An Indo-European language and a member of the West Slavonic group of languages, spoken by c.5 million people, chiefly in the Slovak Republic, where it is the official language, as well as in some larger communities in nearby parts of Rumania, former Yugoslavia, Hungary and Poland. A substantial number of immigrant speakers can be found in the United States, Canada, South America, and other countries.
The earliest traces of the language date from the 11th century, while the standard literary language was codified in the mid-19th century. The orthography of the language is based on the morphophonemic principle. Slovak is spelt in the Roman alphabet consisting of 33 characters. It is also closely related to Czech, the two languages being mutually intelligible to a great extent.
Like most of the Slavonic languages, Slovak has a very rich verbal and nominal morphology.
CLASSIFICATION = Indo-European family, SCRIPT = Roman
