Slovak language

Orthography

The primary principle of Slovak spelling is the phonetic principle (that is "Write as you hear") ? as opposed to the English spelling where the etymological principle is primary. The secondary principle is the morphological principle (that is all forms derived from the same stem are written the same way even if they are pronounced differently in reality) ? the main example is the assimilation rule (see Pronunciation). The tertiary principle is the etymological principle, which can be seen in the use of i after certain consonants and of y after other consonants, although both i and y are pronounced the same way. And finally there is the rarely applied grammatical principle, under which, for example, there is a difference in writing (but not in the pronunciation) between the basic singular and plural form of masculine adjectives, for example pekný (nice ? sg.) vs pekní (nice ? pl.).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Most foreign words receive Slovak spelling immediately or after some time, for example "weekend" is víkend, "software" is softvér (but some 15-years-ago spelled the English way), and "quality" is spelled kvalita. However, personal and geographical names from other languages using Latin alphabets keep their original spelling, unless there is a fully Slovak form for the name (for example Londýn for "London").

Related Topics:
Foreign words - Latin alphabet

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Slovak orthography has changed many times. One of the most important changes was after World War II when s began to be written as z where pronounced as , for example smluva into zmluva, sväz into zväz.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~