n, nn, ni
ti, dy, t∙ ni, ny, n∙
ně, ňe, nè, n’
ľ
l, li
l, ly
łÿ, l’, Ǐ
ä
a
a, e, ie, â
ä
ô
o, uo
vo, vuo
ó, ú, ô
ť
t, th, ti
ň
tě, tè, t’, ť
9. Slovak has consonants and vowels – as do all other languages. However, it does not have nasal vowels, which occur frequently in e.g Polish and French. It does use diphthongs. Some languages only have short vowels. Slovak has both long and short vowels. There are certain sounds that are identical in all languages, but some are only characteristic for a specific language. In theory, it is impor‑ tant to strictly differentiate sounds from characters. For example, the character v may have many forms in a language. Its
Contemporary Slovak
pronunciation is different in the word vták (bird), different again in the word vláda (government), it is pronounced differently
Today, the Slovak language9 has a combined digraphic and diacritical spelling system,
in the word krov (roof) and differently again in the word polievka (soup), etc.
which, alongside the basic characters of the Latin alphabet, also employs digraphs (dz, dž
There are many examples like that. Fur‑
and ch; q and x in loan words) as well as characters with diacritical marks (á, ä, č, ď, dž, ô, ŕ,
sarily sound the same everywhere. R is
etc.), which occur relatively often in flowing text.
German; it sounds different in French and
thermore, the same letters do not neces‑ pronounced differently in Slovak and different again in English. It is a similar story with other letters. All languages
In Slovak, the order of characters according to the frequency of occurrence in continuous
mainly have in common the characters n,
text is as follows: n (5.7%); s (5.0%); t (4.9%); r (4.7%); v (4.7%); k (4.0%); l (3.9%); m (3.6%);
that sound soft are different (š, č, ď, ť, r,
d (3.4%); p (3.0%); j (2.2%); z (1.9%); b (1.8%); h (1.4%). In this regard, it is clear to see that
s, t, v, k, l, m, d, b, z, and h. Those letters etc.). The former are the most frequently occurring in all languages.
approximately one in twenty characters in Slovak is either n, s or t. A little less frequent are the characters r and v. This also shows that every twenty‑fifth character in Slovak is k or l or m. In practical terms, this probably means that in a single line of written Slovak text there are three occurrences of n, s, t, r and v, each, and at the same time around two of k, l and m, each.
The frequency of occurrence for diphthongs in Slovak is as follows: ie (0.88%); ia (0.48%); ô (0.22%); ou (0,20%); iu (0,16%). Slovak is composed of 41.69% vowels (including short and long vowels and diphthongs) and 58.31% consonants. Characters that came to us in loan words have the lowest frequency of occurrence: f (0.165%); g (0.175%); x (0.028%); w (0.001%).
DESIGNING SLOVAK DIACRITICS › P. BÁLIK
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