PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY
Segmental Aspects

Slovak as one of the Slavic languages belongs to the Western branch of the Indo-European language family. The Slovaks as a nation have a long and rich history. “The beginnings of Slovak are traced by some authors to as early as the 11th and 12th centuries, while the existing findings can only support this claim with some pastoral formulae used at weddings or christenings, with toponyms included into Latin documents, and with orally preserved folk songs, fairy tales, legends, etc.“ (Böhmerová, 2022, p. 64). As Böhmerová further states, “until 1868, when the so-called National Act in the  Hungarian  part  of  the  Austro-Hungarian Monarchy restricted the official usage of languages other than Magyar, Slovak was used by much of the population, and had also been taught at schools. The official languages on the territory of present-day Slovakia were German, Magyar (in English rather non-specifically and actually inadequately often referred to by the political-historical term as “Hungarian”), and up to 1867 also Latin… Many Slovak inhabitants  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  Monarchy,  including  ordinary,  uneducated  people,  were  often  multi-lingual,  or  at  least  bilingual,  as  in  addition  to  Slovak  they  also  had  some  command of one of the above languages. Moreover, there were also speakers of several other languages, above all Czech, namely in the circles of Protestants and some intellectuals“ (Böhmerová, 2022, p. 64).  The situation changed “after the Austro-Hungarian  Monarchy Compromise  in  1867,  during  the  following  decades  on  the  Hungarian  part  of  the  former  monarchy,  i.e.,  Transleithanien,  Slovak  itself,  just  like  some  other  national  languages  in  it,  was used neither in official communication, nor within any international communication. This was enacted by the so-called National Act XLIV/1868, in which Magyar was instituted as the only “national“ language in the multi-ethnic Hungarian monarchy. Moreover, through a series of acts in 1879, 1883 and 1907, the teaching in Magyar was by law required in all levels of schools, from nursery schools to secondary schools, and regardless of their mother tongue, all pupils were required to master Magyar already by the end of the 4th grade“ (Böhmerová, 2022, p. 64).  

Böhmerová not only briefly outlines the status of the Slovak language during the period of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, but also refers to the social conditions of the Slovaks across centuries: “Slovaks did not hold any international offices, and, consequently, did not have any direct international political, commercial, or other contacts within which English would be needed. Hence, in Slovakia, in contrast to some other European countries, for a long time English did not rank among the various foreign languages used or learned, as it was not needed there. Although the beginnings of the prehistory of Slovaks are linked already with the Great Moravian Empire, i.e. the 9th century, the beginnings of the development of Slovak can be traced back to about the 10th century to the time of the disintegration of Proto-Slavic, when various sound differentiations took place (cf. Krajčovič 1981; Pauliny 1983)… The first preserved Slovak continuous text is from Žilinská kniha (1378–1561) (cf., for example, Krajčovič 1981). In the context of the historical multi-ethnic political units, and because of the scarcity of early written documentation that has been found, the presence of Slovaks in the multicultural political units was for a long time overlooked” (Böhmerová, 2022, p. 65).

Strong efforts to codify the Slovak language are recorded throughout history. One of the quite successful attempts in relatively recent history was that of the Slovak distinguished linguist Anton Bernolák who proposed a codification of Slovak in 1787. This Catholic priest was the author of many publications focused not only on linguistic problems (grammar books, dictionaries), but also on historical, etymological, political and aesthetics issues. The standard he advocated for, was based on the cultural Western Slovak dialects. Another devoted nationalist, Ľudovít Štúr, who was the leader of young Slovak scholars supporting the Slovak national movement, after having overcome oppression and many difficulties, succeeded in establishing and codifying the Slovak language based on the Central Slovak dialects. The Slovak language standardized in 1843 by Ľudovít Štúr and his devout friends, above all Jozef Miloslav Hurban and Michal Miloslav Hodža, represents the basis of Slovak spoken today by approximately five million inhabitants of Slovakia. It is the official language of the Slovak Republic.

From the diachronic point of view, the contemporary model of the Slovak language is based on the accent known as the Central Slovak dialect. For pronunciation according to a norm, hence, for institutionalised (codified) Standard Slovak, the term slovenská spisovná výslovnosť or orthoepy is used (Kráľ, 1982).

As it has already been mentioned, English and Slovak differ from various perspectives. Regarding their origin and classification, English comes from the family of Germanic languages and Slovak from Slavic languages. This distinction contributes to differences in their grammatical features. English is analytical, while Slovak is a synthetic, inflective language. As far as pronunciation is concerned, every Slovak grapheme is prevailingly pronounced the same, i.e. represented by the same phoneme, whereas in English, there exist no general rules for the pronunciation of single graphemes or their clusters.