion for neologisms" or vigorous word coinage, originating from the purist nature of Croatian literary language. One of the peculiarities of the "developmental trajectory" of the Croatian language is that there is no single towering figure among the Croatian linguists/philologists, because the vernacular osmotically percolated into the "high culture" via literary works so there was no need for revolutionary linguistic upheavals—only reforms sufficed. :See also: Croatian linguistic purism

The Serbian connection

The 19th century language development overlapped with the upheavals that befell Serbian language. It was Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, an energetic and resourceful Serbian language and culture reformer, whose scriptory and orthographic stylisation of Serbian linguistic folk idiom made a radical break with the past; until his activity in the first half of the 19th century, Serbs had been using the Serbian variant of Church Slavonic and a hybrid Russian-Slavonic language. His "Serbian Dictionary", published in Vienna 1818 (along with the appended grammar), was the single most significant work of Serbian literary culture that shaped the profile of Serbian language (and, the first Serbian dictionary and grammar thus far). Following the incentive of Austrian bureaucracy which preferred some kind of "unified" Croatian and Serbian languages for purely practical administrative reasons, in 1850, Slovenian philologist Franc Miklošič initiated a meeting of two Serbian philologists and writers, Vuk Karadžić and Đuro Daničić together with five Croatian "men of letters": Ivan Mažuranić, Dimitrija Demetar, Stjepan Pejaković, Ivan Kukuljević and Vinko Pacel. This, so-called "Vienna agreement" on the basic features of unified "Croatian or Serbian" or "Serbo-Croatian" language was signed by all eight participants (including Miklošič). Karadžić's influence on Croatian standard idiom was only one of the reforms for Croats, mostly in some aspects of grammar and orthography; many other changes he made to Serbian were already present in Croatian. Both languages shared the common basis of South Slavic neoštokavian dialect, but the Vienna agreement didn't have any effect in reality until a more "unified" standard appeared at the end of 19th century when Croatian sympathisers of Vuk Karadžić, so-called "Croatian vukovites", wrote first modern (from the vantage point of dominating neogrammarian linguistic school) grammars, orthographies and dictionaries of language they called "Croatian or Serbian" (Serbs preferred Serbo-Croatian). Monumental grammar authored by pre-eminent fin de siècle Croatian linguist Tomislav Maretić (Grammar and stylistics of Croatian or Serbian language) and dictionary by Broz and Iveković (Croatian dictionary) temporarily fixed the elastic (grammatically, syntactically, lexically) standard of this hybrid language.

Unification and separation with Serbian

The establishment of the Yugoslavian state was an important event in the history of the Croatian language. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918-1941) was dominated by the Serbian government, which tried to use a joint language in the spirit of supra-national Yugoslav ideology. This meant that Croatian and Serbian were no longer developed individually side by side, but were attempted to be forged into one language under political pressure. Owing to the nature of the state politics at the time, this forging was resultant in a Serbian-based language, which meant a certain Serbianization of the language of Croatia and Bosnia. In the 1920s and 1930s, the lexical, syntactical, orthographical and morphological characteristics of Serbian were officially prescribed for Croatian textbooks and general communication. This artificial process of "unification" into one Serbo-Croatian language was preferred by neo-grammarian Croatian linguists, the most notable example being the influential philologist and translator Tomislav Maretić. However, this school was virtually extinct by the late 1920s and since then leading Croatian linguists (such as Petar Skok, Stjepan Ivšić and Petar Guberina) were unanimous in the re-affirmation of the Croatian purist tradition. The situation somewhat eased in the eve of World War II (cf. the establishment of Banovina Hrvatska within Yugoslavia in 1939), but with the capitulation of Yugoslavia and the creation of the Nazi puppet regime (the "Independent State of Croatia", 1941-1945) came another, this time hardly predictable and extremely grotesque attack on standard Croatian: the totalitarian dictatorship of Ante Pavelić pushed natural Croatian purist tendencies to ludicrous extremes and tried to reimpose older morphonological orthography preceding Ivan Broz's orthographical prescriptions from 1892. An official order signed by Pavelić and co-signed by Mile Budak and Milovan Žanić in August 1941 included verbiage that deprecated all imported words and actually forbade the use of any foreign words that could be replaced with Croatian neologisms. However, Croatian linguists and writers were strongly opposed to this travesty of "language planning" in the same way that they rejected pro-Serbian forced unification in monarchist Yugoslavia. Not surprisingly, no Croatian dictionaries or Croatian grammars were published in this period. Under monarchist Yugoslavia, "Serbo-Croatian" unification was motivated mainly by the Greater Serbia policy. In the Communist period (1945 to 1990) it was the by-product of Communist centralism and "internationalism". Whatever the intentions, the result was the same: the suppression of the basic features that differentiate Croatian from Serbian, both in terms of orthography and vocabulary. No Croatian dictionaries (apart from historical "Croatian or Serbian", conceived in the 19th century) appeared until 1985, when centralism was well in the process of decay. In Communist Yugoslavia, Serbian language and terminology were "official" in a few areas: the military, diplomacy, Federal Yugoslav institutions (various institutes and research centres), state media, and jurisprudence at the federal level. As well, language in Bosnia and Herzegovina was gradually Serbianized in all levels of the educational system and the republic's administration. Virtually the only institution of any importance where the Croatian language was dominant had been the Lexicographic Institute in Zagreb, headed by Croatian writer Miroslav Krleža. This unitary linguistic policy was encouraged by the state. Notwithstanding the declaration of intent of AVNOJ (The Antifascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia) in 1944, which proclaimed the equality of all languages of Yugoslavia (Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian and Macedonian) — everything had, in practice, been geared towards the supremacy of the Serbian language. This was done under the pretext of "mutual enrichment" and "togetherness", hoping that the transient phase of relatively peaceful life among peoples in Yugoslavia would eventually give way to one of fusion into the supra-national Yugoslav nation and, arguably, provide a firmer basis for Serbianization. However, this "supra-national engineering" was arguably doomed from the outset. The nations that formed the Yugoslav state were formed long before its incipience and all unification pressures only poisoned and exacerbaced inter-ethnic/national relations, causing the state to become merely ephemeral. The single most important effort by ruling Yugoslav Communist elites to erase the "differences" between Croatian and Serbian — and in practice impose Serbian Ekavian language, written in Latin script, as the "official" language of Yugoslavia — was the so-called "Novi Sad Agreement". Twenty five Serbian, Croatian, and Montenegrin philologists came together in 1954 to sign the Agreement (named after the site of the signing, Novi Sad). A common Serbo-Croatian or "Croato-Serbian" orthography was compiled in an atmosphere of state repression and fear. There were 18 Serbs and 7 Croats in Novi Sad. The "Agreement" was seen by the Croats as a defeat for the Croatian cultural heritage. According to the eminent Croatian linguist Ljudevit Jonke, it was imposed on the Croats. The conclusions were formulated according to goals which had been set in advance, and discussion had no role whatsoever. In the more than a decade that followed, the principles of the Novi Sad Agreement were put into practice. A collective Croatian reaction against such de facto Serbian imposition erupted on March 15, 1967. On that day, nineteen Croatian scholarly institutions and cultural organizations dealing with language and literature (Croatian Universities and Academies), including foremost Croatian writers and linguists (Miroslav Krleža, Radoslav Katičić, Dalibor Brozović and Tomislav Ladan among them) issued the "Declaration Concerning the Name and the Status of the Croatian Literary Language". In the Declaration, they asked for amendment to the Constitution expressing two claims:
- the equality not of three but of four literary languages, Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian and Macedonian, and consequently, the publication of all federal laws and other federal acts in four instead of three languages
- the use of the Croatian standard language in schools and all mass communication media pertaining to the Republic of Croatia. The Declaration accused the federal authorities in Belgrade of imposing Serbian as the official state language and downgrading Croatian to the level of a local dialect. Notwithstanding the fact that "Declaration" was vociferously condemned by Yugoslav Communist authorities as an outburst of "Croatian nationalism", Serbo-Croatian forced unification was essentially halted and an uneasy status quo remained until the end of communism. In the decade between the death of Marshall Tito (1980) and the final collapse of communism and the Yugoslavian state (1990/1991), major works that manifested the irrepressibility of Croatian linguistic culture had appeared. The studies of Brozović, Katičić and Babić that had been circulating among specialists or printed in the obscure philological publications in the 60s and 70s (frequently condemned and suppressed by the authorities) have finally, in the climate of dissolving authoritarianism, been published. This was a formal "divorce" of Croatian from Serbian (and, strictly linguistically speaking, the death of Serbo-Croatian). These works, based on modern fields and theories (structuralist linguistics and phonology, comparative-historical linguistics and lexicology, transformational grammar and areal linguistics) revised or discarded older "language histories", and restored the continuity of the Croatian language by definitely reintegrating and asserting specific Croatian characteristics (phonetic, morphological, syntactic, lexical, etc.) that had been constantly suppressed in both Yugoslavian states and finally gave modern linguistic description and prescription to the Croatian language. Among many monographs and serious studies, one could point to works issued by the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, particularly Katičić's Syntax and Babić's Word-formation. After the collapse of communism and the birth of Croatian independence (1991), the situation with regard to the Croatian language has become stabilized. No longer under negative political pressures and de-Croatization impositions, Croatian linguists expanded the work on various ambitious programs and intensified their studies on current dominant areas of linguistics: mathematical and corpus linguistics, textology, psycholinguistics, language acquisition and historical lexicography. From 1991 on, numerous representative Croatian linguistic works were published, among them four voluminous monolingual dictionaries of contemporary Croatian, various specialized dictionaries and normative manuals (the most representative being the issue of the Institute for Croatian Language and Linguistics). For a curious bystander, probably the most noticeable language feature in Croatian society was the re-Croatization of Croatian in all areas, from phonetics to semantics and (most evidently) in everyday vocabulary. Political ambitions played a key role in the creation of the Serbo-Croatian language. Likewise, politics again were a crucial agent in dissolving the unified language. With the collapse of Yugoslavia, the Serbo-Croatian language officially followed suit.

A note on Serbo-Croatian

One still finds many references to Serbo-Croatian, and proponents of Serbo-Croatian who deny the existence of Croatian (as well as Serbian and Bosnian) as a separate standard language. The usual argument generally goes along the following lines:
- Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian are almost completely mutually intelligible, sharing much vocabulary
- Typologically and structurally, these languages have virtually the same grammar, i.e. morphology and syntax
- The Serbo-Croatian language was "created" in the mid 19th century, and all subsequent attempts to dissolve its basic unity have not (yet) succeeded
- The affirmation of distinct Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian languages is purely politically motivated
- According to phonology, morphology and syntax, these languages are essentially one language because they are based on the same, Štokavian dialect. However, these arguments all have flaws:
- mutual intelligibility is not the decisive criterion for anything. For instance, although Urdu and Hindi are mutually intelligible to a degree probably higher than Croatian and Bosnian, they are recognized as separate standard languages. On the other hand, the unity of Chinese culture has imposed the notion of one Chinese language, although numerous "dialects" are almost mutually unintelligible. Also, some linguists operate with the notion of "Chinese languages" – but this is not the generally accepted position. To give a simple and clear example: if there is no "Hindi-Urdu", then there is no reason to have "Serbo-Croatian".
- As far as structural similarity or even the identity of basic grammar is concerned, one might add that, apart from the aforementioned Urdu and Hindi cases, Malay and Indonesian are the same with regard to basic grammar, yet they are dutifully listed as different languages in classification manuals. Moreover, the basic grammar (morphology and syntax) is just one part of a theoretical description of a language: other fields (phonetics, phonology, word formation, semantics, pragmatics, stylistics, lexicology, etc.) give different theoretical linguistic descriptions and prescriptions for Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian (just as with Hindi and Urdu).
- Since the Croatian language as recorded in Držić and Gundulić's works (1500s and 1600s) is virtually the same as the contemporary standard Croatian (understandable archaisms apart), it is evident that the 19th century formal standardization was just the final touch in the process that, as far as the Croatian language is concerned, had lasted more than three centuries. The radical break with the past, characteristic of modern Serbian (whose vernacular was likely not as similar to Croatian as it is today), is a trait completely at variance with Croatian linguistic history. In short, formal standardization processes for Croatian and Serbian had coincided chronologically (and, one could add, ideologically), but they haven't produced a unified standard language. Gundulić did not write in "Serbo-Croatian", nor did August Šenoa. Marko Marulić and Marin Držić wrote in a sophisticated idiom of the Croatian language, some 300/350 years before the "Serbo-Croatian" ideology appeared.
- Politics is always the central factor in determining what is a language and what is a dialect. The purely linguistic criterion (or criteria) that would decide on the status of a language simply doesn't exist. Various modern linguistic atlases give extremely varying numbers of languages in the world: the number generally fluctuates between 4,000 and 8,000, but some books reduce it to ca. 3,000, while others expand the figure to ca. 17,000. It is evident that such a wide variance is the best sign that no reliable linguistic criteria exist to give a unanimous answer to the question "what is a language?". Serbo-Croatian is arguably a political construct, as is Croatian or, for that matter, any language in the world. A similar analogy could be drawn between the Croatian kajkavian dialect and Slovene language. Had politics drawn those two sets of dialects closer together, they might have been considered a single language, too. The topic of language with the writers from Dalmatia and Dubrovnik prior to the 19th century is somewhat blurred by the fact they by and large placed more emphasis on whether they were Slavic rather than Italic, given that Dalmatian city-states were then inhabited by those two main groups. There was less notable distinction being made between Croats and Serbs, and this, among other things, has been used as an argument to state that these people's literature is not solely Croatian heritage, thus undermining the argument that modern-day Croatian is based on old Croatian. However, the major part of intellectuals and writers from Dalmatia who used the štokavian dialect and were of Catholic faith had explicitly expressed Croatian national affiliation, as far as mid 1500s and 1600s, some three hundred years before the Serbo-Croatian ideology had appeared. Their loyalty was first and foremost to the Catholic Christendom, but when they professed ethnic identity, they called it "Slovin" and "Illyrian" (a sort of forerunner of Catholic baroque pan-Slavism) and Croat — these 30-odd writers in the span of ca. 350 years themselves never mentioned Serb ethnic affiliation any time. A Croatian follower of Vuk Karadžić, Ivan Broz, noted that the Serbian affiliation was as foreign as Macedonian and Greek appellation at this time. Vatroslav Jagić pointed out in 1864: : "As I have mentioned in the preface, history knows only two national names in these parts – the Croatian and Serbian. As far as Dubrovnik is concerned, the Serbian name was never in use; on the contrary, the Croatian name was frequently used and gladly referred to" : "At the end of the 15th century [in Dubrovnik and Dalmatia], sermons and poems were exquisitely crafted in the Croatian language by those men whose names are widely renowned by deep learning and piety." (From The History of the Croatian language, Zagreb, 1864.)

Phonology

Vowels

The Croatian vowel system is simple, with five long and five short vowels (all monophthongs), as well as the diphthong . Although meaningful, the difference between long and short vowels is not represented in Croatian orthography. The five vowel qualities are as follows. (A schwa also occurs marginally.) The syllabic trill can also be either long or short, and can carry the rising or falling pitch accent (see next). Syllables before the pitch accent always have short vowels. Those after the pitch accent may have either long or short vowels.

Pitch accent

Croatian has a two-way pitch accent. When a syllable is stressed, it may have either a rising or a falling tone. Although the distinction is meaningful, it is not represented in Croatian orthography. In the descriptive literature, five diacritics are used that are specific to Croatian. They are: Lexical words (such as nouns) of one syllable always have falling tone. Words with two or more syllables may also have a falling tone, but (with the exception of foreign borrowings and interjections) only on the first syllable. Words of more than one syllable may instead have a rising tone, on any syllable but the last. Enclitics (little grammatical words which latch on to a preceding lexical word) never have tone. Proclitics (clitics which latch on to a following word), on the other had, may "steal" a falling tone (but not a rising tone or the vowel length) from the following word. The stolen accent may end up being either falling or rising on the proclitic: : eye, in the eye; : town, to town; : wood, but in the wood.

Consonants

The consonant system is more complicated, and its characteristic features are series of affricate and palatal consonants. As in English, voicedness is phonemic, but aspiration is not. In consonant clusters all consonants are either voiced or voiceless. All the consonants are voiced (if the last consonant is normally voiced) or voiceless (if the last consonant is normally voiceless). This rule does not apply to approximants — a consonant cluster may contain voiced approximants and voiceless consonants; as well as to foreign words (Washington would be transcribed as VašinGton/ВашинГтон), personal names and when consonants are not inside of one syllable. R can be syllabic, playing the role of a vowel in certain words (occasionally, it can even have a long accent). For example, the tongue-twister na vrh brda vrba mrda involves four words with syllabic r. A similar feature exists in Czech, Slovak and Macedonian. Very rare, l can be syllabic (in the name for the river "Vltava", 'l' is syllabic) as well as lj, m, n and nj in jargon.

Current events

Croatian language is today the official language of the Republic of Croatia and, along with Bosnian and Serbian, one of three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina. There isn't a single official definition of Croatian, but there exists an Institute for Croatian language and linguistics with a prescription department. The current rules of the language are generally laid out in the grammar books and dictionaries used in education facilities, such as the school curriculum prescribed by the Ministry of Education and the university programmes of the Faculty of Philosophy at the four main universities. The most prominent recent editions describing the rules of Croatian are:
- Hrvatski pravopis by Babić, Finka, Moguš
- Rječnik hrvatskoga jezika by Šonje et al.
- Hrvatska gramatika by Barić et al The Rječnik hrvatskoga jezika by Anić is often referenced, though not particularly purist. Also notable are the recommendations of Matica hrvatska, the national publisher and promoter of Croatian heritage, the Lexicographical institute "Miroslav Krleža", as well as the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

References

- Ivo Banac: Main Trends in the Croatian Language Question, YUP 1984
- Branko Franolić: A Historical Survey of Literary Croatian, Nouvelles editions latines, 1984
- Milan Moguš: A History of the Croatian Language, NZ Globus, 1995
- Miro Kačić: Croatian and Serbian: Delusions and Distortions, Novi Most, Zagreb 1997

External links

- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Croatian-english/ Croatian English Dictionary] from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition

Language history

- [http://www.hr/darko/etf/baska.html The Baška Tablet - precious stone of Croatian literacy]
- [http://www.hr/darko/etf/et03.html Croatian Glagolitic Script]
- [http://www.hr/darko/etf/et04.html Croatian Cyrillic Script]
- [http://www.hr/darko/etf/novi.html Croatian Glagolitic Manuscripts held outside of Croatia]
- [http://www.archaeology.net/language/liturgy/ Croatian language in liturgy]
- [http://public.srce.hr/staroslavenski-institut/en/home.html Old Church Slavonic Institute]
- [http://www.hic.hr/hrvatski/izdavalastvo/FOLIA.pdf FOLIA CROATICA-CANADIANA: Monumental study on all aspects of Croatian language history. A 243 pages long document in PDF format]
- [http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/cro/crolang.htm The Croatian Language Today], a lecture given by dr. Branko Franolić
- [http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/croatian_language.html Croatian language chronology]
- [http://www.ids-mannheim.de/prag/sprachvariation/fgvaria/croatian_lexical_changes.pdf Mario Grčević: Lexical changes in contemporary Croatian]
- [http://www.ids-mannheim.de/prag/sprachvariation/fgvaria/magisterarbeit_grcevic.pdf Mario Grčević: Die Entstehung der kroatischen Literatursprache], 200 pages long document in PDF format, published [http://www.ids-mannheim.de/prag/sprachvariation/publik.htm 1997]

General links

- [http://www.hr/hrvatska/language/index.en.htm Croatian language - basic phrases and general expressions]
- [http://hren.stillo.biz Online Croatian-English and English-Croatian Dictionary, over 200000 words, example sentences, advanced search options...]
- [http://www.ihjj.hr/ Institute of Croatian language and linguistics]
- [http://www.eudict.com/ Online English-Croatian & Croatian-English Dictionary]
- [http://www.taktikanova.hr/eh/ Online Croatian-English and English-Croatian Dictionary]
- [http://www.taktikanova.hr/dh/ Online Croatian-German and German-Croatian Dictionary]
- [http://eleaston.com/croatian.html Croatian language resources] Category:Languages of Croatia Category:Languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina Category:Languages of Vojvodina Category:Languages of Austria Category:Languages of Hungary Category:South Slavic languages ko:크로아티아어

Bulgarian language

Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Southern branch of the Slavic languages.

History

The development of the Bulgarian language may be divided into several historical periods. The prehistoric period (essentially proto-Slavic) occurred between the Slavonic invasion of the eastern Balkans and the mission of St. Cyril and St. Methodius to Great Moravia in the 860s. Old Bulgarian (9th to 11th century, also referred to as Old Church Slavonic) was the language used by St. Cyril, St. Methodius and their disciples to translate the Bible and other liturgical literature from Greek. Middle Bulgarian (12th to 15th century) was a language of rich literary activity and major innovations. Modern Bulgarian dates from the 16th century onwards; the present-day written language was standardized on the basis of the 19th-century Bulgarian vernacular. The historical development of the Bulgarian language can be described as a transition from a highly synthetic language (Old Bulgarian) to a typical analytic language (Modern Bulgarian) with Middle Bulgarian as a midpoint in this transition. Fewer than 20 words remain in Bulgarian from the language of the Bulgars, the Central Asian people who moved into present-day Bulgaria and eventually adopted the local Slavic language. The Bolgar language, a member of the Turkic language family or the Iranian language family (Pamir languages), is otherwise unrelated to Bulgarian. Old Bulgarian was the first Slavic language attested in writing. As Slavic linguistic unity lasted into late antiquity, in the oldest manuscripts this language was initially referred to as языкъ словяньскъ, "the Slavic language". In the Middle Bulgarian period this name was gradually replaced by the name языкъ блъгарьскъ, the "Bulgarian language". In some cases, the name языкъ блъгарьскъ was used not only with regard to the contemporary Middle Bulgarian language of the copyist but also to the period of Old Bulgarian and even to the mission of St. Cyril and St. Methodius in Great Moravia. A most notable example of anachronism is the Service of St. Cyril from Skopje (Скопски миней), a 13th century Middle Bulgarian manuscript from northern Macedonia according to which St. Cyril preached with "Bulgarian" books among the Moravian Slavs. The first mention of the language as the "Bulgarian language" instead of the "Slavonic language" comes in the work of the Greek clergy of the Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrid in the 11th century, for example in the Greek hagiography of Saint Clement of Ohrid by Theophylact of Ohrid (late 11th century). During the Middle Bulgarian period, the language underwent dramatic changes, losing the Old Slavonic case system, but preserving the rich verb system (while the development was exactly the opposite in most other Slavic languages) and developing a definite article. It was influenced by its non-Slavic neighbours in the Balkan linguistic union (mostly gramatically) and later also by the Turkish language, which had a dominant position in the Ottoman empire (mostly lexically). As a national revival occurred towards the end of the period of Ottoman rule (mostly during the 19th century), a modern Bulgarian literary language gradually emerged which drew heavily on Russian and Church Slavonic/Old Bulgarian and which later reduced the number of Turkish and other Balkanic loans. Modern Bulgarian was based essentially on the Eastern dialects of the language, but its pronunciation is in many respects a compromise between East and West Bulgarian (see especially the phonetic sections below).

General characteristics

Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic innovations that set it apart from other Slavic languages, such as the elimination of noun declension, the development of a suffixed definite article (possibly inherited from the Bulgar language), the lack of a verb infinitive, and the retention and further development of the proto-Slavic verb system. There are various verb forms to express nonwitnessed, retold, and doubtful action. Bulgarian is part of the Balkan linguistic union, which also includes the closely related Macedonian, Greek, Romanian, Albanian and some Serbian dialects. Most of these languages share some of the above-mentioned characteristics (e.g., definite article, infinitive loss, complicated verb system) and many more. The "nonwitnessed action" verb forms, pertaining to a mood known as renarrative mood, have been attributed to Turkish influences by most Bulgarian linguists. Morphohologically, they are obviously related to the perfect tenses, which are known in Bulgarian linguistic tradition as preliminary (предварителни) tenses.

Alphabet

In 886 AD, Bulgaria adopted the Glagolitic alphabet which was devised by the Byzantine missionaries Saint Cyril and Methodius in the 850s. The Glagolitic alphabet was gradually superseded in the following centuries by the Cyrillic alphabet, which was developed around the Preslav Literary School in the beginning of the 10th century. Most of the letters in the Cyrillic alphabet were borrowed from the Greek alphabet; those which had no Greek equivalents, however, represent simplified Glagolitic letters. Under the influence of printed books from Russia, the Russian "civil script" of Peter I (see Reforms of Russian orthography) replaced the old Middle Bulgarian/Church Slavonic script at the end of the 18th century. Several Cyrillic alphabets with 28 to 44 letters were used in the beginning and the middle of the 19th century during the efforts on the codification of Modern Bulgarian until an alphabet with 32 letters, proposed by Marin Drinov, gained prominence in the 1870s. The alphabet of Marin Drinov was used until the orthographic reform of 1945 when the letters yat called "double e"), and yus were removed from the alphabet. The present Bulgarian alphabet has 30 letters. The following table gives the letters of the Bulgarian alphabet, along with IPA values for the sound of each letter: ¹ softens consonants before 'o' Most letters in the Bulgarian alphabet stand for one specific sound and that sound only. Three letters stand for the single expression of combinations of sounds, namely щ (sht), ю (yu), and я (ya). Two sounds do not have separate letters assigned to them, but are expressed by the combination of two letters, namely дж (like j in Jack) and дз (dz). The letter ь is not pronounced, but it softens (palatalizes) any preceding consonant before the letter о. For questions regarding the transliteration of Bulgarian into English (Romanization), see the article Transliteration of Bulgarian into English.

Phonetics

Vowels

The Bulgarian vowel system consists of the following six vowels: The Bulgarian vowels may be grouped in three pairs according to their backness: front, central and back. All vowels are relatively lax, as in most other Slavic languages, and unlike the tense vowels, for example, in the Germanic languages. Unstressed vowels tend to be shorter and weaker compared to their stressed counterparts, the corresponding pairs of open and closed vowels approaching each other with a tendency to merge, although the coalescence is not always complete. The variation of the norm seems to be socially conditioned: on the one hand, the relative absence of reduction is intuitively associated with certain types of low-status (provincial, especially West Bulgarian, or Romani-influenced) speech; on the other hand the awareness of the distinctions is naturally perceived as a sign of literacy and education. The merger is, at least in nondialectal pronunciation, totally accomplished for and in all positions (except, occasionally and for some speakers, in a syllable immediately preceding another ). Unstressed also tends to be pronounced like (the difference is either minimal or nonexistent in pre-stress position and totally absent after stress), but the status of that coalescence is less clear, perhaps because post-stress is not very common in the first place. The considerable reduction of notwithstanding, similar coalescence of and is not allowed in formal speech and is definitely regarded as a provincial (East Bulgarian) feature; rather, unstressed and above all post-stress might occasionally approach a more front form of .

Semivowels

Bulgarian possesses one semivowel: , equivalent to the English in yes. The always im

Danube

Tributaries

Modern navigation

The Danube delta

Geology

Human history

Cultural significance

Economics of the Danube

Drinking Water

Navigation and transport

Fishing

Tourism

Notes

External links

Danube (disambiguation)

Slovak language

Alphabet

Pronunciation and spelling

Official transcriptions

Intuitive transcription for English speakers

Orthography

Syntax

Morphology

Articles (Členy):

Nouns (Podstatné mená)

Adjectives (Prídavné mená)

Pronouns (Zámená)

Numerals (Číslovky)

Verbs (Slovesá)

Adverbs (Príslovky)

Prepositions (Predložky)

Conjunctions (Spojky), Particles (Častice), Interjections (Citoslovce)

Vocabulary

History

Relationships to other languages

Differences between the Slovak and Czech languages

Dialects

Trivia

See also

External links

Croatian language

Early development

Modern language and standardisation

Illyrian period

The Serbian connection

Unification and separation with Serbian

A note on Serbo-Croatian

Phonology

Vowels

Pitch accent

Consonants

Current events

References

See also

External links

Language history

General links

Bulgarian language

History

General characteristics

Alphabet

Phonetics

Vowels

Semivowels