Language
The official language of Slovenia is Slovene, a South Slavic language spoken by only two million people. In nationally-mixed regions Italian and Hungarian are also spoken. The use of foreign languages in communication, including English, German, Italian, French and Spanish, is widespread throughout the country, while the Croat and Serb languages are easily understood.
The Slovene language has played an important role throughout Slovene history. In spite of various influences, in particular Germanic, it has preserved its unique features. The most notable is the use of dual form, the grammatical number used for two people or things in all the inflected parts of speech, which is nowadays a very rare phenomenon in linguistics. Due to the varied relief of the territory and the various influences coming from neighbouring non-Slavic countries, many dialects developed alongside the standard language. According to some classifications, there are 36 separate dialects in Slovenia. Slovene is now taught at more than 40 university departments in various European countries.
Foreigners have been increasingly interested in learning Slovene, rising from 200-300 students each year at the end of the 1980s to 2,000-3,000 per annum in 2003 (figures from Slovene language courses organised by the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana).According to the latest Eurobarometer survey, released in Brussels in 2006, a total of 71 per cent of Slovenes speak at least one foreign language. Languages of neighbouring countries are the most favoured by the Slovenes (61 per cent), followed by English, which is spoken by 56 per cent of the Slovenes surveyed. This is considerably higher than the European average, which is 50 per cent.
In the context of events in celebration of the European Day of Languages (26 September), the
Ministry of Culture, the
Government Office for European Affairs (GOEA), the Information Office of the European Parliament and the Representation of the European Commission published a booklet entitled
On Slovene in co-operation with staff of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Ljubljana. This short Slovene-English publication is intended for a wider public and presents the role, status, historical development, geographical usage, and grammatical structure of the Slovene language. The last part addresses the challenges facing Slovene in the 21st century, particularly with regard to the multilingual environment of the European Union. In addition, the use of Slovene as one of the EU official languages within the European Parliament has been described in more detail. An excerpt from the Resolution on the 2007-2011 National Programme for Language Policy outlines the vision of development in the light of institutional care for the Slovene language to be provided by the state.
