Slovak

Slovak (also called Slovakian) belongs to the west Slavic group of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is spoken by slightly over 4.8 million people in Slovakia. There are also expatriate Slovak communities in Canada, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Ukraine, and USA. The total number of Slovak speakers worldwide is estimated at around 5 million (Ethnologue).

Slovak is very close to Czech. In fact, Slovak and Czech speakers are usually able to understand each other. However, with the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993, the two languages have begun to drift apart.

Slovak is the official language of the Republic of Slovakia. Standard Slovak is the language of government administration, all levels of education, the media, and of publication. Slovak was standardised only in the early part of the 19th century.

Dialects
Slovak dialects are fragmented by the country's mountainous terrain. They are, however, mutually intelligible. Slovak is usually divided into three major dialect areas:

•   Central Slovak on which Standard Slovak is primarily based;
•   Western Slovak which merges with the Moravian dialect of Czech;
•   Eastern Slovak which merges with Polish dialects along the border.

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