Slovene phonology

This article is about the phonology and phonetics of standard Slovene.

Consonants

Slovene has 21 distinctive consonant phonemes.

Slovene consonant phonemes

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Postalveolar	Dorsal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive	voiceless	p	t		k
	voiced	b	d		ɡ
Affricate	voiceless		ts	tʃ
	voiced		dz	dʒ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s	ʃ	x
	voiced		z	ʒ
Approximant		ʋ	l		j
Flap			ɾ

• /m, p, b/ are bilabial, whereas /f, ʋ/ are labiodental.
• /t, d, ts, s, z/ are dental [t̪, d̪, t̪s̪, s̪, z̪], i.e. /t, d/ are laminal denti-alveolar, while /ts, s, z/ are dentalized laminal alveolar, pronounced with the blade of the tongue very close to the upper front teeth, with the tip of the tongue resting behind lower front teeth.
• /n, l, ɾ/ are alveolar. The first two are laminal denti-alveolar [n̪, l̪] before dental consonants. In addition, /n/ is velar [ŋ] before velar consonants, and it merges with /m/ to a labiodental [ɱ] before labiodental consonants.
• /ɾ/ is uvular in a number of Upper Carniolan and Carinthian dialects.
• /k/ is usually pronounced a bit more aspirated and in becomes fully aspirated /kʰ/ before close vowels.
• /ɾ/ and /l/ may be syllabic, but they are usually described as the sequence /əɾ/ and /əl/ (with an epenthetic [ə]). Jones (2002) found that a vocalic segment similar to [ə] occurs before (and occasionally after) both syllabic and non-syllabic /ɾ/, and that it is shorter than epenthetic [ə], leading to the conclusion that this is not epenthetic [ə], but simply a feature of rhotic consonant production in Slovene.
• /dʒ/ and /dz/ as a phoneme only appear in loanwords, such as džez [ˈdʒɛ̂s] 'jazz' and dzeta [ˈdzéːtà] 'zeta'.

All voiced obstruents are devoiced at the end of 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. In this context, [v], [ɣ] and [dz] may occur as voiced allophones of /f/, /x/ and /ts/, respectively (e.g. vŕh drevésa [ˈʋə̂ɾɣ dɾɛˈʋéːsà]).

/ʋ/ has several allophones depending on context.

• Before a vowel, pronunciation is labiodental, [ʋ].
• Before or after a vowel, pronunciation is bilabial [u̯] and forms a diphthong.
• At the beginning of a syllable, before a consonant (for example in vsi 'all'), the pronunciation varies more widely by speaker and area. Many speakers convert /ʋ/ into a full vowel [u] in this position. For those speakers that retain a consonantal pronunciation, it pre-labializes the following consonant. Thus, vsi may be pronounced as disyllabic [uˈsî] or monosyllabic [ˈʷsî].

The preposition v is always bound to the following word; however its phonetic realization follows the normal phonological rules for /ʋ/.

The sequences /lj/, /nj/ and /ɾj/ occur only before a vowel. Before a consonant or word-finally, they are reduced to [l], [lʲ] or [lː], [n] [nʲ] or [nː], and [ɾ] respectively. This is reflected in the spelling in the case of /ɾj/, but not for /lj/ and /nj/. The reduction of non-prevocalic /lj/ and /nj/ occurs in standard Slovene, but not for certain dialects, where speakers use [ʎ] and [ɲ] in this position instead.

Under certain (somewhat unpredictable) circumstances, historical /l/ at the end of a syllable has become [u̯] or /w/ after /ɾ/. This change has occurred in the endings of all past participles not ending in vowel + l. For many derivatives of words ending in [u̯] that historically had /l/, both [l] and [u̯] can be used, sometimes depending on the context it is being used in.

/p/ and /b/ have different pronunciations before some sonorants:

• Before /m/, pronunciation is nasal, [pⁿ] and [bⁿ], respectively.
• Before /f/ and /ʋ/, pronunciation is labiodental, [p̪] and [b̪], respectively.

Similarly, /t/ and /d/ also change their pronunciations:

• Before /n/, the pronunciation is nasal, [tⁿ] and [dⁿ], respectively.
• Before /l/, they become lateral stops, [tˡ] and [dˡ], respectively.

Several consonant clusters also get simplified into geminated consonants. In fast speech, however, they change into usual, non-geminated consonants.

• When two or (rarely) more of the same consonats are pronounced one after another, they become geminated, taking the allophone of the first one, e. g. brezzob 'toothless' [brɛˈzːôp]. Stops, affricates, [w] and [ʍ], the latter two only after [u̯] can be geminated or pronounced seperately, e. g. oddati 'to hand in' [ɔdˈdàːtí] or [ɔˈdːàːtí], siv vzorec 'gray pattern' [ˈsîːu̯ ˈwzóːɾə̀ts] or [ˈsîːˈu̯ːzóːɾə̀ts] (of course vzorec can also be acute).
• When a dental/alveolar stop is followed by a dental/alveolar affricate, then they can be pronounced seperately or combine into a geminated affricate, e. g. od čebele 'from a bee' [ʔɔt tʃɛˈbéːlɛ̀] or [ʔɔtʃːɛˈbéːlɛ̀].
• When a dental/alveolar stop or affricate is followed by a dental/alveolar fricative, they combine together into a geminated affricate or are pronounced seperately, e. g. podse 'under itself' [ˈpóːtsɛ̀] or [ˈpóːcːɛ̀].
• When a dental/aleolar fricative or affricate are followed by a postalveolar fricative or affricate, they usually become postalveolar, e. g. stric Žan 'uncle, whose name is Žan' [ˈstrîːdzˈʒâːn] or [ˈstrîːdʒˈʒâːn] or [ˈstrîːˈdʒːâːn].

In some loanwords, sonorant clusters may be present that are required to form a new syllable iin Slovene. Tonal speakers insert [ə], the same way as happens with sonorant + non-sonorant clusters, but non-tonal speakers form a syllabic consonant, except if the second sonorant is [ɾ], where it follows the usual pattern: film [ˈfìːlə́m] (tonal speakers) [ˈfiːlm̩] (non-tonal speakers) 'film, movie'.

Vowels

Vowels of Slovene, from Šuštaršič, Komar & Petek (1999:137). /ʌ/ is not shown.

Slovene has an eight-vowel (according to Peter Jurgec nine-vowel) system, in comparison to the five-vowel system of Serbo-Croatian.

Slovene vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e	ə	o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Near-open		(ʌ)
Open		a

• Stressed front vowels are in most words pronounced as lax [ɪ] when /r/ follows, so that e.g. mira 'myrrh' is pronounced [ˈmɪ̀ːɾá] and večer 'evening' is pronounced [ʋɛˈt͡ʃɪ̂ːɾ],but loanwords are exceptions, such as virus [ˈʋíːɾus] and [ˈʋɛ́ːɾa].
• If a vowel appears at the end of a word, a glottal stop /ʔ/ is inserted before: ura [ˈʔúːɾà] 'clock, watch', rt [ˈʔə̂ɾt] 'cape, headland'.
• Vowels /ɛ/, /ɔ/, /ɪ/ and /a/ (but not /ʌ/) are pronounced with retracted tongue root while others with advanced tongue root.

Jurgec proposes the existence of a ninth vowel /ʌ/ in tonemic variety that in traditional pronunciation (see below under Prosody) would rather be analyzed as a short /a/. However, since more recent studies indicate that native speakers do not actually phonemically distinguish long and short vowels and yet the distinction between /ʌ/ and /a/ 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 /ʌ/ can only appear in the word-final stressed syllable before the syllable coda, as in čas [ˈtʃʌ̂s] 'time'. Due to the restrictions stated above, the open /a/ usually appears in its place in other declinational forms of the same word: časa [ˈtʃàːsá], not [ˈtʃʌ̀ːsá], 'time (gen.)'. The analysis as two different phonemes is also reinforced by the fact that in some words the phoneme /a/ appears in the very same position that would permit /ʌ/, leading to a phonemic contrast: pas [ˈpâs], not [ˈpʌ̂s], 'belt'.

Jurgec also states that in the tonemic varieties of the language, the near-open vowel /ʌ/ can carry only the high tone (see below), which is "parallel to the pattern for the [/ɛ/, /ɔ/ and /ə/]." He also notes that similarly to /ʌ/, the schwa /ə/ 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 /ʌ/ "behaves in a systematic way within the vowel system of Slovenian."

According to Jurgec (2007), /ə/ 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."

The dialectal distribution of /e/ vs. /ɛ/ and /o/ vs. /ɔ/ is inconsistent with the distribution in Standard Slovene. This influences the way speakers of such dialects speak Standard Slovene.

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 /ɛ/ and /e/, and between /ɔ/ and /o/ 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 [ɛ, ɔ], while the unstressed variants are, broadly speaking, true-mid vowels [e̞, o̞]. In fact, however, the unstressed mid vowels have two realizations:

• Lowered close-mid (between close-mid and true-mid) [e̞, o̞] before a stressed syllable (as in velikan 'giant' and oglas 'advertisement').
• Raised open-mid (between true-mid and open-mid) [ɛ̝, ɔ̝] after a stressed syllable (as in medved 'bear' and potok 'stream').

The unstressed mid vowels are never as close as the stressed close-mid vowels /e, o/ and never as open as the stressed open-mid vowels /ɛ, ɔ/. However, Šuštaršič, Komar & Petek (1999) report true-mid allophones [e̞, o̞] of the close-mid vowels /e, o/ occurring in the sequences /ej/ and /ou̯/, 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 /e, o/ is that these symbols are easier to write than /ɛ, ɔ/. These allophones have neither advanced nor retracted tongue root.

When unstressed /ə, i, e/ are followed by [u̯], they can be pronounced together as [u]. When two vowels are pronounced one after another, they are usually pronounced the same. Exceptions are unstressed /i/ and /u̯/, which are pronounced as usual or turn into [j] and [u̯], respectively.

In loanwords, /y/, /ø/ and /œ/ are also allowed, e. g. [ˈmýːnxə̀n] 'Munich', [ˈgǿːtɛ̀] 'Goethe', [ˈkœ̂ln] 'Cologne', but only without any affixes added.

In the colloquial spoken language, unstressed and most short stressed vowels tend to be reduced or elided. For example, kȕp ('heap') > [kə̂p], právimo ('we say') > [ˈpɾâu̯mó].

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:

• A non-final syllable that bears stress will automatically have a long vowel. Conversely, at most one vowel in a Slovene word is long, and it automatically bears the stress.
• If a word has no long vowels, the stress usually falls on the final syllable. However, a limited number of words have non-final stress on short syllables.
• Schwa /ə/ can also be stressed non-finally, but has no length distinctions.

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.

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 (the Upper and Lower Carniolan dialect groups, part of the Carinthian dialect group, and some dialects in the Littoral dialect group). 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:

• A low-pitch contour, also known as "acute". It is indicated with an acute diacritic ⟨é⟩ on long syllables, a grave ⟨è⟩ on short syllables.
• A high-pitch contour, also known as "circumflex". It is indicated with an inverted breve diacritic ⟨ȇ⟩ on long syllables, a double grave ⟨ȅ⟩ on short syllables.

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 [ˈpǒːt] / [ˈpôːt] 'path'. Other vowels have neutral (mid) tone.

Not all types of syllables have a distinction between the two tones:

• All long vowels distinguish the two tones.
• Tautosyllabic stressed /əɾ/ (i.e. /əɾ/ not directly followed by a vowel in the same word) can also distinguish the two tones. It is considered "long" for this purpose, for example pȓstnica ('phalanx') with high/falling tone vs. pŕstanəc ('finger') with low/rising tone.
• For the schwa /ə/ (when not part of the /əɾ/ combination), the two tones are mostly in complementary distribution: it is circumflex in final syllables and acute elsewhere. This is the only case where a short acute vowel can occur.
• All other stressed short vowels are always realised with a circumflex tone. They are mostly restricted to final syllables.

This leads to the following possible combinations of tone, length and vowel quality:

IPA a ɛ e̞ e i ɔ o̞ o u əɾ əl ə Long low tone àː ɛ̀ː è̞ː èː ìː ɔ̀ː ò̞ː òː ùː ə̀ɾ ə̀l Long high tone áː ɛ́ː é̞ː éː íː ɔ́ː ó̞ː óː úː ə́ɾ ə́l Long falling tone âː ê̞ː êː îː ô̞ː ôː ûː ə̂r Long rising tone ǎː ě̞ː ěː ǐː ǒ̞ː ǒː ǔː Short low tone à ɛ̀ è̞ ì ɔ̀ ò̞ ù ə̀ Short high tone á ɛ́ é̞ í ɔ́ ó̞ ú ə́ Short falling tone â ɛ̂ ê̞ î ɔ̂ ô̞ û ə̂ Mid tone a ɛ e̞ i ɔ o̞ u əɾ əl ə

tonemic diacritics a e ḙ ẹ i o o̭ ọ u r l ə Long low tone á é ḙ́ ẹ́ í ó ó̭ ọ́ ú ŕ ĺ Long high tone ȃ ȇ ḙ̑ ẹ̑ ȋ ȏ ȏ̭ ọ̑ ȗ ȓ l̑ Long falling tone ȃ ḙ̑ ẹ̑ ȋ ȏ̭ ọ̑ ȗ ȓ Long rising tone á ḙ́ ẹ́ í ó̭ ọ́ ú Short low tone ə̀ Short high tone ȁ ȅ ḙ̏ ȉ ȍ ȍ̭ ȕ ə̏ Short falling tone ȁ ȅ ḙ̏ ȉ ȍ ȍ̭ ȕ ə̏ Mid tone a e ḙ i o o̭ u r l ə

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 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 /á/, which does not merge with /áː/. Instead, the former is realized as [ʌ́].

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 every second syllable before and after the syllable with primary stress, e. g. aerofotogrametrija [ʔaˈɛ́ːrɔˌfɔtɔˌgɾameˈtríːjà] 'aerophotogrammetry'. Secundarly 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.

Phonetic transcription

[ˈsèːʋɛrní ˈʋéːtə̀r ʔin ˈsóːntsɛ̀ sta ˌsɛ pɾɛˈpɪ̀ːralá – kaˈtɪ̀ːrí ʔɔd ˈnjìːjú ˌjɛ mɔtʃˈnè̞ːjʃí – ˌkɔ jɛ ˈmìːmɔ́ priˈʃə̂u̯ pɔˈpòːtník – zaˈʋǐːt ˈʷtɔ̀ːpə́u̯ ˈplǎːʃtʃ]

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.

References

• Greenberg, Mark L. (2006), A Short Reference Grammar of Standard Slovene, Kansas: University of Kansas
• Herrity, Peter (2000), Slovene: A Comprehensive Grammar, London: Routledge, ISBN 0415231485
• Jurgec, Peter (2005), "Formant frequencies of standard Slovene vowels" (PDF), Govor, 2 (2): 127–143
• Jurgec, Peter (2007), Schwa in Slovenian is Epenthetic, Berlin{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Jurgec, Peter (2007), Novejše besedje s stališča fonologije Primer slovenščine (in Slovenian), Tromsø{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Jurgec, Peter (2011), Slovenščina ima 9 samoglasnikov (PDF), Amsterdam{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Pretnar, Tone; Tokarz, Emil (1980), Slovenščina za Poljake: Kurs podstawowy języka słoweńskiego (in Polish), Katowice: Uniwersytet Śląski
• Priestley, T.M.S. (2002), "Slovene", in Comrie, Bernard; Corbett, Greville. G. (eds.), The Slavonic Languages, London: Routledge, pp. 388–451, ISBN 0-415-28078-8
• Reindl, Donald F. (2008), Language Contact: German and Slovenian, Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer, ISBN 978-3-8196-0715-8{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Srebot-Rejec, Tatjana (1988), "Word Accent and Vowel Duration in Standard Slovene: An Acoustic and Linguistic Investigation", Slavistische Beiträge, 226, Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner, ISBN 3-87690-395-5
• Šuštaršič, Rastislav; Komar, Smiljana; Petek, Bojan (1999), "Slovene", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 135–139, doi:10.1017/S0025100300004874, ISBN 0-521-65236-7, S2CID 249404451
• Toporišič, Jože (2001), Slovenski pravopis, Ljubljana: SAZU

Further reading

• Rubach, Jerzy (2008), "Palatal nasal decomposition in Slovene, Upper Sorbian and Polish", Journal of Linguistics, 44 (1): 169–204, doi:10.1017/S0022226707004987, JSTOR 40058031, S2CID 146558564