Slovak is a Slavic language spoken in Central Europe. It is the official language of Slovakia, also spoken in parts of the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Serbia. Rich in its cultural heritage, Slovak is widely spoken by over 5 million people.
Slovak is the only official language in Slovakia and the native language of its 5 million people. Its literature dates back to the 11th century, and the oldest form of Slovak is known as Old Church Slavonic.
Slovak uses Latin or the Cyrillic script and shares many words with other Slavic languages, mainly Czech, Polish, and Russian.
Slovak was first standardized in 1787 by the linguist Anton Bernolak and is one of the 23 official languages of the European Union.
Slovak has a few dialects and uses the Accusative case for nouns which sets it apart from other Slavic languages.
Scientists often acknowledge the complexity of the Slovak language. For example, it has a free word order, multiple grammatical cases, and genders.
There are 29 letters in the Slovak alphabet, but new foreign words are primarily written using the Latin alphabet.
Slovak pronunciation is relatively simple, with few rare rules to memorize compared to other languages.
The dialects range from literary forms to mainly spoken dialects. Some have varieties of vocabulary and grammar structure.
The Slovak language is often called the language of love and music due to its tendency to express emotions more eloquently than other languages.
Slovak has a unique feature known as Stress Clusters, which involves an alternation of stressed and non-stressed syllables, creating a distinctive rhythm.
