Croatia[8][9] Slovak (/ˈsloʊvæk, -vɑːk/ SLOH-va(h)k;[15][16] endonym: slovenčina [ˈslɔʋent͡ʂina] or slovenský jazyk [ˈslɔʋenskiː ˈjazik] ⓘ), is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script.

Slovak is closely related to Czech, to the point of very high mutual intelligibility,[18] as well as to Polish.

In the later mid-19th century, the modern Slovak alphabet and written standard became codified by Ľudovít Štúr and reformed by Martin Hattala.

(2) Používanie iných jazykov než štátneho jazyka v úradnom styku ustanoví zákon.

In practice, the Ministry of Culture publishes a document that specifies authoritative reference books for standard Slovak usage, which is called the codification handbook (kodifikačná príručka).

There are four such publications:[27] Slovak speakers are also found in the Slovak diaspora in the United States, the Czech Republic, Argentina, Serbia, Ireland, Romania, Poland, Canada, Hungary, Germany, Croatia, Israel, the United Kingdom, Australia, Austria, Ukraine, Norway, and other countries to a lesser extent.

[28] There are many Slovak dialects, which are divided into the following four basic groups: The fourth group of dialects is often not considered a separate group, but a subgroup of Central and Western Slovak dialects (see e.g. Štolc, 1968), but it is currently undergoing changes due to contact with surrounding languages (Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, and Hungarian) and long-time geographical separation from Slovakia (see the studies in Zborník Spolku vojvodinských slovakistov, e.g. Dudok, 1993).

Lowland dialects share some words and areal features with the languages surrounding them (Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, and Romanian).

[35] In addition, Slovak, unlike Czech, employs a "rhythmic law" which forbids two long vowels from following one another within the same word.

For example, adding the locative plural ending -ách to the root vín- creates vínach, not *vínách.

[36] This law also applies to diphthongs; for example, the adjective meaning "white" is biely, not *bielý (compare Czech bílý).

For example, prísť domov [priːzɟ dɔmɔw] (to come home) and viac jahôd [ʋɪɐdz jaɦʊɔt] (more strawberries).

Slovak uses the Latin script with small modifications that include the four diacritics (ˇ, ´, ¨, ˆ) placed above certain letters (a-á,ä; c-č; d-ď; dz-dž; e-é; i-í; l-ľ,ĺ; n-ň; o-ó,ô; r-ŕ; s-š; t-ť; u-ú; y-ý; z-ž) Italic letters (Q and W) are used in loanwords and foreign names.

Finally, the rarely applied grammatical principle is present when, for example, the basic singular form and plural form of masculine adjectives are written differently with no difference in pronunciation (e.g. pekný = nice – singular versus pekní = nice – plural).

In the above example, the noun phrase ten veľký muž cannot be split up, so that the following combinations are not possible: And the following sentence is stylistically infelicitous: The regular variants are as follows: Slovak, like every major Slavic language other than Bulgarian and Macedonian, does not have articles.

The demonstrative pronoun in masculine form ten (that one) or tá in feminine and to in neuter respectively, may be used in front of the noun in situations where definiteness must be made explicit.

Compound numerals (21, 1054) are combinations of these words formed in the same order as their mathematical symbol is written (e.g. 21 = dvadsaťjeden, literally "twenty-one").

The numerals are as follows: Some higher numbers: (200) dvesto, (300) tristo, (900) deväťsto, (1,000) tisíc, (1,100) tisícsto, (2,000) dvetisíc, (100,000) stotisíc, (200,000) dvestotisíc, (1,000,000) milión, (1,000,000,000) miliarda.

The highest number of borrowings in the old Slovak vocabulary come from Latin, German, Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Greek (in that order).

Since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia it has been permitted to use Czech in TV broadcasting and during court proceedings (Administration Procedure Act 99/1963 Zb.).

Czech and Slovak have a long history of interaction and mutual influence well before the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, a state which existed until 1993.

Literary Slovak shares significant orthographic features with Czech, as well as technical and professional terminology dating from the Czechoslovak period, but phonetic, grammatical, and vocabulary differences do exist.

Standard Slovak shares high degrees of mutual intelligibility with many Slavic varieties.

Some mutual intelligibility occurs with spoken Rusyn, Ukrainian, and even Russian (in this order), although their orthographies are based on the Cyrillic script.