Slovak language

In Latin script, Slovak is a West Slavic language belonging to the Czech–Slovak group. It is a member of the Indo-European language family, and it is one of the Slavic languages, which are a subset of the wider Balto-Slavic branch of the language family. It is the official language of Slovakia and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union, and it is spoken as a native language by around 5 million people, the majority of whom are ethnic Slovaks.

Czech and Slovak have a strong relationship, to the point that they are mutually intelligible to a very high degree, as are Czech and Polish. In common with other Slavic languages, Slovak has an extremely complex morphological system and a word order that is rather fluid. A great deal of Latin and German, as well as other Slavic languages, have affected its lexicon.

Czech and Slovak dialects were standardised in the early modern period within the Czech–Slovak dialect continuum, which emerged as a result of development within the West Slavic group during the high mediaeval period. The contemporary Slovak alphabet and written standard were defined by udovt tr in the latter mid-19th century and revised by Martin Hattala in the early 20th century, respectively. The Moravian dialects spoken in the western part of the country along the border with the Czech Republic are also sometimes classified as Slovak, despite the fact that some of their western variants are closer to Czech; nonetheless, they serve as a link between the two languages by serving as a bridge dialect.

Besides the United States, the Czech Republic, Argentina, Serbia, Ireland, Romania, Poland, Canada, Hungary, Germany, Croatia (in Israel), the United Kingdom, Austria, and Norway, Slovak speakers can also be found in the Slovak diaspora in other countries to a lesser extent.