Slovene

Slovene or Slovenian is a South Slavic language.
==Geographic Distribution==
===Official Language in===
*Slovenia
=== Recognized minority language in ===
* Austria
* Hungary
* Italy
==Phonology==
===Vowels===
===Consonants===
Voiced obstruents (//, //, //, //, //, //) are devoiced at the end of words unless immediately followed by a word beginning with a vowel or a voiced consonant. In consonant clusters, voicing distinction is neutralized and all consonants in the cluster assimilate the voicing of the rightmost consonant. In such environments, [ɣ] and [d͡z] may occur as voiced allophones of /x/ and /t͡s/, respectively (e.g. vŕh drevésa [] and muc Bóbi [].)
[] is an allophone of // before velar consonants (e.g. in bánka [] and sangvínik [].)
[] is an allophone of // before // and // (e.g. in simfoníja [] and trámvaj [].)
/ʋ/ has several allophones depending on context:
*Before a vowel: [] (vôda [])
*At the end of a syllable or before a consonant: [] (pav [])
*At the beginning of a syllable before a voiced consonant: [] (vbod [])
*At the beginning of a syllable before a voiceless consonant: [] (vsak [])
The preposition v is always bound to the following word; however its phonetic realization follows the normal phonological rules for /ʋ/.
==Grammar==
===Grammatical categories===
====Gender (Spol)====
Three genders are distinguished in Slovene:
*Masculine
*Feminine
*Neuter
Nouns possess one of the three genders, while adjectives as well as participles and gerunds come in the forms of all three genders.
====Number (Število)====
Slovene uses three numbers:
*Singular
*Dual
*Plural
Slovenian is one of the few languages that have fully preserved the dual number.
====Case (Sklon)====
The Slovenian language has six cases:
*Nominative
*Genitive
*Dative
*Accusative
*Locative
*Instrumental
====Degrees of comparison (Stopnja)====
Just like English, Slovene adjectives and adverbs have the three degrees of comparison:
*Positive
*Comparative
*Superlative
====Definitiveness (Določnost)====
Slovene does not have any articles that would indicate definitiveness, but it can be expressed in a limited amount of words. The nominative singular positive of most masculine adjectives comes in two forms: the definite and the indefinite form. The definite form is characterized by the ending -i that conveys the definitiveness of the noun that the adjective belongs to, while the indefinite form lacks such an ending, which means that the noun the adjective refers to is not definite. 
====Animacy (Živost)====
Animacy is only distinguished in a minor aspect, of which most speakers of Slovene are unaware. When declining masculine nouns of the first conjugation, one finds that if the reference of a noun is animate, its accusative is the same as its genitive, while if the reference of the noun is not animate, the accusative is the same as the nominative of the noun.
====Aspect (Vid)====
Slovene distinguishes the perfective and imperfective aspects. It does so by having perfective and imperfective verbs. Perfective verbs usually have a prefixed preposition, which, along with making the verb finite, also changes the meaning a bit.
====Mood and Tense (Naklon in čas)====
Slovene has three moods and four tenses, though not all tenses appear in all the moods.
*Indicative
**Present
**Preterite
**Future
**Pluperfect 
*Conditional
**Present
**Preterite
*Imperative
**Present
The pluperfect tense is nowadays considered archaic and is rarely used in speech.
====Voice (Način)====
Two voices are distinguished in Slovenian:
*Active
*Passive
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Category:Languages
Category:Indo-European languages
Category:Balto-Slavic languages
Category:Slavic languages
Category:South Slavic languages
Category:Language of Europe