Slovene phonology

This article is about the phonology and phonetics of standard Slovene.
Consonants.
Slovene has 24 distinctive consonant phonemes, of those only 21 are more common:
 has several allophones depending on context.
The preposition "v" is always bound to the following word and it is always pronounced as except when standing alone out of a sentence (the pronunciation then is ).
Under certain (somewhat unpredictable) circumstances, historical at the end of a syllable has become (or after ). This change has occurred in the endings of all past participles ending in vowel + "l". 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.
 and have different pronunciations before some sonorants:
Similarly, and also change their pronunciations:
Bigger dialectal variations.
Slovene has many dialects, which have its own consonant changes. Some of the changes that impact only one consonant are already listed above and more general changes that impact more consonants, as well as two distinctions that are not present in standard language anymore are listed here.
Palatal sonorants.
Alpine Slovene, the transitional language between Proto-Slavic and Slovene, had five palatal consonants: j , ĺ , ń , ŕ and t’ . Sonorants , and all turned into sequences , and , respectively if followed by a vowel. Before a consonant, merged with in all dialects, while still retains its palatal pronunciation in Upper Savinja, Inner Carniolan, Karst, Soča, Istrian, Upper Carniolan around Bohinj, South White Carniolan, Kostel and southern part of Gail Valley dialects and retains the pronunciation in Resian, Torre Valley, Natisone Valley, Karst, Inner Carniolan, Istrian, Brda, Soča, Gail Valley, Rosen Valley, Upper Carniolan around Bohinj, Prekmurje, Kostel and South White Carniolan dialects. In other dialects they either merged with their non-palatal counterparts, merged with or turned into sequences and (). Therefore, Standard Slovene allows three different pronunciations in this case:
In the orthography, former , and are always represented by the sequences , and , respectively, except before a consonant is represented by .
tʼ–č distinction.
The tʼ–č distinction is one of the two distinctions that was present in Alpine Slovene and is still present in some dialects, but is not present in standard language anymore. Dialects that still have this distinction (Resian and Torre Valley dialects, some Soča, Inner Carniolan and Istrian microdialects) mostly do not pronounce the phoneme as anymore, but as , which was also the standard pronunciation during the Reformation. Therefore, this distinction is either dialectal or obsolete. In other dialects, merged with . Examples, where the difference can be observed are "sveča" (with distinction) (without distinction) 'candle', "teči" (with distinction) (without distinction) 'to run' and "hočem" (with distinction) (without distinction) '(I) want'.
Shvapanye, elkanye, vekanye and *ł.
In Alpine Slavic, *ł was an allophone of *l before consonants, back vowels and , and before a stop. Some dialects still retain the original pronunciation (e.g., Horjul, Lower Carniolan, Inner Carniolan and Upper Savinja dialects. Shvapanye () is the pronunciation of and as or before all back vowels, consonants and (), which is present in the Carinthian dialects, Upper Carniolan dialect, some northern Lower Carniolan microdialects and the Čabranka dialect. In standard language, shvapanye is only somewhat present, as described above. Elkanye () and vekanye () is the hypercorrect way of pronouncing words, without shvapanye.
Slekanye.
Slekanye () is a phenomenon mostly limited to slovenized Germans, which live in around Rut (Bača subdialect) and is the merge of alveolar and post-alveolar fricatives and affricates into one phoneme, which is pronounced somewhere in between (, and for and , and , and and , respectively). Apart from that area, it is also known for a part of the Torre Valley dialect.
tl/dl–t/d distinction.
Proto-Slavic consonant clusters *tl and *dl simplified quite soon in central, southern and eastern areas while it disappeared later from western and northern dialects. Today, the only dialect that still retains this distinction is the Gail Valley dialect. The clusters "tl" and "dl" that are nowadays present in the standard language became such after the omission of *ь/*ъ between the consonants. The distinction can be seen in the word "vile" (Gail Valley dialect without any other dialectal changes) (all other dialects).
Consonant changes.
The pronunciation of a consonant can be influenced by its surroundings, which is not necessarily reflected in the orthography.
First Slavic palatalization.
The first Slavic palatalization in nowadays Slovene exists only for , , , and , which turn into , , , and , respectively:
Second Slavic palatalization.
The second Slavic palatalization in today's Slovene exists only for and , which turn into and , respectively:
Iotation.
Iotation is the change of a consonant when follows and they merge together in one or more sounds:
Dissimilation.
When a stop or affricate is followed by another stop or affricate, it dissimilates into a fricative, e. g. "bedak 'idiot' + "-ski" → "bedaški" 'idiotic' and k" 'to' + "grobu" 'grave' → "h grobu" 'to the grave'.
Assimilation.
There are two types of assimilation in Slovene; a consonant can either match the following consonant by voice or by the place of articulation (or both).
All voiced obstruents are devoiced at the end of prosodic 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. The consonant pairs are given in this table:
In this context, and may occur as voiced allophones of and , respectively (e.g., "vŕh drevésa" 'top of a tree'), while and would be hardly ever used allophones of and , respectively. Consonant clusters in non-assimilated words can be excluded from this rule, for example "podcast" 'podcast'.
When a dental/alevolar fricative or affricate are followed by a postalveolar fricative, affricate or //, they usually become postalveolar; e.g., "stric Žan" 'uncle, whose name is Žan' or or .
Nasal , also match the place of articulation with the following consonant: "Istanbul" 'Istanbul' , "informacija" 'information' , "banka" 'bank' (but they do not change change articulation before post-alveolar consonants and also does not have allophone ).
Gemination of consonants.
Several consonant clusters also get simplified into geminated consonants. In fast speech, however, they change into usual, non-geminated consonants.
Vowels.
Slovene was long thought to have an eight-vowel system, however newer research (done mostly by Peter Jurgec) suggests that the number of vowels is different between tonal and non-tonal varieties of Slovene which have nine and eleven vowels, respectively.
Jurgec proposes the existence of a ninth vowel in tonemic variety that in traditional pronunciation (see below under Prosody) would rather be analyzed as a short . However, since more recent studies indicate that native speakers do not actually phonemically distinguish long and short vowels and yet the distinction between and is quite consistently perceived by tonal speakers, 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 (gen.)'. 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 (see below), which is "parallel to the pattern for the [, and ]." 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 "[d]escriptions of schwa distribution are offer[ed] 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."
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 . These allophones have neither advanced nor retracted tongue root.
In most cases, unstressed vowels are nowadays written as before the stress and as after the stress, however old way of writing them as everywhere is still very common (e. g., in Toporišič 2001).
In some loanwords, sonorant clusters may be present that are required to form a new syllable in Slovene. Tonal speakers insert , the same way as happens with sonorant + non-sonorant clusters, but non-tonal speakers form a syllabic consonant, except if the second sonorant is ; then is inserted in both varieties: "film" (tonal speakers) (non-tonal speakers) 'film, movie'.
When unstressed are followed by , they can be pronounced together as .
In non-assimilated loanwords, german , , , are also allowed (e.g., 'Munich', 'Goethe', 'Cologne', 'Ravensbrück'). When the word becomes assimilated or any affixes are added, they become vernacularized. The pronunciation, however, varies widely between speakers depending on their knowledge of German. Here, the phonemes are given for a really educated person and the first change to go in pronunciation of qualitatively different that .
In the colloquial spoken language, unstressed and most short stressed vowels tend to be reduced or elided. For example, "kȕp" ('heap') &gt; , "právimo" ('we say') &gt; .
Syllable breaks.
Standard Slovene does not really have diphthongs. The closest to a diphthong are combinations of vowel + or . In all other cases, two following vowels form two different syllables, e. g. "poenostaviti" 'simplify' . Often, these clusters simplify into one vowel (which is reflected in the orthography) or insert (always after , which is not necessarily reflected in the orthography) or . When two vowels are pronounced one after another, they are usually pronounced as would be expected. Exceptions are unstressed and , which are pronounced as usual or turn into and , respectively if preceded by a vowel, e.g, "bo imela" '(she) will have' or .
Dialectal variation.
Number of vowels varies drastically between dialects. For example, Tolmin dialect has 3 long vowels, while some Carinthian microdialects can have 15 or even more long vowels. Alpine Slavic had three distinct long e-like vowels (which are in standard language all represented by ) and two distinct long o-like vowels (which are in standard language all represented by . However, most dialects at least differentiate between one e-like vowel and the other two. In fact, Standard Slovene has one of the most simplified vowel systems of all dialects. Also not common for other dialects is that it does not contain any diphthongs as they all monophthongized. The only vowels that consistently merged with other vowels is *ə̄, which turned into in the west and south (and in standard language) and to in the north and east.
While long vowels tend to be diphthongized, short vowels tend to be reduced because of modern vowel reduction, which is also common in colloquial spoken language. Apart from centralization, is commonly pronounced as (akanye) or as (ikanye) and is commonly pronounced as (akanye) or (ukanye).
The most common pronunciation difference between speakers is vs. and vs. as the dialectal distribution is inconsistent with the distribution in Standard Slovene. This influences the way speakers of such dialects speak Standard Slovene.
A new change that is currently happening most notably around Ljubljana is the pronunciation of as or , eliminating another distinction between vowels.
vs..
Historically, is the pronunciation of "sem" in the meaning 'here' and for "sem" in the meaning '(I) am', but due to modern vowel reduction, which is the most prominent in monosyllabic words, and the recent development of → , the roles are nowadays mostly switched, i. e. '(I) am' is now pronounced and 'here' is now pronounced .
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.
Accent shifts.
Standard Slovene has undergone two accent shifts since Alpine Slovene. The first one, which happened in the 15th century, is from open short final syllables to the mid-close syllable before in words with two syllables, e. g. "žena" 'wife' → . The original accentuation is retained in a part of Rosen Valley, Resian, Natisone Valley, Torre Valley and southern part of Soča dialects and is considered obsolete in Standard Slovene.
The second accent shift was from short final syllable to the mid vowel in the syllable before, e. g. "megla" 'fog' → (→ ). This change did not happen in all the aforementioned dialects, as well as Upper and Lower Carniolan dialects. Standard language allows both accents, but the unshifted one is considered archaic or high literary, as with the pronunciation of as or , the shift occurs also in Upper and Lower Carniolan dialects.
Other two common accent shifts, that are not present in Standard Slovene are from all short final ( → ) and from all long circumflex final ( → ). The first one happened in Tolmin, Cerkno, Črni Vrh, Horjul, Karst, Inner Carniolan, Istrian, Kostel, Čabranka, South White Carniolan and North White Carniolan dialects, as well as all Styrian dialects, except Lower Sava Valley dialect and the second one happened in Gail Valley dialect without the subdialect, Resian, Torre Valley, Črni Vrh, Poljane, eastern part of Rosen Valley, Jaun, Mežica, North Pohorje–Remšnik, Upper Savinja, Central Savinja, South Pohorje, Kostel, Čabranka, North White Carniolan and South White Carniolan dialects.
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 in a north–south band in the center of the country (Gail Valley, Rosen Valley, Ebriach, most of Jaun Valley, Natisone Valley, Torre Valley, Soča, a lesser part of Tolmin, Upper Carniolan without the subdialect, most of Selca, Horjul, Poljane, and Lower Carniolan dialects, a well as southwestern part of South White Carniolan dialect). Dialects in the eastern and south-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.
Tone is differentiated only on the stressed and on the last syllables, where it is the opposite of the tone that stressed syllable has (except in some prepositions). If last syllable is stressed, then they merge and form rising (acute) or falling (circumflex) tone; e.g., "pot" / 'path'. Other vowels have neutral (mid) tone. vowels are mid tone in none-tonemic variety.
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 (note that unstressed vowels have diacritical marks often omitted):
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 four rows merge, as do the next three. 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 .
Secondary stress.
Longer words, particularly loanwords, also have secondary stress. It always appears in words and word clusters when words do not have primary stress. Secondary stressed is usually every second syllable before and after the syllable with primary stress; e.g., "aerofotogrametrija" 'aerophotogrammetry'. Secondarily stressed open-mid vowels also become close-mid.
Sample.
The sample text is a reading of the first sentence of The North Wind and the Sun.
Slovene national phonetic transcription.
The given phonetic transcription is how the pronunciation would be written in Slovene dictionaries, using Slovene national phonetic transcription. Such transcription needs the usual spelling of the word because it does not have a one-to-one correspondence.
Sẹ́verni vẹ̑tər in sȏnce sta se prepírala, katẹ́ri od njíju je močnẹ̑jši, ko je mímo prišə̏u̯ popọ́tnik, zavȋt v tópeu̯ plášč.
Orthographic version.
Such transcription is found in dictionaries meant for non-native speakers and the usual spelling of the word can be reconstructed. For any use on English Wikipedia, such transcription is favored over the one found in Slovene dictionaries.
Sẹ́verni vẹ̑tər in sȏnce sta se prepírala, katẹ́ri od njíju je močnẹ̑jši, ko je mímo prišə̏ł popọ́tnik, zavȋt v tópeł plášč.