This article is about the phonology and phonetics of standard Slovene.
Consonants Slovene has 24-26 distinctive consonant phonemes; of those, only 21 are more common:
+Slovene consonant phonemesAffricates and can be found in words in , e. g. pfenig and sikh.LabialDental/AlveolarPalatalDorsalNasalPlosiveAffricate()()()Fricative()Approximant()Flap
are bilabial, whereas are labiodental. are dental ; i.e., are laminal denti-alveolar, while 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 the lower front teeth. are alveolar. The first two are laminal denti-alveolar before dental consonants. In addition, is velar before velar consonants, and it merges with to a labiodental before labiodental consonants. It is debatable whether the Slovene should be transcribed as or . The pronunciation varies between native speakers, but generally they all oppose 'typical' long trill. is uvular in a number of Upper Carniolan and Carinthian dialects, but such pronunciation is not allowed in Standard Slovene. is usually pronounced a bit more aspirated and it becomes fully aspirated before close vowels. is spirantized into in a large portion of the Slovene-speaking area (all Littoral dialects, most Rovte dialects, some parts of the Upper Carniolan dialects, the western Carinthian dialects), or even further into or even disappeared altogether. is usually described as the sequence (with an epenthetic ). Jones (2002) found that a vocalic segment similar to occurs before (and occasionally after) both syllabic and non-syllabic , and that it is shorter than epenthetic , leading to the conclusion that this is not epenthetic , but simply a feature of rhotic consonant production in Slovene. , , and as a phoneme only appear in loanwords, such as pfenig 'pfennig', sikh 'Sikh', džez 'jazz' and dzeta 'zeta'.
has several allophones depending on context.
Before a vowel, the pronunciation is labiodental, . Before or after a vowel, the pronunciation is bilabial 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. Some speakers convert into a full vowel in this position. For those speakers that retain a consonantal pronunciation, it pre-labializes the following consonant. Thus, vsi may be pronounced as disyllabic or monosyllabic . In some dialects turned into instead of // and devoices as a normal obstruent (see consonant changes), so vsi would in those dialects be pronounced .
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:
Before , pronunciation is nasal, and , respectively. Before and , pronunciation is labiodental, and , respectively.
Similarly, and also change their pronunciations:
Before , the pronunciation is nasal, and , respectively. Before , they become lateral stops, and , respectively.
Bigger dialectal variations Slovene has many dialects, which have their 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 four (alveolo-)palatal sonorants: j , ľ , ń , and ŕ . 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:
Speakers of dialects which retained original pronunciation usually pronounce them as and , respectively. Elsewhere, this pronunciation is considered archaic. Speakers of dialects which completely lost the distinction between palatal and non-palatal and pronounce them the same also in the Standard language. Other speakers can pronounce them either as one of the forms above, or as longer and , respectively.
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 the 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 (to flow)' 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 modern Slovene exists only for , , , and , which turn into , , , and , respectively: Depalatalized (hard)Palatalized (soft)
Second Slavic palatalization The second Slavic palatalization in today's Slovene exists only for and , which turn into and , respectively: Depalatalized (hard)Palatalized (soft)
Iotation Iotation is the change of a consonant when follows and they merge in one or more sounds: ChangeNon-iotatedIotated → bitibič → mladitimlaj → visokvišavje → nizeknižavje → jajcejajčast → polnitipolnjen → volitivolja → govoritigovorjen → kapatikaplja → pozabitipozabljen → lomitilomljen → davitidavljen → frfetatifrflja
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: DevoicedVoiced 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 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. When two or (rarely) more of the same consonants are pronounced one after another, they become geminated, taking the allophone of the first one; e.g., brezzob 'toothless' . Stops and affricates can be geminated or pronounced separately; e.g., oddati 'to hand in' or . Labialized consonants can also lose labialization after ; e.g., siv vzorec 'gray pattern' or (of course vzorec can also be acute). When a dental/alveolar stop is followed by a dental/alveolar affricate, then they can be pronounced separately or combine into a geminated affricate; e.g., od čebele 'from a bee' or . When a dental/alveolar stop or affricate is followed by a dental/alveolar fricative, they combine into a geminated affricate or are pronounced separately; e.g., podse 'under itself' or .
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.
+Slovene vowels+TonalFrontCentralBackCloseClose-midOpen-midNear-openOpen+Non-tonalFrontCentralBackCloseClose-midOpen-midOpenConsonants, , Stressed front vowels are in most words pronounced as lax when follows, so that, e.g., mira 'myrrh' is pronounced and večer 'evening' is pronounced , but loanwords are exceptions, such as virus and vera . If a vowel appears at the beginning of a word, a glottal stop is inserted before: ura 'clock, watch', rt 'cape, headland'. Vowels , , and (but not ) are pronounced with retracted tongue root while others with advanced tongue root.