Wiktionary:About Slovene

This is a Wiktionary policy, guideline or common practices page. Specifically it is a policy think tank, working to develop a formal policy. Policies – Entries: CFI - EL - NORM - NPOV - QUOTE - REDIR - DELETE. Languages: LT - AXX. Others: BLOCK - BOTS - VOTES.

Slovene is the northernmost South Slavic language spoken in Slovenia, and also in some parts of Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Croatia, however the latter are unfamiliar with Slovene Standard and rather speak Standard Croatian. It is quite closely related to the Kajkavian dialect of (Serbo-)Croatian, but a bit less so to the standard Štokavian dialect that is the base of the Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin national standards. The language borders four major groups of "European" languages (Germanic to the north, Romanic to the west, Slavic to the south and Uralic to the northeast), which combined with various different borders through the territory over the years has caused great dialectal diversity and a lot of regional words. The ancestor of all Slovene dialects is called Alpine Slovene, which existed somewhere between 1000 and 1200 AD.

Standards

Slovene has currently four standards and one historical standard. The most common form of Slovene is Standard Slovene (abbreviated SS). It has two standards, tonal (an accented vowel can be high- or low-pitched) and non-tonal (all vowels have the same pitch). The more common standard is non-tonal, however Wiktionary entries should be described in tonal as the only major difference between the two is that the tonal distinction is absent in the non-tonal standard, but otherwise, they use the same orthography etc.

The other two current standards are used by Slovene-speaking communities in Italy. The Natisone Valley dialect standard is spoken in the Municipality of Polfero and is based on the western Natisone Valley dialect. Resian is spoken in the Municipality of Resia and further has four sub-standards based on the four major settlements (San Giorno, Gniva, Oseacco, Stolvizza). The latter is practically unintelligible with the Standard Slovene.

Dialectal and colloquial forms

Most other Slovene dictionaries include only the Standard Slovene pronunciations, forms and spellings, however Wiktionary policy is a lot more lax and also allows dialectal and colloquial forms. These should be classified into three different categories:

1. General colloquial, which are present on most of the territory (e.g. fon instead of telefon). Words with omission of schwa from orthography (dž instead of dež) and additional letter for schwa (vert instead of vrt) also belong into this category. These forms should have their own entry and if the pronunciation differs from standard form, should also be included in declension/conjugation tables, synonyms etc. The accompanying qualifier should be colloquial.
2. Regional, which are present on a smaller territorial area, but still not limited to just three or fewer dialects, e.g. frderbati. These forms should have their own entry and if the pronunciation differs from standard form, should also be included in declension/conjugation tables, synonyms etc. The accompanying qualifier should be regional, or the description of region, e.g. Littoral dialects for the form imaste. If the form is also allowed in Standard language or is sometimes also used in other areas, then the qualifier should be chiefly regional, e.g. chiefly eastern dialects for the form otipljem.
3. Dialectal, which are present only in one or two dialects. These can have their own entry if it can be justified with three written examples, otherwise the entry is limited to the template {{sl-pronounce-dial}}. These forms should not be included in the declension tables as it would make this impractical due to the almost fifty different dialects.

The border form between second and third form is verbal ending -ve for feminine and neuter subjects instead of standard -va, which is then reserved only for masculine subjects. This form should not be included in conjugation tables as it could cause confusion and first person dual indicative/imperative form can already have many forms (verb īti already has ten different forms for imperative), however it can be listed as (partial) synonyms, etc. as a regional word would be.

Orthography

Standard Slovene

The modern Standard Slovene alphabet uses Gajʼs Latin alphabet. It is deficient in several respects:

• Accent and tone are not indicated.
• The difference between closed /eː/ /oː/ and open /ɛː/ /ɔː/ is not indicated.
• The phoneme /ə/ is not distinguished, and represented simply with the letter ⟨e⟩.
• Syllable-finally, letter ⟨l⟩ can represent either /l/ or /ʋ/.

Dictionaries and other learning materials use extra characters/diacritics to compensate. Regarding vowels and length, there are two common but incompatible systems in use:

• The tonal orthography resembles that used for Serbo-Croatian.
  • Accented long vowels with low/rising tone use an acute accent ⟨á⟩.
  • Accented long vowels with high/falling tone use an inverted breve ⟨ȃ⟩.
  • Accented short vowels with low/rising tone use a grave accent ⟨à⟩. This occurs only on the schwa in Slovene.
  • Accented short vowels with high/falling tone use a double grave accent ⟨ȁ⟩. All other accented short vowels are of this type.
  • The distinction between closed and open e and o is denoted with a dot under the vowel. Open /ɛː/ and /ɔː/ are written as simply ⟨é⟩/⟨ȇ⟩ and ⟨ó⟩/⟨ȏ⟩, while closed /eː/ and /oː/ are written as ⟨ẹ́⟩/⟨ẹ̑⟩ and ⟨ọ́⟩/⟨ọ̑⟩.
• The stress orthography indicates placement of the accent/stress and the distinction between closed and open mid-vowels, but it does not distinguish tones. It should not be used as it could cause confusion, except if {{sl-non-tonal}} or {{sl-notone}} are used.
  • Accented long vowels are indicated with an acute accent ⟨á⟩.
  • Accented short vowels with a grave accent ⟨à⟩.
  • The signs ⟨é⟩ and ⟨ó⟩ denote the long closed vowels /eː/ and /oː/, while the open vowels /ɛː/ and /ɔː/ are written as ⟨ê⟩ and ⟨ô⟩ with a circumflex.

These representations are detailed further on Appendix:Slovene pronunciation.

Regarding these three orthographic representations, Wiktionary adopts the following practice for Slovene entries:

• The names of entries use the common standard orthography, without any diacritics (apart from the haček which is normally part of the letters š, ž, č).
• In the headword line, inflection tables and links to synonyms, derived terms or cognates in etymologies of other languages, the tonal orthography is used. It is more precise and gives more information than the stress orthography. Additionally, the symbol ⟨ə⟩ is used to indicate the schwa, and ⟨ł⟩ is used to indicate where the letter ⟨l⟩ is written but /ʋ/ is pronounced.
• In the "Pronunciation" section the pronunciation is indicated in IPA using the {{IPA}} template. This should use IPA tone diacritics as well. The template {{sl-IPA}} can be used to automatically generate the IPA pronunciation.
• In running text, such as usage examples, no diacritics are used, to reflect the language as it is actually written.

For example, the entry will be named "slovenščina", it is linked to using {{l|sl|slovẹ́nščina}}. The entry itself should have the full IPA transcription /slɔˈʋèːnʃt͡ʃina/ in the pronunciation section.

Resian

For Resian, the renewed orthography should be used, and not the former Italian-made orthography. Additionally, acute (´) should be used to denote stress. For the four regional varieties, the diacritics used should be as defined in the renewed orthography. The entries should still have the centralization diacritic (¨) as it is normally written.

Natisone Valley dialect

The standard orthography is defined by Nino Špehonja in Nediška gramatika. There are three diacritics additionally used in dictionaries to denote stress:

• grave (`), used to denote long accent (ː)
• acute (´), used to denote short accent
• dot above (˙), used to denote extra-short vowels (◌̆)

However, this way the tone and two consonantal phonemes still are not distinguished. Therefore, Wiktionary also used the following symbols in the head of the entry:

• 〈˥〉 to denote high tone
• 〈˩〉 to denote low tone
• 〈ć〉 to denote archaic phoneme /tɕ/
• 〈ɢ〉 to indicate pronunciation as ɡ, rather than more common ɣ

The first two should be placed at the end, e.g. ǧardìn˥

Archaic spellings

In the past, Bohorič, Danjko and Metelko alphabets were in use. Words written with Bohorič alphabet can be added as separate entries, but they need to actually exist, do not just transcribe everything into Bohorič alphabet. The entry should just be {{form of|sl|Bohorič spelling of|XY}}. Metelko and Danjko alphabet should not be included as they were used only for a short time, never gained much popularity, and not even all letters are encoded as of Unicode 15.0.

Prekmurje Slovene spelling

Prekmurje spelling uses the same diacritics for stress as non-tonal Slovene, but it has another diacritic, ü, which should be always included.

Alpine Slovene

Alpine Slavic forms are mostly unattested, so an asterisk should always be placed before. These forms should only be included in pronunciation section, and written using scientific notation. Only those forms that were present at that time should be included.

Entry format

You are advised to read Wiktionary:Entry layout explained before continuing; it sets forth general formatting rules for entries.

Headers

Slovene entries should begin with the L2 header ==Slovene==. If there are other languages on a page besides Slovene, each section is separated from the others by four dashes (----) on an otherwise empty line.

Other headers are:

===Alternative forms===
===Etymology===
===Pronunciation===
===[part of speech]===
====Usage notes====
====Declension==== or ====Conjugation==== (for verbs and interjections)
====Derived terms====
====Related terms====
===See also===
===References===
===Further reading===

Part of speech

For parts of speech, templates such as {{sl-noun}} should be used. In the entry, additional diacritics should be placed to indicate the stress/tone. The second parameter is gender (and animacy) for nouns, comparative and superlative for adjectives, and aspect for verbs. For nouns for places, template {{sl-at-to}} should be added.

Inflection tables

Inflection tables can, and do, include more forms than Standard Slovene allows are present, however. More exactly, all forms can be included that satisfy the following conditions:

• The form should have different pronunciation that all of the others.
• The form should not be dialectal (present in only one or two dialects). This includes special declension in Brdo dialect.
• All forms should be written in Gaj alphabet.
• Plural forms should not be included for dual (although loss of dual is in some cases pretty common).
• Forms that could be derived, but are not attested (e.g. plural forms from singularia tantum etc.)
• Forms that evolved from simplification of one of the forms (e.g. gospodu/gaspodov instead of gospodov), loss of the final vowel (e.g. šol instead of šoli) or any other phonetically-based change (e.g. mestu instead of mesto).
• Feminized or masculinized forms that do not change the endings.
• Historical endings that are not part of evolution from Proto-Slavic to nowadays Slovene and were attested for a shorter period of time.
• Resian and Natisone Valley inflection can also be added, if enough data is gathered.
• Aorist and imperfect forms can be added, but a special template needs to be made first.

Styllistically marked forms, as well as forms not included in dictionaries, but still used or understood should be just italicized, obsolete forms that are not understood anymore (mostly limited to former vocative endings and former forms of verbs for 1st sing. and 3rd plur. for present) should have a superscript ✝ placed before them. Verbs following accentual type IIA should not have their fixed accent forms in l-participle italicized.

Unknown stress or tone

If you don't know the tone of the entry, then {{sl-non-tonal}} should be placed right after the L2 heading and non-tonal diacritics should then be used. If only a single form has unknown accent, then {{sl-notone}} should be placed.

Dialectal forms

All dialectal data should be gathered in the template {{sl-pronounce-dial}}. For each parameter, a bullet point list of pronunciations should be made, accompanied by a qualifier, which is the name of town/village. Below, a description can follow, detailing the formation, any different meanings, or declension.

See also

• Category:Slovene language