Complete Lists Of Basic Words And Phrases In Slovak
These basic words and phrases in Slovak should give you a decent start into this interesting language and help you on your trip to Slovakia. This beautiful country has a lot to offer to travelers but unfortunately, they may see the Slovak language as very hard to learn. But no worries! In this blog post, I will do my best to teach you a collection of useful phrases in Slovak.
Why Should You Learn The Slovak Language?
Most young people in Slovakia now learn English in schools which is a great thing. However, many older Slovaks speak only their native language and know basic words in German or Russian.
Slovakia is not yet overrun by tourists, so people are usually very motivated to offer help to visitors, even if their foreign language skills are modest or non-existent for that matter. Like in many other countries in the world, if you learn even a few basic words of Slovak locals will appreciate it very much and will be great hosts to you.
Bars and restaurants in tourist areas offer menus in English or German but in many smaller towns, menus are only available in Slovak.
Basic Words And Phrases In Slovak
Pozdravy (Greetings)
Konverzácia (Conversation)
About The Slovak Language
The Slovak language belongs to the group of Western Slavic languages. However, it contains some elements of the Southern Slavic languages. Slovak, as a codified language, did not exist until the end of the 18th century, when Anton Bernolák, a Roman Catholic priest set about to create a Slovak literary language. He based his creation on the Western Slovakian dialect and produced a phonetic spelling (one that is written as it is pronounced).
Slovak uses the Latin alphabet plus the 4 diacritics: the softener: , the length mark: ´, the two dots ¨ and the circumflex ^. This beautiful language is sometimes called “Slavic Esperanto” because it is regarded as the most comprehensible language for the speakers of other Slavic languages.
Like Czech, the Slovak language is distinct from many other Slavic languages in the fact that the accent, or stress, is usually placed on the first syllable of a word.
In addition to Czech, a number of other languages have exerted influence on the development of the Slovak language, notably Polish, Hungarian, Latin, and German. The German word for coins, “münzen,” for example, became the basis for the Slovak word for coins, “mince.” In more recent years, Slovak also has borrowed a number of loan words from other languages such as English and Italian. In most cases, these words are immediately adapted to a Slovak spelling conducive to the Slovak language pronunciation. For example, the English word “weekend” became “víkend”, while the Latin word for quality, “qualita”, became “kvalita”.
Final Thoughts
Slovak is such an interesting language to learn. So, if you are planning to visit Slovakia, you can use the Ling App and master it in an easy, fast, and fun way. Just keep in mind, if you master the pronunciation it might fool the person you are talking to and you will get the response in Slovak and you will be in trouble :).
Original blog post: https://ling-app.com/sk/basic-words-and-phrases-in-slovak/
