A West Slavic language closely related to Czech — the official language of Slovakia, often considered the most central Slavic tongue in mutual intelligibility.
Where it’s spoken
Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, with minority speakers in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia (Vojvodina), Romania, and Ukraine. Slovak-American and Slovak-Canadian communities trace back to 19th-century emigration. Slovak is mutually intelligible with Czech and quite intelligible with Polish and other West Slavic languages — it is sometimes called the “Esperanto of the Slavic world.”
What it sounds like
Slovak has thirteen vowels (including a falling diphthong system) and the syllabic consonants l, ĺ, r, ŕ. Stress is consistently on the first syllable. It preserves several archaic Slavic features Czech lost, and lacks the famous Czech ř.
How it’s written
Slovak uses the Latin alphabet with háček (č, ď, š, ť, ž), acute (á, é, í, ý, ó, ú, ŕ, ĺ), circumflex (ô), and umlaut (ä). The orthography was systematized in the 1840s by Ľudovít Štúr based on Central Slovak dialects.
History
Slovak emerged as a written standard in the 18th–19th centuries during the Slovak National Revival. It was administratively suppressed under Magyarization policies until 1918. Czechoslovakia (1918–1992) maintained both Czech and Slovak as official.
Find more languages by letter
Slovak starts with S and ends with K. Browse other languages along the same letter.
Languages that contain a letter from "Slovak":