Language Information

Slovenian is the official language of the new Republic of Slovenia, spoken by about 90 percent of the country's 2 million people.

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The language is most closely related to Serbo-Croatian but the two are not mutually intelligible.

Austria, Italy, Slovenia.

Family: Indo-European
Subgroup: Slavic
Branch: Southern

Writing Sample

Translation

Night was falling; villagers and farmhands were coming home from the fields. On Sitar's roof the red cock suddenly appeared. A tongue-shaped flame shot up skywards; then another was seen on the stables, and yet another on the barn—and then on both sheds. They were leaping up; they seemed to come out of the earth and to reach up to the sky. Burning beams whirled in the air and fell in a circle on the green fields, as if thrown by a mighty human hand_. Yerney had set fire to his terrible torch.

—IVAN CANKAR, The Bailiff Yerney and His Rights