Slovenia Languages

Description
Slovene is the official language in Solovenia. It is the native language of 88% of Slovenia's population.

Other languages which have official language status in selected regions of Slovenia are:
 * Hungarian
 * Italian

Other minority languages spoken include:
 * Romani - a legally protected language in Slovenia.
 * Croatian
 * Serbian
 * Serbo-Croatian - a significant number of people speak a variant as their native language.
 * German - was the largest minority language in Slovenia prior to World War II.

Slovenia's most taught foreign languages include English, German, Italian, French, and Spanish.

Alphabet and Pronunciation
Alphabet

Pronunciation

Language Aids and Dictionaries
Dictionaries

Online Dictionaries

Language Aids

Introduction
Materials used in Slovenian research can be written in German, Slovene, Latin, Hungarian, or Italian. Early records are in Latin, later records until 1800 in German, and then in Slovene. Slovene is a south Slavic language closely related to Croatian. Some records in western Slovenia are in Italian and some records in the eastern part are in Hungarian. You do not need to know all these languages to do research in Slovenian records. You will, however, need to know some key words and phrases in Slovene, German, and Latin for most of the country.

For word lists and help researching in Slovenian records, see:
 * German Genealogical Word List
 * Hungarian Genealogical Word List
 * Latin Genealogical Word List
 * Italian Genealogical Word List

Research Strategy
Here are some language tips when doing research in Slovenia:
 * Good genealogical word lists in English, Slovene, German, and Latin are found in the appendices to Moj rodovnik : priročnik za raziskovanje rodu by Vasja Butina (FS Library 949.73 D27b).
 * Archival finding aids are written in Slovene.
 * Census records (1880-1890) for Novo Mesto are written mostly in Slovene although the columns are dual language—both German and Slovene. When recording a family of German heritage that entry would be written in German using the Fraktur script. All other entries were written in Slovene using Latin script.
 * You will only find Hungarian in the eastern edges of Slovenia next to Hungary.
 * For instance, the records at the FamilySearch Library for Murska Sobota include Muster rolls in Hungarian, Jewish Records in German and Hungarian, civil registration in Hungarian, and Roman Catholic parish registers in Latin and Hungarian.

Months
In modern Slovenian, the names of months are cognates with most European languages. However, archaic Slovenian can have multiple names for the months which names are primarily of Slavic origin. These names usually vary by region. Additionally, the Slovenian language changes the endings of words depending on their function in the phrase or sentence. Months are often written in possessive form. The following table illustrates the various names of the months in modern and archaic Slovenian: