Slovak alphabet Slovenská abeceda
Script type	Alphabet
Period	18th century – present
Official script	Slovakia
Languages	Slovak
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Phoenician alphabet Greek alphabet Old Italic scripts Latin alphabet Czech alphabet Slovak alphabet
Unicode
Unicode range	Subset ofLatin
This article containsphonetic transcriptions in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. For the distinction between[ ],/ / and ⟨ ⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The firstSlovak orthography was proposed and created by theSlovakCatholic priestAnton Bernolák (1762–1813) in hisDissertatio philologico-critica de litteris Slavorum, used in the six-volumeSlovak-Czech-Latin-German-Hungarian Dictionary (1825–1927) and used primarily by Slovak Catholics.

The standard orthography of theSlovak language is immediately based on the standard developed byĽudovít Štúr in 1844 and reformed byMartin Hattala in 1851 with the agreement of Štúr. The then-current (1840s) form of the central Slovak dialect was chosen as the standard. After Hattala's reform, the standardized orthography remained mostly unchanged.

The Slovak alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet with 46 letters including fourdiacritics (ˇ(mäkčeň), ´(acute accent), ¨(diaeresis/umlaut), which makes it the longest Slavic and European alphabet.

In IPA transcriptions of Slovak,[tʂ,dʐ,ʂ,ʐ] are often written with ⟨tʃ,dʒ,ʃ,ʒ⟩, i.e. as if they were palato-alveolar. The palato-alveolar[tʃ,dʒ,ʃ,ʒ] exist in Slovak, but only as allophones of/tʂ,dʐ,ʂ,ʐ/, which are normallyretroflex, as inPolish.

The following digraphs are not considered to be a part of the Slovak alphabet:

• ⟨ia⟩, which stands for therising-opening diphthong[ɪɐ], similar to the/jæ/ sequence in English (as inyap/jæp/), rather than the common[ɪɐ] realization of the underlying/ɪr/ in the German wordWirt[vɪɐt] 'host', which is falling;
• ⟨ie⟩, which stands for the rising-opening diphthong[ɪe], similar to the/jɛ/ sequence in English (as inyes/jɛs/);
• ⟨iu⟩, which stands for the rising-backing diphthong[ɪu], similar to the/juː/ sequence in English (as inuse/juːz/) (but with a short ending point), never as a falling-backing diphthong as in someWelsh English new[nɪu].

In loanwords, all three can stand for the disyllabic sequences[i.a,i.e,i.u], rather than the rising diphthongs. The starting points of those diphthongs are written with ⟨ɪ⟩, rather than ⟨j⟩ (as in Spanishtierra[ˈtjera]) because[ɪɐ,ɪe,ɪu] count as a long vowel in the rhythmical rule described below, unlike the phonological consonant/j/ followed by a short vowel.[ʊɔ] also counts as a long vowel, though there is no *[wɔ] sequence to rival it, as[w] never appears before a vowel within the same word.

The primary principle of Slovak spelling is thephonemic principle. The secondary principle is themorphological principle: forms derived from the same stem are written in the same way even if they are pronounced differently. An example of this principle is the assimilation rule (see below). The tertiary principle is theetymological principle, which can be seen in the use ofi after certain consonants and ofy after other consonants, although bothi andy are pronounced the same way.

Finally, the rarely appliedgrammatical principle is present when, for example, the basic singular form and plural form of masculine adjectives are written differently with no difference in pronunciation (e.g. pekný = nice – singular versus pekní = nice – plural).

Mostforeign words receive Slovak spelling immediately or after some time. For example, "weekend" is spelledvíkend[ˈʋiːkent], "software" -softvér[ˈsɔftʋeːr], "gay" -gej[ɡej] (both not exclusively)^{[clarification needed]}, and "quality" is spelledkvalita. Personal and geographical names from other languages using Latin alphabets keep their original spelling unless a fully Slovak form of the name exists (e.g.Londýn[ˈlɔndiːn] for "London").

The letterse, i, í, ie, ia trigger thepalatal realization of the preceding D, N, T, L with few exceptions when the letters denote the ordinaryalveolar phonetic value. To accelerate writing, a rule has been introduced that the frequent sequences[ɟe],[ce],[ɲe],[ʎe],[ɟi],[ci],[ɲi],[ʎi],[ɟiː],[ciː],[ɲiː],[ʎiː],[ɟɪe],[cɪe],[ɲɪe],[ʎɪe][ɟɪɐ],[cɪɐ],[ɲɪɐ],[ʎɪɐ] are written without a mäkčeň asde, te, ne, le, di, ti, ni, li, dí, tí, ní, lí, die, tie, nie, lie, dia, tia, nia, lia.

Some exceptions are as follows:

1. foreign words (e.g.telefón is pronounced[ˈtelefɔːn])
2. the following words:ten[ten] 'that',jeden[ˈjeden] 'one',vtedy[ˈftedi] 'then',teraz[ˈteras] 'now'
3. nominative masculine plural endings of pronouns and adjectives do not turn the preceding d, n, t intopalatal consonants (e.g.tí odvážni mladí muži[tiːˈɔdvaːʐniˈmladiːˈmuʐi], the/those brave young men)
4. in adjectival endings, both the long é and the short e (shortened by the rhythmical rule) do not make the preceding d, n, t palatal, so that bothzelené stromy[ˈzeleneːˈstrɔmi] 'green trees' andkrásne stromy[ˈkraːsneˈstrɔmi] 'beautiful trees' feature the alveolar[n], rather than the alveolo-palatal[ɲ].
5. However, the adverbkrásne[ˈkraːsɲe] (meaning 'beautifully') does feature the alveolo-palatal[ɲ], resulting in aheterophonic homograph withkrásne[ˈkraːsne] 'beautiful' (inflected), which features the same alveolar[n] as the uninflected formkrásny[ˈkraːsni], which has an unambiguous spelling. There are some more examples of heterophonic homographs like this.

When a voicedobstruent (b, d, ď, dz, dž, g, h, z, ž) is at the end of the word before a pause, it is pronounced as its voiceless counterpart (p, t, ť, c, č, k, ch, s, š, respectively). For example,pohyb is pronounced[ˈpɔɦip] andprípad is pronounced[ˈpriːpat].

When "v" is at the end of the syllable, it is pronounced as labio-velar[w]. For example,kov[kɔw] (metal),kravský[ˈkrawskiː] (cow - adjective), butpovstať[ˈpɔfstac] (uprise), because the/v/ is morpheme-initial (po-vstať).

The feminine singular instrumental suffix-ou is also pronounced[ɔw], as if it were spelled-ov.

Consonant clusters containing both voiced and voiceless elements are entirely voiced if the last consonant is voiced, or entirely voiceless if the last consonant is voiceless. For example,otázka is pronounced[ˈɔtaːska] andvzchopiť sa is pronounced[ˈfsxɔpicsa]. This rule applies also over the word boundary. One example is as follows:prísť domov[ˈpriːzɟˈdɔmɔw] (to come home) andviac jahôd[ˈʋɪɐdzˈjaɦʊɔt] (more strawberries). The voiced counterpart of "ch"/x/ is[ɣ], and the unvoiced counterpart of "h"/ɦ/ is[x].

One of the most important changes in Slovak orthography in the 20th century was in 1953 whens began to be written asz where pronounced[z] inprefixes (e.g.smluva intozmluva[ˈzmluʋa] as well assväz intozväz[zʋɛɐs]). The phonemic principle has been given priority over the etymological principle in this case.

The rhythmical rule, also known as the rule of "rhythmical shortening", states that 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 one within the same word. If two long syllables were to occur next to each other, the second one is to be made short. This rule hasmorphophonemic implications for declension (e.g.žen-ám[ˈʐenaːm] buttráv-am[ˈtraːʋam]) and conjugation (e.g.nos-ím[ˈnɔsiːm] butsúd-im). Several exceptions of this rule exist.^[1] It is typical of literary Slovak, and does not appear inCzech or in some Slovak dialects.

Theacute mark (in Slovak "dĺžeň", "prolongation mark" or "lengthener") indicates length (e.g. í =[iː]). This mark may appear on any vowel except "ä" (wide "e", široké "e" in Slovak). It may also appear above the consonants "l" and "r", indicating the long syllabic[l̩ː] and[r̩ː] sounds.

Thecircumflex ("vokáň") exists only above the letter "o". It turns the o into adiphthong (see above).

Theumlaut ("prehláska", "dve bodky" = two dots) is only used above the letter "a". It indicates an opening diphthong[ɛɐ], similar to GermanHerz[hɛɐts] 'heart' (when it is not pronounced[hɛʁts], with a consonantal/r/).

Thecaron (in Slovak "mäkčeň", "palatalization mark" or "softener") indicates a change of alveolar fricatives, affricates, and plosives into either retroflex or palatal consonants, in informal Slovak linguistics often called just "palatalization". Eight consonants can bear a mäkčeň. Not all "normal" consonants have a counterpart with mäkčeň:

• In printed texts, the mäkčeň is printed in two forms: (1) č, dž, š, ž, ň and (2) ľ, ď, ť (looking more like an apostrophe), but this is just a convention. In handwritten texts, it usually always appears in the first form.
• Phonetically, two forms of "palatalization" exist: ľ, ň, ď, ť arepalatal, while č, dž, š, ž areretroflex (which, phonetically speaking, is not "soft" but "hard").

The Slovak alphabet is historical available within theISO/IEC 8859-2 "Latin-2" encoding, which generally supports Eastern European languages. All vowels, but none of the specific consonants (that is, no č, ď, ľ, ĺ, ň, ŕ, š, ť, ž) are available within the "Latin-1" encoding, which generally supports only Western European languages.

Today is practical preferring Unicode (practicalUTF-8) and often with content of the operations system Windows bothWindows-1250.

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