ABSTRACT

Slovene is a South Slavonic language and is spoken in Slovenia and adjacent enclaves in Austria, Italy and Hungary. It is the native language of nearly two million Slovenes, and it is also spoken by approximately 400,000 speakers in emigrant communities in the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, Germany and France. Considering the relatively small size of the Slovene-speaking area (approx. 20,000 square kilometres), Slovene is remarkable for the heterogeneity of its dialects. All these dialects can differ greatly, so much so that there can be some lack of mutual intelligibility from one end of the country to the other.